On the next morning, when the sun took its place at the peak of the sky to cast its rays upon the whole world , including the waters of that lake that moved with a steady motion, producing a soothing murmuring sound , it coincided with the sounds of the creatures that had awakened to begin a new day of work.
The sunlight struck Noroi's sleeping face, making him mumble in annoyance, his eyelids trembling as he tried to adjust to the morning. Finally, the boy surrendered to waking up, slowly opening both of his eyes, and his pupils shrank under the sunlight above him.
He grumbled softly before lazily lifting himself up to sit. He was in a pitiful state; his body was stiff from sleeping in a bad position on the rocky ground. His eyes were blinking heavily with drowsiness, while his black hair was messy and tangled like a bird's nest.
He looked to his side, checking the situation around him, only to find Yamka sleeping on her left side, her arm resting beneath her head, giving her back to both Haruki and him. Her axe was placed carefully in front of her so it would be easy to reach when she needed it.
She was usually used to waking up at dawn, but it seemed she was still exhausted from last night's battle.
Behind her, about a meter away, Haruki was sleeping with his limbs sprawled in every direction, a string of drool marking his cheek while the bird had made his chest its warm little nest.
He let out a tired sigh, rethinking why he had agreed to those two idiots in the first place. He pushed the thought out of his head, he was stuck with them now.
He turned his gaze away from them, directing his attention to the ruined place around him.
This looked nothing like it did when they first saw it; the beautiful Lake Solmire had turned into a destroyed battlefield.
Purple blood colored the grass and flowers and even extended to stain some of the tree trunks, while the creature's remains were scattered in certain spots as a sign of the battle that had taken place the previous night.
The devastated state of the area around the lake itself evoked a strange feeling of sorrow, how just one night had been enough to destroy a place that might have existed for hundreds of years.
He raised his hand to his hair, trying to untangle the knots in his scattered black strands before pulling his bag, which was resting nearby, onto his lap. He opened it and took out a worn piece of paper, about the size of a hand, along with an old-fashioned charcoal pencil.
Noroi ran the tip of the pencil over the first four sentences one by one,each had been shaded with charcoal, leaving only two sentences unshaded.
The tip of the pencil stopped at the sixth and final sentence, and Noroi drew a dark line over it before folding the paper in half, putting it back into his bag along with the pencil, and closing it tightly.
He leaned on his right arm to push his body up onto his feet, his shoulders slouching forward lazily.
He moved from his spot with a blank expression drawn on his face and both hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, stopping beside the powered-down mechanical figure. Its screen was black, and its robotic arms rested motionless at its sides.
Noroi bent toward it, pulling his hand out of his pocket to press his finger against the button located at the back of its metallic head. It took a while before the robot's glass screen lit up in blue, and then all its parts began to hum with energy, its gentle face appearing to greet its owner with a smile.
Noroi whispered to Mini.
"Good morning."
Mini's body trembled slightly before its systems activated, lifting it upward to hover in the air before its owner. It looked around at the ruined place, not recognizing it as the same location it had seen before being shut down. Then it turned back to Norouzi, displaying a question mark on its screen and emitting incomprehensible robotic sounds, as if asking what had happened.
Noroi raised his hand to scratch the back of his neck, just below his hair, casting another glance around before answering Mini's question.
"We got tangled up with a level-six monster, and that stubborn Viking insisted on handling it alone."
Noroi's ears caught the sound of grass moving directly behind him…
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Thank you for reading! If this moment touched you even a little , please consider adding it to your library.💐