Chapter 153 : Chapter 153

When his boots stepped onto the scorched moss, it crumbled into powder beneath them with faint cracking sounds.

Some spots were still hot. Even through the soles of his boots, he could feel the lingering heat.

The thing lay there.

Like the remains of a campfire burned down to ash.

Its seven- or eight-meter body had shrunk into a curled mass, all four limbs bent inward, its head lolling to one side. It had been completely carbonized, its surface coated in a layer of gray-white ash.

Some places were still smoking, faintly, almost imperceptibly. When the wind passed, it stirred the ash and sent it drifting into the air.

Ryan crouched down and prodded it with his short blade.

Pfft.

The tip slid in easily, like piercing a pile of charcoal that had dried all the way through. There was no resistance, no sound. It simply sank straight in. He gave the blade a light twist, and a chunk of blackened matter broke loose, fell to the ground, and shattered into powder.

It had all carbonized. At a touch, it crumbled.

Ryan withdrew the knife and stood up, ready to leave.

There was nothing left worth looking at.

“Wait.”

Syl’s voice suddenly sounded in his heart.

Ryan paused.

“In the corpse,” Syl said, his tone puzzled, “there seems to be something.”

Ryan froze for a moment. He looked down at the blackened heap, then raised his eyes to scan the surroundings. There was nothing around them, only scorched earth.

“What thing?”

“I don’t know.” Syl paused. “But I can feel it. There’s something inside. Something that wasn’t burned away.”

Ryan fell silent for a beat.

Then he crouched down again and drew the short blade once more.

He did not question Syl’s intuition. This creature had lived for who knew how many years and seen more than Ryan had ever even heard of.

If Syl said something was there, then something was there.

The knife point sank into the charred mass.

The carbonized flesh was brittle. One stab, and it broke apart.

Each time the blade went in, there was a faint crackling sound, like stepping on dead leaves.

He pried away the fragments and probed deeper, peeling it back layer by layer as though stripping away some kind of shell.

The deeper he went, the less complete the carbonization became. The blade started to meet resistance, as though it were stabbing into half-dried mud. He put more force into it and kept digging.

Then the tip struck something hard.

A light, clear ding rang out.

Ryan’s heart stirred.

He pulled the knife back, changed the angle, and began cutting.

He peeled aside sheets of blackened flesh, revealing another layer underneath that was only half carbonized.

Beneath that were the roasted internal organs, black-brown and thick like congealed tar. He shoved them aside and reached in to feel around—

His fingertips touched something.

It was cold.

Smooth.

Hard.

He grabbed it and pulled it out.

It was the size of a fist, and dark red.

Ryan held it up before his eyes and looked at it closely.

It was a regular dodecahedral crystal.

Each face was so even it seemed measured with a ruler, every edge distinct, every corner sharp enough to cut skin. Dark red, like blood that had coagulated, or wood that had burned all the way through.

Yet on closer inspection, that red was uneven. Some areas were darker, so dark they verged on black. Others were lighter, tinged with a faint orange-yellow. Those different shades of red interwove with one another, as though something inside were flowing slowly.

It was called a crystal, but in truth it was murky. It was neither clear nor translucent, more like a pane of old glass clouded by dust.

Held against the sunlight, nothing could be seen inside it, only a muddled darkness of red. But when he looked more closely, something seemed to be hidden within that dark red haze. Not a shape, but something deeper.

Like a heartbeat.

Like breathing.

Like a sleeping life.

Ryan turned it over several times in his hand, but could not make sense of it.

“Syl,” he asked inwardly, “do you recognize this?”

Syl was silent for a while.

“No,” he said at last. “But it feels... somewhat familiar.”

“Familiar?”

“It feels like a kind of energy form,” Syl said. “I can sense energy inside it. Very faint, but definitely there. Like... like a heart. Not a heart of flesh and blood, but the core of some sort of energy.”

Ryan stared at the dark red crystal and frowned.

An energy core?

Inside that thing’s body?

He thought it over for a moment and got nowhere. So he stopped thinking about it, stuffed the crystal into his pack, and pulled the drawstring tight.

Whatever it was, he would carry it for now.

It might prove useful later.

He stood and gave the blackened heap one final look. A gust of wind rose and carried some of the ash into the air. Even the thin smoke had begun to dissipate, until nothing remained.

Ryan turned and headed off in another direction.

He kept his footsteps light. His boots made faint crackling sounds as they trod across the scorched earth, each one unnervingly clear. He walked for a while, passing the still-smoking mounds of charcoal and weaving through the few giant trees that had survived, until he entered the silver-gray forest once more.

The light dimmed again.

The canopy sealed the sky overhead once more, chopping the sunlight into scattered flecks that spilled over the ground and across his body. The scorched smell gradually faded, replaced once again by that familiar dampness and the faint, sweet tang of blood.

“Syl.”

He called inwardly.

“Mm.”

For some reason, the pressure in his chest lightened a little.

Walking through a place like this alone kept one’s nerves drawn far too tight.

Every little sound had to be identified. Every patch of shadow had to be watched. Given enough time, a mind would begin to crack. Now that he had someone to talk to—even if that someone was not human—it was still better than bottling it all up by himself.

“How did you end up sleeping for so long?” he asked inwardly. “Was it because of last time? Back during the Frost Crystal Explosion Incident?”

Syl was quiet for a moment.

“Yes, and no.”

“How so?”

“It’s true that I used my strength that time,” Syl said in that unhurried voice of his, as though he were beginning a very long story. “But my reserves were not so shallow that such a small expenditure would force me into a long slumber. A few days of sleep would have been enough to recover.”

Ryan frowned. “Then why did you sleep for months?”

“Because it was time to sleep.”

“...What?”

“My life rhythm told me so,” Syl said. “When it is time to sleep, I sleep. Just as your kind sleeps when tired and eats when hungry. It is an instinct.”

Ryan said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

“I can sense whether danger is near you,” Syl said. His voice sounded as though he were explaining something, perhaps even reassuring him. “At the time, there was nothing much happening around you. So I thought it might be better to conserve my strength and sleep a little longer.”

Ryan froze.

A few months ago? After the Frost Crystal Explosion Incident?

Back then, he really had been living without major trouble. Attending classes, training, researching Magic Tools.

Syl had known all along that he was safe.

“So every time I’m in danger,” Ryan said slowly, “you wake up?”

“I do,” Syl replied. “If I can feel it.”

Ryan said nothing more.

He kept walking, stepping across a patch of wet moss and绕ing around a giant tree wrapped in vines. One hand still rested on the hilt of his blade. His eyes still swept constantly over the surroundings. Yet something shifted quietly inside him.

Something warm.

He could not quite name the feeling.

Ever since he had come into this world, he had always been alone.

Calculating alone. Guarding himself alone. Surviving alone.

Cosette was by his side, but she was someone he needed to protect, not someone he could rely on.

The Princess gave him resources, but that was a transaction, not affection.

Syl was different.

This creature existed inside him. When asleep, he was like something that did not exist at all. When awake, he was almost like another self.

He needed no protection from Ryan. He would not scheme against him. He would not use him.

He was simply there—waking when it was time to wake, speaking when it was time to speak.