17 Departure (Again) and Arrival

"Are you sure you want to go? I know what I did was... It was unforgivable, but I still want to make it up to you, you know?" Evelyn asked me as I stood next to the departing entourage.

"I know, Evelyn it's just... I've got to do this. I keep losing the things and people I love due to how weak I am and I don't want to ever lose something like that again." I replied with a bit of a twinge in my chest.

While I hadn't completely gotten over the whole 'lying to me for my whole life', thing, I had decided to forgive Evelyn and Noella for their part in it. It's not like they directly ordered my parents' deaths or anything and they were clearly extremely messed up by the fact that it had happened. They took responsibility for it and were genuinely trying to make it up to me, so if I went on carrying a grudge against them, I was only really hurting myself in the long run.

That didn't make their actions okay by any means, but I had decided it was better for both my spiritual and mental health if I tried to move on. Even if I wasn't there yet.

Evelyn sighed and looked down, clenching her fists a bit and biting her lip for a moment before she put on a fake gentle face to see me off with. "If that's the case then be sure to visit. You will always be welcome in the Kingdom of Soma!"

I smiled at her words and nodded before walking away. "I'll be back. See you later."

"Dude, that scene was sooo hard to watch!" Twilight said to me as I walked up to the group of himself, Sylvia, and Luminous.

"Standing next to you is even harder to bear!" I spat back at him.

Luminous smiled at my retort and gave me a thumbs up before turning to Sylvia. "I like him." She stated.

"I do too." Sylvia responded without looking away.

"Really! Neither of you is going to defend your dear old dad!?!" Twilight complained.

"Lets just get out of here already. Everyone looking at us like we are fools is painful." I interjected, completely ignoring Twilight's complaints.

"Ha~" Twilight sighed hard before snapping his fingers. A large blue magic circle appeared under our feet and began to glow brightly before I felt a slight tugging sensation all over my body. When I next blinked, we were already far from the Kingdom of Soma on the other side of the continent.

We were in a vast grassland of lazily rolling hills as far as the eye could see. In the distance, a large blueish mountain peered above the horizon to the east and in the north was a wide ocean. A small village could be seen not too far from where we stood, only about a five-minute walk or so. It was an almost perfect example of an Arcadia, an idyllic countryside town where the protagonist of another generic isekai anime would grow up before setting out on his quest to slay the Demon Lord or something.

"My first teleportation was kinda anticlimactic" I spoke aloud my inner thoughts.

"Fufufu. You'll get used to it sooner or later. I'd advise you to learn spatial magic while your with this guy." Luminous pointed to Twilight. "It's the only thing he's good for."

"Eh! What did I do to deserve such harsh treatment?" Twilight complained, but we all ignored him and stepped off towards the town in the distance.

"Why'd we teleport so far away?" I asked as we walked.

"Unless you have a dedicated and safe teleportation spot, this kind of thing is actually better. It keeps you from ending up in a wall or buried alive." Twilight spoke up, having caught back up to the group.

"Plus it doesn't startle people as much," Sylvia added to the conversation while glaring at Twilight.

"What!?! It was funny to scare her like that!" Twilight replied.

"You can say that AFTER you're house burns down when Velgrynd gets scared next time!" Sylvia spat back venomously.

"To be fair, that was pretty funny." Luminous said to the room, smiling evily.

"I bet you won't be saying that after a True Dragon destroys YOUR home!" Sylvia said in response.

"As if that'll ever happen." Luminous responded in a tone of complete disbelief and dismissal.

'Ah... she jinxed it...' I thought to myself as we approached the edge of the town.

It was only after walking through what I felt to be a very thin layer of magical energy did I realize just how NOT normal this place was. There were several extremely dense magicule signatures coming from the town's center, so much so that I thought I was tripping. If normal people glowed like fireflys dancing in the distance when sensed with [Magic Sense], then these people shone like standing directly in front of stadium lights, being so blindingly bright that I almost felt like I had to turn off my skill just to see where I was going.

It seems the others noticed my sudden stop and all smirked. "Yeah, I was the same way when I first sensed them too." Sylvia comforted me.

"Geez. I really was like a frog in a well huh?" I thought out loud.

"What's that saying now?" Twilight asked.

"The saying is 'like a frog in a well, not knowing how big the world truly is. It's a variation on the saying 'Big fish in a small pond' or the like." I replied to him.

"Ohh! I like that saying! If nothing else, your quotes are just as interesting as Ramiris described!" I heard a voice coming from behind me.

I jumped a bit but didn't attack, as I had learned from the whole Twilight debacle last time, but I did instinctively grab the handle of my sword. I turned around quickly before coming face to face with an extraordinarily handsome man. His hair looked like the night sky, being long dark bluish-purple with gleaming white sparkles running through it. His hair became a lighter shade of blue the closer it got to its ends, becoming almost entirely sky blue. A golden halo hovered around the back of his head almost like a crown and a black blindfold obscured his eyes, however, even with most of his face covered, I still could tell that THIS was the most handsome man I had ever seen before in my life. He wore black robes that clung tightly to his chest along with a white coat-like over robe with blue highlights and gold trimming.

'Like, I'm not gay at all but... damn dude!' I thought to myself before quickly locking that thought in the far recesses of my mind next to all the cringy memories of my past self.

"I seemed to have startled you. My bad!" The man stated before looking at Twilight. "Ah! Twilight! Its good to see you again! I thought you'd be off completing your mission by now."

"I did, my lord," Twilight stated with a reverend and serious tone that I hadn't heard from him before. It threw me for a bit of a loop, to be honest.

"Well, that's good, but I think after seeing what became of the High Human civilization, we should stick to just humans to be the primary, though we will need a way to check human ambitions before they destroy themselves" He started speaking to Twilight, though halfway through was more talking to himself than anything.

"It is as you say." Twilight responded.

"Umm... I don't want to be rude but... who are you again?" I asked.

The man in front of me smiled and opened his mouth to introduce himself but was interrupted by the shouting of another man from nearby.

"How dare you not show reverence to our god, you worthless human!" I heard from behind and felt a dangerous killing intent, so I quickly unsheathed my blade and blocked with my full force as one of the densest energies from before rapidly made its way towards my back.

I barely blocked the strike, which appeared to be a magic aura infused |Aura Strike| but felt denser than anything I'd ever experienced.

I was instantly blown off my feet and flew through the street, landing hard after crashing through two buildings. I felt that all of my bones had been broken by the strike and my sword was easily destroyed. I spat out blood and waited for my [Ultraspeed Regeneration] to kick in as I painfully pushed myself up off the ground and looked back towards where the attack came from.

"Hoh? So you survived that huh? I guess you aren't completely worthless then!" The man who stood before me declared.

"Who are you?" I asked, getting to my feet lowly. Even with my [Ultraspeed Regeneration] running at full strength, it still took a bit to fully recover.

"I am Feldway! A loyal servant of Veldanava-sama and the one who will teach you proper respect!" He screamed at me.

"Oh... oh shit" I muttered while looking at the handsome ma- I mean True Dragon who held his head in his hand.

.~.~.~.

A/N: Sorry for the inconsistent upload schedule, I've got a lot of grown-up stuff going on right now, like working full time and trying to move out of my Grandma's House and stuff. Something about me needing to become 'A productive member of society' and 'needing to have a healthy social life'!

Bah!!!

jk, love you gram gram!