Chapter 121: What the Winds Whisper

Their rest lasted around thirty minutes. Once everyone had savored their tea down to the last drop, Arielle made the cups disappear, then put out the fire as easily as she had lit it, this time with a simple water spell.

Of course, this time too, Jin couldn’t help exclaiming.

"Water magic, now...?"

Zoyra and Arthur stayed silent, at least on the outside. On the inside, they were just as shocked as he was.

But before they set off again, Zoyra called everyone over. She had made her choice.

She still remembered her master’s words: "Only use this spell if you’re sure you’re surrounded by good people." That was why she hadn’t used it sooner. She wanted to keep it secret, and the spell consumed almost all of her mana, leaving her at the mercy of the dungeon and the people around her until it regenerated.

But now she was sure. Between Jin and Arthur, whom she had known all her life, and Arielle and Frelja, whom she had known only briefly but who had already shown them so much kindness, she could do it with her eyes closed.

After all, would someone with bad intentions have offered each of us a cup of tea that expensive?

And yet, as every gaze turned toward her and everyone wondered why she had stopped them, a small doubt crept back in. Was this really the right thing for her to do?

In this world, every person was blessed with an affinity by the System from birth. It revealed itself in different ways: sometimes in a dream that showed the path to follow, sometimes through a simple stroke of luck that unlocked a skill tied to that affinity, and sometimes even through intuition.

Zoyra took one hand in the other and ran her thumb over the ring she wore on her finger, remembering once again the words of her master, who was also her mother.

"Your affinity, like mine, is a blessing from the heavens. So much so that, because of other people’s greed, it may one day become a curse in your eyes."

But if she didn’t do it now, they would keep going in circles for hours, maybe even days. Without the tea and the kindness of Arielle and Frelja, they would already be lost.

She was still hesitating, caught between two fires, on the verge of revealing the truth about her affinity. Her hand tightened around the ring, and the hesitation was taking hold of her more and more, when her gaze met Frelja’s through the slit of her helm.

She saw a smile there, and in it she found what she had always seen in her mother’s eyes. Understanding, empathy, and gentleness, all mingled together.

At the sight, all her doubts vanished.

Zoyra closed her eyes and raised her hand above the empty air.

"Winds that wander beyond the horizon, winds that cross every land and every sky, answer my call."

The wind around them changed.

At first, it was only a light breath. Then the dead leaves lifted from the ground and began to swirl around her, the branches of the nearest trees started to bend, and the surface of the pond rippled all at once. The heavy, still air of the swamp, which had been smothering them for hours, began to move from every direction, and all of it converged on her.

At that same moment, Zoyra felt her mana leave her body. It didn’t drain slowly: it was ripped out all at once, from the hollow of her chest, leaving behind a cold emptiness that grew with every second.

Jin took a step back without even realizing it.

"Zoyra...?"

"Let your countless voices converge within me and reveal to me all that moves in your wake."

Her hair slowly rose and began to drift around her face.

And the voices came.

First a single one, a barely audible murmur right in her ear. Then a second, then a dozen, then hundreds, piling on top of one another without ever stopping. A dull ache bloomed at the back of her skull, then slowly crept up to her temples, where it began to pound in time with her heartbeat.

Arthur, normally so calm, stared with wide eyes.

"What is... Since when can she do this?"

"I don’t know!" Jin breathed. "She’s never shown us anything like this!"

Zoyra clenched her teeth.

"Let the world itself speak to me through the air."

She opened her eyes.

They burned at once. Tears welled up all of a sudden, and her pupils began darting in every direction at full speed, never settling on anything. Before her, the forest overlapped with other images, trunks, roots, puddles, treetops, places she had never seen, all flashing through her mind at the same time.

"Resonance of the Winds."

Her feet left the ground.

She slowly rose into the air, carried by the winds swirling around her. Her hair began to whip about more violently, her clothes snapped against her body, and her eyes kept darting in every direction.

Every wind in the area was speaking to her now, all at once. Those slipping between the trees, those gliding over the forest, those skimming the mud and threading through the branches. Each one passed on everything it had touched along the way, every rise, every obstacle, every movement, and there were so many that her mind threatened to buckle under their weight.

The pain in her skull became unbearable. Her eyes burned so badly she felt they were about to melt, and a thin trickle of blood ran from her nostril down to her lip.

But she held on, and she searched.

Jin and Arthur no longer said a word. They watched her with their mouths open, unable to look away.

Then, all of a sudden, everything stopped.

The wind died down, the leaves dropped to the ground, and Zoyra fell to her knees in the mud.

There wasn’t a single drop of mana left in her. The emptiness in her chest had grown so cold that her whole body was shaking, her head pounded with every heartbeat, and the world around her swayed.

Her breathing was heavy, her cheeks flushed, and sweat ran down her forehead. She raised her arm with difficulty and pointed in one direction.

"...This way."

Then she pitched forward and fainted.

~~

FWOOSH. FWOOSH.

That sound was what woke her.

Zoyra opened her eyes with difficulty. The first thing she noticed was the light of the "sky," which had changed. It had taken on an orange hue and was slowly fading, about to disappear.

Her body was swaying gently, at a steady rhythm. Turning her head slightly, she realized she was draped over Arielle’s shoulder.

So she’s been carrying me this whole time?

FWOOSH. FWOOSH.

She painfully turned her eyes toward the source of the sound. It was only an earth doll at the front of the group, hacking a path through the undergrowth with great swings of a sword someone had given it.

"Oooh~ You’re finally awake?"

Frelja was looking at her, head turned her way.

The words echoed in her mind, far too loud for what they were, and the pain immediately flared back up in her skull. Zoyra pressed one hand over her eyes and the other to her temple, and simply accepted the pain.

"Yes, I’m—"

She was cut off by an absolutely divine taste landing on her tongue.

Stunned, she spread her fingers in front of her eyes. Frelja was right beside her, arm outstretched, a spoon tucked into Zoyra’s mouth, and the jar of Mana Honey in her other hand.

Zoyra literally melted as she swallowed the spoonful.

But she had barely swallowed it when she saw Frelja dip the spoon back into the jar.

"No, wait, it’s too much, I can’t—"

The spoon went back into her mouth.

"Mmh...! Frelja, really, I promise you—"

A third.

"But it costs—"

A fourth.

Zoyra stopped trying to protest. She simply let it happen, eyes half closed, melting a little more with every spoonful.

A little later, they came out into a fairly open spot, and Frelja turned to the group.

"Halt, everyone! We’ll stop here for tonight!"

Arielle gently set Zoyra down against the trunk of a tree. Thanks to the honey, she already felt much better, her mana was slowly climbing back, and her head hurt less.

But her mind was busy with something else entirely.

One house... two houses... three houses... four houses...

Her face visibly paled, and she nearly fainted a second time.

Just... just how many houses have I eaten?!

Meanwhile, Arielle was setting up camp. In a matter of moments, she felled a tree, cut it into logs and planks, built a shelter of woven branches large enough for all of them to sleep dry, and lit a fire in the middle of a ring of stones she had placed herself. No one made a single remark anymore. They had stopped being surprised.

They all settled around the fire. Arielle purified water from a nearby pond, then added a few leaves she crushed between her fingers before handing it out. The water had a faint, fresh, tingling taste, and with every sip, they felt their muscles relax and their energy return.

Zoyra, for her part, brushed her fingers over the ring on her hand. It was a dimensional ring her mother had given her before she left. She drew several pieces of dried meat from it and passed them around to everyone.

They ate and drank around the fire like that, while the light finished fading above the forest.

After a while, Zoyra noticed that Jin kept looking at her, opening his mouth, then closing it again without saying anything. She knew perfectly well what he wanted to ask, so she spoke first.

"My affinity is Mythic Wind..."

She kept going without stopping, as much to answer Jin as to free herself from a weight she had been carrying for far too long.

"It wasn’t anything against you. With an affinity like that, I was always told to keep it secret until I was strong enough to defend myself."

She had lowered her head and was staring at her cup, fidgeting nervously with her fingers along the rim. She was already afraid of their reaction, afraid they would hold it against her for having hidden this from them all this time.

"I’m sor—"

"That’s incredible, Zoyra!" Jin shouted.

She looked up. Jin and Arthur were both looking at her with wide smiles.

"You should’ve told us sooner!" Jin went on, practically yelling. "We’d have aimed for rank SS instead of rank S!"

"You guys..."

Zoyra smiled at them, tears in her eyes.

So she told them everything. She explained why she had kept it to herself, and what her power really allowed her to do. That with it, she might be worth rank B, maybe even A, but that her mana reserve was still far too low for the spells her mother had taught her, which was why she had been waiting to be more balanced before revealing it. That her spell let her ask all the surrounding winds whatever she wanted, and they would answer: what lay around them, where each path led, what was hidden there, and much more besides.

Jin and Arthur listened without interrupting, asking a question now and then, their eyes shining.

A little farther off, Frelja and Arielle, sitting side by side, watched them.

"Aren’t those three adorable?" Frelja murmured.

"Very," Arielle replied.

Then Frelja turned her head toward her and thought that the one sitting beside her was far more adorable still. Arielle, for her part, was thinking exactly the same thing, and that was all it took for them to start flirting in their corner, as usual.

The sky was now completely black. Night had fallen over the dungeon, and only the fire still lit their little camp.

That was when Jin turned to Zoyra.

"Oh, by the way! While you were asleep, Arthur and I were wondering why we haven’t run into a single monster so far. Did you see anything with your spell?"

Zoyra’s face went pale all at once.

How could I have forgotten?

It all came back to her at once. In the midst of everything the winds had passed on to her, there had been those shapes. Clinging to the branches, pressed against the trunks, hidden beneath the leaves, motionless. And there weren’t just a handful of them.

"They’re everywhere. In every single tree on this floor."

Jin’s smile faded.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. At the moment she had cast her spell, those shapes were scattered from tree to tree across the entire floor, except in certain places, where there were far more of them, crowded into the branches.

Around their group.

And around every other party of adventurers the winds had brushed against, all across the floor, it was the same. Dozens of shapes, in the trees right above them.

And yet, not a single one had attacked them.

Slowly, they all raised their eyes to the trees surrounding the camp. Beyond the glow of the fire, there was nothing but darkness, and total silence.

"They’re waiting for the right moment."