Chương 508: The Center of the Mist (2)

The ten of us spent nearly half an hour sailing towards the island at the center of the lake. Now that my magic was back in working order, I could see that the boat did not have a soul, which somewhat surprised me - I had kind of suspected that the boat was some kind of living organism. Instead, the boat seemed to run entirely on manifestation essence magic, which allowed it to sense the direction its passengers wanted to move and then pick a course that would get the passengers to their desired location.

I was still quite glad to have it. Not needing to worry about wind, or rowing, or any other form of propulsion made it far easier to get from one point to another. As we slid along the glassy surface of the lake, we didn't speak much. I wasn't sure what the others were feeling, but the closer we got, the more nervous I felt. I could confidently fight off the monsters that lay at the outer edge of the mists, but I still had no idea what to expect inside.

I hoped that we weren't about to enter the lair of some kind of incredibly powerful monster - but I also felt a strange sense of resignation. We had run into too many powerful monsters over the centuries. At this point, I was used to it. My anxiety only increased as we neared the mini island. Our actual trip was uninterrupted - no monsters came out of the mist to attack us, and nothing from the lake rose up to try to turn us into breakfast as we moved.

Finally, we landed on the island itself, and the great column of mist enveloped us. Immediately after entering the mist, I felt a strange sense of dislocation. It only took me a heartbeat to confirm that space was bent now. The space inside of the mist was expanded and stretched out, making the originally tiny island in the center of the lake turn into a massive landmass.

Interestingly enough, this distorted distance did not impact every direction - when I looked behind us, it was clear that we could still return to our boat and sail away at any time. It seemed as if the spatial manipulation had only been used to expand the size of the island. I had a hard time figuring out how large the island actually was, if I included the spatial expansion. My spatial senses weren't good enough to figure out just how much space was being stretched.

However, I suspected that the island was at least as large as the 'outer island' that we had originally landed on. That meant we could potentially spend a few days wandering around this place before we even reached the other end of the island, if we got lost and weren't paying attention to where we were going. The second thing I could see was the little souls in the mist. Just as I had seen from outside, they looked like little grains of sand.

Unlike when I had observed this island from our town, these little grain-sized souls were everywhere. They flickered and danced like little candles flickering in the wind, and many of them moved so quickly they were nearly impossible to track. This wasn't helped by the fact that my regular vision could barely pick up anything at all - while the little souls were clear enough to my soul sight, all I could see with my regular eyesight was normal mist.

"Miria? The island we landed on looks way bigger from the outside than the inside. What's going on here?" asked Felix.

"I think there's some kind of spatial expansion here. It shouldn't prevent us from fleeing if we want to leave, but it makes the island much larger than it appears to be," I said.

"I'm a bit surprised, actually. I would have expected something like this to also have extra security mechanisms installed, but I can't find anything of the sort. At least, so far. Keep an eye out for nasty surprises, though." The others nodded, before we started to creep further into the island. We didn't have a clear direction to go yet, so we simply headed towards the center of the island. However, after we got deep enough into the mist that we couldn't see the shore anymore, something unexpected happened.

One of the little souls that had been dancing around us suddenly dive-bombed Sallia's hair. I tensed, and then immediately shared my vision with my friends via communication bracelet. Then, I prepared an extinguish, and I saw Anise create a thin wall right in front of Sallia an instant later. The little soul expertly twirled around Anise's wall in a display of incredible agility.

I tried to hit it with an extinguish that would leave it injured, but hopefully give us some time to study it and figure out what was actually attacking us. The sprite twirled out of the way of my extinguish as if my attempted attack wasn't even there. Then I blinked in surprise as it reached right in front of Sallia's face, and then flickered away. <It felt like something just… booped me on the nose? > said Sallia.

A new layer of shields sprang into existence right in front of Sallia's nose, as we waited for some kind of display of hostilities. A delayed bomb exploding in her face, or a spell activating, or… something. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. But nothing happened. Several seconds passed, as the sprites went back to dancing around us and otherwise ignoring us. I frowned. Perhaps the sprit had left some kind of curse spell behind?

Experimentally, I tried hitting Sallia with a very weak healing spell. We were literally surrounded by fog, which was made of water, so I didn't even need to splash her with water - she was already a valid target for my healing spells. To my surprise, upon trying to heal Sallia, nothing happened. <It doesn't seem like Sallia is injured, and I don't sense anything at all in front of her, > I said. <I don't either, > said Felix. <It feels like Sallia wasn't attacked at all? > I hesitated.

The sprite hadn't obviously harmed Sallia, and none of its friends had swarmed us, even after I tried to hit one of them with an extinguish. Maybe the little mist sprite wasn't hostile? If that was the case, I felt quite bad about trying to hit the little soul with an extinguish.

"Why are we stopping?" asked Amanda, and I saw a few of the other elite combatants also frown at me. I scratched the back of my head in frustration. They hadn't noticed the little mist creature move up to Sallia's face at all? That seriously called their value in this environment into question. They might be good at dealing with regular monsters, but if they couldn't see or react to the little souls in the mist, they had no way to fight back if the mist monsters turned hostile.

"Something touched Sallia. I can see it too, but not very well," I said.

"Keep an eye out for shifts and movements in the mist. We might be -" Before I could finish my sentence, another little soul made of mist darted towards me. Unlike the others in my group, my ridiculously high [Perception] actually let me get a look at what the creature was. Its body was made entirely of mist. It had the upper body of a regular female human, wrapped in a long, misty robe. The lower half of its body was a combination of different animal parts.

Its waist and the upper half of its legs resembled a serpent, which almost made the creature look like a mermaid, but partway through the creature's tail, it split into several segments that resembled a centipede. Despite its rather unusual combination of features, it looked strangely cute. Its misty face had zero hostility, and its wide eyes were innocent and curious. I could see a certain spark in them that I didn't see in most monsters.

It zoomed right up to my face as it sailed through the air, and then gave me a friendly wave. I blinked in surprise, and hesitantly waved back. The creature giggled. Even though its appearance was a bit unnerving, its laughter was musical, like the tinkling of bells. It gently reached out to me, booped me in the nose, and then giggled again. Then, it darted away from me, and happily swirled around our group.

"What was that?" Asked Amanada, as she and the other five elite mages stared at the place the sprite had occupied a moment ago.

"Was that another one of those creatures?"

"It is," I said.

"I think they're friendly?" I was a bit worried about making that declaration, since it would leave us more vulnerable to a surprise attack if they decided to turn on us. On the other hand, I really couldn't detect any signs of hostility. Sallia was still doing just fine, and the creature that had touched my nose seemed intelligent and friendly. It had waved at me, touched my nose, and then left.

"Are you sure they're friendly?" asked Amanda.

"No, but the one that touched Sallia earlier, as well as the one that touched me, didn't use any obvious magic or deal any damage. I tried healing both of us, and there was nothing to heal."

"I see." Amanda slowly sheathed her weapon, although her hand didn't stray too far from the hilt of her blade.

"Let's avoid aggravating them. If we can get through this without a fight, that would be for the best."

"I agree," I said. I now felt more than a little bad for trying to use an extinguish earlier. If the little mist-sprites were friendly, I had definitely overreacted. The group began to advance again. Every so often, another of the little mist sprites would fly towards us, giggle with us, and touch us before leaving. Other members of the group also started to spot them more frequently, as the little sprites danced right in front of their eyes.

They always seemed mischievous and teasing - but they never did anything to actually hurt us, no matter how many encounters passed. We still maintained some vigilance towards them… but it was becoming increasingly evident that if they wanted to do something to us, they would have probably done it already. After four hours of walking through the misty forest, we found what appeared to be our destination. An incredibly dense cluster of trees rose out of the earth.

Each tree was only a dozen meters tall, which was on the smaller side - but the grove of trees was so impossibly thick, and so weirdly uniform in height that we could still tell we had arrived at somewhere important. Nestled atop the uppermost branches of the grove was a giant palace made of mist. Dozens of little mist sprites danced around it, while others played and twirled among the branches below.

The moment we arrived, the outer edge of the mist palace trembled, before a giant set of stairs began to flow towards us like magma. In moments, a walkway extended from the palace to us. I exchanged looks with the others in the group. Contrary to my expectations of a fight, it seemed that we were being invited inside.