Lone: The Wanderer

Book 3: Chapter 30: War Leader and Void Walking

"Sure," Lone nodded before he sat down on the bed with Soph's assistance.

"Very good," Doctor Shulma responded. "First, what was it that caused you to attack yourself with your own aura? While not life-threatening, the only purpose I can think of for such a thing would be unpleasant, to say the least."

Lone saw no reason to lie. There were few beings Lone would never be untruthful to, one was the entire White Dragonkin race, and another was Little Rinrin. Basically, anything or anyone that could tell the truth from a lie. You would only make yourself look worse to such beings if you weren't being honest to it. Or at least deceitfully truthful.

Another class of people he would never lie to were doctors and healers. If he was putting his health in their hands, as rare as that would ever be required what with how powerful Basic Regeneration was, the least he could do in such circumstances was to be forthcoming.

"I was expediting the process of learning a skill," Lone answered. "Rapidly expediting, really."

"Oh? Which skill, if you don't mind my asking?" the doctor followed up.

Lone shrugged. "Internal Strengthening Arts."

"Ah, that would make some sense," Doctor Shulma noted. "The clan has a handful of warriors with that skill. A useful one, though it's usually gained much more carefully. Did you succeed?"

"Sure did. I plan to carefully train it now that I have it. Do I owe you anything for the treatment, by the way? I know you couldn't do much but surely your time is valuable," Lone asked.

Doctor Shulma shook his head and smiled. "I received news that you're a valued guest of the clan, and such people need not pay for treatment, even if said treatment is just a comfortable bed and a watchful eye, haha. I would like to ask a few more questions if you don't mind though. Nothing too personal, of course."

Lone didn't mind even if he would rather be training or doing something else more proactive to distract himself from the soul pain. So he sat there by Soph's side as he endured agony and answered the questions. Before too long, he was allowed to leave so he quickly made his way back to the pagoda Roderick's caravan was inhabiting with Soph at his side.

Little Rinrin ran towards Lone and tackled him to little effect. "You'reback!Youscreamedsoloudandwouldn'tstopmovingeventhoughyouweren'tawakeitwasreal-"

"Whoa, even if I can understand what you're saying, slow down, will ya? It was just a training accident. They happen all the time, this one was just a little bit more serious than a bruise or light cut. is all. No need to worry your pretty little head over me. It takes more than something like that to take me out," Lone laughed.

The wolfkin girl went silent as she kept hugging him. She tilted her head up to stare at his face before she smiled and her one tail started wagging. "You really think I'm pretty? Daddy and mummy always say I'm pretty but my stupid skill says that even if they mean it, they're also just being nice."

Lone peeled the child off of him and smiled wryly. "Yes, you're very pretty. Now, go back to your parents' room and work on controlling your skill, 'kay?"

"I know what you're doing!" Little Rinrin protested. "You're dismissing me! Dad does it all the time when he's trading! The stinky old man doesn't want my skill to get revealed."

Soph had given control to Sophie during their journey so the cold woman walked past Lone and the young girl while saying, "Your father is wise regardless of his aroma. You would be wise too to acknowledge a polite dismissal by leaving, not by confronting the one dismissing you."

Tears began welling up in Little Rinrin's eyes and a sigh escaped Lone's lips as he whispered, "She's too brutal for her own good."

'One of us has to be. We will be training once you are done complimenting all of the younglings in the clan on their fetching good looks,' Sophie retorted telepathically.

Obviously, she had used her Mana Sensing to eavesdrop on his murmurings. 'She's a kid. Of course I'd tell her she's pretty when she asks. You and your jealousy...'

'We will bite,' was all Sophie responded with before she rounded a corner and teleported away since Lone could no longer sense her aura.

"Well, wanna train your world skill? I've got nothing else better to do while I focus on recovery," Lone asked the almost-crying child. "Sophie can be a moody old lady on her own."

Little Rinrin sniffled and wiped at her wet eyes before smiling. "Yup! Let's! But, uh, you said you were fine! Just a bruise or scratch. Why do you need to recover? Areyoudying?Iknewthatscreamwastooloud.Doweneedtocallahealeragain?Butdaddysaidwecan'taffordonesoyou'llneedtopa-"

"Oh for fuck's sake..." Lone sighed. 'I swear to god, if Kyuubi turns out to be a transformed person, she better not be such an annoying kid.'

In a three-story pagoda that was nestled within the military quarters of the Crimson Foxkin Clan, a well-muscled five-tailed foxkin woman was reading war reports that related to the ongoing sanctioned skirmishes with the Azure Foxkin Clan.

Her skin was flawlessly unmarked and her features were more than appealing though they weren't particularly out of the ordinary for a foxkin. She was one of the clan's few public X-rankers and she was the current war leader for the clan.

A skinny man was reading out a list of interesting happenings around the clan's territories as was his daily duty and one thing in particular caught the war leader's interest.

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"Really now? Little Lossa - poor girl, Primals preserve her - has been ordered by the Elders to welcome a triple avatar as our guest? And one of the avatars is even for Void? Primals preserve us all," she exclaimed.

She put down the physical reports she was reading and cracked her neck. "Keep things tidy for me here, Anda. I need to see this guest of ours myself right now to determine if they're a danger to the clan. Elders be damned, I'll kill them on the spot if they mean us harm and if I'm capable. If I don't return in an hour, start evacuating the entire clan."

And just like that, she was gone in a flash, leaving poor Anda to himself. He raised his eyebrows in concern and muttered, "You didn't let me finish. He is a triple avatar, yes, but he still has his sense of self... This is why you are the war leader, not the matriarch. It's also why you're supposed to go through five advisors before enacting any decisions you, yourself, make..."

"You're an asshole when ya wanna be."

Sophie opened her eyes and pulled herself away from her careful internal searching with her aura. She glanced up at Lone and smiled. "Finished with the child, are you? Come to spend time with the moody old lady?"

Lone pursed his lips and pointed a finger at her while he shook it up and down. "You and your Mana Sensing eavesdropping... You're a fuckin' menace, ya know? Love ya to bits, but you get under my skin sometimes."

"It is quite an easy task with my barriers," Sophie teased, quite pleased to see Lone being so bothered by something so minimal.

That would distract him from the massive pains his soul was enduring as well as perhaps pull his thoughts away from Arch Devil Zel for a moment, if nothing else.

Make no mistakes, Sophie was more than aware of how insurmountable of a threat the demonic man was, but worrying about it at every waking moment wasn't mentally healthy. She had been down that road already with the false deity who once ruled Earth.

Lone rubbed the back of his neck, winced in agony, and then sighed. "Well, looks like I'll be working on Meditation for the rest of the day. The body is willing to improve other skills but the mind isn't."

Sophie watched him with concealed affection and concern in her eyes as the man she loved sat down on the grassy area she had chosen to do her own training. It was in throwing distance of the actual training area associated with the pagoda Rodorick's caravan had been assigned - the one that the leech was actively training in right now with a handful of the female adventurer group whose name she saw no reason to remember.

"How long do you think it will take before Soul Pain Resistance breaches the barrier to expert rank?" Sophie asked.

Lone shrugged. "Dunno. Not too long? It levelled while I was walking over here, so only three more leve-"

Sophie panicked. She had no idea how, but someone had snuck up on them. No, not snuck on them, snuck up on her. Lone didn't have the ability to detect everything that contained magic up to a distance of 10,000 metres, but she did.

A shimmering red longsword appeared mere inches from Lone's neck in mid-swing. It was being held by an incredibly well-built young-looking foxkin woman that Sophie estimated was between an SSS-ranker and an XX-ranker.

She didn't have the time to teleport Lone out of the attack's way so she, without hesitation and perhaps purely on adrenaline, created hundreds upon hundreds of barriers simultaneously.

Not to attack the woman, no. That might kill her, of course, but it wouldn't stop the momentum of the attack. Sophie had instead attacked the longsword itself. It didn't even seem to slow as it cut through Lone's flesh.

His neck was half-severed and not ready to fix itself yet but it was at that moment that her barriers had accomplished their mission. The flaming red longsword shattered, sending shrapnel everywhere. Lone could deal with some metal stuck in his body, but getting his neck cut off was specifically something he had said he didn't want to endure unless unavoidable. Neither of them was sure his Basic Regeneration could save him from that.

Sophie watched as the blood cape hanging off of her lover's shoulders shifted into a bubble shape and bone armour began sprouting from his flesh. 'Good. He is going on the defensive. Then we shall be his ultimate support.'

Sophie blinked her eyes and whispered, "Void Walking." At the same time, the attacker also disappeared and became invisible to her Mana Sensing somehow. 'A high-level illusion spell? Hopefully Lone earns it. It might be useful. Now, you may be able to hide from my 'eyes', but can you disguise yourself from the ripples?'

It has been a little over two weeks since Lone had received enlightenment and became a B-ranker, consequentially ranking Sophie up in the process. Her unique skill Void Walking had unsealed as a result.

Void Walking was an interesting skill. It had revealed a lot about the true nature of the world to Sophie which she didn't care for personally, but Lone and Soph seemed very interested in it. The former more so than the latter, obviously.

The two had spent almost a full day while they were travelling with the caravan experimenting with the skill. Lone knew the most about it, unsurprisingly, with Soph being not too far behind. Sophie's lack of interest in the deeper workings of the skill had left her knowledge of it also lacking.

However, she knew the core functions of Void Walking which is why she had chosen to use it right now. In essence, Void Walking allowed her to step into 'the void'. The void was everywhere according to Lone. It was like a plane of existence that overlapped with the real world and he wondered if its ever-presence was the reason Void was so strong among the Primals.

Being able to enter this plane of existence changed the rules. The core rules that bound existence together. Moving a step through the void and then exiting it would result in Sophie having moved a full mile in the real world.

People and objects, even the environment in the void, none of it appeared as it was. Instead, everything gave off ripples. Ripples that were not too dissimilar to the colours she could see in her Mana Sensing. The ripples and the colours were not one and the same but they were close enough for it to have only taken Soph, and by proxy, Sophie, three days to learn how to understand them on a surface level.

Sophie scanned the pitch-black ripple-flooded environment looking for signs of Lone's attacker. It took a few seconds but she saw something. A set of ripples overlapping atop another set of ripples, cleverly trying to disguise these under-ripples. "Found you."

It would be a drain on her MP to stay in here since the skill consumed 100,000 MP per second but it was safer for her in here than it was out there and besides, she didn't have the instant firepower Lone did. From in here, even if only for a little over half a minute, she could direct his attacks before she would need to be unsummoned for her own safety.

'She is 14 metres to your seven o'clock readying a skill under her illusion. It is something stronger than that neck slash but not strong enough to break one, let alone two, fortress shields, assuming the bone one is the outer layer,' Sophie relayed.

'Roger Roger,' Lone replied jokingly as she watched his ripples shift and resonate differently to represent the actions he was taking in response to her intel.

Sophie sighed mentally. Could he take this seriously for just a moment? His head had almost been separated from his shoulders. No matter. Now was not the time to distract him with her criticisms. Now was the time to see if she could interact with his attacker's ripples to kill her.

Soph hadn't been able to affect anything in the real world from the void thus far but Lone was always going on about 'additional effects' and 'sub skills' and 'stress is great for skill improvements', so perhaps now Sophie would earn that ability in place of her meeker self.