The Sleeping Child

Ever since I was young, a lot of old people reminded the younger generations to fear the darkness, as it only brings harm to good people. They sounded so sure whenever they told stories to justify their opinions, which led to most of the listeners agreeing on it, not because they shared the same experience, but because it was from fear for their safety if it was true. These events often happen, and they result in people avoiding the night like a disease.

I tend to listen to these stories and forget about them the next day, as they are simply just unnecessary assumptions. But staring into the darkness for who knows how long does affect such perception. You have enough time to spoil your deepest thought to the point it becomes your fear.

"I don't like it..." I burst out a small sound that echoes in my ears. I've been staring into the darkness ever since I opened my eyes from my deep slumber, and it just made me contemplate my memories that I kept from the deepest point of my mind, but nonetheless, it is a great opportunity to think of things thoroughly.

I tried to move my right hand to know if I already had enough strength to even move my upper body, and then when I managed to flinch one of my fingers, I sighed for relief, which led me to move my right arm and lift my upper body with all of the energy I have. I slouched as I finally reached the last string of my energy. I gasped for air after I sat up with an ugly posture; apparently, it was a rigorous task for my body.

If I recall correctly, this place was supposed to be a room I built inside a cave, behind the curtains of a massive waterfall in the northern part of the continent. I chose such a location as no one will be brave enough to cross the madness of the waterfalls without any life-long experience or the determination to be the first person to do a death-defying stunt. But there's a question in mind. As far as I know, I am inside a cave, hugged by the waterfalls and hidden by a small room, and before I even sleep here, I know for a fact that I kept a good number of energy stones to light up the room for a good amount of years.

The energy is provided by the waterfalls through their force on the ground and through the force of the gushing water. I thought the number of energy stones and the unlimited source of force to produce enough mana to light the stones would be enough. Was I fooled when I bought those stones? No, once the stones light up, that means it'll work continuously as long as there is a continuous source of mana. So that means there's no energy source nearby. Did the waterfalls dry up?

How long did I sleep? It was supposed to be for a couple of years, not longer than a decade, and that's how it should be. Did someone come here and purge my belongings, including those stones? Did someone move my body to some catacombs with no light? We do look different when we sleep; we breathe slower, and our heart beats after a minute or two. Was I buried alive?

I drag myself around with my right hand in front of me, hoping there is a wall nearby so it can assist me in standing up. I wonder, where am I if my conclusion is right? Upon blindly reaching for something, I hit my fingers on a hard surface, and a sharp pain zapped within me, which led me to scream uncontrollably. It was so painful that it sent my head spinning.

I stopped moving for a while and took all of my energy to do a mana detection. It is a type of mid-level skill, and with mastery, it'll cost a small amount of my strength and mana. I need to check if I can do more than just dragging myself around—to see if I can even use my mana. If I can even endure hitting my head, or it will send me to the afterlife. It is the consequences of our long slumber. Since we remain immobile for a long time, we will become weak physically, and at some point, we will lose our control with our own body. Our energy focuses on maintaining our mana core to keep us warm and alive during our sleep.

If I have the chance to feel the mana around me, it may help me establish my location precisely how big is the room that I am currently in, but beside that, it'll help me to identify the environment that surrounds me, specifically the mana.

I feel a tingling sensation in my body as I slowly absorb the raw mana around me. It feels so raw that it feels so heavy, like no other living being warms it up and uses it regularly. Does it mean I am the only one who breathes here?

The raw mana I absorbed turned into polished mana once it entered my body, like how it should be done. Once its energy depletes, it will return to nature as ghost mana or an empty shell, and if it gains enough energy, it will be a raw mana, and the cycle continues. Think of an object that hasn't been moved and is unused for a long time; it is functional, but it is dusty and requires cleaning before one can use it properly. So if this is the condition of the raw mana around me, then it means no one has been using it for a while now. Aside from that, there are numbers of ghost mana around, which means there are no nearby natural forces that can fill up these empty shells. It is highly likely that the waterfalls dried up or I am no longer inside that cave. Which one could it be?

But other than that, it seems like this mana has been raw for a long time, which makes it dense, and it only means that even plants don't prosper in this location, and it is evident due to the density of the raw mana. It already developed a thick outer core, suitable for a corrupted environment, and for mana to reach and remain on that point, it must have been more than a hundred years ago since the last time it was used. I think, wherever I am, the place has become so hostile that potential candidates for darkness are the only ones who can use this raw mana properly.

It is clear to me that something happened, but I can't confirm anything if I can only sit here. I need to regain my energy and look for the detailed answers for my questions.

I rest my body on the hard surface that I hit earlier. I need to rest, for I am eager to see what happened outside. If no one lives here and if there is some ghost mana around, I am likely in a barren land. There is no water movement, the fog is so thick that there's no air movement, the fire can't last long, and the soil isn't fertile.

Eventually, I dozed off after a long wait to retrieve my strength, and when I woke up, I immediately snapped my fingers, and the raw mana around it reacted, and then a small explosion happened. The mana here is too dense for a much tamer reaction; therefore, it reacts to a mana user violently, creating an explosion. After the explosion, a fire lit up on the tip of my index finger, and it lit up the immediate area. To my surprise, it was the same room that I had entered hundreds of years ago—it was just a little out of shape due to neglect for a long time. It is to be expected if you sleep for a long while without assigning a keeper, but it wasn't part of my plan that I would sleep for a long time.

"Oh," I saw stacks of what I think used to be chests in one corner. I almost forgot how I decided to take all my wealth in this small space just to avoid waking up as a poor fella. "I am still rich."

I extend my hand towards the ground where the chests are placed, and I sway my hand towards the right, and a mana gate appears. It opens to a view of a dark void uninterrupted by time, then it swallows all of the things I stored with me inside this room, even the once valuable possession that turned to garbage. I'll find the time to take that away later.

After I cleaned everything up, I touched the wall opposite to where the chests are. It is the door where I entered before, but it seems like it is not a hollow space, and that only means it is blocked by something, probably fallen rocks. Nonetheless, I can just break my way out of here. I collected the raw mana with my fingers, and a mana circle appeared on the wall. At first attempt, the mana circle didn't respond to my command, and only when I made my second attempt. It explodes like a mana bomb, unwantingly messy.

The air here is as heavy as the air inside the room; it doesn't move, and it feels sticky. I let out a heavy sigh upon witnessing with my own two eyes the place that I once believed was a paradise, but I can only see the fog. Since this was supposed to be a waterfall more than a hundred years ago, the room was supposed to be on an elevated surface, but it now kisses the ground and is hugged by large boulders. There must have been a devastating landslide somewhere in between those long years that reduced this place to an unappealing sight.

As I leave the room and take my first few steps into the outside world, I can only sigh with my disappointment. I am sure that I am on a northern continent, but it is not in the northernmost part of the continent, which is the reason why nothing is covered with pristine snow. I am not sure if this still experiences snow, though; a lot may change in the span of those years. As I walk blindly in an unknown direction, I witness carcasses scattered on the ground; they do look like animals whom I believe went astray and perished here. There are also bones of humans around, and the further I walk, the more I realise why this became a barren land.

It became a mass grave. There must be hundreds of thousands of dead bodies here, and I can conclude such from how high the pile of nothing but skulls of other races is in front of me. Someone must have tried to make this as a trophy. If these people died filled with hatred, regrets, or any negative emotions, it is bound to attract negative energy as they decay here.

The only event that can produce a high number of dead bodies is an epidemic and war, and by observing this place, it is not a battlefield since none of these bodies possess any hints that they are soldiers or anything that makes them recognisable—they were stripped of what these people believe is their honour. I doubt that these are only soldiers, but I believe there will be civilians of other races or even nobles who lie here. If this is the result of war or any deadly reasons, they surely died with a lot of negative emotion. The raw mana here is so thick that it will be useless to some mana users.

If a dead body attracts negative energy or negative mana, its bones decompose much slower as this negative energy makes a dead body its shell, and since it functions similarly to a ghost mana, the only negative mana users are necromancers, witches, and anyone who chants dark magic. I bet none of them received the news that this place actually exists on the map, since nobody's here and no one has yet to use this negative mana. This is like a treasure haven for them; it is a good push if they want to conquer the world and have them kneel before them.

Unfortunately, I got here first, and I will use them however I like.

I extend both of my hands in front of me, and I murmur a short incantation, and then a magic circle lights up above the mounds of the dead bodies. The magic circle rotates anticlockwise, and all of the skeletons, broken or not, rattles and stand up. Some broken bones are connected by the energy and find their way to complete themselves, but some, well, they might have died a miserable death. Upper their sudden movement, they all fell down, just like how they did before they take their last breath.

I don't want to wake them up or even make them move for a long time, as it will cause a large mana disruption. True, light mana or dark mana are two completely different sources of energy, but they share one function, and that is their influence. If a lot of people who use light mana or dark mana nearby sense the rapid increase of dark mana usage around here, it'll just wake a lot of unnecessary rumours and curiousities. I just made sure that no one else will take this huge number of pawns away from me.

Nonetheless, there must be a few numbers of people who felt the large dark mana usage around here. They are too sensitive since they already felt that before, and now I wonder how they'll respond to it.

I continue walking on the same path that I was taking earlier, then I open my spatial storage and grab a piece of cloth that I hid here before I slept, then I place it on my eyes and tie it at the back of my head. If there are people who felt that mana usage, they must be skilled enough to use an advanced mana location skill to look for the mana user. I need to avoid that.