AGHHHHHHHHHHHH..........

Who was screaming so loud?

'...ell...'

A barely audible voice registered in the middle of that terrible screaming. I felt something soft and warm beside me. My mind was sluggish and my mouth seemed to be... open? My body was shaking slightly.

'Bell...'

The screams intensified, but I didn't want to get up... It was so comfortable, being unconscious. Like a dream... almost as if nothing had happened. As if--

'Bell!'

My eyes flew open, and I realized that I was the one screaming. My mind was suddenly flooded by hundreds of images shoving the same story down my throat over and over again. The violet Chaos spell, the tempest, the escaping villagers, the anguish on Ellie's face, the agony on Jean's. I shut my eyes tightly and tried to suppress the memories, but they wouldn't stop. They just wouldn't stop. My shoulders started to tremble as the torrent of emotions caught up with my consciousness.

Guilt. Confusion. Misery. Regret.

So... Much... Regret...

My brain strapped me to a chair laden with needle-like thorns and giant, living centipedes, and placed me in the middle of a white room. It constructed a cylindrical screen around me so that I could watch every regretful decision I made, no matter which direction my head turned. Killing my own mother, hurting Jean with my carelessness, attempting that dumb fucking experiment, abandoning my parents after breaking their heart. I tried to escape the torture of my own bloody choices, but the thorns dug ever deeper into my skin and the centipedes crawled into my mouth and ears, tearing through flesh as they squirmed underneath my skin.

Desperately as a last resort, I tried to bend the memories to my will. But no matter what I did, the story didn't change. The truth didn't change. If I had just listened to my parents. If I hadn't been so selfish. If I--

'BELL, WAKE UP! IT'S OKAY. You're alive. We're alive. Your parents are alive,' someone said, as thin, but warm arms wrapped themselves around my shaking body. This last statement sucked me back into reality.

'That's right. Your parents are alive,' the voice reassured me. My mind did a double-take while this fact sunk in. Slowly, the rest of my memories creeped back and played like a broken record.

...Yes. I had managed to save them in the end. And Coffee and I... we... what happened?

I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. Over what felt like several minutes, I steadily regained my senses, and recognized the girl hugging me. Seeing that I had come to, Coffee let go and kneeled beside me, still wearing an anxious expression. Anyone would, especially if they saw me as I was.

'...Thanks for that, Coffee. I... I'm back,' I smiled weakly.

'Thank fucking god. Are you okay? I mean, you obviously aren't, but--' she started to get flustered.

'Don't worry, I'll be fine in a bit. Just let me reorganize my thoughts...' I checked our surroundings. 'Where are we?'

'I'm... not sure,' she hesitantly replied. 'That Chaos spell forcefully teleported us away, but it had a random trajectory. We could literally be anywhere. We're definitely still in the dungeon though; the mana flowing through the walls is the same.'

The two of us were in a small, rocky cave of sorts, which was probably about two meters high and four meters wide. On one end was a dead end and the other was a long stretch of tunnel that screamed death. How deep it went was anybody's guess, as it extended far into darkness. In front of us, a small flame floated in midair, illuminating Coffee's pale face in a warm, orange glow.

'Teleportation?' I massaged my sore head, recalling what Coffee had said before the spell hit us. 'How do... did you know?'

'The way the Chaos mana was flowing out of the void. If it was a devastation-type spell, the air above us would've been ripped apart as the spell descended. Rather, it just disappeared as if wasn't there anymore,' she answered, staring off into the distance as if she was visualizing the scene in her head.

'So devastation-type would be something like... nuclear fission, am I hearing this right?'

'Nuclear fission?' Coffee turned to look at me again and raised an eyebrow.

'Nevermind,' I waved it off.

There was something much more important right now. Something that I didn't even know whether I wanted to know the answer to or not. The only reassurance was that Coffee said they were alive.

I held my breath.

'Are my parents okay?'

...

'Yeah, don't worry. The spell should've only affected the encompassed area. I told them that we'd be back before they knew it,' Coffee reassured me.

Relief flooded my mind and I exhaled deeply. '...Thank you. Again.'

My body suddenly felt like I had run a marathon, and I wanted to do nothing more than sink into the floor and take a nap. Before I could, I caught myself and reminded myself of what was at stake. This wasn't the time for weakness. I didn't know if I should be comforted that they knew I was alive. I worried that they would try and look for me, and get hurt in the process or worse. Moreover, I... didn't know whether I would come back--

'No. We will find our way back. Alive,' Coffee stated sternly, almost as if she was reading my mind. She was right. There was no point in being pessimistic. I nodded wearily.

I quietly stared at the flame burning in front of us. There was so much to think about, but for now, I felt like I needed a mental rest or else I would go crazy.

Quietly, I focused on my breathing.

'In... out.... In... out.... In... out....'

At least half an hour must have passed before I felt calm enough. I decided to break the silence, motioning to the flame before us. 'Is that yours, by the way?'

Coffee was startled by the sudden noise, but collected herself quickly. 'Yep, it's a basic fire spell.'

'So you can use magic now, awesome. Did the seal wore off?'

'Not exactly... I think the teleportation process destroyed it.'

'Oh, that's good.'

'Mhm.'

...

'I can use about 25% of my power now,' Coffee continued. I cocked my head in confusion.

'Only 25%? How come?'

Coffee pointed towards the tattoo on her torso. 'This is some kind of curse. Some bastard sealed me in this child's body, along with most of my mana capacity,' she complained, massaging her nonexistent breasts through her loose shirt.

I felt my face turn warm, and quickly turned my head the other way. It made sense, though. 'So that explains why you know so much...'

...

'Coffee?' I looked back because she had fallen silent. I was worried that I was being insensitive about the curse with my statement, but I needn't have worried. She was crossing her arms and shooting me an accusatory glare.

'Don't you get the wrong idea. I'm in the prime of my youth at 25. You were just thinking that I was some kind of ancient 100 year old vampire, weren't you?'

'Wha--*Cough* of course not, haha. Hahaaaaa--ow ow ow ow!' I protested as she squeezed my cheeks super hard. 'I give! I give!' She let go.

'I'm glad,' she smiled.

'That I'm in pain, you sadistic vampire?!' I exclaimed, rubbing my sore cheeks.

'No stupid. That you seem to be feeling better.'

'I don't believe you. You're definitely happy about having an excuse to-- ow!' She flicked me on the forehead this time.

I grinned. She was right. And it wasn't just having time to recover, either. There was something about being with her that made me feel better, despite the predicament we were in.

'So, that curse... Is that why you lost your memory?'

'I think so. I'm going to find the fucker who did this to me, and make him eat his dick piece by piece,' she spat out.

'Or, we could try and undo that curse,' I suggested.

'That's not how they work. To my knowledge, no one has broken one before.'

'Seriously... Then, what are you going to do?'

'I just have to wait it out until it expires,' she sighed, glancing at her torso. I had a slight suspicion she was remorsefully looking at her bust, rather than the curse tattoo. 'I'd say it's going to last at least five years.'

'Is there any way to shorten the time?'

'Maybe, but I don't know. Do I look like a walking encyclopedia?'

'Well, you're sitting right now, so no.'

'Oh fuck you.'

She was trying so desperately hard not to smile that it was kinda cute. I shifted my attention to the dark tunnel before us.

'I guess we should find a way out of here.'

'Good idea. My legs were getting cramped just sitting here,' Coffee stood and brushed the dirt off her shirt. Which she found to be an impossible task, and soon gave up.

We started to make our way down with only Coffee's tiny flame to light our way. The path twisted and turned, but much to our gratefulness, didn't branch off into a million different tunnels. However, it was so quiet that I could hear the slight plop whenever I hopped forward enough to get air, and hit the ground. I wondered where the hell we had ended up. At that moment, though, a thought came to mind.

'Say, you mentioned that my natural affinity for mana was Collision before, and that there were ten types. What are the others?' I questioned my exploration partner.

'Uhhh... Other than Collision, there's Chaos, Charge, Bonding, Emission, Absorption, Flux, Soul, Divine, and Manifestation.'

'Care to explain them?'

'You're kidding me, right?' Coffee looked disgusted with me.

'I'm quite serious... wait.'

In the distance, I thought I saw a tiny light at the end of the tunnel.

'Kill the flame,' I told Coffee. She nodded, and the area around us became dark. The light ahead of us was definitely real, but it was dim and mobile. We cautiously approached the area, when a large mana signature entered my perception.

'GET BACK!' Coffee clutched onto my pseudopod and pulled me backwards, out of mana perception range. We waited for something to happen, but it seemed like whatever was ahead didn't notice us. 'Hide your mana presence,' she commanded.

'How?!'

She slapped her forehead and dragged her hand down slowly, pulling her skin in frustration. 'I just told you the ten types, right? You can hide your mana by converting your mana into Absorption. Copy what I'm doing. If you don't figure out what I'm doing during the conversion phase, you're not going to understand.'

She closed her eyes and started doing something with her mana. I reached out and tried to understand what she was doing. Each of her mana particles seemed to be getting... smaller? No, that wasn't right. After practicing Chaos mana manipulation, I understood that there were at least two components to each speck of mana, and that was that the light and particle behaved differently, despite being one unit. It seemed like the light aspect of the mana was shrinking, but the particle was growing. As this conversion was happening, I began to lose track of where Coffee was in the dark. Eventually, she blended in with the weak mana signature of the dungeon walls.

If I was understanding this correctly, it would mean that mana perception was more specifically detecting the light characteristic of mana. By converting the light to size, I was able to maintain the total energy of the mana while reducing the perception of it. The problem was, I had no idea how to actually accomplish this.

Hmm...

Light... Size... wait, would light refer to energy and size relate to... mass? If so, then, isn't this something like that theory? The one that Eureka dude came up with. Einstein, right? E = mc^2. That would mean that to convert energy to mass, then I would have to speed it super fast, wouldn't it? Like a really powerful vibration?

I attempted exactly this, and concentrated on a small cluster of my mana to begin with. Faster... faster....... faster................

'What the fuck are you doing? Jerking off your own mana?' An annoyed voice asked. 'Just will your particle to expand while keeping the light as is. It'll naturally shrink.'

Reluctantly, I did what Coffee said and was able to convert all of my Collision-type mana to Absorption-type within a minute.

Again, we tiptoed towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, Coffee did. I just kind of dragged my body slowly. Our mana perception meter was flying through the roof with multiple signatures registering all around us, but we were able to move without attracting attention. Just a bit more...

RATATATATATA.

A familiar shape zoomed past the exit. Our bodies froze, and we slowly looked at each other, both confirming that what we saw was indeed what we saw.

'Was that...' she began...

'A box?' I completed.

Smack!

'A mimic, you idiot!' Coffee slapped my face.

It was precisely that. Except a little different. In that split second, we had seen a creepy-ass motherfucking chest waving two long, black arms in the air. Its lid was a little more open than the one we had seen back at the village, probably because it was moving so quickly. We saw the same four thick tongues hanging loosely behind the chest, leaving behind a trail of slobber. Unfortunately, it got worse. The greater exposure of its mouth allowed us to see the hundreds of rows of sharp, jagged teeth that were present inside, arranged like they belonged to the most terrifying fucking shark I had ever seen, in real life or on the internet. And I've seen some crazy shark photos.

What was worse, the lankey, hairy legs that we had expected were no longer there. More accurately, they were there, except...

'Its legs were... bent into a wheel, weren't they,' Coffee whispered.

'Yep,' I confirmed.

Our adventure had officially just begun.