"You've been doing great, 'Satoshi'."

Satoshi's eyes shot open to the darkness of the night.

"Nice to hear from you again-", Satoshi didn't even need to check in surroundings for where the voice came from as he knew the entity wasn't there. Even though he had heard it very briefly, that voice was one he would never forget, "-dear summoner of mine. I thought you couldn't talk to me without a medium? Like that fire kid back then."

"Why would you think so?"

Satoshi was away from the elf and did a quick check with his detection in the direction he had left her. She was a couple of kilometers away and he could feel her steady breathing.

"I will never forget what you said to me back then. It's still in my notes, every single word."

"Tell me."

"You said 'I am limited in my ability to talk to you. As much as it pains me to use someone as useless as him, I don’t have much of an option. Follow him and come to me and then you shall have that what you truly desire.'"

"My limitation in speaking to you back then was neither of time, nor of distance. As for using the 'fire kid', he was not a relay."

Satoshi couldn't feel anything from the voice. It was neutral in every sense. He couldn't tell if it came from a man or woman. It was bland and without emotion.

"Good to know I was wrong. But then I find it weird that you never bothered to contact me for all the time I have been here. Either you don't have a grand purpose for doing all this, or you don't care enough for it."

"To me, the purpose is very important and I care for it very much."

The entity spoke to the point and not more than it considered necessary. Because of that, Satoshi figured his summoner must have a reason for contacting him like this so suddenly. And since this was such a rare opportunity, he wanted to get as much information as he could get before the being spoke all it actually called for and suddenly snapped the connection like last time.

"Care to fill me in on the details?"

"You need not know."

It bluntly refused him.

"You know, unless you tell me your scheme, there's no way I can act on it.", Satoshi goaded the entity. If he knew what it wanted, he could go ahead and do the exact opposite.. but maybe it knew that and that’s why wasn't disclosing any information.

"You already are."

Now that irked him. He didn't like dancing to someone else's tune. Unfortunately, the simple reality was that there was nothing he could do about it and he knew it so he kept his cool and asked something else.

"You had also mentioned something about giving me what I truly desire. What is it?"

Now this was something Satoshi was dying to know. Was there something he wanted more than his freedom? He didn’t want to believe it but he couldn't discard the possibility, seeing as he was now in a different world with all sorts of things that people of his world only ever fantasized about. There was so much he did not know and did not understand that being rigid to his beliefs was probably the worst thing he could do.

"You have to tell me what you truly desire.", instead of answering him, it asked him back.

"Freedom.", Satoshi replied without missing a beat.

"As expected of a wind elemental."

Satoshi frowned. What did the entity mean by that?

(Did he imply there is emotion attached to the power that the elementals wield?)

His thoughts went back to the fire elemental. Satoshi remembered his shouts filled with abuses. It was as if he was the very embodiment of rage.

(So fire is attached to rage and wind to freedom?)

Satoshi didn’t have to even think to know how much he would have hated it if he were the fire elemental instead. He might have even gone as far as making his life goal to burn his summoner for it.

"Was it because of my desire for freedom that you chose me as the wind elemental?”, he enquired.

"I didn't choose you. But you indeed were chosen because you were compatible with it."

Satoshi was surprised at the former revelation.

"Who chose me then, if not my summoner?"

"You need not know."

Satoshi almost facepalmed as its reply but quickly moved on to the next question.

"So how is it that you will give me freedom?"

"You need not know."

He was getting annoyed by that answer but there was a lot he was learning otherwise so he kept his cool and kept going without letting much pause in the conversation.

"But you can? Give me freedom, I mean."

"Yes."

"Which would mean I'm not free right now?"

"Indeed."

"And what is it that binds me?"

"You've already felt it but are yet to acknowledge it."

What was the entity talking about? Was he being philosophical? Maybe the ideas of society were binding him and the summoner could tell him something about this world that would change his view? Or was it something physical? But he didn't feel restrained in any way. On an extreme, life itself was a kind of a shackle and the only way out was to die but thankfully that was not included in Satoshi's definition of freedom.

"Enough.", the entity suddenly said. Unfortunately, Satoshi had been thinking too long on the last answer and the lull in the conversation made the entity get to its point, "there is a dungeon 60km towards the right of where you are. Near it, there is a camp of goblins."

This was the information it had contacted Satoshi for, but for the life of him he couldn't tell what was its purpose in telling him so.

"Goblins love sentient females. Elves are a rare delicacy."

Satoshi's eyes bulged as he realized the implication.

(He's giving me a tip for a major event!)

Satoshi knew that the entity would close the connection now that it was done, so he quickly spoke.

"Wait. Tell me one thing before you go."

He paused a little. Even though no voice came, he felt the connection and took it as a cue to speak.

"Why tell me this?"

The entity hadn't contacted him in all this time that it could have but it did now for such an obtuse reason. What could it possibly stand to gain by it?

"Consider it a reward for being the first to defeat the beast I created as your natural enemy."

Satoshi didn't even need to think about what his summoner was referring to. It was the chimera that had the ability to become immune to one element at a time. One on one, it was the perfect elemental killing machine. But that was so long ago. Why now?

"Why n-"

Satoshi felt the connection snap. The entity had said what it needed and decided it was enough.

(That was a lot to take in..)

The first thing Satoshi did next was to fly straight up. The last few days he had realized how hard it was to maintain a sense of direction in a forest. He had no clue how the elf did it but he had figured out his own unique way of doing it and that was to fly up and mark all landmarks he could locate from his position.

Being careful to not rotate his body so as to maintain the same direction as before, he turned only his head to look around. With three of five moons out today, there was enough light for him to see the mountains to his left. They were the same mountains he had met the wyvern in. A small distance in front of him, there was a clearing and though it wasn't a reference he would be able to track for long, it was better to have than nothing.

He took out a paper and his writing supplies and drew a rough map. Then he let himself rotate about 180° using these references and drew whatever he could see on the opposite side. Worst case scenario, if he lost his sense of direction, he could come back here and start again.

His summoner had said that the dungeon was towards the right, so he drew a long arrow in that direction on his map.

Now that that was done, he got onto the next task for which he needed some proper hard surface under him, the tree branch he was resting on earlier would do but he also needed some light. He found a good spot where one of the brighter moons shone enough light for him through the leaves. It was only moments like these when he would ever feel jealous of the fire elemental or light elemental.

He lay down on the branch and removed all his stack of papers from his bag. Paper was expensive in this world and he had spent more on it than anything else. He had made several notebooks for himself, one for the beastkin language, another about their culture but unfortunately most of it was left behind in Domania. He now had only a few papers on him and he had to use them wisely but this wasn't something he could ignore.

He jotted down the entire conversation he had had with his summoner while it was still fresh in his mind. Once he was done, he re-read it and started writing his thoughts. First, he noted that the entity had been constantly watching him. Maybe all the time or maybe not, but either way it did at least seem to know what was going on with him in detail because it knew about his plans with the elf. And for it to know that he was planning events to get close to her, the entity might either be able to not only see him but also hear him or it could even directly read his thoughts. Though considering that it could speak directly into his mind, he wouldn't be surprised if it could read his thoughts as well.

Surprisingly, Satoshi didn't care if the entity could read his mind. If anything, it only let it help him with a prospective major event. As long as it wasn't influencing him in any way or hindering his plans, he didn't care.

The second thing he noted was why it would tell him what it did. It said the information was a reward but could it be a trap? Maybe by going into that dungeon he would set in motion some events that were beneficial to it. This really needed more thought. He circled it and put it off for later. He would have to go and scout the place out.

Thirdly, and quite importantly, he wasn't free. At least according to his summoner. It had claimed there was something binding him and he had felt it but did not yet acknowledge it. For the next hour, Satoshi went through his memories since coming to this world but for the life of him, could not discern what the entity was referring to. He circled this one as well and put some question marks around it for his cluelessness.

Last but not the least, his summoner said that he was the one who made that chimera. And for Satoshi to be summoned near the wolfkin village that was troubled by it..

(It couldn't have possibly been a coincidence.)

The only reason why Satoshi could even stand a chance against it was because he could fly whereas the chimera couldn't. It gave him time to come up with a strategy. Before that, if it hadn't been for Feriana's sacrifice, he would've died before even being able to see the monstrosity. It was evident how that beast was a natural enemy for elementals. But that made all the less sense for why his summoner would create it. It summoned the humans, gave them each an incredible power, just to have them die at the hand of a beast that it itself created? What kind of sick perverted game was that? There was definitely something Satoshi was missing here. It all came back to what was the purpose of the entity in all of this.

Satoshi shook his head. He had to use his time wisely. Satoshi had written down what he thought was important and took flight. The dungeon was supposed to be 60km away from his position. That was a distance he could easily cover in under a minute at his top speed even accounting for the steady acceleration and deceleration. If the place looked suitable, he had to come up with a plan to make the elf woman head in that direction without raising suspicions.

He flew back up and before he knew it, he was there. Even in the night, the dungeon entrance was easy to spot since Satoshi had a top-down view of it. The entrance was a large structure made of some unnatural substance that resembled mud at first glance. It was shorter than the surrounding trees but had almost double their height in width and more than triple its width in length. The entrance was like a cave opening and the rest of it was very slowly sloping downwards leading underground.

Satoshi carefully scoped around it. To him, it had been easily noticeable from the sky but he reckoned it wouldn't be the case for those traveling on foot. It was very closely surrounded by trees so unless you were very precisely moving towards it, it was possible to miss it even if you were a few steps off. But Satoshi was somehow sure the elf wouldn't miss it.

Satoshi wanted to go in and scout it out as well but he didn't want to take the risk so he just tried to detect the insides of the dungeon with his power. He got a few reactions but he couldn't tell what the creatures were, only that they were small.

(Maybe they're goblins?)

His summoner had mentioned that there was a camp of goblins nearby. Maybe they used the dungeon as a hunting ground, or they could have come from the dungeon in the first place. Satoshi did not know enough to reach a conclusion but it didn’t matter at the moment.

Satoshi focused his detection in other directions and easily located similar reactions from one particular direction, and it was quite a few of them too. Okay no, it was quite a LOT of them. Satoshi estimated around 200 of the little buggers. There were a handful of bigger reactions as well.

Satoshi covered himself in a sound barrier which also doubled as a smell barrier and flew stealthily towards their "camp".

Goblins were small dark-skinned creatures, the exact color hard for Satoshi to determine in the night. Not far from the camp, he saw a group of 30 goblins butchering through a pack of wolves. The wolves were only 8 and the goblins, even though clearly weaker than the wolves individually, overwhelmed them with numbers. They were also light and didn't take much damage from being thrown, so they would repeatedly grab onto the wolves' bodies and scratch at them till the wolf would manage to throw them off. But it wasn't enough since another goblin would just take its place and the one that was thrown would simply get up and join the fray again.

Satoshi headed deeper and saw 2 taller humanoid goblins who were beating some smaller ones. They looked like some kind of grown-up versions of the goblins; 'hobgoblins' - Satoshi decided to call them tentatively, from some of the fantasy tales on Earth he knew. Their skins were even darker than the goblins making them almost impossible to detect by sight in the night.

The camp itself was more of an assortment of filth than a camp though. Satoshi couldn't tell much in the dark but he could see enough to make him terribly glad about his barrier blocking smells as well.

"This is good to hold a major event for the elf. I'm just worried if it's too good.", Satoshi spoke out inside his sound barrier, as a plan formed in his head.