(I made some changes regarding Kuro's eyes (chapters 7 & 9), but the changes will not effect the plot so far.)
(Basically, the world in Kuro's eyes during daytime is very clear and full of vibrant colors, while at night, except for the center of her vision, the world would be like a black-and-white TV.)
"Rise. Tell me about what's wrong with the townspeople," Alice says.
Unlike other mages, Alex does not put on her hood. Her long orange hair is tied into a ponytail that drapes over her left shoulder. She has bright green eyes and looks quite energetic. She should be in her early twenties, a little older than Alice, though she looks a lot less mature. She is quite beautiful by human standards, though not comparable to Alice. Shiro thinks Alex is the orange-level mage who she saw when we entered the camp for the first time, but she isn't too sure since, at that time, Alex was wearing a hood over her head.
"The townspeople are all recovered now. The cultists cast illusion magic into the town's water sources; without a magic power supply, the illusion magic will dispel itself once its magic power is used up. In addition, we had already purified all the town's water sources, so there will be no further trouble. Your Highness, here is the sample of the cultists' illusion magic that we use our magic power to maintain. Without a new magic power source, we expect it to last three more days." Alex pulls out a pottery flask from her belt and hands it to Alice, looking a little guilty. "The townspeople have accumulated large amounts of black powder in their bodies due to the forced overextraction of magic power. We estimate that their lifespan will be gradually reduced by at least 20 years."
"Is that the case? You don't need to blame yourself, Lieutenant Alex; this isn't your fault. There is nothing we can do about the black powder." Alice accepts the flask handed over to her. "What is the situation in this town? Where do these people come from, and how long have they been here?"
"Your Highness, our investigations indicate that there are roughly 800 individuals overall. The oldest one had been in this town for at least three years, and the most recent one had been here for roughly a year. The cultists are either abducting them directly or tricking them here. None of them make an effort to resist or flee since the illusion magic makes them believe that everything is normal," Alex continues. "They also claimed that they don't know when this town was constructed because it was already finished and livable when the first of them arrived."
Alice nods, "I understand. Then, Lieutenant Alex, can I trust you to be in charge of sending them back to their homes?"
"As you command, Your Highness, I will live up to your trust." Alex immediately bows quite excitedly, while Kay gives her a disapproving look. Maybe she shows too much emotion?
"Good," Alice nods before turning around and leaving. She walks in front, followed by us and Kay at the back. Soon, we arrive at our destination, Alice's tent.
After seeing Alice, Kuro, and Shiro step inside the tent, Kay bows and says, "Your Highness, I will take my leave." Then, he takes a few steps back and turns to leave.
After she ignites the candles with magic power, Alice takes off her clothes and uses [Water Ball] to create two water balls. She controls the first water ball to wet herself and rub the hard white block against her hands. Then, she rubs her hands against parts of her body and washes away the bubbles with another water ball. Alice does something incomprehensible again!
Thereafter, she puts on her loose light blue chemise that appears to be even softer than the gown she previously wore and lets the water balls dissipate. The impurities that do not dissipate fall into a wooden bucket underneath; it's the same bucket she lets the bubbles in when we wash our hands. Then, she turns toward us.
Alice sighs helplessly, looking at the confusion in our eyes. Why is she sighing? Alice can really be difficult to understand sometimes!
"Take off your masks," she says before closing her eyes to cast [Water Ball]. Although we don't know what she wants to do, we follow her instruction anyway.
She once again summons two more water balls. Then, she uses a water ball to wet our faces and rubs them with her hands covered in bubbles from the hard, slippery, white block. After she finishes rubbing, she washes the bubbles away with the remaining water ball. The water balls dissipated on top of the same bucket as those before.
Alice closes her eyes for a moment and uses [Water Ball] before summoning three much smaller water balls. Perhaps because the water balls she summoned are a lot smaller than usual, the time taken to murmur meaningless words is much shorter.
Alice, then, takes out a package containing unknown white powder from under the cabinet and sprinkles some of it into the three water balls.
"Rinse your mouth with these," Alice says as she controls each water ball to float in front of our faces. "Don't swallow them," she adds, then pops one of the balls into her mouth. She controls it to swirl around in her mouth for about half a minute before spitting the solution into the bucket. We follow her example, as the water balls are created by Alice's magic power, preventing us from controlling their movement inside our mouths like she can. We can only swirl them physically.
The solution is salty. Presumably, that white powder is salt. After we spit the solutions into the bucket, Alice stops supplying them with her magic power, and the water balls dissipate, leaving behind salt crystals.
"Alright, let's go to sleep. Tomorrow, we will be back to the capital," she says as she walks toward the bed. Well, humans seem to sleep every day, right?
We take off our robes and hang them on the chairs; after all, lying on the bed with our robes on will be uncomfortable. Then, we follow her to the bed.
Alice looks at our tails, but she does not seem very surprised, a sharp contrast to her reaction to our eyes and ears earlier on. She lets us get on the bed first, and then she gets on it after extinguishing the candles.
Alice quickly dozes off to sleep. As for us, we don't sleep. Shiro has nothing to do, so she simply holds Kuro's hand and transfers most of her processing power to Kuro, letting Kuro continue whatever she wants to do. She just leaves herself enough processing power to be on alert for disturbances.
Soon, it is midnight. For some reason, Alice wakes up during this time. Because of the disturbance Alice creates, Shiro pulls a little of her processing power back. Alice gets out of the bed and picks up a leather tube hanging on her gown's black belt. The belt is embellished with gold threads in complex patterns, somewhat similar to her fingerless gloves. Her leather tube contains a few feathers and a smaller metal tube containing some kind of liquid.
Alice lights a candle on the table with magic power and uses that candle to ignite other candles just bright enough for her to see clearly. Shiro will call this magic [Ignite]. She will analyze it later, along with other magic, once Kuro has completed her calculations.
After making sure she won't turn her tent, and potentially her camp, into a giant fireball, Alice sits down at the table and places a piece of parchment on it. Then, she picks up a feather, dips its tip into the black liquid in the metal tube, and uses the tip of the feather to write something onto the parchment. So this is the quill pen and ink the books talk about!
Dragons did not use quill pens, ink, and papers to write; we inscribe words directly into stone or metal plates. Writing with quill pens and paper is not only slow, but these materials are also very fragile. In comparison, stone or metal plates are much easier to use and can last much longer. We just need to use our draconic power to directly control the shape of the plates to inscribe what we want onto them. Theoretically, humans can also do this, but they choose not to; maybe the stone and metal plates are too heavy for them?
Alice writes some unknown letters into the parchment. We can't understand what she is writing about. Dragon language allows us to understand any spoken language, but not written ones. However, it still enables other creatures to comprehend our writing.
As she writes, she occasionally pauses and stares blankly with a silly smile and flushed face before her expression returns to a serious one once again and she continues to write. Basically, after an average of 10 minutes of writing with serious expression, she starts daydreaming with her heart beating rapidly for 5 minutes, and then she returns to serious expression, and the cycle renews.
This pattern continues for a total of three hours—a whole three hours! Shiro is starting to worry about Alice's brain. Maybe she should find some time to tell Kay about Alice's abnormal behavior. After she finishes writing, she gently folds the parchment into a packet and puts it into a light blue pouch on the belt.
Alice wrote only a full page in these 3 hours, which is incredibly slow, especially considering she used her magic power to control the shape of the quill pen's tip as it wore down. Shiro can imagine how slow and troublesome other humans' writing process is. Shiro will find some way to fix it later! After all, knowledge grows when shared!
After making sure the packet containing the parchment is completely secured in the pouch, Alice blows out the candles and returns to the bed. Soon, she falls asleep. Shiro also transfers her processing power to Kuro.
A night passes in a flash.
Alice is woken up by the sound of increasing soldiers' activities outside the tent. Since Alice is awake, we also open our eyes. Kuro also transfers back Shiro's processing power to her.
Alice gets out of the bed, takes out a light blue ankle-length dress from the cabinet, and changes into it along with her black belt. The dress is quite similar to the one she wore yesterday but light blue in color and a little shorter. She wears stockings and turnshoes of the same color as her dress. Does she like blue this much? Why is everything on her blue?
After she finishes dressing up, she turns to look at us, who are getting out of the bed. Upon seeing us, she summons water balls and adds salt to them. Then, she says, "Rinse your mouths with them, just as you did yesterday. Do you still remember?" We nod, but she demonstrates it to us anyway.
After the two of us rinse our mouths and put on our ritual robes, Alice reopens the cabinet and takes out a chest. The chest is almost a meter long with half a meter in height and width. Because it is covered by its lid, we have no idea what is inside.
As we push open the tent flaps, we see two soldiers standing in front of the tent with swords hanging on their belts. Alice hands the chest she carries to the soldiers. The soldiers receive the chest from Alice, with each of them holding one side. Unlike Alice, who looks relatively carefree while carrying the chest, the soldiers obviously struggle a little even when the two of them bear its weight together.
Alice leads us and the two soldiers to one of the three tents that surround Alice's tent. When we enter the tent, we see Kay directing five red-level mages to calibrate a circular stone platform. The platform sits about a step higher than the ground and covers almost the entire floor of this tent. Intricate and complex patterns are engraved onto its surface. Outside the platform lies a chest about the same size as the one Alice has, which the two soldiers are carrying.
Why is Kay directing the mages? Isn't he a knight? Why did he seem to know what to do even better than the mages? Shiro will have to find some time to ask Kay later.
Speaking of Kay, Kay is wearing a cream-colored, knee-length, loose-fitting tunic over black pants and brown boots. He also wears a black belt with a sword in its scabbard tied to his left. He has light brown hair and blue eyes. Looking carefully, he is actually quite handsome even by our standard.
"Your Highness, the teleportation circle will be ready soon," Kay turns to say to Alice but turns back as soon as he finishes his word. Shouldn't he be super rigid? It seems he thinks that calibrating the teleportation circle correctly is more important than greeting Alice with full formality.
After about 5 minutes, the calibration finally finishes. Kay lowers himself to carry the chest on the ground onto the platform. Presumably, this is his chest. The soldiers also place Alice's chest on the platform. The mages also step down from the platform.
"Let's go." Alice leads the two of us up onto the platform. Then, she takes out a small circular gold plate with complex patterns and inserts it into a shallow circular indentation in the middle of the platform. It fits perfectly, with only a small portion of the plate protruding from the platform, presumably for ease of removal.
After all the mages and soldiers leave the tent, Alice releases her magic power into the gold plate. Her yellowish magic power then flows from the gold plate along the patterns into the stone platform, lighting up a little the pattern it passes through. The moment her magic power flows to the edge of the platform, a transparent yellow barrier appears, forming a dome to cover it.
Then, Alice closes her eyes and starts murmuring meaningless words for a whole minute. During this minute, we can clearly feel the space transforming and the surrounding view fading into a mesh of bizarre colors. Shiro thinks she knows what Alice is doing; Alice is pulling us into the 'Subspace.'
The moment her voice ends, we are completely transferred to the 'Subspace.' At the same time, the pattern on the platform also shines brightly. Then, we return to the main material plane, but our surroundings have changed greatly. We are no longer in the tent but are in a room surrounded by stone walls decorated with flaming wall-mounted lamps; strangely enough, there seems to be no ventilation visible. Under our feet is a platform similar to the stone platform but made entirely of gold. In front of us is a wooden door, which seems to be the only exit here.
We have no idea how this teleportation circle works. We know that the barrier is erected to protect the people inside it, as below the yellow level, the 'Subspace' is a dead zone; even the yellow level cannot stay too long in it. However, we have no idea how we arrived here. Because physical rules do not apply in the 'Subspace,' we might be traveling in a straight line or back and forth on a very complex path. It is also possible that the platform directly modified our coordinates to send us here.
Upon arriving, even the always serious Kay relaxes visibly. A soft smile appears on his face. Alice, on the other hand, is getting increasingly excited. As soon as the barrier is down, she impatiently rushes toward the door under Kay's helpless gaze. Kay does not stop her; he simply bends down to pick up Alice's small gold plate ignored by her. Shiro quickly follows behind Alice while pulling along Kuro. Shiro is really curious about the reason behind Alice's impatience.