Chapter 44: Smoldering Embers

Lumina

I stood facing the wall, my eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"...How do you know that name?"

I struggled to come up with some reasoning as to how Athena knew Ares. It was surprisingly difficult to do, considering I had no idea where Ares had lived before the Mass Teleportation. He was in Fittoa, sure, but he'd said he was just visiting. He was initially well in line with my perception of the nobles in this world, so I'd unconsciously assumed that he was, in fact, some sort of nobility, but he never really acted like it. He wasn't pretentious, but I figured Ares wouldn't have fit with the crowd to begin with. He sure had the proclivities of a noble, though…

So, maybe this girl was an acquaintance from before he and I met? The implications of that were troubling, though. That'd mean that, one, kidnappings and robbery were not done away with even in the more glamorous cities in the world—and two, considering how much of a lady-killer he was back then, there was probably some bad blood between them. Or worse, she still clung to an affection for him.

She could have also been a victim of the Fittoan Mass Teleportation if her Asuran red hair was anything to go off of. In that case, she was just as lost as I was.

"I feel like it's been, what, maybe a year? Since I last saw him, I mean. He was my… err, I don't exactly know how to describe it. We were stuck in the same slave trading ring as each other and ended up talking for a few days. Your Ares mention anything about that?" Athena asked as I strained to hear her unclear voice.

Slave..? so Athena found Ares there before I did? Or rather, from the sound of it, they were stuck together for a good while. I found it strange that Ares hadn't mentioned her, but then again, Ares had mostly skirted out of telling me what he'd done in the first thirteen years of his life.

"He never mentioned you, no," I said, before realizing that I didn't know how she might take that. "...Oh, but don't feel too bad, we were going through a hell of a time when we first met and, uh, it probably just slipped his mind—if I had to guess."
Never thought I'd be making excuses for the guy, but here I am. I suppressed a snort.

"That's no surprise," she gave a small, dry laugh. "If I'm being honest, I really didn't expect to hear anything else about him for the rest of my life, however long that's going to be. But… it's a relief, knowing he's alright now."

I nodded even though there was a wall between us. I'd never given it much thought, really, that he had ended up in such a state. Ares came out mostly unfazed, but if I or any other average person were put in his situation? It made me all the more curious about what type of life Ares lived before to let him endure all of that.

"He's changed a lot, I bet. If you were to meet him now, I wonder how you'd react…" I ventured.

"Haha, I don't doubt that a bit. That boy had too much energy to be one of those types who hardly took a step in their lives. Besides, I'm sure he's got a lot to work towards now, hehe," her voice shifted to one that sounded more like a younger girl.

"Hm? What do you mean by that?" I tilted my head uselessly.

"He's got you now." I could somehow tell that she was grinning ear to ear as she said that.

"Huh?!"

Athena was a crazy good storyteller, that was for sure.

Over the next five or so days, we talked and talked and talked. I learned that Athena had lost her childhood to the whims of slave owners, basically stripping her of any real sense of childlike feelings. She was optimistic about mostly everything since her adoptive mother had promised her that she'd come to find her one day. But, as it turned out, she was still nobility. Maybe not princess-level, but she remembered being heralded as the poster girl of the city her family ruled over.

I smiled. This girl was a lot more interesting than I first thought. Her warm voice reminded me of someone else I had looked up to for a while now—the gentle tone that Roxas used to speak to me in when he was teaching me.

"...Maybe when we get out of here," I began, "you can come with us. Joining the party, I mean, if you have no place left to go."

Athena chuckled softly. "Generous offer, kiddo. But we'll have to see. Before that, I feel like there's a lot more that you want to ask…"

Demon! She read my mind!

"Urgh…! Yes, lots… especially since you met him even before I properly got to know him."
I was so curious. I knew he was a little, you know, forward when we first met at my birthday party, but that was probably just one side of him back then. Surely you couldn't blame me for innocently wanting to know a little more. Surely.

I knew about skirt-chaser Ares and everything after that, but not noble Ares. And we had all the time in the world to figure out a way to escape. I could afford to get to know her a little better.

"Oh? In that case…"

She told me all about Ares while they had to go through being enslaved. From what I could tell, Ares sounded a lot less refined than what I imagined a noble would act like, but that wasn't a surprise in the slightest. Once, Ares had a staring contest with one of the other slaves that lasted a full hour. I don't know what that says about him, but picturing it is hilarious.

In any case, she wasn't the worst person to be stuck with for a full working week. After a while, though, I noticed that she'd get tired quickly. She'd sleep a lot more than I expected her to, but I chalked it up to her not getting enough to eat, since we weren't exactly being provided gourmet meals daily.

Gallus had up and disappeared for a while, so we were free to do whatever. But, after a full five days of nothing but dead ends, something changed.

It was the middle of the night and Athena had already hunkered down for the time being. I was only just beginning to get used to sleeping with a light source beaming right against my eyelids, so I was up later than usual.

I was trying to throw myself at the biggest problem I had yet to solve—the magic circle at my feet. I'd said that the Eye of Indication was a dead end, but I admit that I was quick to write that off as a dead end. I had nothing better to do, and I wasn't going to have spent five whole days doing nothing. But I had made some progress.

It wouldn't do it justice to say that these circles had a whole language to themselves. It was an entire system of links and chains that all made up one single spell. I gained respect for whoever had to draw these up—not that I'd ever met somebody who could. This circle was carved into the wood, but I had a suspicion that whatever tool was used to carve it wasn't just some chisel. It had to be a magical implement, considering it left mana signatures that I could see.

I worked backward from there. I had some idea of the starting mechanism: this particular circle began with some sort of beginning circle that would start a chain reaction throughout the inscription. I figured that out since the oldest mana signature, the one that made up the first of many circles that made up a ring around the structure, had ties to almost every other signature. That is to say, the first step was connected in some way, shape, or form with every other contour of the circle.

But that was the only thing I had managed to figure out. It was immensely frustrating, sure, but there had to be some way of finding out how this thing worked. And so, I went through those five days trying lots of things, trials and mostly errors. And so far, it hasn't led me pretty much anywhere.

C'mon! Throw me a bone, I'll do anything! I stared harshly at the sky, hoping Mister Man-God was watching. But in some cruel twist of fate, nothing happened. He was probably laughing at me right then with that weird, patronizing mosaic face of his.

I won't forget this, you conniving swindler! I raised my fist to the sky and sighed.

I peered back down onto the circle and placed a hand over the initiating ring. It felt like I was endlessly trying to restart a computer that stubbornly didn't want to boot. I'd already tried unplugging it and switching out the cables, but nothing had worked. I narrowed my eyes.

If studying wasn't going to work and brute forcing wasn't either, maybe there was an angle that I wasn't approaching it from. When I tried manifesting Curse Magic in the contained space, it would just dissipate as usual. The same happened when I did it directly onto the circle. But there was one last thing I hadn't tried.

Paralysis! I thoughtlessly fired off a spell into the initiating circle as some sort of last-ditch effort.

And, instead of going nowhere as I was anticipating, my mana branched into the circle. The circle brightened and momentarily flickered.

"Woah!" I exclaimed. It's a breakthrough! Finally!

But something happened on my end—almost like a change in pressure. Normally, my mana was released as easily as tap water; now it felt like I was pouring honey down a spout. It did take some effort on my part to release mana on any normal day, but that feeling was amplified tenfold now. My veins were screaming for release as I tried to wring out any mana I could.

It was a struggle to even power the spell, and my connection to the circle snapped the moment I stopped exerting myself. The flickering stopped and I clung to the ground, drawing heavy breaths.

I wiped my brow. Give me a break.

Ares

I thought I was done with being locked up for committing no offenses, but here I was.

The beastman had brought me all the way to the Great Forest. I was still paralyzed when I got here, but at the time I felt like yelling in frustration. Like Alek had said, this was the outcome that was the least favorable. Not only was I probably out of the party's reach, they were now left with two missing children. What a joke. I was sure they—at least Alek—could handle it, but things were just getting worse as the days went on.

I was stripped naked, thrown into a dangling cell, and given scraps to eat. If my memory serves me justice, being forced to be naked for long periods or being splashed with water was considered a humiliation tactic to the beastfolk. The only reason I knew that was because my father used the practice to discipline his beastfolk workers and force them into learning the hard way. I never stuck around to watch, but it was another reason why I resented my father—if I could even call him that.

The first day I couldn't move at all, so I was forced into a dreamless sleep on the horribly uneven planks of the cell. But I'd moved past that point.

I held onto a bulky branch that served as the bars to my prison. I looked out over a drop that would instantly end my life in a blink should I fall, but I wasn't focused on that. If I had visited this place properly, maybe I would have enjoyed the view.

Said view was just dreamlike. I'd known about the civilization of the beastfolk, but clearly not enough. They'd built a village in the canopies, with scaffolding lining nearly every tree with the pale touch of stripped wood. There were bridges that covered the skyline, suspended or not, most likely to make traversing the whole place a lot less taxing. There really was just a whole load of nothing on the ground. I could make out what looked to be a shack and something that could probably pass as a field, but it was deserted.

The village was massive—if not a little boring. Sure, beastfolk went about without paying much mind to the deadly drop below them, but there weren't that many of them prancing about. It was all… very open. If you were to walk on one of the bridges, you'd be fully exposed to anyone below you, and likewise for the ones on the lower bridges.

"...Scary."

My cell was awful—by a regular person's standards, at least. It had practically nothing of real value, and I had to make do with what I had: a straw bed that might as well have been made of cactus, and a very mindful gaping latrine hole swarming with flies. But compared to the cell back in the Demon Continent, at least I had the view.

Speaking of views…

A guard appeared—a slender woman carrying my meager lunch. Sure, she was slender, but she looked like she'd exerted herself her whole life with her build. Her chest pulled tightly against the fabric of her clothes, completely distracting me from the fact that she also carried a bucket of water. One look at me and she walked over to my cell and dumped it over my head. Ah, did I mention that I was stripped bare? I was left a shivering, soggy mess. I probably looked like a wet dog. I sure felt like one.

"...!" she yelled some expletives at me, shoved my food into my hands, and left.

Trying to plead innocent had no use here thanks to the damn language barrier. Lumina told me that learning Beast God wasn't horrible compared to Demon God, and I wished I'd asked her to teach me it when I had the chance. I made a mental note to ask her when we next met and sat down, defeated. I could see my sword just out of reach, along the bridge to my cell. If I could just reach it…

The memory of that beastman paralyzing me with a single yell flitted through my head again. It took me hours to recover from that. I ruffled my still-wet hair in frustration. If all the guys in this place could do that, I had practically no chance. I could try to escape, sure, but it'd be a long shot. Maybe if I scurried off down the scaffolding and reached the ground, there was a possibility that I could hide in the underbrush and try to make my way back to Zant Port.

That is… if I knew the way out of the forest. The beastman had run at full speed for what felt like a full six hours, and that was also mostly in the dark. The only way I could've remembered a way back was to use the little moonlight that reached the bottom of the forest, and even then it wasn't like I could have moved my neck around to try to get a look at landmarks. I'd get lost, quickly. It had just been two days, and that beastman still hadn't shown his face.

This was irritating. I could try to understand if Alek decided to prioritize Lumina over me, but I was really hoping that he'd come for me sooner rather than later.

Day three.

The food that the woman brought me was scrumptious. They ranged from a wild grass stew to a few strips of grilled meat that took some effort to bite through, but they were both so much better than the food I was forced to eat in the Demon Continent.

I was entirely expecting the food here to be low quality, but now that I gave it some real thought, it makes sense. This tribe had so many hunters and powerful men that meat had to be constantly flowing into and through the people's dinner tables—fresh meat, at that.

The food held me over a little longer, but I could feel my patience thinning. Not that I had much to begin with, but I prided myself on how it was, at least, better than it was before.

Day five.

My integrity was slipping. There were just… so many beautiful beast girls prancing about, wearing nothing but tight-fitting tops and clothes that swung over their bodies carelessly.

I'm not…! I'm not like my brothers…! I couldn't go around violating beastfolk with my eyes. I racked my brain trying to come up with a logical reason as to why I felt so drawn to them, but it didn't help. Of all the things my bloodline could have messed with, of course, it had to be something as ridiculous as this.

But I didn't feel ridiculous. I felt a guilt drip over my body as my brain raced to conjure situations that couldn't happen.

If I let this feeling overwhelm me, I'd be just like the other Boreas Greyrats. I needed to focus on what actually mattered to me. And that, now, was both who I wanted to be, and who I wanted to change for, the person who'd saved me.

As I gazed out with vacant eyes, a thought popped up in my head. It was just that simple.

I wanted to see Lumina.

Day seven.

This was my last day here, so I finally decided. I'd held out this long because I knew the party would come looking for me, but there was something wrong. Alek would turn this place into an abandoned wasteland if he truly wished to, so there was no way he got caught up here. There was something that he was dealing with, and I didn't want to be a lingering worry in the back of his head any longer.

In my head, I was crafting a plan to get out of here, but to anyone looking in I was just sitting on the floor voraciously munching on some stale meat. I could, without a doubt in my mind, pry a hole through these branches, rush over to my sword, and take my guard captive. There was also a chance I could remember the little fire magic Lumina tried teaching me, but I wasn't banking on that.

Wasn't it something like, err, "Let the great protection of… flames be on the place thou…" no, it was, " fire on the place thou…" um, searchest? No, that's not…

I grimaced. For the record, I wasn't considering turning this place into a heaping pile of ash—at least not considering at the moment—since I would feel bad about doing that. There were a lot of kinks I had to work out with my plans, but I had the base outline pretty much figured out. Pretty much.

Something felt weird to me. A smell caught in my nose, and it was as far from pleasant as it could be. I peered around and saw nothing in my cell, but my itchiness did flare up. I had an aggravating amount of bug bites, and they were the other main reason why I was so eager to get out of this place. Even my bed was infested with things, so I had to sleep on the cold ground, with the little blanket they provided being my only protection from the outside.

My lunch hadn't come in yet. For as badly as they treated me usually, the guard lady was particularly punctual around noon. But it was already an hour or so after that. Weird.

I hadn't noticed that I was sweating, either. Normally, eating my lunch would distract from my body being covered in a thin sheen of it, but apparently, my guard had taken a day off or something. Maybe it was a holiday or something? Anyway, my sweating was a bit excessive. It never got hot to the point where I had to fan myself the way I was now.

Something pricked at my nose, a lot more intensely than before. I double-checked the outside of my cell, just to be sure, and stiffened as soon as I registered what was going on.

The forest was burning.

Lumina

The magic circle was budging, bit by bit. It was definitely frustrating, but breaking through some barriers I thought were entirely out of my reach was immensely satisfying.

It was a nice conversation starter with Athena, too. It had been seven or so days since we were dumped here by now.

I tried explaining to Athena, but since I was mostly trying to reverse engineer the circle, I had basically no grasp of it. But she did get the gist of it, and cheered me on when I felt like I was going to give up.

You know, I'd met so many people that fit the archetype of a Big Sis nicely. Hm. Not that I'm complaining, of course, but it sure was funny to think about. Let's see… Elinalise was one, Meadow was as well, and now, Athena acted just like a dependable older sister. I sure lucked into the cream of the crop. Even Ghislaine maybe possibly counted, but I regrettably hadn't been around her that much to really know. A shame, but she might still be out there somewhere. That lady was particularly badass, so it wouldn't surprise me if she was dropped into some war-torn picturesque environment and still made it out alive. She was a Sword King, after all.

I tried not to think about the other victims of the incident. The faces of the girls I played with in Buena or even Sylphie just felt plain tragic to remember. We hadn't really come across any Fittoan in our journey, and I hoped I wasn't in the wrong for not prioritizing finding them.

I couldn't help but have nightmares about coming across Sylphie in a terrible state while I was in the Demon Continent. I still had them, but not as often. I hoped dearly that such a sweet girl was still okay.

But enough gloomy stuff. Athena and I had discovered something new. Or more accurately, I narrated what I'd discovered and Athena whooped in excitement when I found something out.

Keep in mind the initiating ring from before, the one that I thought powered everything. If I had to compare it to something, it was probably like a line of code that marked an activation sequence. My initial idea was to attack that, but it was beyond what I was capable of.

I initially thought that Paralysis in this case served as a way to temporarily interrupt the flow of mana through the circle. Of course, the next logical leap is to try to attack the initiating ring to entirely shut the circle down—but there was a catch.

Instead of the flow of mana being an instant power to the whole thing as I thought, I figured out that it stopped powering individual sections of the circle before moving on to the next. Mana was also the fuel for a start-up sequence, it didn't merely keep it powered. So if I tried attacking the main ring, all I would do is try to interrupt the boot-up sequence without knowing anything about the process itself. I was bitter for a while after that revelation.

And Mister Man-God is nowhere to be found. What a deadbeat.

But I couldn't have guessed that the lady on the other side of the wall was who pushed me to the home stretch.

I was employing a new strategy, trying to block the initial ring from starting the sequence, but it was significantly harder when pushing mana to form Paralysis felt like crawling in a trench.

"G-gah…!" I groaned, my fingertips feeling like they were raking magma. I dropped my hand back onto the circle and sighed. I was getting there, I had to be.

"Lumina, are you alright in there?" Athena said, her voice underlined with surprise.

"You're awake?" I said through an awkward smile—not that she could ever see it, but I digress. I hadn't heard as much as a peep from her in about half a day, and it was already past noon from what I could see through the ceiling windows. At this point, I was getting slightly worried.

"Of course. But, really, just what are you doing in there to strain yourself that much?" she prompted, clearly getting up and pressing herself against the wall to speak.

"I'm trying to block off the power source of the magic circle using that same spell I mentioned before, remember?" I replied, wiping the sweat off my brow.

"I… see. But be careful," she insisted.

"It's just trial and error at this point. I'm getting there, sure, but it might take a while," I sighed.

Athena hummed. "You know, I was wondering. If you made or prototyped Curse Magic, like you said, how do you know the incantations for it? Did you have to make them up, or…?"

She seemed genuinely curious. But it was a valid question. I wondered how that worked, too, but I hadn't experimented much with incantations seeing as I could forgo them entirely.

"I don't use incantations for Curse Magic. Well, that goes for any other magic as well. Haven't since I was very young," I explained.

"You what?!" she exclaimed. "You didn't mention that 'til now! You're something else, you know!"

It felt nice hearing that reaction from her, hehe. But I had mostly cheated, so I decided to opt for the next best thing. "Thanks to my teacher, I managed to get this far, so once you meet him, tell him that for me too."

"Pfft. It's okay to take some of the credit for yourself, you know? But I'm sure that teacher of yours is great, too," she insisted.

I giggled. "That's an understatement, surely."
"Right, right. I'm not a magician, so I don't have much reference, but how is it being able to cast without incantations?" she asked.

"..." That sure was a curveball of a question. Maybe it was my old habits kicking in, but I didn't exactly know how to talk about my own experiences. Hm. Perhaps I should say…

"It's super tough to nail down, but I can do a lot more tricky things with magic. I can do things like cast out through basically any part of my body, cast more than one spell at the same time, things like that," I responded. Instead of talking about how it felt, I opted instead to rattle off the more tangible aspects.

"Casting more than one spell at a time sure sounds cool. Entirely out of what I can imagine, but I'm sure you're happy with it," she spoke.

She seemed satisfied with that answer. Something about what she said had stuck with me, but I couldn't put a finger on it. Casting two spells at once… would that change anything with the circle? However, my introspections were cut short.

Shortly after she spoke, I heard her audibly grunt and slump against the wall. It would be a hell of a lot easier if I could just see her and confirm what was going on.

"Something wrong?" I asked. She was fine just a minute ago…

"N-No, it's alright. Just a little light-headed, is all," she replied.

Light headed? That can't be good at all. I furrowed my eyebrows and started listing off any possibilities in my head. There was a lot that could cause that, ranging from immediately lethal to laughably benign. The immediate things I could rule out were a heart attack, shock, and any medication considering anything I knew about the pharmaceutical parts of the health world was basically useless here in a world without conventional drugs. Again, I learned from Wikipedia and medical webtoons, so I wasn't sure how much of my knowledge would be put to use.

But I didn't know enough to diagnose a problem. Not that I was claiming to be a doctor… If only.

"Athena, did you just wake up? You've been pretty iffy about sleep lately, so maybe that's what's causing that?" I asked.

"Ahh… yeah, I've been sleeping for a long time… but I've gone without sleep for longer, so I don't… ah…"
A slump.

"Athena!" I cried. I rushed to the edge of the magic circle and called her name again. "Athena! Are you okay!?"

Silence. My breath hitched as I swallowed hard every time my cries were left unanswered. An unpleasant sensation crept up my throat and my eyes darted around the room, wishing that an exit would somehow materialize then and there so I could check on her. Athena could've collapsed from several things, but I really did not have the time to panic.

I kneeled on the floor and trained my focus on the circle once again. If I could figure this out, there was a chance my healing magic could at least treat Athena before I figured out what was going on with her.

What had Athena said? Casting two spells… I hadn't tried that at all. I had no other choice or option at this point, so I got to work. I tried to ignore the looming dread that came as a result of Athena lying unconscious in the next carriage over as I experimented.

I placed my hand in the most optimal spot that I had figured out, just where the very first ring that started the sequence to activation met the first requirement—the first circle—needed for activation. The light flickered as it always had, and every time I was bathed in darkness, my heartbeat never ceased to be the loudest thing in the room. But the spell wasn't strong enough, and my heart began to rapidly beat through my chest as I strained my very core trying to focus. I searched tirelessly for a flaw in my reverse engineering, someplace to put another hand or foot where I could cast.

And then, I found it. The very backbone of the circle suddenly became clear to me. I'd been so distracted by seeing the circle as a collection of gears working together that I completely neglected to remember that, just like a computer, there was a case that held it all together. Damage the case enough, and the components would crumble with it.

Forget the ring that started the activation, the thing I should've been attacking from the beginning was this backbone, this outer layer that contained everything inside of it. There. I slammed a foot down and consciously invested as much mental power as I could handle to cast two instances of the most complex spell in my arsenal, at the same time.

My body began to feel as if it was being dragged across pavement, and my head was fighting to bat away any sort of distraction even as my heart rang out like it wanted desperately to be heard by my brain. It continued to struggle and beat back against my efforts, but at last, something gave. With one final push, my fist crashed through the wall I'd been trying desperately to break through for so long. Sparks of mana coursed through my vision like rays of lightning, and all at once, the grooves and curves of the carved circle snapped into hard angles and expelled chips of wood into the air.

There I stood, bathed in two slits of moonlight heaving tired breaths and sweat topping my skin with a sheen of moisture. I stood atop an incomprehensible scramble of marks and engraving, distorted beyond recognition.

I had destroyed the magic circle from within, at last.

I was silent for a moment. Finally, I breathed out a resounding, "...Ahh… It's done."

I felt so fed up that this breakthrough made my heart leap like it hadn't in years. This feeling of accomplishment was second only to casting Cumulonimbus in front of Roxas years ago. I gasped and belted a cry of triumph.

Before I could get too heated, though, I cut my celebration short and told myself I'd celebrate with Athena when I got to her.

I tip-toed over the chips of wood and retrieved my staff, grinning at the way it felt in my hand again. I needed to be fast, so as to be able to evade anybody who was standing guard. I took a stance and cast Coldheart Bolt at the carriage wall facing Athena. This variation of the spell was much stronger than the one I shot out at Ares, enough to slam through the wall and crush the wood enough to tear a hole open. Sunlight rushed to fill the new hole, and the brightness was a lot harder to handle than I expected.

Something smelled off, and I desperately hoped it wasn't my body that smelled as I leaped the gap between our carriages and arrived before Athena.

Athena was pale. Her obviously faded red hair was just like Ares's that day when I first saw him in the slave market, and her rags were worn. She wasn't scrawny, but she looked noticeably underweight for a lady who looked just over seventeen. Her eyes, shut as they were, were not harsh. They looked pained, though, and I instantly kneeled to cast healing over her body. I propped her body up and ran warm water down the dirtiest parts of her body, namely her soles, hair, and hands. She was cold to the touch, but she was still breathing. After I wrapped my robe around her body, her complexion improved just a tinge. Finally, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness… She's going to be okay.

I turned around, staff in hand and eyes narrowed as I dropped from the carriage. But instead of being surrounded, I was met with utter silence. There weren't people around, but there were tents and food lying astray. The smugglers had left, and recently.

We need to go. This is our chance!

I turned around to face the carriage again, but my eyes began to water and sting. My nose inhaled something itchy and heavy, and I managed to open my Demon Eye to see through the pain.

There, on the other side of the clearing that the smugglers were using, were open flames. As if the world had decided to show one last act of stubbornness, the forest was burning.

Author's Notes:

I accidentally deleted my original notes, so here we go again
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (...almost.)
The past two or so months have been a hell of a time, but I am happy to see new faces around the Mushoku Fanfiction community. While I can't say I have the audience or place to shout somebody out, I'd like to thank both Enro and Oldeus for being such great additions to the place. We needed you both here to spice things up, lmao. I'd heavily recommend checking out their work as they're posted on Ao3 as is Lumina Greyrat. They both have such great catalogs of work that deserve praise.

Ahem, back to the chapter itself. If you couldn't tell (or are reading from the future, in that case, hello! and thanks for reading these notes), this chapter took a considerable amount of time to write and publish to get to you all. I don't plan on repeating it, but as always school and other responsibilities are kicking me in the rear. We're on the 50th chapter at last, and yes, we've been in Volume 4 for more than a year, somehow. With the holidays coming up, I might be even busier than I was beforehand. But Lumina is still something I hold very dear to me, so if you would continue supporting me even through these wait times, it would mean the world. You all are great, and I thank you for giving me some time out of your day to read my work.

I hope you all have a great time this Thursday and Happy Halloween!
The next chapter is titled... Chapter 45: Man of His Word.