Stray Soul

A group of 6 people could be seen walking through a forest at a brisk pace, and at the very front of the group an olive-skinned man can be seen, trudging through the forested terrain without any worry, and that man’s me.

Xavier.

Bit to my left is my wife Xylene, who’s a lovely person once you get to know her, but can get easily annoyed or angered, which puts a lot of people off, but I know, in her hearth, she is an angel!

She currently has a bored expression, not that I can blame her for it. While I find the forest around us beautiful and entertaining to just look at, there was a reason why she decided to leave our village and explore the world and go on adventures.

If not for our tax financial situation, and her medical expenses that keep piling up because of her... distinct fighting style, she wouldn’t have even agreed to come here.

Not that she did mind you, I had to convince her which took a lot of work due to her stand-offish personality.

Behind of us are Elise and Lazarus who is going on about—

“I cannot believe you get tax cuts!” Lazarus started saying, once again.

“...Can you stop?” came a tired voice from under Elise’s hooded figure.

“It’s been over 2 weeks since we talked about this. Its not even a secret or a not well-known fact, if you just went to the explorer’s guild and asked for an explanation on what we are, what we do, and what benefits there are to being an explorer, you’d know this.”

“But seriously? Why do you get tax cuts and I-we adventurers don’t? Its not fair! What would happen without us going around, delving into dungeons and hunting down monsters? Why are explorers treated better than us!”

“Ahhh... firstly, you are not even taxed that much, and any tax you have to pay is taken out from the quests you complete in the guild, so you won’t even know you got taxed at all, and its not like every explorer gets a tax cuts, only with those with bases of operation in the frontier—”

“So, your home counts as a base of operations?”

“Yes, it does. Because it is my base of operations in the frontier, and I live in the frontier. Without it, I’d have a lot of problems now, wouldn’t I?

Moving on. Secondly, no nation on the continent is particularly dependant on the adventurers’ guild and while its good to have adventurers around, going into dungeons, hunting down monsters and keeping the flow of magical materials going on, if there were no adventurers, local nobles would just fill their place with their soldiers.

Thirdly, adventurers and explorers are treated differently for one simple reason: we are a more professional organisation. While anyone who wants to can become an adventurer, no vagabond like yourself can become an explorer. We do extensive background checks, test peoples’ aptitude, and only recruit from E and higher ranks, putting us at just a better place than the adventurers.” finished Elise, her hands overlapping in front of her chest as if to signify some sort of superiority over adventurers.

To this, Lazarus could only bring a hand to his hearth and say mockingly,

“I cannot believe you, an explorer who’s so much better than an adventurer like me, called me a vagabond! Oh, the tragedy!”

To which Elise could only reply to by putting a hand on her forehead and heaving a sigh.

Behind the 2 scouts, were our expeditions leader Heinrich, and our healer Caroline, who seemed to be talking about a weird looking flower in Carolines head which... I am not sure if I’ve seen before... wait.

“Inspect”

Name: Unknown Medicinal Flower (G-E)

Description: A flower of unknown origin that is being inspected by an herbalist.

“Knew it.” I muttered softly under my breath.

“Hmm? Knew what?” Xylene asked lifting her head up to me.

“Oh, I just thought I hadn’t seen the flower Caroline and Heinrich are looking at before, and I was right. My inspect came up empty.”

After I answered her, Xylene looked behind her for a moment and shook her head.

“Me too, wonder what that is though.”

“We can always ask them later, if you want you can go back to ask them though, I am sure they wouldn’t mind if you were a bit curious.”

“Hmph. No thank you.”

“Aww, come on dear. I am sure they don’t even remember it, and even if they did, I am sure they wouldn’t mind you asking questions here and there, after all, we are a team right now, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Xylene said, quickening her pace and marching forwards, which caused me to give off a little smile.

Other than being stand-offish, she also gets embarrassed really quickly, and never really forgets it. Surely, she’s still on about the first time she met with Caroline and is embarrassed about her acts.

But no matter, she would eventually make a move towards her, and they’d become quick friends, because that’s what she’s like, and one of the reasons that had me fallowing behind her.

“Xylene—” I started saying, but before I could continue, I heard a yell behind us.

“STOP!”

When I turned around readying my shield, I saw Elise looking towards to east, towards the mountains, and quickly turned towards them and though I couldn’t see anything, I moved as quickly as I could in front of the others and prepared to take the hit of whatever was there.

“Everyone! Wait here while I am gone!” Elise yelled out, which left me baffled because this was not how we were supposed to act when she detected a threat, we had gone over this and many other plans in case something happened before we set off from Darkwoods and after it, and I could not remember any scenario where in would get separated like this.

“What is going on?” I asked turning my head back, but as I was turning, I saw Elise had started running forwards, towards the mountains, and while I kept her in my sight, I saw her giving me an ‘OK’ sign and lowered my guard, after all if there were no threats, there was no reason for me to be on guard... too much at least.

“Where’s the action!” shouted Xylene running forwards with a grin, but I quickly picked her up and went back to the group.

“HEY, LET ME DOWN!” she said, to which I didn’t comply with until we reached Lazarus, who was now our main detector.

After putting an angry Xylene down, I turned towards where Lazarus was looking at, trying to sense what made Elise break formation like that, but I couldn’t see anything.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked him, to which he quickly responded

“Beats me. Maybe she finally went crazy? Ma said I had that effect on women, but I didn’t know it was this extreme. Oh well, one less mouth to feed, let’s get going.” he said and started moving past me, and I quickly grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back, and looked towards Heinrich and Caroline and to my surprize, Heinrich seemed to be ecstatic! There was a gleam I had never seen before in his eyes, which prompted me to quickly ask him what was going on.

Then, he returned to me, his smile widening ever so slightly,

“WE FOUND IT!” he yelled aloud, throwing his hands above.

“What? Found what?” asked Xylene, curious to what was happening as the rest of us.

“We found the zpirit tree!” Heinrich yelled out once again, which prompted everyone to look towards the distance to where Elise ran off to.

“...I can’t see anything” said Xylene after a few seconds of everyone scanning the horizon.

“Of course you can’t shorty, want to climb on Pa’s shoulders?” Lazarus quipped at her, to which she responded with throwing a kick at his knee, which he skill fully dodged, a testament to the numerous times he had not gotten so lucky.

“Oh Nutian, why have you cursed me with these crazy women? One runs off into the forest, seeking heresy, and the other tries to murder me! Haven’t I overcome your challenges enough for a small blessing of fortune and luck? Oh, gods why are you testing me—ACH!” suddenly a sound that can only be described as a blessing from the gods came out of Lazarus’ mouth as Xylene went in for another kick to his leg, causing him to fall to the ground, and as he lay there, I could see a singular tear coming out of his eyes, a sign that he has accepted his fate and decided to shut up.

He would continue, as he always does, but for the next hour, we are saved.

“So... where is this spirit tree again?” Xylene asked, turning to Heinrich who was just watching the small fight between the two play out as the rest of us, and quickly responded after fixing his glasses.

“It is normal for you to not zee the zpirit tree, hell, I’d be more zurprized if you could, after all elves are the only race favoured by the zpirits and they’d choose an elf, or someone like me with elven blood, to zhow themselves to before any man, you might zee the tree if the zpirits decide that you are worthy, or if you are close enough to it, but from this distance, only those who they decide to be worthy can zee the tree itself.” he answered quickly.

Turning her head towards the mountains, Xylene looked at the distance for a few moments and asked,

“So, what happens if I just... go near the tree to see it? If I am not worth, will they do something?”

“Yes and no. Because you are in a group with an elf and a half elf, they’ll probably let you go if you are not too close to the tree.”

“And, what if there were no elves with me?”

“It depends. If you are lucky, the spirits would just warp the image of your zurroundings before you got near them and make you continue as normal or make you leave the forest or wherever they are. If you are not lucky and they are in a... ‘playful’ mode, then you’ll have zome problems.”

“Playful mode? So, what, will they ask me to entertain them?”

“Yes, but beware because their ‘games’ can range anywhere from making you do a funny dance to...” he trailed off, seemingly in thought.

“To?” Xylene said, clearly curious about what Heinrich was talking about.

“To asking you to go on an epic quest to dethrone the corrupt monarch of some faraway land.” he finished with a small smile.

“Wait? Really?! Has this happened before???”

“Yes, quite a few times actually. You’d be surprized by the amount of people stupid or lucky enough to wander into a zpirit tree or another location favoured by the zpirits and then come out, claiming that they are the hero of the ages, here to zave the world from whatever ‘evil’ person the zpirits decided to fuck with that day.

Might be a mayor of a village, a priest, or like what I zaid, a king of a faraway land.”

At this Xylene became thoughtful and asked,

“Where all of those people really evil?”

“Zometimes, like when a kid from the eastern continent outed a zenator of Lia in the southern continent as a collider with monsters, and after culling the monster tribes he collided with, and executing him, the Lian senate made a parade for him and zent him back to the eastern continent. Other times, its usually people the zpirits have collided with before, or random local figures.

They just like being annoying zometimes.” he said, shrugging.

And as Xylene continued pestering Heinrich with more questions about spirits, outing herself to have clearly ‘forgotten’ to read the book on spirits Heinrich lent us, I began wondering what Elise was doing right now.

Running past the trees like the wind, Elise continuously tried to commune with the spirits to no a wail, but she knew they knew that she was there, after all, how would they have revealed themselves to her if they didn’t know she was there?

But no matter, she would be able to commune with them when she arrived near the spirit tree, because at that point she’d be able to sense their thoughts even if they didn’t allow her to, and they’d have no option but to talk to her.

Not that she was planning on forcing them to do anything, as an elf offending the spirits would be akin to a mage saying that they’d no longer use mana.

Without the help of the spirits, she wouldn’t be able to do anything.

Well, she could still do things that required physical prowess, but she wasn’t trained in that, and neither had she teached herself skills that focused on her body.

After all, if she had the spirits, what reason where there to focus on other things?

Quickly approaching the spirit tree, she started to slow down, and ask for permission to enter the area around the spirit tree from the spirits, after all not doings so would be akin to entering someone’s house without their permission, and quite rude in polite society.

After a few moments, she felt a mental thug allowing her to enter the area, but it felt... weak.

They still allowed her to enter, but for some reason tried to hide it, why she could not tell.

Approaching the clearing around the tree, she stopped a few steps away and looked at what was inside the area.

“Is that a... plant being?” she asked, confused, as she was sure this spirit tree was not one belonging to a dryad, after all, what kind of dryad would let someone get this close to one of their spirit trees?

While the loss of a spirit tree wouldn’t be a major setback to a dryad, it’d still be an important one.

After looking at the weird being for a few moments, she took a step forward, and the moment she did that, she saw the plant being activate and look at her, and she could see... eyes?

But plant beings don’t have eyes... what is this abomination in Sylph’s name?

Before she could do anything, the plant being quickly got right up and started waving a few branches around aggressively, well, quickly to it. But to her, it was slower than the movements of a babe.

But what she saw while the being was moving shocked her, it had a branch of the spirit tree!

And not a small one either, it was nearly as big as her forearm, but it was impossible! No spirit would consent to giving such a thing to an abomination such as this!

Then she moved forwards instinctually, wanting to remove whatever abomination this was out of existence and into the deepest parts of the abyss it came from.

But the moment she stepped into the circle of grass around the spirit tree, the spirits ordered her to stop, to which she obliged, and she saw the abomination drop the branch and run full speed towards north, into the forest.

After watching the abomination escape, the spirits allowed her to move once again, and communing with them she felt that they were... sad?!

Wait, no, not sad, just... disappointed?

Not being able to understand the meaning behind their feelings, Elise asked them to clarify to which they responded with quite a few feelings, which she translated into the word’s youngling, lost, wayward, and... destined?

Wait, not destined as in the literal sense, destined as in... the branch?

Quickly making out the meaning of their senses, Elise understood that whatever abomination that was, was to have that branch.

But why would the spirits let such a thing live? She could not tell.

They clearly knew it was young and weak, so there should be no reason to let it live but oh well, the spirits command and she obeys.

Without letting the spirits talk about their quest and make her take a part in their ‘games’ she quickly offered to deliver the branch back to its rightful owner and asked for directions to an abandoned facility near here, to which she did not expect a response, but she did get one!

...Just not a complete one, the spirits wanted the branch returned to its rightful owner before they heard her plea.

Then she thanked the spirits and started heading back to her party, but before she left the area of grass around the tree, she stopped and asked for a branch from the tree for the group’s healer, Caroline.

After a few moments of nothing happening, the tree shook and a twig fell from it, it was as long as the branch destined for the abomination, but not as thick. So, while it seemed big, it was less valuable than it.

“...Oh well, the spirits do as the spirits wish.”