Same World, Same Princess, Different Path [WMMAP]

Chapter 22 - Asnwers and Destiny

"Hey, don't you think that's weird? I mean, why aren't you still awake?" Athanasia began to check some of her papers with a completely neutral look on her face. Her voice, however, was not the most unpleasant and she addressed Lucas lightly.

"Awake? Oh..." He stretched his legs on the sumptuous sofa. "You're talking about myself from this world, right?" She nodded. "Honestly, I don't know. I don't even feel him around when I'm sure I woke up near the Ruby Palace when Athanasia found me."

"See? That's really weird." She stacked what she had finished completing one by one and started a new stack of papers just as quickly. "You think there's a chance he won't wake up for several years?"

Lucas simply shrugged with a doubtful look on his face. "... It's a possibility. Besides, the only reason I woke up in the first place was because Athanasia's man- Wait a fucking minute!" Suddenly, he stood up quickly and put both hands on his face. "How could I have forgotten this detail?!"

Athanasia, who hadn't taken her eyes off her papers, raised her gaze to him in silence. "What's the matter? Did you have a revelation?" He didn't answer her but paced the room whispering things she couldn't hear. "Lucas?"

"Athanasia, the only possible solution would be if he had woken up a long time ago!"

"You mean, before you arrived? But how and more importantly, where would he have gone?" This time she focused all her attention on Lucas' shifting figure, more focused than ever.

"... For the place, I don't know. But do you remember what I told you? It was when Athanasia's mana came into contact with mine that I woke up."

"So far, I remember." She agreed. "But I don't understand the connection between the two."

"It's simple. I already told you that your mana might have been stolen. I thought of Anastacius at first. But now I realize that the one who took it from you is probably me." Athanasia raised an eyebrow in his direction, a questioning look taped to her face. Even thinking straight, she couldn't understand how he could have taken it from her. Didn't it take great strength to pull off such a thing out of a body?

"What you say might make sense if I understood how 'you' did it."

"Again, it's simple." He walked over to her desk. "When Athanasia was little, she had a lot of mana. And out of that huge source of power came 'Raven'." Athanasia cocked her head to the side. Who was this Raven? Lucas answered her question before she even asked it. "Raven was Athanasia's magical beast. He was made of her excess mana."

Athanasia nodded again. She remembered reading that somewhere in a book. She knew that this kind of beast existed, even if she had never seen one. "She had fallen on you when she tried to catch it, hadn't she?"

"Yeah, something like that. And right after that, I tried to absorb it."

"You what?" She looked at him with a puzzled expression. He 'tried' to absorb it? So he didn't do it?

"I didn't, at the end. And so she ended up using her powers as she wanted. But let's imagine for a second that I ran into 'Raven' before you did." She motioned for him to continue, her curiosity peaked. "In that case, you wouldn't have been able to use your mana freely anymore and I wouldn't have had any reason to stay here."

Happy with his analysis of the situation, Lucas raised his head high and proud. "So basically, you'd be awake and with my mana, somewhere in the continent? If so, even finding you would be impossible, wouldn't it?"