Unlocked

Standing on the brink of the river, Sylvia looked ahead at the other end of it. The fire flies circled around her as she squinted her eyes and leaned over the lake a bit to catch a clearer view of what was happening on the other side.

The little manikin sat on her shoulder as she saw Lloyd jumping into the water.

"Hmm," she said after sitting down on the brink. "That brat should be safe now. That's my eldest's child, isn't it? He sure grew up well even after going through all that. What did they call him? Lully? Lily? Was it Lottie?"

The little manikin whispered in her ears and Sylvia nodded, "Yes, Lloyd it was. He can bring him out safely for sure. My blood sure runs on the stronger side."

Humming and yelling at fireflies, she stood back up and started going into the forest.

"You almost took me in the opposite direction, little one," she said to the manikin. "If we had been even a bit late, that kid would have been dead and would have been walking around here with us."

It was quite an ordeal to save Frank, as Sylvia posed it. Frank had almost died bodily by the time she had reached him and Cerates were preparing to feed on his body. But the soul hadn't left yet. She was lucky to find him.

Frank's existence was very special to Sylvia.

Loitering in the forest where all dead souls came to after crossing the Death Lake and moved forward to the afterlife or reincarnation, she couldn't let go of the attachment she had with the living world.

Her strange magic prevented her from going to either heavens or hell, all she could do was to reincarnate. But that way she would've forgotten all about her current life, which she didn't want.

Therefore, Sylvia was just remaining in the forest as a free soul until she was ready to let go.

However much attached she was to the living world; the forest life was fairly boring. It was to the point, that she considered reincarnating multiple times, but held back stubbornly.

She found the little fairy manikin twenty years ago to keep company. She usually sent the manikin to the other side of the lake to know about the living people of the empire as she couldn't herself leave the forest.

Dead people were like occasional visitors to her passing through the forest. She loved to scare them by telling them stupid scenarios that they were going to face once they left the forest.

It wasn't entirely to scare them, Sylvia just hoped that at least one of them would give up crossing the forest and keep her company. Unfortunately, no one did.

Sylvia's strange magic kept her attached to the world. But that wasn't the case for everyone. They were all too done with this world to stay. Some filled with resentment and some with satisfaction, but no one with attachment.

And then suddenly, that night, the manikin brought her a news. A strange news. It had found someone with similar magic as Sylvia. And it wasn't every day that one encountered someone like Sylvia.

In fact, over the entire span of thirty years she had spent in the forest after her death, she had not encountered a single soul with magic similar to her.

Sylvia was interested.

Her magic was actually very unique. Because she had two mana cores inside her body when she was alive. That kind of condition can only be achieved through specific conditions. One needs to be born with an innate healer's mana core and then receive a witch's blessings to attain the second mana core. Healing magic and witchcraft magic can't coexist in a single mana core, so two are formed.

Beings with such condition were naturally over-powered. But that wasn't all there was to 'Bi-core beings', as Sylvia called her kind. There was a strange magic that she called 'Absolute Control'. Absolute Control could only be used by Bi-core beings.

She wasn't sure if the manikin was right, so she risked her soul dismantling and went into the Death Lake to see for herself. But the manikin hadn't told her that it saw Frank on the brink of death.

Frank's two mana cores were there, but something was weird. That child should have been able to save himself from drowning easily if he was a Bi-core. Then why was he drowning.

It was then, Sylvia noticed that Frank's cores were sealed by something. Only a single kind of magic; Fire namely, was unsealed. Everything else was under a lock of some kind. That explained why Frank was having burns because of water and why those burns, if formed, weren't healing even with a healer's core.

She tweaked around a bit with his mana cores with her magic and in a bright slash, all the seals were removed. Franks hair, that was golden blonde before, turned into a shiny mint color.

All the wounds on his body began to heal and subconscious shields began to remove the Cerates attached to Frank's limbs. Sylvia even thought he grew a bit taller in that split second of unlocking his magic.

As her job there was done, Sylvia quickly left the lake. Staying there un-necessarily was, if anything, bad for her. Any dead soul, that tried to cross the Death Lake back to the living world, was dismantled and ceased to exist.

She left Frank behind there; she couldn't possibly risk her own existence to drop him off safely to the other side. As she reached her side of the lake, she could hear the horses coming there and two people running towards the shore.

Though, she was a bit troubled that one of the four people over there seemed to be a sorcerer, but she felt reassured as she saw him doing nothing to the girl with a witch's blessing either.

"Guess not all sorcerers are core hungry beasts," Sylvia mumbled as she disappeared into that forest again.