000 - What Makes The Sky Blue

Almost forget to write this because im so tired.

And then just yolo writing it in 3 hours i even didn't expect it to be finished that fast.

So don't forget to give me your feedback on this chapter because i write it so fast so maybe you will find some typo or something.

Thank you ~

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When Rei and the others were busy fighting the archduke and colossus, Black Knight, along with Drang and Sturm, were watching them.

Black Knight was looking at Rei, who was clashing one on one with the primal beast Colossus with a serious face.

"Look at Rei there, when else can you see someone fighting one on one with a primal beast" Drang said as he watched Rei.

While Sturm looked at Rei with really worried expression, but because she was with Black Knight the person who hired her mercenary services, she could only watch them from here.

Drang, seeing Sturm's worried face, started thinking and finally he seemed to have an idea and smiled.

"Your choice was really good, Sturm, I didn't expect your chosen man to be able to fight a primal beast like... Ouch Ouch Ouch!!!"

Sturm, upon hearing that, immediately stabbed Drang while blushing.

"Enough both of you!" The Black Knight's voice was heard stopping their banter.

Upon hearing that, they both immediately stopped joking and turned their attention back to Rei and the others.

"So what do you think? Except for Rei, whom we definitely don't need to ask about, but the others are doing good work out there too, don't you think?" Drang asked the Black Knight seriously.

Black Knight remained silent, thinking back to how they initially regarded Rei's strength from Drang and Sturm's descriptions as average, but they did not expect it to be like this.

The human(?)... no, he was definitely not human because he had wings like that and his techniques were very strange to be called sword techniques or magic.

But Black Knight had never encountered a species that matched Rei's appearance description.

But for now, they needed to keep an eye on him while thinking of a plan for him.

"Lyria is still not ready... if she remains like that, we cannot bring her back, but the problem is the man named Rei," the Black Knight said as they gazed at Lyria.

"And from your descriptions, that man seems to have a very close relationship with Lyria, so we cannot afford to be careless if he were to get involved."

The three of them continued to watch the battle of Djeeta and the others until Rei was thrown by Colossus' attack.

"Wow, that must have hurt!" Drang closed his eyes as he saw Rei being thrown.

While Sturm could only clench her fists tightly, restraining herself to chase after him to check if Rei was seriously injured or not.

Meanwhile, Black Knight, seeing the end of their battle with the frozen Colossus and the captured archduke, finally turned around.

"We're done, let's go," Black Knight said to Drang and Sturm.

Drang, upon hearing that, immediately turned around and began following Black Knight.

But before that, he patted Sturm on the shoulder.

Sturm, feeling it, turned to Drang and saw him shaking his head.

Then Drang went back to follow Black Knight while Sturm still kept an eye on the direction where Rei was thrown.

Finally, she sighed and released her clenched fists, but as she did so, she saw a little blood on her nails.

It seemed she had clenched her fists too hard, causing her nails to pierce her skin.

Sturm then began following Drang and Black Knight.

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'Damn.... I can't move my body at all,' was all Rei could think of at the moment.

His body was completely covered in wounds from being thrown earlier and from withstanding Colossus' attacks.

Right now, he really hated Dimensional Cleave, why does the early boss raid have a technique like that, and on top of that, its defense was so high too.

Rei tried to move his head to see where he was, but he couldn't do it at all.

Normally, his body would regenerate when he was injured, but this time he seemed to be completely out of energy, so his healing was slower than usual.

"Rei!" Vyrn's voice could be heard shouting as he was looking for him.

Rei wanted to answer Vyrn, but he couldn't speak either. He began to wonder why he didn't faint if he couldn't move his body at all.

"Vyrn, I found Rei! He's here," Lyria yelled to Vyrn.

Rei then heard footsteps running towards him and saw Lyria with a shocked expression as she looked at his condition.

"Rei! Your body is covered in so much wounds like that... I told you not to be reckless!" Lyria scolded Rei, but her voice seemed like she wanted to cry.

Lyria then approached Rei and tried to heal him. However, due to Rei's numerous wounds, and undoubtedly his internal organs being injured as well from the pressure of Colossus' sword, Lyria's healing was not working as fast as she want.

Rei wanted to tell Lyria that he was okay and would heal if he had the energy to use his astral healing. But he couldn't speak and could only watch Lyria crying while her hands emitted a blue light while touching his body.

"Waaaaa! Rei, your wounds! What should we do! Don't die Rei!!! Hold on until we get back to the city," Vyrn, who had just arrived, panicked upon seeing his best pal number 2 lying injured like that.

But when he saw Lyria crying while focusing on healing Rei, he finally fell silent and let Lyria focus.

However, hearing Lyria cry made Vyrn start crying too.

"You... even though you often tell Djeeta not to be reckless... but... you're the same..." Vyrn spoke, with whimpering in his voice.

Hearing that made Rei feel guilty...

But what else can Rei do, it's not like in the game where they can easily win with turn-based battles.

And at the beginning of the story, they didn't have enough power to fight the primal beasts because they had not been given power by their respective primal beasts.

Except for Djeeta, for some reason without a primal beast, she could fight Lucilius who had just awakened, even though assisted by Sandalphon's 12 wings and given power by all the archangels.

"Reeeeiiiiiii!!" They could hear Djeeta's voice running and shouting, looking for Rei.

"Djeetaaaaa! We are here," Vyrn shouted in response to Djeeta.

Hearing that, Djeeta immediately ran towards them, and like Lyria, she was shocked when she saw Rei's condition.

Compared to before when Rei was injured by Hydra's claws, this time Rei's body is full of wounds.

Djeeta went to Rei's left side while Lyria was on the right, still trying to heal Rei.

"You!! Why are you always like this, stupid! You can wait for us to finish with the archduke so we can help you defeat that primal beast! but you keep trying to defeat it yourself! What if..." Djeeta continued scolding Rei while slowly shedding tears, but Rei's consciousness began to fade little by little as he heard Djeeta's scolding.

Seeing Rei starting to lose consciousness from exhaustion, Djeeta finally stopped scolding him.

She smiled sadly as she reached out to caress Rei's head.

"Good job, Rei... just leave the rest to us, you rest, after this we will take you to the city."

Hearing that, Rei began to think, 'Uhhh Djeeta, you say that as if I'm going to die...' but eventually everything turned dark, and he fell asleep.

<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>

It has been several days since Rei lost consciousness.

Although they were willing to wait for Rei to wake up before continuing their journey, they heard information about black knight from the archduke.

Knowing that the Black Knight has plans in Auguste Isles makes them all worried about what else the empire is planning.

The archduke apologized to them for the incident he caused when he was affected by dark essence.

As a way of apology, he allowed Io to join them and gave them a substantial amount of compensation money.

They accepted the archduke's apology because they couldn't blame him for what happened while he was affected by dark essence.

Except for Djeeta and Lyria who are still upset with the archduke, if he hadn't collaborated with the empire in the beginning, none of this would have happened and Rei wouldn't have fainted for so long.

But regardless, since it had already happened, they left Valtz Duchy and headed to Auguste Isles.

Auguste Isles is a special economic zone known for its abundant water resources.

Formerly known as the August Isles Special Economic Cooperative Territory, it is not under the jurisdiction of any neighboring governments.

Auguste boasts a vast body of water that is unique and makes it a popular tourist destination.

There are many shops on the isles, packed closely together, making it difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.

In pursuit of the Black Knight, the crew soon arrives at the Auguste Isles. There they find a cluster of cities overflowing with crystal clear water.

When they arrived at August Isles at first Djeeta and Lyria wanted to wait in the Grandcypher and take care of Rei, who was still unconscious.

But Katalina said that if Lyria didn't go, how could they find the primal beast? And if Djeeta didn't go either, their team's strength would decrease, and because Rei was not there, they needed the whole team if they wanted to fight the primal beast.

Hearing that, Djeeta and Lyria still wanted to refuse to go down, but eventually they gave in and intended to finish all this quickly so they could return to taking care of Rei.

"Wow! Wow! What is this? Why is there water everywhere? Is this the... ocean?" Io's voice was heard as she looked at the surrounding ocean.

Although some of them were seeing the ocean for the first time, their mood was not really for a vacation at the moment.

So they quickly refocused to find clues about what the empire wanted to do here.

"What's wrong, Lyria? You've had this serious look on your face ever since we arrived." Katalina asked Lyria, who had been serious since they approached the beach.

In the Grandcypher, Lyria only looked worried, but suddenly changed drastically after they were close to the ocean.

"I'm sensing a primal beast here, but... something about it feels off." Lyria answered Katalina while looking at the ocean.

Hearing that made them all turn to Lyria with curious faces.

"A primal beast? I don't see anything even slightly beastly around here!" Vyrn looked around them besides many people walking, he only saw water and shops.

"If there's anything worthy of investigation, it's that rotten stench wafting through the air." Rackam spoke while fanning his nose with his hand.

For some reason, the ocean scent from Auguste Isles was really smelling bad to the point where many people seemed to be covering their noses.

"Hey, you over there! What are you doing?" Suddenly a voice yelled at them.

"Whoa, what's your problem?" Vyrn saw the person pointing towards them.

The person was not wearing Empire soldier clothing, so they were confused as to why the person was pointing at them.

"We don't have time to analyze the situation! Let's get out of here, Djeeta! There are too many people here to start a fight," Katalina said to Djeeta, who had been silent, seemingly thinking about something.

Hearing that, Djeeta nodded and finally they moved from there.

They kept running until they reached this very deserted beach, perhaps the unpleasant smell made this beach abandoned.

"We're surrounded!" Rackam spoke as they saw many people dressed the same as the ones who were chasing them in front of them.

They finally stopped running and looked around them.

"Stand down. Our captain will be here soon, and—" One of the men said but stopped as they heard their captain's voice.

"Good work out there today, boys. So you caught that shady group of characters, eh?" A voice of an old man was heard.

They could see that the man had brown hair, a brown beard, and mustache, plus an eye patch covering his left eye.

"So? You were trying to sneak into town, when— Wait a second. Is this for real?"

The man observed Djeeta and the others, but when he saw Rackam's face, he stopped and seemed to recognize him.

"Took the words right out of my mouth. What are you doing here? Aren't you getting a little old for this, Eugen?" Rackam spoke to the old man, or Eugen, while smiling.

[IMAGE]

"Haven't seen you since I was last at Port Breeze... Whatever happened to the Grandcypher? Did you eventually get her flying? And looky here, Rackam! Who's this stunning friend of yours? Wait... you didn't get married, did you?"

Eugen asked Rackam as he saw Katalina and young ones like Lyria, Djeeta, and Io, making him think that the three young ones were their children.

"What? No! Absolutely not!" Katalina immediately rejected Eugen's words.

"Katalina would be wasted on Rackam anyway. Right, Lyria?" Io said with a smirk, nudging Lyria.

"So Katalina's our mom? Hee hee... That'd be nice..." Lyria responded softly, imagining what it would be like if Katalina were their mother.

But after thinking again and remembering Katalina's cooking, Lyria started shaking her head, trying to get rid of what she had in mind.

"S-surely I don't look that old... Do I?" Katalina looked worried and touched her face, checking if she had wrinkles or not.

*Grooaar!* Suddenly, the sound of many monsters approaching was heard.

"Heh. Trust me, I'd love to clear up this little misunderstanding, but it doesn't look like we've got time to chat right now. Goodness... Look at all those monsters! Lend me a hand, everyone!" Eugen shouted to his other members and then to Djeeta and the others.

They all then began to draw their weapons and prepare to fight the many monsters that appeared.