Swords, magic, and martial arts

Rod opened his eyes, feeling as if his head had been ripped open. He tried to rub his head, only to find himself tightly bound with ropes.

It was pitch black all around him, and he couldn't see anything. Behind him were uneven stones.

I should be in a cave. Why was the entire caravan hypnotized? Was Aya really a spy?

He struggled to stand up, but his legs gave way, and he fell back down onto the ground.

He exerted his strength again, and this time he stood up and walked forward shakily.

He walked for an unknown amount of time, but still couldn't reach the end. Surrounded by complete darkness, Rhodes felt himself lose all sense of time, walking forward like a zombie.

As Rhodes walked, he tripped over a stone on the ground, and his whole body jolted, snapping him out of his zombie-like state.

I realized I was still sitting on the floor and hadn't stood up. Had I fallen asleep again after waking up?

This time he didn't stand up; instead, he fell forward onto the ground and crawled forward like a caterpillar.

Crawling like this is very physically demanding. After crawling for a while, Rod, who was already sore and weak, had no strength left in his body and stopped to pant heavily.

Suddenly, the thought of practicing the "Embrace the Origin and Guard the One" technique came to his mind, so he lay down on the ground and began to enter the state of meditation.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself still sitting on the ground, with uneven stones behind him.

Was it all just a dream within a dream? Had I never woken up?

He felt a strange fear creeping into his heart. He remembered the ghost movies he had watched before, some of them like "Coming Soon" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street".

This time, instead of moving forward, he suddenly leaned back forcefully. The stone behind him was like a piece of paper, torn apart upon impact. Behind him was an endless abyss. Due to inertia, he fell backward, struggling in mid-air.

Finally, he fell to the ground and shattered into pieces. He woke up in a cold sweat, realizing that it had all been a dream. He lay on the ground, panting, and looked up to find himself in a forest.

He was hypnotized in the morning, and now it's almost evening. He was lying on the ground feeling a bit hungry and wanted to take something out of his spatial ring to eat, but he found that the spatial ring was gone.

Rhodes suddenly sat up from the ground, wanting to see if his spatial ring had fallen to the ground, but he couldn't find anything. He saw that besides himself, Aya was also there.

Aya was still fast asleep, leaning against a tree, when Rod noticed a seductive figure sitting on the tree where Aya was leaning.

The man noticed Rhodes's gaze and said, "I'll take your spatial rings. I didn't expect one of them to contain that key. Even if the other one is empty, my directional teleportation scroll wasn't wasted. I'll spare your lives."

Rod picked up a small stone from the ground and threw it, the stone passing right through the man's body.

I didn't expect it to be another illusion. There's nothing valuable in my spatial ring, just Baron's wine and some food and hot water. What kind of key could it be?

Rhodes thought for a moment, recalling that he had obtained a strange dagger from the necromancer Otto. According to Weber, it was a key to unlock something, but he didn't know which relic it was used to open, so he temporarily put it in his spatial ring.

As for the incredibly sharp dagger of the Death God priest, it was taken and used by Webber.

He had heard them talk about the legend of that spatial ring when he obtained it. He never expected that someone would actually want to collect all eighty-one of them, and he never expected to run into them.

Rod shook Aya awake, who was still sleeping, and it took him a while to finally wake him up.

Aya groggily opened her eyes: "Where are we now?"

Rhodes repeated what the illusion had just said.

"Do you also have a spatial ring like mine?" Rhodes asked.

Aya hesitated for a moment, but finally nodded. "I do have one. It's a family heirloom. My father was afraid it would be stolen by robbers, so he put it on me."

"Then why didn't you wear it on your hand before?" Rod asked again.

"I'm afraid someone will snatch it if I wear it on my wrist, so I hide it inside my clothes," Aya replied.

Rod found Aya a bit strange. Since it was a family heirloom, why didn't she show any heartache at all about losing it? He wondered if it was because she was too young or because of her personality.

"Do you have any food on you? I'm so hungry," Aya said somewhat embarrassedly.

"My spatial ring was taken, and now we have no food or water," Rhodes replied. "We need to set up a temporary camp before dark, otherwise we might not make it through the night. How did you usually spend the nights alone?"

Spring hasn't arrived yet, but some wild animals have already started to come out to forage. It's very cold in the forest at night, and without a campfire, you could easily freeze to death.

"I used to sleep in trees at night, but it was too cold, and I didn't dare to sleep too soundly for fear of never waking up again," Aya replied.

As expected of Nords, they are resistant to the cold and can survive on nights when the temperature is below zero without fire.

"Then let's go gather some branches and start a fire so it'll be easier at night. Do you know how to start a fire?" Rod asked.

Aya shook her head.

"Although I've never started a fire before, I've often seen them start fires, so I think I can do it too," Rod said.

He started taking Aya to collect the dead branches on the ground. There were many dead branches in the forest, and after a while they had collected a large pile.

Rhodes stared blankly at the pile of dry branches. Without flint or a knife, how could he start a fire? Was he supposed to rub wood together to make fire?

If only I could generate flames like last time, but he hasn't been able to use those dark green flames since he fell into a coma.

If only I knew the Flame Tongue spell. Although it was a weak spell, at least it could start a fire. Rhode regretted not learning this magic from Baron.

Rhodes cleared away a patch of snow, revealing the soil beneath, and placed some twigs on top. He decided to try using a gravity spell first, using it to control a twig to scrape some sawdust off a pine branch, and then he controlled a clump of pine sawdust to rub together rapidly.

The wood chips started to burn, and he used gravity magic to control the burning wood chips to ignite the other branches. Before long, Rhodes successfully created a bonfire.

Aya watched Rhodes with envy as he used magic.

"I didn't expect you to be able to use magic," Aya said.

"This is the only one we know," Rhodes said. "Let's collect some more before it gets dark."

Aya nodded, and then ran to the nearby area to pick up some more branches.

Food is hard to find in the forest in winter, and the snow hasn't melted in many places. This shouldn't be the High Mountain Province, at least not a place he's been to before. There's much less snow on the ground than in the High Mountain Province.

If only there were some animals, we could have a delicious, authentic barbecue.

Just as he was thinking, he saw a fierce-looking wild boar not far away, its head lowered, tusks bared at him, and its front paws pawing the ground, as if it were about to charge at him...