“Why is it… smoking…? Did it got poisoned?”

The young man grabbed onto Zoemi’s clothes and asked in a bothered voice, his face twisting with disgust at the sight of the drool leaving the monster’s mouth in copious amounts.

“No idea about the smoke. It might be rabies-like you said… although it is really disturbing that not that virus exists in this world, but that monsters can catch it… Could you imagine something like the seven-limbed bear getting infected with it? How many villages would get wiped out?”

“Zhoooo… Zzzhhhhhooooo…!”

Zoemi took a deep breath and said without taking his eyes off of the creature that was clearly in pain.𝒐𝓥𝓁xt.𝗇𝓔t

“Don’t say something so scary out loud! We need to kill that thing and dispose of the remains so something like that would not happen!”

Alan flinched with disgust and fear and slapped Zoemi’s side with an angry expression.

“Yeah, you don’t have to say it…”

“Zhoo… eehhhhmiiiiii…!”

The black-haired man’s expression turned serious and he nodded at the young man by his side – but then the monster whizzed and turned directly towards him, its beady eyes focusing for the first time since its emergence.

“…did… did it just…?”

“ZHHHHHHHHHHHRAAAAAAAGHHHHHH…!”

*WHOOOOO*

Alan gulped down his saliva and uttered wide-eyed from disbelief, but the rabid great mole didn’t seem keen on waiting and whizzed again – this time its gunt turning into a squeal of pain as its beady eyes turned bright red for a second and a raging ball of flame formed within its jaws causing a continuous stream of fire to blast towards the shocked marital artists.

“HMPH!”

Zoemi let out a scoff and lowered himself to the ground, putting his arms together and scooping out the scalding flames, blocking even a single flick from touching the two people behind him.

The next moment the black-haired man rushed towards the creature…

“GAHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

…that stopped breathing fire and instead began squirming in frenzy – the rabid great mole did not attempt to use the fire attack again and instead rushed out at the approaching man flailing its claws widely like some sort of fans.

It really didn’t seem like an attack, more like a desperate struggle instead.

“Zzhoooeem-HURGH…!”

*WHAM* *crack*

The black-haired man grabbed its paws easily, and as the beast was letting out another whiz, he kicked up with his knee at its throat, delivering a devastating hit that both crushed its throat and shattered its spine, causing the monster’s head to flop down limply, ending its suffering.

“…”

Zoemi raised the creature with one hand, looking at it with a grim expression, carefully examining its corpse.

“Master Alan… tell me… Great moles aren’t supposed to breathe fire, are they?”

The black-haired man asked, even though it sounded like he already knew the answer.

“O-of course not! What part of fire breathing does sound peaceful to you?! What in the world even was that?! That… that was like magic or something! Completely insane!”

If Zoemi was disturbed Alan lost his cool completely and started shouting, grabbing onto the shocked Aaron and shaking the already sick boy.

“Yeah, figured out that much… its mouth and throat are completely burnt, there’s no way that its a creature that evolved to have that ability…”

“Zoemi… did… you know… before it died… didn’t it sound like that monster was calling out… your name…?”

As the black-haired man was nodding to himself, Alan gulped down his saliva and asked nervously unable to pull his eyes away from the limp corpse that Zoemi was holding up by one of its paws.

“Correct. Again. That’s how it sounded like indeed.”

Zoemi nodded slowly turning the monster around as if expecting some new detail to reveal itself.

“What does that mea… wait? Again…?”

Alan gasped nervously before flinching and changing his question in confusion.

“The ability it used. It wasn’t just like magic. It was magic. That creature used mana to produce fire. It simply must have.”

The black-haired man cleared out what he meant.

“Huh…? H-how do you know that…?”

The young man hesitated and asked cautiously, subconsciously leaning closer to the boy next to him while asking the black-haired man.

“My clothes. They got charred but did not catch on fire. That is because there is not even a trace of mana in the air or the clothes themselves, making it impossible for the element created out of mana to spread. It could hurt me, but the moment that the monster ran out of its own mana, the heat stopped. If it was natural, I would be rolling on the ground as my clothes would be ablaze.”

Zoemi explained, putting the monster’s corpse down and walking towards the spot where the beast emerged from.

The same spot from where the mysterious black smoke erupted at the monster’s arrival.

“…”

The black-haired man bit his lips, staring at the molehill, there was no longer a trace of the black smoke there, but he kept glaring at it as if thinking about something deeply.

“Law of Libra. Law of Aries and law of Aquarius. Law of Aquarius.”

As he opened his mouth again, he used the power of his newly acquired law of Libra to gain access to the cleansing power of the law of Aquarius and used it immediately too.

The star power emerged from within him, creating a sphere that spread outwards, purifying everything it touched both within and outside both the black-haired man’s body as well as the ground.

Still, because of the low star level of the law of Libra, the range of the law of Aquarius at Zoemi’s disposal wasn’t satisfying at all.

“It’s… it’s good that you did that, but we still should burn that monster so no other beast comes here and eats it just in case…”

It was clear that Alan had many questions, but he decided to ask only the one that was the most important at the moment.

“Were you serious about the magic fire not spreading out if there is no mana around? How come you know about magic and mana?! Who are you really, Zoemi?!”

…still, the curiosity and concern were too much for the young man to just stay quiet and made him ask out loud immediately after…

“And how in the world did that monster have mana?! Isn’t it poisonous in the first place?!”

Alan added, pointing at the monster corpse next to Zoemi’s feet.

“Yes. Mana is poison. A least for the humans of this land…”

“Huh..?”

“…!”

Zoemi nodded, causing Alan and Aaron to flinch and look at him in shock.

“Why are you looking that shocked, master Alan? You literally had this on you when we first met, and you clearly fed it to the seven-limbed bear!”

The black-haired man scoffed at the looks he was given, and angrily pulled out the empty crystal vial that formerly hosted the mana potion that Zoemi could recognize anywhere.

“This…!”

Alan gasped and hurriedly checked his pockets even though he was in a different outfit form back then – and didn’t have pockets in this one in the first place.

“Wait! What does that have to do with anything?! It is a bait for monsters that Zoey… that Zoey gave me… Zoemi… what exactly was inside?”

The young man gasped and got worked up, but as he spoke he began to talk slower and slower realizing that he himself missed a few important details, and ended up changing his tone completely.

“Mana potion. A concoction that causes the bodies of magicians to regenerate mana at an increased rate. It is highly ineffective and is useful only for the weakest mages. It was considered a novelty item and fetched a high price for collectors, but nothing more. The question is, how did it make its way into the hands of a confirmed dark sect member?”

Zoemi answered holding up the vial as his expression became darker and darker.

“I don’t like where this is going…. honestly, I hate it. I hate it and I fear that my overthinking is actually just the truth.”

“Seriously, what do you mean?! And again, why do you know those things?! Who are you?!”

The black-haired man started to massage his forehead, slowly breathing out the air from his lungs, making Alan clench his fists in anger and ask in an accusatory voice.

“I am a champion of your god of stars, Guide. Someone that they selected to get rid of the demon-lord-level threat upon his world. The task which I completed. That I thought that I completed… but with how things look like, I fear that I ended up not doing a thorough enough job.”

“Wh… what…?”

Zoemi lowered his hand and revealed, looking straight at the speechless Alan, and this having Aaron let out a shocked gasp.

“I mean, this might really be just my overthinking it, with just one monster making noises that sound vaguely similar to my name… but then… why would a beast from this land have mana in the first place? On the other hand… Cherro was using mana and even merged with it by the end… If it’s his influence that has caused this, how could he survive here in the first place…?”

The black-haired man smiled apologetically at the tense boy and shrugged his shoulders.

“You know, it might not be the guy I’m talking about. Despite being the strongest one around, there were plenty of messed up evil beings around my homeland.”

Zoemi breathed out and tried to make it sound less threatening and completely failed in that regard…

“Ah, yes, the homeland you mentioned more than a few times… Wait. You know little to nothing about the star power but you seem knowledgable about magic… You can’t actually mean that…”

Alan took a deep breath trying to calm down but ended up only working himself up even more.

“The land of mana. More precisely, the Kingdom of Bellcephora. That’s the place where I was born and grew up at.”

Zoemi confirmed the yet-to-be-spoken suspicion that the young man had…