Unsealing Emptiness

Those blasting sounds of spells could have alerted people from miles away, but it seemed that no one wanted to be the one to check out what had happened here all night.

Until it was morning, everyone slept soundly.

Raven was the first to open her eyes, feeling quite refreshed despite being unconscious on the ground all night after she was poisoned to near death.

The warm wetness on top of her eyelids and the forehead caused her to jerk awake as she quickly stood up to survey her surroundings.

Finding herself surrounded by the familiar sight of trees and craters of all kinds here and there amidst which there were two familiar men lying there as well, Raven calmed down a little.

It was only then that it hit her.

.....

The head-splitting pain above the spine and around the temples almost caused her to stumble back to the ground.

Then came the vivid memories of all that had transpired last night. Her first reaction would have been to look for Ozul if not for the sight of an unfamiliar body on the ground, lying only a few feet away from Blaze.

She didn’t need to thoroughly examine the body to notice that the man was killed only recently, if that severed head and the scarlet blood gushing out from the neck was anything to go by.

Raven instantly figured out who might have killed this man, and he was currently atop a tree to her left.

As she located him on the tree, he jumped down himself, “I waited till the last moment one of you guys woke up before killing him. This one didn’t even realize my presence.”

Raven smiled internally at the trace of disappointment in his voice. Though she maintained a calm exterior, Ozul could see that she was amused for some reason.

How could Raven not find it amusing? She had already started noticing the changes in Ozul. Before, the extent of emotions he would express was mostly limited to tired sighs and even disappointment only materialized in extreme cases such as when it concerned himself, her, or even Blaze.

It wasn’t like that when she had first met him. Even back then, he used to express himself more.

She didn’t know when he took upon more of a colder attitude, but her guess was after Grandma Carol’s death.

After that, his behavior fluctuated quite a lot. Only now had it stabilized a little as even though he wasn’t completely open about it, she could still tell traces of emotions mixed within his scarcely spoken sentences.

‘He usually doesn’t even pause between mid-sentences now...’ Raven thought to herself, feeling herself getting lost in the nostalgia.

Unknown to Ozul, the amount of time Raven had spent growing up with him and noticing his every little action had made her quite an expert in reading him.

Even a slight change in his tone that would usually be ignored would instantly be noticed by her.

“What are you smiling for?” Ozul squinted his eyes at her even though she wasn’t smiling on the outside.

As always, it caught her off guard, but before she could think of anything, Ozul spoke again.

“Anyway, it’s time to move. Wake them up,” he pointed his finger at the dome of shield which had somehow moved closer to them.

“Is he going with us?” Raven asked while staring at the overly sickly appearance of the purple-haired man beside Blaze.

“He saved Blaze’s and your life. He was the one to help with your poison.”

Ozul didn’t need to tell Raven again to wake Zier up as well since she knew when to be grateful more than anyone else.

Although it was hard to accept, she didn’t doubt Ozul. If he said so, that weak man must have done something to save their lives.

And no matter how ruthless she was when given orders directly from Ozul, Raven would usually sympathize with the innocent people. And since this man had saved not only her’s but even Blaze’s life, the least she could do was to accept the fact that he was leeching off of them.

She cast the spell to clean off the blood on her forehead before she reached to wake the two men up. However, that proved to be unnecessary.

*Yawn!*

“Mhmm... It’s been months since I slept so comfortably-” muttered the man, who clearly looked more drained than he did yesterday. Yet, the mirth in his voice conveyed that he actually enjoyed the sleep last night.

On the other hand, the cyan-haired man covered all over with straps from the Ball of Purity had a completely different response than Zier,

“AHHH! FU*K!”

Blaze’s head felt as if it was almost about to explode as he clutched it between his hands.

Although his body felt refreshed, the first thing that happened to him was the mind-numbing sensations of something like actual needles slowly piercing through his brain!

His scream even caused Ozul to be a little startled since Blaze wasn’t the one to whine like this every time he was in pain. If he had cried out like this, it only went on to show how excruciating the pain really was.

“Ha... that w...- was hell.”

After the initial scream, only a few muffled groans escaped Blaze’s mouth before gradually his breathing stabilized and the pain vanished.

Last night, his whole body had been littered with wounds and Ozul had covered all of them with a thin strap of the Ball of Purity.

Among the three, he stood out the most with that black substance latching onto him.

“This is...?” Zier asked under his breath.

Only then did he notice that there was also a thin layer of a black substance on his hand where he had made the cut last night.

Ozul realized that he had forgotten to remove those straps of the Ball of Purity.

Without bothering to explain what it was doing latching onto their bodies like this, he simply called it all back to him. In a few blinks, all of it seemingly disappeared into nothingness.

Suddenly feeling the cold winds brush past his now-exposed skin, Blaze looked down at his arms and noticed that all of his wounds were completely gone!

The Darkness Element Spell had left his arms in a strange state of numbness that he felt as if another poison had entered his skin and was eating him from the inside, however that gruesome sight was nowhere to be seen now.

Still he didn’t have a big reaction to this, he had already been healed quite a lot of times with Ozul’s Ball of Purity. The only reason he was still amazed was because he found it hard to believe that even wounds as gruesome as last night’s could be restored like this under a single night.

Raven had no surprised feelings about this at all.

One could say that her reaction was almost lackluster. However, only she knew how much joy it brought her everytime Ozul healed her using the Ball of Purity. She would always be reminded of the time when she had first followed behind him.

‘Even at that time... he had stopped my bleeding cuts using the Ball of Purity...’

It reminded her of the day when she was saved from the miserable life that awaited her in that dark alley.

If Ozul hadn’t appeared back then, she would have just been sold as a slave and left to rot in some unknown corner of the world awaiting and most likely craving for death.

As she was lost in her fantasies, she heard someone exclaim loudly.

“Woah! How did that happen!? It’s completely gone! There isn’t a hint of the slit here!”

Zier’s reaction was completely opposite to that of Blaze and Raven’s.

It was reasonable though since the duo had already experienced the miraculous regenerative abilities of the Ball of Purity. Also, most of the things coming from Ozul didn’t surprise them anymore.

However, it was the first time that Zier had seen something like this. Even his grandfather was never able to create any medicine or bring him any elixir that could make a wound like last night’s entirely disappear without leaving any traces behind.

“How did you do it?! If you knew medicine, you could have healed them yourself. Awh! I wouldn’t have had to cut myself again for that!” Zier complained, “You know my body’s different. Once I cut myself, it becomes really hard for the bleeding to stop and the wound to close again.”

After blurting all of that out in amazement, Zier realized something, “... yet you healed the wound in a single night...”

One of the many reasons that his grandfather had forbidden him to use his blood to cure poison for anyone was because of his body condition. Even a Rank-9 Mage like him would sometimes find it difficult to heal the wound and have the blood clog there to stop the bleeding.

Last night, Zier was convinced that the next whole month would be hard to pass because he would have to be extra careful around his wound. Even a bit of force would make the blood gush out from there like a fountain.

Yet not only did he wake up the next morning without that wound, his body even felt more refreshed as if he had recently made a breakthrough to the ranks.

“It is not time for questions, we have to move.”

Ozul completely ignored Zier’s blabbering, reminding everyone of the giant dome of shield that gradually decreased in its size from all sides...