The fortune telling began.
This character, an old demi-human woman, is called Yska. She's only a character that helps new players with her fortune telling and seeing into the future.
"You won't regret giving me the chance to see into your future, young boy" she claimed, making my fortune telling a spectacle to every crowd member that was watching us.
She manifested water magic all around me, not chanting any spell. She probably is using those watter bubbles she manifests as mere show.
"Seven great treasures of the jungle king's dungeon, the flower pattern of a toxic man-eating plant monster, and the symbol of the great snake god!"
Bubbles glowed with the symbols of the things she mentioned inside them.
I know of the jungle king's castle. In the game, it's a difficult and optional dungeon that allows you to recruit a single character, and the most common enemy in said gate is the toxic man-eating plant monsters.
It's a pretty famous dungeon, not because the dungeon itself is liked or well designed, or because the character you can recruit is good. The reason as to why that dungeon is famous is because of the designs of those plant monsters that take the man-eating part on a whole new meaning.
But the snake god... I have no idea...
The only gods mentioned are:
Valentia, the human goddess of light, and the goddess the main religion of the humans is based around.
Daruru, the wolf god of the demi-humans.
Syiritinia, the god worshipped by the elves.
And the Dragon God, the very last boss of the game.
"Snake god...? I've never heard of anything like that"
"Me neither" said the fortune telling old woman, making me mentally face palm myself.
"Which is why I'm trying to learn about it with your help" she said.
Yska took a deck of cards and began shuffling it.
"I... I don't want to be used as a test subject" I breathed out, knowing that I won't get monetarily compensated for being her guinea pig.
"The process has already started. You can't back down now"
For the sake of giving Kaida the best options that allow her to grow into her strongest version, I've gotta make sure that Yska is recruited.
And to recruit Yska, you need to protect her on an event in month four and have at least two characters that can interact with her alive.
You also need lots of gold, but that's a problem for the future.
"Choose three" Yska ordered me, showing me the back of her cards.
"Any card?" I asked as my figer began hovering over the deck of cards.
"I'd like it if you chose the ninth, fifteenth, and twentieth card in the deck starting from the right"
"Your right or my right?"
She looked at me as if I was an idiot.
"Just pick a damn card, boy"
I picked my three cards. Before I could even see what those three cards were, she snatched the cards from my hand.
"Now pick two cards, but think of the two women you care for the most"
At first, my mind immediately thought of Karla and Milly. They're my family and one of the reasons I want to achieve the best possible future where I can save them and all the other members of [Crescent Moon].
But before I picked my two cards, the images of both Fran and Kaida appeared in my mind. Those two are also the most important women to me, as their actions will determine my future.
With both Kaida, the protagonist I want to help, and Fran, the villainess I want to save, in my mind, I picked my two cards.
Just as the first three cards I picked, she snatched the cards I just picked before I could even look at them.
"Now, pick a card and think about your future"
My future... I guess I never really thought about it that much.
If I do end up surviving the game, what do I want to do afterwards?
I guess I want to do something that goes in hand with surviving the game' story. Learning more about magic.
Learning magic, spells, incantations, they've been the thing I ended up enjoying a lot more than I first expected.
If there's one thing I want in my future, it is to keep learning, studying, practicing, and understanding what magic and mana are.
With magic in mind, I picked out a single card.
She quickly grabbed and hid the card on her pockets before I could even see the card.
"Now, don't pick any card, I just need you to think of yourself"
"Wha- how?" I asked with a confused expression on my face.
"You've never thought about yourself, boy? Never given your own self a question?" I'm not enjoying how she treats me as if I was the dumbest person she knows.
"I have" multiple times, in fact. All of them thinking about Alen.
"Do the same thing, and you'll let me work faster"
Thinking about myself...
I spend a lot of time going on and on about my thoughts on Alen, which is me.
I've long since accepted that I am Alen, no matter who I was before I transmigrated into this body.
My mind was flowing with thoughts about myself. Thoughts about all the changes I experienced from being in this body.
And then...
...
...
I opened my eyes, and I was in a totally different place.
There was no crowd surrounding me, no old woman I front of me. The floor is no longer a stone made street of the medieval era. I was now standing on a dirt road, alone.
On one side I there's a dense forest, and on the other side I there's just a rail road. The rail road seems to be old and rusty, as if it hadn't been used in decades.
For some reason, I know this dirt road like a path I take daily. But I don't know where it leads to or where I came from, as if my mind blocked it.
All I know is that I have to continue walking down this dirt road and, maybe then, I'll find where I was walking towards.
As I continued walking down the dirt road, the fog from the dense forests started spreading around me. It's still at ground level, so it doesn't obscure my view right now.
My clothes are also different from before. I am wearing a really generic school uniform, the kind of school uniform that could belong to any school.
The more I walk down the road, the more the fog rises, and the thicker it becomes.
Somehow, it doesn't bother me. I feel like, even if blindfolded or any other kind of visual ovstuction affecting me, I could still walk this path with no problem.
But I am alone, and the emptiness doesn't help that feeling. No birds, no bugs, nothing making a sound other than my own footsteps and breathing.
After probably an hour of walking, the fog has fully engulfed me. I can't even see my own hand if I fully extend my arm. But I still have yet to feel lost.
Despite not even being able to see the ground I'm walking on or my own two feet, I still haven't tripped. Even if I did, I have the feeling that... tripping and falling to the ground could never happen to me.
More walking, and now the fog doesn't even let me see my own chest. If it weren't for the fact that I feel my muscles moving, I wouldn't even know if I was walking or not.
The sound of my footsteps now seems distant. Not being able to see my feet makes the sound appear almost foreign to me. The only way of knowing that those footsteps are mine is because they happen exactly when I feel the sole of my foot touch the ground.
!!!
For some reason, I stopped.
There's nothing in front of me preventing me to continue walking forward. Despite walking for what felt like hours, I'm not tired. I had no reason to stop walking.
Yet I stopped walking.
For a moment, the silence was almost deafening. I could only hear my own breathing, which wasn't even agitated despite all that walking.
And that's when I heard footsteps, foreign footsteps.
I know those aren't my footsteps because I stopped moving.
The footsteps are getting closer to me at a slow pace. I feel nothing coming from them. There's no pattern to them, no change in the speed at which those footsteps happen.
I look around me, but the thick fog doesn't let me see anything that's not directly in front of my own nose.
The footsteps grow louder, to the pint that I can only feel my heart bumping through the vibrations it sends, no longer hearing that beat.
Despite all that, I don't feel any fear.
Lost in a thick fog that doesn't let you see past your nose, on a place you don't know, absolutely no sound, anyone would be afraid of this situation and I wouldn't blame them.
But to me, I don't feel lost as my body seems to remember this walk as if it was a daily routine.