The elven man beside him smiled. His hair was grey and his skin was as pale as paper, although his face remained youthful. His orange eyes glowed, his hearty smile intact.
"These roots bind us and sap our mana, but I was at least able to use translation magic. Strange. It wasn't given to you at birth?"
Mana? Translation magic?
"No… I was raised in a rural village. Even magic, I'm not too familiar with it," Julian quickly made up a lie.
"A village? There are no villages near this forest. Ah, you must be traveling towards the capital?"
Julian nodded.
"We're all gonna die here, anyway. My name is Athlin."
"Julian… If you don't mind me asking, what is this place?"
"Even I'm not so sure myself. The forest might just be inhabited by a manifested spirit. Spirits are beings of mana. It's lived here for so long, the trees have grown around it."
"…"
"If the spirit doesn't come into here and directly consume us, these roots that suck up mana will kill us. Because once you run out of mana, you die."
That's strange. While his roots are incredibly thick, mine aren't that bad. It must be because elves have a higher mana pool than humans.
But the others also have pretty thick roots. Then again, they've been here for longer.
…I keep on trying to dodge it or avoid it. But it appears that I have no mana.
Julian squirmed. An illusion of tightness was being made.
It's not actually tight. It's merely the illusion of tightness; it uses all its force to wrap around me, but it is easily movable. The spirit recognized that I had no mana… yet it still took me in here, and made the effort to create that illusion. Because wasting its own mana to actually thicken it would be useless.
But it could easily avoid all of that by simply not picking me up. I guess the roots have a mind of their own.
The roots dropped to the ground like a rope, leaving a circle of them bundled beneath them. Everyone in the room was shocked. The elf, Athlin, stared at him with wide eyes.
"How did you-"
"I suppose that spirit skipped over me. Do you have anything sharp? I can try and get you out, too, Athlin."
Athlin's eyes darted past Julian. Staring at the beating heart.
"Try to rip that thing up. It'll help everybody here."
Julian nodded, promptly walking toward the floating blue heart. Although he said he would do it with no hesitation, he was, of course, a little anxious.
He lifted his arm, his pointer finger approaching the heart. As his finger neared it, he was zapped with a blue shock, causing him to retract his hand.
It didn't hurt. It only caught him off guard.
"Okay."
He touched. It was hard, like a muscle. Yet soft enough to pierce or rip apart. He pulled his hand back.
Fwsh!
A root that made up the wall had latched onto it, swinging toward Julian at the speed of sound. Julian had not even realized this was coming toward him.
So naturally, he was going to die. What could he do?
!
An intense gust of wind blew through the room.
Before the root could reach him and pierce through his chest, it was slashed into several pieces.
Julian dropped to the ground, panting.
"Whoa. How lucky. If it weren't for me, all of you guys would be dead."
The voice belonged to the man who sliced the root into pieces.
A human man. His hair was light green, long, and tied up in a bun. Soft hazel eyes peered forward, staring at Julian, then at the beating heart.
The weapon of choice used to cut up the root was a large war axe. He held it with a single hand.
Julian looked around, his eyes widening as he saw the large hole that had been created to enter this spot. Moonlight peered in.
Someone like him. Someone like that guy is definitely a protagonist of this world.
Before he knew it, everyone had already managed to escape the wooden room. They fled through that hole. Even Aithlin had left him. Out of all the hostages, it was just him left.
"My.. heart..."
A deep voice boomed through the room. Roots wrapped around the heart, the shape of a body forming around it. Skin formed, along with a pair of bright blue eyes. Long black hair fell down.
This is... a spirit. Julian thought.
Fwsh!
What followed was incomprehensible to Julian's feeble eyes. There were abstract concepts he could make out. Like the sound of magic being activated, or the sound of roots cutting through the air.
Heavy gusts of wind, strikes that nearly hit him. The fight ended within a mere 5 minutes, finishing with Greenie stabbing his axe through the spirit's blue heart. As soon as it was pierced, the roots retracted into the heart.
"Wheew..." the green-haired man said, stretching his legs out. He quickly threw the blue heart into a burlap sack, reaching his arm up to wipe off sweat from his forehead.
"Not only will I be able to get a hefty sum of money from this manaheart, but I've also slain the spirit of the forest. I'm essentially a hero, heh."
"...Excuse me..?"
Julian spoke up for a moment, his eyes wandering. Still a little shaken up from the sight and a little fearful of the man in front of him, he walked toward him.
"And not only those two, but I can sell off a slave as well. Wow. What a great day it's been."
"Huh?"
With no warning, Julian was struck in the head with the handle of the green-haired man's axe. He fell to the ground, hitting his head again.