Forming a Symbol takes toll

Liam woke before all the others, like always.

He was troubled by the amount of baggage he was carrying around. The amount of it was getting burdensome. So he was thinking of what to do with all of that.

"Should I go ahead and sell all of this in Pando. I don't need money that much," he mused. But, unfortunately, there wasn't a good solution.

He still had leftover money from Maple City. What to do?

"Go sell it all in Pando. Looking at your progress, you'd probably have a large pile of the same stuff soon enough," Biff had answered to his musings.

"You sure? I would need to leave these guys here," he pointed at the sleeping ones.

Haru was usually next to wake up. He glanced at her.

"The thing about people is that I don't dislike them, more like I like the smaller ones. I don't eat humans. For whatever reason, they are just too dry and stringy. So I prefer playing with them, especially with the young ones," Biff was unusually forthcoming this morning.

"Really?"

"Yes, I don't want the city gone from the tree. More like, I want them to get rid of that huge wall so that I could play with the kids, but I think that they thought I wanted to eat them," a chuckle-like sound escaped the water.

"Well, you are kind of scary," Liam commented, that he still hadn't seen his body.

"Hmph!" He couldn't refute that.

"Would you like to be able to speak with them?" Liam hesitated in asking as he remembered what Pollen had told him.

"I don't know, hmm, is that a possibility?"

"Someone gave me an idea, but I think I'll turn it around and see if it's possible." Liam pondered.

Liam sat down and concentrated on the language of this world and tried to put it in one symbol, as Pollen had suggested. But unfortunately, it didn't work, and the symbol collapsed.

'Was he missing letters?' No, that didn't seem to be the issue. 'Or was it the pronunciation of the letters?" Letters have different sounds depending on the word someone is attempting to say. It wouldn't matter. Biff would still be able to talk to the people around, even with an accent.

'Then why did the symbol collapse, even after several tries?'

'Shit!' he cussed in his head. Yet again, it was the understanding of things. He could speak and understand what others were saying but didn't understand the language.

'Was that the problem?' he got up from his position and went to wake up the old man.

"Wh-what?" The old man woke from his slumber, confused. He didn't understand why he was sleeping comfortably and even lying down. The previous day's memories emerged, and he could only wonder at the world's weirdness.

If only he knew that that was just the beginning of all the weirdness he would witness.

He opened his eyes to see a young man with white hair shaking him. He seemed flustered about something.

"Hey, Grandpa, I need your help with something. Would you mind?" Liam got straight to the point.

He was still groggy and just nodded. Liam helped him up, and they went closer to the river. There he sat the grandpa down and asked him if he could examine his body with energy. He didn't mind, and Liam looked him over.

He was shocked that the man was on a higher stage than he was. However, that wasn't important at the moment. He just wanted to ensure the man was healthy. Either way, he wasn't sure what would happen when he tried to use the old man as his base understanding of the language of this world.

The old man watched as Liam closed his eyes and examined him. After a moment, he saw his eyebrows raise slightly, but then he changed. His concentration seemed to be reaching a peak. The old man watched how Liam's hands now reached for his head.

Liam didn't touch the man. His hands just hovered near his head. It was instinctual rather than thought.

The old man's eyes widened in shock when he saw a weird glow emanating from the boy's hands. It wasn't the energy they gathered. Well, it was, but it was combined with other substances, and he couldn't identify them. Moreover, he didn't know what it was; it couldn't be just energy.

After some time of this, the boy's hands moved again. One was near his neck and the other near the place where his heart was.

Liam was collecting and copping the data from his mind, the sound of the letter from the man's throat, and the feeling from his heart. He was composing all that to the energy he was forming.

An hour passed like this. Finally, everyone was awake and looking at the riverside.

None of them had seen a sight like that before.

Some time ago, Grandpa had somehow understood that he wasn't needed at the moment and could retreat to the kids. So he was staring at the scene with an open mouth.

A symbol had started to form between Liam's hands gradually. It was glowing. At first, it had been gentle, but as time went on, the glowing intensified.

Soon after, Liam shouted out a name.

"BIFF!"

A tentacle shot out of the water and approached Liam, stopping right in front of the symbol.

With immense strength, Liam pushed the symbol enough to touch the tentacle. It seemed to have been immensely difficult.

The children now noticed the amount of sweat he was exerting.

At that moment, he collapsed to the ground, and the symbol disappeared.

The humans looking at the scene were left confused along with the black cat. Only Nio seemed to have seen that the tentacle had absorbed the symbol.

He went over to the river to ask but seemed to be welcomed with silence.

Biff didn't answer, and after investigating, he figured he was unreachable. He seemed to have entered some trance or something like meditating. Liam once explained what it was, and this seemed to be describing that quite well.

He was probably comprehending all the things he had gotten from that symbol.

The first to approach Liam's unconscious body was Haru. First, she sniffed it to make sure that he was alive. Then, she gently bit his clothes, trying to move him near the fire where everybody else used to sleep.

The kids reacted after that and approached the unconscious Liam as well. Karu crouches in front of Liam as Haru holds him. She gently lowers Liam onto his waiting back.

He strained his legs and pushed up, starting to walk toward the fireplace. Jin and Yong-Sun supported him as best they could. WIle Haru still held onto Liam's clothes, decreasing the weight the kids had to lift.

The old man just stared at the scene.

He still couldn't understand what the white-haired noble-looking young man was.

The scene of him forming the weird symbol is still firmly lodged in his mind.

Haru laid down near the fire pit, and the three kids laid Liam on her.

Nio came over to smell him as well. He just seemed to be extremely tired. He thought something didn't add up. He shouldn't be this tired. After all, he could gather energy. Why would he be so exhausted?

He gathered some of his energy to look inside him. He found all the defenses a person could have been down. He easily accessed his internal body and, to his amassment, found that his core had been depleted.

'Did that symbol cost all his energy, but he was still at the same stage. He's going to be fine once he recovers some energy.' So Nio thought to himself and injected some of his energy into him.

To his surprise, it got rejected.

He didn't know what was happening but decided to retreat and wait to see what happened next.

He smiled involuntarily, thinking nothing had happened like it was supposed to since that human appeared in his life. Everything seemed to have become twisted.

The world was the same, but to him, it looked a bit more colorful when the boy called Liam was around.

He wasn't the only one thinking that.