Chương 69: Feverish Thinking II

June wanted to tap his foot. He wanted to wiggle his fingers. He wanted to look, smell, and touch anything that wasn't dirt.

'The voice has been quiet.'

'What do you think, fellas?' Blue and white blobs floated around. He could sense them still somehow. June had no eyes to see them, and his ears, nostrils, mouth, and every sensory piece of his body were covered or filled with dirt. But he could still sense them, hear them, smell them, and see them.

'Are you guys mana?' The mana June could see was specs of light that were colored to its corresponding element, like fireflies. But the ones June was talking to were less specific; they were colored to their corresponding element, but these mana had shape; they were often blobs, some had pudgy legs, some had eyes that blinked, some made chirpy noises, and others produced scents of nature.

'Why do I only see blue and white?'

"Leonard said that I should only see earthen-colored ones since I was learning earth magic."

'…'

'Maybe it's the location?'

"There's a lake above; maybe that's where the blue ones are from?"

'What about the white ones?' From time to time, June's jubilant, moving friends brushed against his skin, making it tingle and glow slightly.

'This place sucks, good for meditating though.' June has been buried for an unknown amount of time. He kept track for about a week and then forgot when recounting past events in his head.

'I wonder if Grace is at the Colosseum or if she joined remotely.'

"I wonder if Shade and Julian are doing well. It's been a minute since I talked to them.' Even though Grace died within the tournament, June was happy to know that she was alive and in a state to even participate; death within the simulation wasn't permanent after all.

'…'

'Martin… Martin… Martin…'

'He's the Royal faction leader, but do I know him from somewhere?'

'…'

'Doesn't ring a bell.' The borbs of mana seemed to study his skin and its reactions with curiosity. Every time they brushed against his skin, it seemed to react in novel ways.

'I wonder if they're like spirits.' Whenever the spirit of light touched his skin, it felt warm and invigorated. Whenever the spirit of water touched his skin, it felt cool and relaxed. He couldn't see his body, but he was able to tell which spirit brushed against him through sensation alone. One would have been pleasant enough, but there were several of these spirits playing with his body.

'Do they like the strings or something?' Even though June's eyes held his will, June, by habit, circulated it within his body, although the fact that he was able to lose most of his will by having his eyes removed was a problem that no other Dreamer had. June used a little will to spur his flesh-shaping abilities and pushed some strings out of his body. The little spirits seemed to be weightless; they moved like bacteria in a petri dish. They congregated and studied the exposed strings.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Despite the sand and dirt encompassing June, the spirits moved unburdened by it; some squeezed through gaps, and others just phased through as if it wasn't real.

'Wait a second, this is a simulation.'

'Every animal I've seen or hunted so far automatically runs away?'

'Wait… are these guys real?' Before June could properly ponder his revelation, a spirit of water got too close to the exposed strings of his body and got sucked in. It felt as if a blockage in his arms was pushed out.

"What the..." June felt something coming out of his throat as he began to tepidly foam water onto the dirt in front of him. June retched bits and pieces out, the dirt obstructing his mouth caked into mud. June located the spirit in his body and willed it to exit, and a gush of water began to leak from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. As unpleasant as it was, it did clear a little bit of the dirt and sand that crept into his orifices. June heaved for the little oxygen left in his tomb. He felt hopeless.

He tried to recall how he got here.

June had climbed to the top of Royal Central once per day during the last four days. Every morning, he would sleep. Every evening, he would meet with Eren for notable updates. Every afternoon, he would sit on a nearby building beside the training camp and watch over Silvester. And every night, June would scale the royal castle and enter through the top veranda that had been Grace's office. The office was no longer in use, so other than the occasional adjutant disturbing its remains, the room was largely unused.

It was a rectangular room; the balcony entrance stood opposite the desk where Grace would have worked, and adjacent to the desk was a wide, open, doorless doorway. Despite the premium view from Grace's office, she was not a member of the royal family. Royal Central was the entire city, a large favela filled with conscripted, sprawled around a massive body of crystal-clear water, and in the center stood an odd structure.

It was several stories tall, and it was not quite a castle despite the battlements attached to it; it was more of a spire with limestone boxes affixed to it as rooms. Although it wasn't a true castle, the only way to enter was by boat, a single high-class water mage, or an entourage of a couple of dozen intermediate earth mages to create a floating bridge across it. Of course, June swam across while invisible.

The limestone castle, with the fitting name of the Royal Castle, was also fit to resist long sieges with arrowslits and heavy battlements and could resist heavier, more destructive spells. But, despite having the incredibly fitting name, the Royal Castle, the large castle that sat on the lake housed no royals; it was a red herring; it was purely a logistical hub.

If the thousands of aspirants in the faction died, followed by the hundreds of Dreamers, the next line of defense of the Royal Central would be the thousands of mundane slum rats, followed by every logistical member within the Royal Castle. Approximately 5000 fighters were defending the false capital, though this number may vary. And about a couple of hundred Dreamers, presumably at the true capital. Where are the royals and the elites, of course?

They were in the true Royal Castle, which was a sprawling catacomb city underneath the false Royal Castle. But here was the problem. Every day, for the last several days, June climbed to the top of the false castle and parsed through logistical tablets in Grace's former office, but no matter how much he looked, he couldn't find a carved tablet with the exact location, nor anything of substance.

The report book Atish provided had a bounty of information, but the only thing Atish and his spies struggled to find was the entrance to the true castle. So June had come up with an alternative plan on the fly. The true catacomb realistically had the true elite force; not to mention, the Royals of the night realm weren't often the dainty type.

Sealing off the catacombs seemed like a band-aid for a severed limb; it might help, but realistically, whoever dug them into that hole would be able to dig them back up, not to mention that there was the massive possibility of an underground network and several exits. Every single day he learned something new in Grace's office; he ended up learning more about the Dreamer's habits, weaknesses, and things to keep them on a leash.

June knew Grace was no fighter, but at the same time, if she was given a unit to lead, even Mortimer himself would find himself in a pinch, especially considering that Grace's entire deck of cards was oriented for logistics instead of combat. Every time June climbed in through Grace's balcony, he noticed slight shifts in the building; of course, he had explored the entire structure himself.

Invisibility and silence were incredibly useful for him not to exploit, but out of every other room in the false castle, Grace's room acted like a nexus point. All information was gathered here on a large shelf on her wall, and at the same time, if an enemy captured the castle, it only took a few explosives to topple the spire and all information within it to be swallowed by the lake.

The war was impending, and all the information June had scrounged up so far would be massively inconsequential if he couldn't destroy the heart of his enemy.

June had been letting the water spirits enter his strings. Sometimes they would enter willingly, sometimes forcefully. Other times, he had to lull them into trust. He experimented enough to learn that certain frequencies affect them. With the help of the water spirits, he was able to turn the dirt surrounding him into mud. At first, it was inconvenient, but at some point, June realized that, unlike the tough dirt, he was able to shift his body in the viscous mud; he had slowly begun digging his way to the surface.

'It's nice having eyes again.' Echolocation required space to sense, which was not something he had at the moment. The omniscient bubble view that the Voice taught him required light to see, which was lacking in his tomb. With the help of his eager new friends, he was able to clear his orifices of dirt, allowing his body to regrow without any obstructions. The process of healing was slow. The process of escape was slower.

The light that emitted from his eyes just turned everything in his immediate sight bright gold, rendering it impossible to see properly. The spirits of light seemed more interested in studying his eyes than the strings, but they provided no immediate benefit. So June slowly took the water spirit in, vomited water, and slowly inched towards the surface. Sometimes he would have to lull them in with his voice. He would produce frequencies that blended into songs.

It was a slow, painful, and horrendous trial, but despite the rightful dejection that June had a claim to. He sang as loud as he could. He sang a jubilant song for his new friends. A jubilant song of water.