3 Chapter 3 - Smiles and Scars

[Luz POV]

I had arrived at that house, thanks to a caring and concerned woman, due to the crime scene I was in. And there I could feel an aura, it was weak and looked like a mix of colors between gold and purple, but I soon saw the origin of that one. This aura came from a boy, who I thought was younger than my current body, which made me think, that we were in the same boat. But of course, it would be idiotic for me to speak right away, I don't want to scare him.

They asked my age and name while I stopped pretending that anxiety and intense crying. I looked for a name in the body's memories, but they were still a little fuzzy, so I said my first name I ever had, Luz. The age was something much simpler to remember, the owner of this body was 7 years old, but he looked much younger and purer than some little brat of that age, so I lied saying I was 5 years old, it seemed more believable.

I kept looking out of the corner of my eye at the son of my saviors, his essence definitely seemed to carry weight, a weight of authority and coldness, but its intensity made it very transparent to see, making me think that at most he would have gone through 3 lives. Of course, I would act like this was my second life, when we were alone and I saw that it was the right time to talk about it.

But the universe always has surprises, or I'd better say it always teases me. The boy genuinely seemed to say silly things or to be of few words, as if he acted for it, but this acting was kind of bad, he spoke so correctly and always moving his body as if he was used to speaking in speeches and not socially.

"Universe... do you really want me to talk to him about this or what?... Is this serious?" I thought, while he asked about what happened to me, taking advantage of this to look at the floor a little depressed.

I broke down a little on the inside, starting to have a few laughs in my mind. I started to talk to him about auras, to see if he would open up the game, and it actually happened. It was interesting one more reincarnated, in all my lives I had only met 20 other reincarnated ones, and that's considerable if you think I've been in at least 11 thousand worlds.

After that, I noticed a black sphere on the boy's body. I went to ask what it was, and when I received the answer, I pretended slight ignorance, for having seen versions of mana cores, but not like that.

With the conversation about magic started, we were left to compare the things he knew about mana from this world with the things I knew about mana from my Homeworld. I decided to do so because that world of mine was at a "hypothetical distance" of 11 thousand universes. So obviously the fundamentals would be extremely different and I wanted to shock him.

"My god... The people here are pretty lost and it doesn't look like they're going to develop more on their own." I thought, as I started flipping through some of the books Art had given me.

I knew it would be very different, but that was absurd, for them to develop further, I bet they would need some crazy wizard to create theories. However, this same crazy wizard would be hunted down and beheaded in a public square, if the rulers of this world saw him as a threat to common sense.

After a few readings, I sat on the floor and started to meditate, I wanted to start this experience of mine in this world, but I ended up being interrupted by the other reincarnated who was with me. The reason for the interruption was that I could blow up the surroundings by doing this, which made me very confused because it wasn't said in the book that talked about mana core, but I accepted and we went straight to the garden.

"Let's take advantage of my parents not being here. That way we won't have any problems." Arthur said scratching his head.

"Okay. And sorry for almost trying that in there, it wasn't kind of written in the book about the other consequences."

"I know! That's exactly what I used as an excuse after awakening my core! But my parents said it was in a book.... Apparently this one was destroyed during the explosion...." He said a little embarrassed, apparently it was his fault I even wanted to think about meditating inside that house.

We started training my meditation to create my mana core, but it wasn't even 40 minutes, and I saw bright lights, I warned Arthur, because I didn't know if this was good or bad, it was always good to be careful and have the knowledge approved by someone there, than to go with the luck with the instincts. The lights I saw were different from what Arthur was describing during this process.

"It's weird.. I see a big white light, I know that itself is the core. But these other lights that are supposed to represent mana.. Art, what was the color scheme again?"

"White for pure mana, green for wind mana, red for fire mana, blue for water mana, and a medium brown orange for earth mana." He said this in a monotonous way, as if he was reading the book in front of me, but soon his voice showed curiosity with the question. "Why? what colors are you seeing?"

"I see.. a kind of intense black, not a kind of paint black, more a void black, another unusual color is.. I can't explain it, it's like it has color, but at the same time it's transparent." I said trying to keep as much detail as possible exposed to him, because I didn't know what that meant in this world, I had a faint idea of ​​what black might be...

"I can see green, red and blue, but they look so strange. Green and blue are in contact all the time, while red surrounds both black and green." I continued talking, hearing the boy sigh, as I had my eyes closed, focused on the mana.

"I honestly don't know what they can mean, but try to bring the ones we know into the greater light." He commanded and I obeyed, as the safest option. It wouldn't be good to mess with something unknown, for now.

"Uh.. Luz?" After a few other minutes of silence, Arthur seemed to call me.

"What is it now?" I said while keeping my eyes closed, still gathering the mana where my core would be.

"STOP NOW!!" He yelled at me, and that's when I opened my eyes.

I found myself floating about 3 meters off the ground, with a sphere of pure energy where I was in the center, during meditation I hadn't felt any of this because of a second inner sphere that was surrounding me like a protective shield. My eyes widened in surprise when I saw that, and looking at Arthur, he had the same expression as me.

"I TOLD YOU TO STOP!" He yelled at me again, possibly thinking I wasn't hearing him properly due to the two layers surrounding me.

"I THINK IT'S TOO LATE TO STOP!!" I spoke in shock, still floating in that meditation position.

I could see Arthur's expression getting extremely worried as he ran away. He held up his hand to me with a thumbs up, indicating that I could now continue. I was connecting all the mana particles around me, but without letting the black ones or the transparent ones get close to my future core. And as I did, I felt intense pain all over my back, arms and legs, as if they were burning and being sliced ​​from the inside out. Even with all this pain, I continued my meditation, if I already suffered so much in these multiple lives, my mind could handle it.

After a few but long minutes, an explosion happened. Luckily it didn't hit Arthur's house, but ended up creating a bizarre and oval-shaped crater, apparently it would be possible to make a family pool if it was filled with enough water and the edges were remodeled.

"Incred-!" I was going to speak, but I was interrupted by gravity, which returned to affect me, causing me to fall sitting at the bottom of the crater.

"THIS WAS VERY BIZARRE!" Arthur said in disbelief, his voice coming closer to me, as if he was running towards the crater. And that was confirmed when I saw his face there, with his hand trying to reach me. "Want some help?".

"Sure!" I said taking a leap that wasn't that powerful, but it was enough for my hand to reach his, and so he took me out of the crater.

"I can't believe you did it on the first try and it hasn't even been 4 hours!" Arthur said to me in a surprised and at the same time playful way.

"I think that thought was right. Because I've had mana before, this world's mana seemed to accept me easily." I spoke, smirking and looking at my core with the normal black that they have as first color.

"I hope that black mana was the Soul of Corruption... It's always good to use this on my side... but anyway, what was that transparent...?" I thought, while that smile of mine masked my slight concern.

"ARTHUUUUUUUUR!!!" my thoughts broke when I heard a woman's voice, the sweet woman who saved me, and she seemed to have turned into a demon, calling out for her son.

We looked at the direction and saw both of Arthur's parents, they had just arrived. His mother looked like a bipolar beast, halfway between anger at the damage and concern for her son. His father, on the other hand, looked excited, I could see his eyes shining from afar he was so surprised. I tried to sneak out, but Art was holding my clothes.

"I won't suffer because of you..." he said deadpan.

"Gods be merciful for my future punishment..." I thought with an expression of fear.

[3rd Person Pov]

After leaving the house, Reynolds and Alice walked apart, while Reynolds went to where the corpses were to at least make sure no one had seen, Alice went looking for the guards to warn them about the situation. It took almost an hour, but she managed to contact 2 guards, she took them to the crime scene.

{A/N: I'll call them guard 1 and guard 2, so there's no problem with the distinction.}

As they walked, Alice spoke a little vaguely, saying that she had heard an explosion, her husband had gone to see what it was, and that there seemed to be an attack by bandits, with victims. She decided to speak like that because she still didn't believe in all that and thought it was better for them to see for themselves.

"Good afternoon everyone, I hope we're not interrupting any of your work." Said Reynolds, watching the pair of guards who were coming with his wife.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Leywin. And no problem, at the moment nothing was going on around town, until your wife told us about an ambush that took place nearby. Hope we didn't take too long." Said guard 1, approaching Reynolds and shaking hands.

Meanwhile, Guard 2 was approaching the corpses that were on the ground, realizing that only the man had injuries. Alice realized this and warned that she was a healer, and was trying to help the woman, as she still seemed to have salvation, but ended up failing.

"All right, Mrs. Leywin. So you mean the man was already in that state when you arrived, while the woman was still showing signs of life?" She nodded and so Guard 2 continued. "Okay, as you tried to heal her, you know exactly what wounds she had, correct? Could you come over here, point out and detail what the wounds looked like?"

She was approaching that guard and helping him identify the injuries that had been on that body before, with him writing down everything she said in a kind of notepad. Reynolds, meanwhile, was talking to the Guard who was with him, until the two men were called to attention by Guard 2.

"Come here and see this! Under their clothes! I think I saw a deep cut from the amount of blood." Guard 2 said leaving the corpse of the man lying face down on the floor.

"But what is this?!" Reynolds said seeing guard 2 lifting the dead man's shirt, he appeared to have numerous marks and intense scars.

"They appear to be marks of attack and torture. I don't like to think about this, but there is a chance they are actually runaway slaves, I mean, I don't recognize this mark, but it seems to be a symbol of some noble. It's too damaged to identify." Said guard 1, a little behind Reynolds.

"My god, she also has..." Alice said doing the same procedure with the woman, she also seemed to have several marks and scars, but why weren't they healed when she used the magic before? Possibly they were so old that she had no way to heal them anymore.

Reynolds and Alice were having a bad feeling, those two were slaves, so was their son too? If they were killed, was there any chance they would go after a child? With these questions in mind, the two looked at each other a little, it seemed that they had both come to an agreement without having to say anything.

"Okay. And it looks like there are some travel backpacks here, was there anything in them when you arrived?" Guard 2 said, noting the open luggage next to the bodies.

"Well, I went to look before to see if there was any identification of them. But nothing, they were totally empty." Reynolds said.

"Yes. While my husband was looking for some identification, I tried to save the woman, and I also tried to see if there was anything on her, but nothing unfortunately." Alice completed Rey's speech.

"Alright, was anyone else around? I mean, you heard an explosion, right?" guard 1 asked.

"No. I believe it must have been a spell with some distance trigger, I didn't find anyone around here, even though I augmented my eyes with mana." Reynolds said, looking at guard 1.

"Okay, could you sign a report together with my colleague? I'll try to take the bodies with me so we can examine it in more detail." Guard 2 said, while guard 1 walked with the Leywins.

It took about a few hours, but they both finally made it out of Ashber's guard post. They looked at each other anxiously, the first to calm down was Rey, and soon after he calmed down his wife.

"We'll protect that boy, won't we?" Alice was saying to her husband, in a shaky voice. "I mean.... If he managed to survive... he deserves a better life."

"Of course. As there aren't that many people who knew about Arthur's birth... we could say that Luz is also our son, and if anyone suspects him, because he's nothing like us, we at least say he's adopted. What do you think?"

When Rey said that, she hugged him tight, it seemed like it had been a while since he'd said something so responsible. They both laughed and headed straight for the house, but when they were a street away, they heard an explosion. Both eyes widened as they ran towards it, soon seeing a crater in the backyard, with Arthur and Luz next to it.

"ARTHUUUUUUUUR!!!" She said, both with anger and with concern.

"Apparently that boy is already looking like our son." Reynolds thought, with a delighted look to see another child managing to awaken a mana core at that age.