Most of our supplies had been lost in the dungeon adventure, so hunger was rapidly becoming an issue as I soaked in the blue pool with Amelia. The growling of her stomach alerted me to the fact, which she tried to hide coyly.

“As much as I hate the thought of us finding another dead end, I feel we have to go search ahead a bit.” I finally spoke up after the silence had persisted for long enough.

“F-fair enough…” The paladin mumbled a tad awkwardly as we got up.

Since the way back into the dungeon was basically impossible to traverse without proper climbing gear, Amelia and I decided to instead march ahead deeper into the tunnels. It was effectively the only direction for us to go.

The sounds of our footsteps echoed in the cave. I didn’t see a single living creature along the way either. Maybe the dungeon was something animals were instinctively afraid of?

“May I point out something I noticed before we entered the dungeon?” Amelia began a conversation with a strange hint of nervousness in her voice.

“What’s up?” I replied as we slowly walked along. I tried offering Amelia my wolf coat, but she politely declined. Maybe she didn’t like the smell.

“Those people who chased after us…” My knightly companion was lost in thought for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure if she should speak in the first place. “I did not recognize their armor…”

“H-huh? You mean it was a different group from the Rachasian search party?” I stopped walking for a moment, and so did Amelia.

“I’m not certain. We had to leave in such a rush, that I couldn’t get a proper look at them… It was simply something that unnerved me slightly.”

“So… there might have been more people after us for some reason?” I pondered for a moment. “The people who brought me to the swamp both died in an attack by one of those wolf monsters. Maybe they got reported as missing?” I crossed my arms… Only to realize I was lacking one. I will say, crossing your arms with just one is pretty ineffective.

“That could make sense.” Amelia mused, and we began walking again. “Perhaps it was some private mercenary group sent after them. It would explain the different armor.”

“Yeah… Let’s hope that was it.” I wrapped the wolf coat around myself a bit more closely.

We kept walking in silence for a while longer, until Amelia pointed at a nearby cave wall.

“Yverna. Do you think this could be writing of some kind?”

There was some sort of symbol on the wall. It looked a bit like a butterfly with sharp wings.

“Hmmm… It kinda looks like a little road sign or…” I looked at the figure on the wall more closely. There was a noticeable glimmer of mana to the symbol. I gestured for Amelia to step back, which she did. “I think there is some kind of magical property to it…”

Amelia and I tossed some rocks at it to make sure it wouldn’t blow up or something if we got closer. As we figured it was most likely dormant, we simply passed the symbol and continued onward. Not far ahead, I suddenly heard Amelia shout.

“Light!” Amelia began running towards the shimmering of what looked like blue light at the end of the tunnel. I followed her, although a bit more slowly.

A bunch of sturdy wooden planks covered the exit. It seemed we were stuck behind a shoddily sealed mining shaft entrance. Despite its seemingly hasty make, it was still too much for Amelia to brute force in her weakened state.

“Amelia. Can you come here for a bit?” I instructed the paladin, whose interest got piqued.

            “What are you planning? Magic?”

“Something like that.”

In the dungeon, I had managed to use magic without making physical contact with the item I cast the spell on, and I wanted to try it again.

I tried to remember the feeling… It was like pushing water around. Admittedly, it was probably a bad analogy, considering I didn’t really swim a whole lot in my past life. But I at least IMAGINED it felt something like that. Something along the lines of pushing around an invisible matter.

“HHhhaa!!” I pointed my hand at the wood and the sparkles began to amass!!... And nothing happened. While my fire spell failed, my cheeks sure as hell felt like they were on fire. I probably looked like a skinny chili pepper standing there acting all cool.

“… Um…” Amelia glanced at me, while I was still locked in my cool action pose. “Aren’t you supposed to draw the sigil on the thing you want to cast a spell on first?”

I collapsed on the floor dramatically.

            “I… forgot…” I lamented, while my ears burned with embarrassment.

Amelia finally burst out laughing. Her giggling was honestly quite healing, but I still felt like daggers of shame were jabbed onto my back with each hearty sound of laughter coming from her direction.

“S-some witch you are…!” She laughed. Ironically, her words actually made me remember, I hadn’t told Amelia I didn’t actually know squat about magic.

The thought of admitting it was scary because while we did survive through a rather harrowing experience, I’m sure if I was a better witch, we’d have had no issue whatsoever.

But… giving Amelia the wrong impression of my skills was also a bad idea because she might overestimate me and rely on me too much…

“A-Amelia…” I began speaking quietly as I got up, slowly walking over to the wooden planks and carving sigils on them with a sharp piece of rock I spotted on the floor.

            “Yes?” The paladin followed me, most likely to hear me better.

“I um… I have a confession to make.” I sighed, squeezing onto the stone in my hand a bit to calm my nerves.

“Go on then.” Amelia smiled peacefully as she made her way to my side. I couldn’t match her expression, but it did calm me down a bit.

“Remember when I mentioned losing my memories?”

“I do recall something along those lines, yes.”

“W-well… I actually… forgot all about magic too. I only know incredibly basic magic…”

A nervous silence filled the room. Amelia seemed taken aback. The blue light shining through the planks made her expression seem a bit colder than usual, but then it rapidly changed into a more quizzical one… Then her eyes went wide, as if she realized something.

“If you truly are that bad with magic… then… the reason you must have wanted to form that contract with me… Wasn’t to gain control of me… but to simply have me there to protect you?”

“M-mmmh…” I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “I’m sorry for giving a false impression of myself…”

Amelia took a deep breath, pacing around a bit. She seemed to be lost in thought, and her expression seemed almost conflicted.

“I… I see. This is a bit… unexpected. To an extent.” She mumbled. I wasn’t quite certain of what exactly she was referring to.

“Please don’t hate me… I didn’t mean to drag you into danger like this…” I spoke quietly.

“Ah! N-no! That’s not your fault. We mutually agreed to this, and to be honest, the fact that you’re not an almighty monster does make me feel a bit more at ease over myself.”

“W-what do you mean?” While I was maybe good at reading people’s faces, I still had very little experience with proper social encounters. Thanks to this, it was quite hard for me to gauge what Amelia was talking about.

“When I got hit by that dark swarm in the dungeon, and you were totally fine, I felt like I was nothing but a burden to you. You were clearly stronger… so what was my value in tagging along? I didn’t quite understand…” Amelia began speaking as she knocked around the wooden blockage in front of us.

“Wha?!”

“Indeed!” Amelia chuckled and turned to look at me. “I didn’t realize you were actually… frail.” She gently poked at my arm. “So, it makes me feel like I bring a bit more value to the team like this.”

“Y-YOU DO!! YOU REALLY DO!! I’d… definitely be dead if not for you!! I owe you so much!! You’re not a burden at all…” I flailed around and words just spilled out of my mouth, almost like in a panic.  

“Yeah… I understand that now. So, please don’t think too poorly of the situation. Let’s just say… you owe me a dinner!” She winked, and with a gentle smile, she guided me back a bit further from the planks.

            “Deal…” I sighed softly, feeling like my nerves were finally calming down.

“Now! You’re not useless at all, either. While… burning things is limited in use, we have already been saved by it multiple times! Don’t sell yourself short. How about you burn the planks instead of embarrassing yourself like last time, huh?” The paladin teased.

“HEY! I WAS KINDA LOST IN THOUGHT, OKAY!?” I protested, but then couldn’t help but laugh.

With that, I managed to cast the long-ranged spell again. Okay… well. LONG might have been an exaggeration because my control range was about three meters. Not a whole lot, but still better than nothing.

The planks slowly turned to ash as their mana ran out. The amount of fire they created was genuinely quite pathetic, so even calling it fire was a gross overstatement. It was simply little singes at best. Whatever wood they were made of seemed to be extremely low on magic.

Either way, we were finally out… or… in? We were still underground, so it was a bit uncertain what was the correct way of describing our situation.

“What in the world…” Amelia began staring at something wide-eyed as soon as she made it out of the cave. I followed her and rapidly understood why.

A vast cavern spanning easily tens if not hundreds of kilometers spread ahead of us. There was a vast blue ‘sky’ up above, which consisted of the cavern ceiling and some sort of strange cloud-like things floating around.

            “It’s those things from the pond!!” I shouted as I realized.

The ceiling was covered in the hand-like protrusions, shining their faint blue light down upon the vast green fields below. There was no wind… Giving the wide green fields a slightly haunting feel when accompanied by the blue hue of the light.

As I mentioned before, the sky had clouds of mist gathering near the top. I couldn’t quite understand how clouds like that could form underground, but I decided against pondering on it too much.

There was something much more fantastical in sight, after all.

It wasn’t the plains or the trees or the river… or the bizarre blue sky enveloping the area in its melancholic light.

No, it was the gigantic mountain range of enormous stalagmites with some kind of structures built within them.

The sight was immense. There was a beautiful, elaborate city resting at the base of the stalagmite range. Lights and little windows adorned on all sides of the stalagmites, and a single one of them connected all the way to the ceiling of the cave.

At the very ceiling above the city, there were stalactites hanging down with similar windows and lights decorating them. It was the first sight of an open area in this world, that truly screamed the word ‘fantasy’ at me, and I was all for it.

            “What… is that…?!” Amelia’s eyes were wide open.

“I was hoping you’d know…!” I shook my head as I stared about as wide-eyed as my knightly companion.

Our amazement was interrupted by the sound of something approaching. As it got a bit closer, it was easier to figure out the source of the noise. I’m quite confident it was a horse carriage. As I began to run towards it to call for help, Amelia suddenly lunged at me. I wanted to squeal, but she covered my mouth, hiding us in the nearby tall grass. I was confused, and for whatever reason, Amelia’s expression was very stern.

A horse carriage did indeed arrive, and out of it stepped a very short man.

“D-dwarves?!” I gasped in a whisper.

Amelia simply hushed me as three more armed dwarven men exited the carriage. The first man seemed to be an aristocrat, judging by his extravagant outfit, and the three others following him were incredibly muscular and had rather immense beards. They wore light leather armor which did nothing to hide dark tattoos adorning their arms. All three carried unnecessarily large battle-axes.

They spoke something, but the group was too far off for us to hear anything. They seemed to be assessing the damage we did to the planks. How did they know the planks had been broken through like this? Wasn’t the response way too quick?

The group seemed to be scanning the area a bit after checking the ashen remains of the wood, as if to find something.

The aristocratic man shrugged, and then three dwarven strongmen rushed off into the distance for a moment.

“W-why are we hiding?” I was still whispering, even though only the noble dwarf remained.

Meanwhile, the other three returned with a bunch of similarly worn-out pieces of lumber. They began nailing them to cover the opening again, and after the job was done, the group spoke something and gave one last glance around before they finally left. 

Amelia surveyed into all directions, before finally sighing deep as the carriage began racing away.