[ Theodric D'velon POV ]

The moment Amity and Denaru left the room with Jefferson for the cartomancer, Theodric wiped his mouth with a cloth specially prepared on the side of the table, got up, and took a step.

Immediately, his legs gave out, and he collapsed, barely managing to hold himself on the table to avoid hitting the floor. The moment that happened, his head butler, Gustachio, rushed to his side and helped his master onto his feet.

"Ah," Theodric sighed with rugged breaths. "I thought I was going to pass out in the middle of the conversation."

"Were they that powerful?" Gustachio asked. Although he was somewhat informed about the Witch of Pride and how she was powerful, he had already met very powerful people from the royal palace visiting their city before.

"Ah, Gustachio," Theodric looked to his head butler with a sympathetic face. "How I wish I lacked [Magicule Detection] like you. Just take note of the servants who do have the skill."

Gustachio did as told, and his face widened when he noted the five servants present who had the skill collapsed on the floor, barely conscious, and were being helped out of the room by their peers. That alone told Gustachio how powerful both of their visitors were.

"My [Acting] skills even leveled up twice during that small talk, even though it was already high level," Theodric commented, his legs still shaking. "The dragon wasn't so strong, at least a few years old, but the Witch…"

Taking long breaths, Theodric managed to stand upright on his own. He looked in the direction their guests were going, and was still able to feel the edge of Amity's aura, it was like an ocean held at bay by a single glass pane.

"Guerda said she needed a few weeks free because of something happening that she needed to prepare," Theodric recalled his cartomancer, Guerda, sending a formal release request for a few weeks of emergency leave. Now he understood the reason why she did so and made a mental note to increase her salary after all was over.

"Gustachio, please cancel my plans for the next three days. I won't be able to attend them. I need to rest," he said, moving towards his chambers with calm, deliberate steps to avoid losing balance as he was still shaken from the encounter. Just imagining the city leveled if he had upset the Witch of Pride was enough to shake him down to his core and increase a level on his [Fear Resistance] skill.

[ Denaru's POV ]

My heart was pounding on my chest, and every movement in the shadows caused me to flinch, breath caught in my throat. Only after I was sure Jack wasn't there was I able to keep breathing and walking.

The good news was that due to the size of my legs and each step I took being larger than Jefferson's, who wasn't in any rush and seemed to be slightly trembling, I was able to keep up with them even with my constant pauses.

"Is something on your mind?" Amity asked me, walking backwards while still following Jefferson.

"No, it's nothing," I said. I didn't know how to approach her about Jack and ask her if she could just kidnap me to another place.

"Hmm," she narrowed her eyes at me, and I could feel the edge of the immense amount of magicules she had hidden underneath her frail-looking skin weighing down on me for just a moment before it vanished. "Okay."

I was thankful she didn't push for more information, because I was sure that if she really wanted to know, I wouldn't be able to resist her, but unfortunately, her next question was just as hard a topic as the first.

"By the way," she started. "Lily said she didn't know any dragons living in the Darnas Forest, which means that she doesn't know about you, which should be impossible. Lily knows everything in this territory."

"Haha…?" I wasn't sure where she was going with it.

"So, where are you from?" She asked. It was an innocent question, but I could feel the weight behind those words. I wasn't going to escape answering it, and considering that we already took two turns and were out of the castle, and Amity is walking backwards with no problem following the wolf person…

I looked at her, then at Jefferson, then back at her and at our surroundings, which were filled with people, some screamed at seeing me, but I saw some guards following us to calm down the populace.

Amity tilted her head and then widened her eyes. Immediately after, I couldn't hear anything but my own steps and Amity's.

"There," her voice was as clear as water, even though I couldn't hear anything else. "Now no one will be able to listen in or read our lips."

She didn't say for me to answer her, but she didn't need to, it was implicit in her actions. I sighed.

"I was born there," I answered.

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"Impossible," Amity immediately rejected my answer. "There were no other dragons there, and Lilith didn't know about any living close to the forest to hatch you."

I stared at her for a few moments.

"I don't know what to say to you. I was born there. My egg was in the middle of the forest all by itself."

"Also impossible," she refuted again. "If that were the case, how are you a dragon and not a wyvern? Dragons have a hard time raising other dragons so they don't become wyverns, and you want me to believe you, all by yourself, managed to attain sentience and become a full dragon?"

Interesting, I think? I knew that white dragons could become wyverns when evolving, but it appeared that evolving into dragons was more difficult than it seemed. I never met another white dragon, so I didn't know how different I was from the norm.

"I… I was born with it," I meant my sentience. I was human in my past life, and retained my memories after I was reborn, of course, sentience was a given. But Farahio already told me how impossible that should be as well. Judging by Amity's expression, she also didn't believe it.

I sighed. I knew where this was going, and if I needed, I could just reset the loop. Knowing that, I began telling Amity about my story up until that moment. She looked like she wanted to stop me a few times during my retailing, but she stopped herself to listen.

"It honestly sounds total goblinshit," she said after I finished telling her. "But it somehow makes sense…"

Amity seemed to be deep in thought, only stopping when the wolf person stopped in front of a small house. The door was already open, and an elf woman was already waiting for us. I could see she was slightly trembling.

As the wolf person was about to say something, Amity removed whatever spell or skill she used to mute the sound around us, and I was able to hear the environment again. I could hear people murmuring around us and birds chirping in the distance.

"L-lady Witch," he said. "We have arrived. This is Guerda, our apprentice cartomancer."

"H-hi. I'm Guerda," The elf woman said. "It's a-an honor to meet someone as splendid as you."

"Hmmm," Amity looked her up and down. "How old are you?"

"I-I am 87 years old," she answered.

"Oh, a child still. And you're learning cartomancy at such a young age? You must be very proud of yourself," Amity said, nodding in approval.

"T-thank you, Lady Witch," she said, then bowed and showed us the entrance using her arms. "Should I guide you inside?"

Amity nodded and waited for Guerda to enter before following her. I followed right behind them, my size barely fitting the door frame.

Guerda moved us to what looked like a living room that was prepared for our arrival. There was a table in the middle with a single chair on one side and another chair and the same type of chair for me on the other side. On top of the table, there was a set of 5 card decks, each one having a different style. I recognized one style as the same one Amity had showed me when we first met.

Amity sat down on the chair, and I joined her. Guerda followed and sat down on the opposite side. She was fumbling with her thumbs as she looked at us and them at the cards.

"I am still learning the art, so I'd like to apologize before we begin," she said.

"Don't worry about it, anything is better than nothing," Amity countered. "Besides, Ellie was also awful when she started."

Guerda just nodded.

"What would you like to seek?" Guerda asked.

Amity considered her answer for a moment.

"The source of the Origin Magic near here," she stated. I froze, and Guerda looked confused, but nodded anyway.

I looked at both of them, and then I felt a weird movement of temporal energy around us. At first, I thought it was Jack, but it was too weird to be him, and the source seemed to be too close. Then I noticed that the source was Guerda herself.

She had her eyes closed and seemed to be thinking about which deck to pick, and after a few seconds, picked the first one, which had the drawing of flowers around the edges and a forest inside.

She shuffled the deck and picked two cards from it, placing them on the table. The first card had a drawing of a city, and the second of someone wearing long clothes with a hat and a massive bag on their back.

"The city and the traveler," Guerda said, her eyes still closed. "It represents someone who left civilization, or just a city, and is on a quest that requires them to journey through the land."

She shuffled the deck once more, drawing two more cards. The first one was of a wolf-looking creature, and the second one of a person holding a sword in a battle position.

"The monster and the fighter," she said, her eyes still shut. I wondered how she was doing it. "The traveler met resistance from something much stronger than him."

She placed the deck back on the table and picked up another one. This one was the nebula background that Amity had shown me on the card she had.

After shuffling the deck a bit, Guerda pulled three cards. The first one was of a person running away from a fire. The second one was of two people, one of them was writing something in a book, and the other one was pointing to the book. The third one was of a star, not the drawing of a star that a child would do, but one you'd see in a science book.

"The runner, the student, and the star," Guerda said. "After meeting something stronger than them, they run away. Then, with the help of a teacher, they were told something, and that something led to the birth of something very powerful and very ancient."

Wait… Wait, wait, wait. I looked over at Amity and saw that she was looking at me. I looked back at the cards on the table and back at Amity. Whatever the cartomancer was saying was basically a skimmed version of my own story, which I had told Amity just a few minutes ago.

"The city, the cycle and the dragon," Guerda said, causing me to immediately turn towards the cards and see the same city as before, from the same deck, the other was of a serpent eating its own tail and the last one of a red dragon on top of a mountain.

"They returned to civilization, but were stuck on a repeating cycle of events before being approached by something even more powerful than the first enemy they encountered," Guerda said, finishing up her reading of the cards.

Amity immediately got up from the table, causing Guerda to open her eyes as she flinched, the temporal energy surrounding her dissipating as she lost her concentration.

"I-I'm sorry, I-I'm not good at read-" she was cut off by Amity, who was looking at me.

"It was you!" She half-shouted, before grabbing me by my horn. "We're going to see Athor, right now!"

A magic circle appeared beneath us, and before I could say anything, spatial energy surrounded me, and I felt the temporal strand vibrating because of it. The next thing I knew, I was back at the inn's room, staring at the ceiling.

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