TBATE - Corrupted Blessing

31 : it begins

I apologize for the late upload so here's 5k words

The sound of the wind whistling into my ears, the flying leaves that dances through the air. It all welcomes me back. Back to this continent I grew up with.

I gaze up at the sunny sky, enjoying the view while getting disturbed time to time by the sudden bumps that the carriage makes every time its wooden wheel bumps into small rocks.

Though I know that this peace will soon disappear. It's just better to stay silent and enjoy it currently without any worries, that's for me that is.

I looked at my party silently without them noticing. Theodore is in the front in control of the horses, while everyone else is in the carriage.

Even if the sun's rays are hitting us directly at noon, we stayed cool because of Kathlyn spreading her mana everywhere.

The temperature is perfect, not too cold and not too hot. Her control over her magic has gotten better since the last time I saw her use it.

The last time I saw her use it... Is it when I saved her from that professor who didn't even look like one?

Nevermind that, right now we're all heading to an unnamed dungeon. Caspian is the one who secretly assigned this to us as it's a newly discovered dungeon and me being here will ease some of his worries.

This is my first major raid in this. continent. I wonder how this will turn out.

___________________

“This is it? ”

The disappointed voice of Feyrith echoed throughout the cave.

“I expected my first ever real dungeon dive to be good but... ”

“I already told you about it right? Anything can happen inside a dungeon. ”

“But that's too easy!”

“Yeah?”

“I came here to face life or death situations not fodder like this!”

“Theo's right, I can't believe my father won't let me do this. I can do this everyday with breeze. ”

I looked at my side and saw Claire sighing, disappointed with her party.

“Guys, we should calm down. This is an undiscovered dungeon, everything is possible here. We're lucky that this dungeon seems to be in a low C-rank. If it's higher than that we'll be struggling a lot. ”

Claire went to her serious mode and easily took care of her teammates complaints. If I have to guess Claire should have at least experienced a couple of B-rank dungeons multiple times. And with Caspian assisting her every time, I won't be surprised if she already went to an A-rank dungeon before.

It is indeed upsetting not reaching the expectations you want but for a dungeon, it's better for it to be much weaker than expected than for it to be much stronger. Just like my encounter with the elderwood guardian. Though it's a small thing for myself now, it's a very big thing for Arthur. Hmm... well maybe it's important to me too, after all that's where I met Nico again.

I haven't seen those guys for a long time but I need to do this. In my time here in Dicathen I need to face and figure everything by myself. That's the only reason why Agrona sent me here. Agrona Vritra wants me to know what path I should take. Though I know that my path is already set in stone, the pathway I chose is simply close to impossible.

Making everything peaceful again without any sacrifices is an unattainable goal. Sacrifices are inevitable as this is now a warzone and there are only a few possible ways to end such a thing and I need to prepare myself to do it, again.