Jobless Reincarnation X Tensura: 《THE ANOMALY》

Chapter 1: The absence of warmth.

There's nothing more damning, more frustrating than looking back on your journey and acknowledging its futility.
—--- Rimuru Tempest, K420.

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FITOA REGION, ASURA KINGDOM. K417

Not much time had passed since I started walking behind the self-proclaimed Dragon God, but the sky was already dark.

Just like back home in Tempest, the lack of light pollution made the stars visible in all their splendor.

But I couldn't bring myself to admire them, it was just another painful reminder.

“What happened in this place?”

As far as I knew, I was stuck here. Might as well have some basic knowledge.

Orsted didn't show any reaction to my question, I almost thought he didn't hear me.

“A mana disaster.”

Wow, very descriptive. I definitely couldn't tell that much.

Maybe this guy wasn't big on conversations, even the Sage….

Damn it.

“And what exactly did this disaster do?” As I asked the question, I jogged a bit to catch up with the steadily marching man, it was a bit annoying to move at his pace because of my considerably shorter legs.

Orsted looked down at me, or was it a glare? I couldn't tell with this person.

His look told me all I needed to know: he was still suspicious of me.

But I presently had no way of proving my innocence so I didn't bother.

“Not going to answer?” I pushed.

Now he was clearly scowling.

“I don't know.” Was all I got from him.

I wasn't deterred by his tight lipped behaviour and kept hitting him with question after question.

According to him, we were currently in the Fittoa region of the Asura Kingdom, the epicentre of the aforementioned disaster.

The year was K417.

I was curious about why the years were recorded in such a way but Orsted seemed even more annoyed at that particular topic, so I let it go.

We eventually arrived in a forest, the trees weren't too tall but were densely packed together.

I had been pushing Magic Sense to its maximum range the whole time, trying to take in as much information as I could.

It allowed me to notice something odd.

Every living thing we've come across, or almost come across—-- mostly insects, but there were a few wandering rodents —--- had run away in what I could only perceive as absolute fear after getting within a certain radius of us.

I was in full control of Great Sage, so I was absolutely confident I wasn't leaking any significant amount of my aura, which led me to the next plausible conclusion.

For some reason, living things were terrified of this man.

The forest around us was eerily quiet, even the nocturnal animals were keeping quiet (though I wasn't sure if those existed).

And what was weirder was I couldn't detect the exact cause behind this phenomenon.

That was a first.

“Whatever aura you're releasing, is it really necessary?” I decided to ask the man himself. I wasn't used to the woods around me being this stagnant.