Fortunately, his advisors managed to bring the king on the right track. Otherwise, I would have had to punch him to sanity, but I doubt the sword saint would let me get close to him. I tightened my fist. This was just like my previous world. The nobles there were so arrogant and did not bother to work towards a better future. They were just far too content on shifting the burden onto otherworlders.

  They agreed to create a joint team together with the other nations to figure out a plan. All they had to do was figure out how to defeat a supposed primordial eldritch being that could hunt down a god, but sure; this was the perfect time for a month-long recess. I stormed out of the room with one conclusion in mind, and that was that I had to figure this shit out herself.

  "Excuse me?"

  Turning around I realized it was the sword saint. Something within me wanted to shoot my shot — I was most likely going to die a horrifying death anyway, but I doubt that would help further my cause. "Yes?"

  The sword saint Lyra walked towards me. "I have been blessed by one of the archangels, tasked with protecting this world in the Wandering God's name. Allow me to lend you my aid."

  - Rachel, the twice summoned

  Hiro let his jaguar instinct loose and growled at the human-shaped paper talisman. "I told you never to contact me again!"

  "And I told you I would anyway," she calmly responded. "The king of the jungle has not forgotten about you, and I should remind you it does not put me in a comfortable position. Luckily for me, fueling his ego is all I need to do, but eventually he would have all my strength endorsed from my corpse."

  "I don't care," Hiro said.

  "You do. You are just too addicted to forgetting." She giggled. "You know, I have never run away from all my problems."

  He tried to keep his composure. She was taunting him on purpose. "What do you want?"

  The talisman flew in front of him. "All I want is to ask of you a small favor. I know I have … not been the best older sister. Our mothers might be different, but it is our father who brings us together. The humans are also frankly being annoying. Why join your kins enemy when you can help us?" The talisman spun around. "Doesn't being a super secret spy sound cool?"

  Hiro didn't say anything.

  "Your thoughts?" The talisman flew up and down.

  He glared at it. "Mercy is the sign of a fool. Ambition, the sign of a king."

  The talisman stopped mid-air, then flew around the room giggling. "I had to check if the humans turned you from beast to prey, but you still got it." Flying back in front of him, the talisman fell on the floor and started marching back and forth. "But I am actually serious, even if I might not sound it. He is planning something, I am sure of it, and he wants you on board. I overheard him spilling secrets left and right as he usually does, and he said you are an oddity that almost makes you as interesting as the Night Witch. He called you a mutt born to be a failure. Not sure what he meant by that, but you are special, I am sure of that much. You have some use, rejoice."

  "I don't care. I am a citizen of the human kingdom, just like my mother, and I will be living an ordinary life here." He snorted. "It isn't like he can start a war if he wants to. The Hero prohibits it."

  "Prohibits?" The talisman stopped. "We do not live like humans so there is no use for us to hide the truth. You are very aware that the king of the forest is as close to the Hero as any of us are allowed. If he wants to start a war, the Hero would not care to stop him. The same goes for his counterpart in the human kingdom; you being a soldier is enough proof is it not? This is politics, the world you were born into, and you will never escape it. I won't let you."

  "You're a toxic, mean—."

  "Spare your pitiful remarks. I am adept at filtering out nonsense." The talisman flew close enough that it almost touched his face. "Retrieve some valuable information about their weaponry, or else—."

  Hiro jumped back as the entire talisman caught in flames and disintegrated.

  He sighed. Honestly, that wasn't so bad. Just ignoring her would be fine. Then looking to his side he realized his hand had never let go of the katana. He had gripped too far ahead and cut his palm. Endorsing his pain away, he stood up to find some bandages.

  "Everything is fine," he lied to himself.

  ***

  "The clump is not disappearing," Tom complained.

  "I will get the stronger cleaning agent then."

  "No," he said. "Let me try something. There should be a vial of water in my satchel. Could you get it for me?"

  Behind he could hear Misha rummaging through the bag, hesitating for a moment, then handing him the vial from behind. "I reckon this isn't water?"

  "Correct." Taking a step back, he threw it at the trashcan and watched it disintegrate. "Poison spirit. I got it from—you know what don't worry about it. This won't be dangerous right?"

  She nodded. "The poison would have lingered in the surroundings, but the Ley Line should take care of the leftover parts of its authority."

  He felt like he was learning more about this world every day. Although, there was a lot that did not make sense. The existence of the Ley Line and how they were separate from spirits already being manifestations of reality. If so many spirits left the elven forest, shouldn't that not make sense? That means the reality was disintegrating. But Alice did not mention it, so it was probably fine. Zev did mention the elf king going mad, and something about inverse spirits? But weren't all spirits supposed to have the same nature? And what did that otherworlder mean by the spirits not listening to her anymore?

  Leaning against the wall, he sighed. At first, he wanted the OP one-shot kind of class, but being an observer was growing on him. It was like slowly trying to solve a puzzle piece by piece. He did not mind continuing to live like this, as long as Alice did not make him confront the demons or try to get rid of him. Living in this camp, which was like a fun summer camp, and gaining more … friends. That would be a good use of his second chance at life.

  Tom shook his head. No. This was an isekai adventure. Why live a boring life when he could be OP? The isekai life was much tougher than he thought, but he had to push through.

  He turned towards Misha who was staring at his satchel, probably worried about other poison spirits inside. Quickly finishing would be the best course of action before she became too curious. "Sorry for taking a break, my mind wandered. Let us continue. We are almost finished."

  "Tom, I don't mean to pry — kind of hard to avoid noticing it being a scavenger and all, but that book in your satchel …"

  He turned to her. "Book? Oh, it's just a book my … squadmate forgot. I will give it back to him later."

  She nodded. "Did you read it?"

  "No. Didn't have the time. Don't tell me it's something super raunchy or weird."

  Shaking her head, she took out the book. "This is a somewhat philosophical book, you could say. One that has caused quite a stir in the capital. People call you a wannabe hero." She coughed. "That's an insult by the way, but even you should know about the death of heroism?"

  He nodded. "The Hero caused everyone to shy away from heroism. Ruined all the fun."

  "Ever since the Hero's betrayal people have looked back at their beliefs. Why did we always summon otherworlders to fix our problems? Why couldn't we have done that ourselves? And if there is a standout amongst us, does it make them a Hero or simply extraordinary? But doesn't being extraordinary make one a Hero who is supposed to lead us? In that case, would they eventually betray us too?"

  Tom shrugged. "That sounds complicated. I guess it is cool to be extraordinary, but that doesn't necessarily make you a Hero. I personally don't think heroism is that bad, it is just the blind faith in someone who was also 'human' that caused this mess."

  She snapped her fingers. "Precisely. The Hero was supposed to be our moral compass, but without him what constitutes the absolute good? Dogmatic belief in what you are told is out of fashion." She raised the book. "This book is controversial since it casts those beliefs away. It is about a human girl and a male demon who open a coffee shop in the capital."

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  "… That sounds like cozy fiction to me. But I reckon the church did not like it."

  "Not at all. They tried to arrest her, the author, for blasphemy, but strangely enough the king protected her. And with that people grew to wonder: what if peace is the answer? What if we are all being manipulated? Our moral compass pointing in the wrong direction."

  ***

  Tom sat down on the ground, leaned up against the wall. Finishing up early was their plan, but because of Soldier Day, there were a lot of clumps of mana to deal with. He couldn't use too many of his precious embodied vials, so Misha left to retrieve some more of the special cleaning agent created by observers.

  With nothing to do, he pulled out the observer orb. This was supposed to make his aura sight better. He closed his eyes. "[see aura]." His own aura was a blur of colors, but he could see the normal silhouette of the alleyway differentiated by different colors.

  He tried focusing on the orb. It had the familiar sensation of his own soul gem, an empty cloud with spirits floating around, however, this one was a little different. Just like the Memento and the Sonata, the mirror spirit inside gave off a string of feelings. He could still remember how much it hurt when the demons Sonata had rejected his attempt at [stabilize]. This mirror spirit, since it represented something, wasn't an ordinary lesser spirit, but was somehow related to the Mirror Maiden. He remembered the book about her he had read in Alice's office. A lonely girl in a world of darkness, with nothing else around her but a mirror to see herself. Looking into the mirror proved that she existed.

  Closing his eyes, he gripped the observer orb tighter. There was no color to sense when he looked for the mirror spirit, but he knew it existed. He grumbled. The easiest way to prove that the world exists was himself. "I think, therefore I am," he murmured.

  Instead of focusing on the observer orb in his hand, he looked inwards at his own aura. His ability to see the details was not perfect, but to him this was the 'clothes of his soul'. An unchanging mess of colors. He focused on the entirety of his aura. "[stabilize]."

  Opening his eyes he saw that the observer orb had lit up and was now filled with a mess of colors. Closing his eyes again and focusing on the aura inside, he realized it was a reflection of his own aura, only that the contrast between different colors was much clearer.

  "I think I figured it out."

  All he needed to do was to sense the aura and use [stabilize] on what he saw to confirm it was normal. Just like energy was always conserved, for something to exist the auras — or authorities of different spirits — should always be conserved. A fundamental law of this world.

  He used [see area] and discovered the method was the same to observe his surroundings. Using [stabilize] once showed a snapshot of his surroundings, and repeatedly spamming his skill showed how the surrounding auras were changing over time. He saw a stream of lighter-shade colors moving towards the south. Moving closer to the previous trashcan, he did indeed see small purple dots slowly getting dragged away by the current.

  The details were much better, but what he saw did not make sense. He could differentiate the surroundings from the color of their aura, the authorities being too weak for him to observe their corresponding spirits. But instead of being separate, it looked like the stream of auras, the Ley Line, was sharing its authority with its surroundings. The color at the edges was much stronger.

  Spirits were supposed to dislike changing their nature. That was why instead of increasing his affinity to one aura, he could only even out the entirety. The Ley Line, or the individual spirits making it up, was throwing away its authority left and right. He figured out the observer orb by understanding the conservation of authorities as a law, and there was no way the Ley Line could break the rules.

  Reality. Purpose. Ideal. That was the rule Trash had told him about, wasn't it? Since a fire spirit flowing in the Ley Line does not interact with reality, but could potentially give away its authority to the surroundings, then the Ley Line must consist of middle-grade spirits and above. Most likely with a specific purpose or ideal that allowed them to more easily change their nature.

  He felt like his brain was going to crash from all of this new information. His conclusion kind of made sense, and kind of not? Middle and higher-grade spirits were supposed to be rare, not just floating in the air.

  He decided to stop thinking about it. That was enough trying to understand reality for today. There was only one ring around his aura and he guessed he had to go through the torturous journey of being able to differentiate the spectrum of colors corresponding to different spirits to progress to his next ring. Lucky him. He could worry about understanding the Ley Line later.

  Misha wasn't here yet, but he couldn't keep being a garbage man. He had to find that feral, hopefully, learn something from that otherworlder, and defeat it to get invited to the capital for a grand celebration. Sounded logical enough.

  "Trash, do you have any idea how to find the feral?"

  Trash hummed. "Not sure. It would be like trying to find someone like yourself. Hiding away in plain sight."

  "Maybe trying to find this feral was a dumb idea after all. I could just wait for another opportunity that would make the king inclined to invite me to the capital."

  "That could be the right choice to make if you want to be patient, but you are missing something. I was stuck in a rock for who knows how long, so I know a thing or two about patience."

  "And that is?"

  Trash hummed loudly. "Patience sucks! You should make use of every opportunity and live in the moment. Instead of worrying about everything, just focus on escaping this camp. Find that feral already!"

  "Geez, alright."

  He felt a ticklish sensation in his stomach. Having someone that encouraged him felt surprisingly nice.

  Picking up his belongings, he headed to the part of town closer to the Void which they had yet to visit. This was the part of town few people ventured into. Ignoring his curiosity he walked past several other Mementos, focusing on signs of the feral. When he exited the alleyway and entered the road, he pulled out the observer orb.

  From one of the alleys, he noticed something out of the ordinary. Walking towards it and focusing, he noticed a missing patch of aura. He could see that the missing patch of aura was slowly being filled up due to the Ley Line, but it didn't happen instantly. It was like someone had carved out the aura leaving a missing area. Walking into the alleyway he followed the trail to find the source.

  Trash hummed, weakly. "Stay quiet."

  Tom's eyes widened as he sneaked forward. When he saw a bludgeoned corpse lying on the ground, he knew he was on the right track. He felt like puking, screaming, and falling on the ground, but he felt a surge of calm fill his mind. Trash was somehow helping him.

  He attempted to try and figure out who it was, but the corpse was too disfigured. The entire body had been torn open, all their organs smashed into a brown-red puddle.

  He flinched from the sound of something breaking. Putting the orb bag in his satchel he slowly walked around the corpse and to the end of the alleyway and peeked out of it. It was the feral.

  He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but the otherworlder having red skin wasn't it. They didn't wear any clothes, and almost all of their hair had fallen off, what remained soaked in blood as if it had been torn off the scalp. The feral was busy destroying a wheelbarrow into shreds. It wasn't difficult to guess why it was called a feral. He wasn't sure if it still could be reasoned with. Perhaps they were just panicking?

  Using the observer orb he tried looking at their aura from afar. Their aura had a horrid red color. He could see some small patches of a somewhat logical-looking aura, but it was almost as if the red color was eating up the rest. Repeatedly using [stabilize] he saw that the red aura was constantly changing, like someone furiously brushing a paintbrush up and down.

  He opened his eyes, feeling a sudden surge of anger. Didn't that only happen from higher-grade spirits? Was the feral somehow having their aura contaminated by a higher grade spirit, or perhaps even a higher being themselves?

  When the feral decided the wheelbarrow had been sufficiently destroyed, they lunged at the nearby bench, tearing it to shreds with their exceptional strength. Tom wasn't sure what was wrong with this otherworlder, but their full attention was on destruction.

  Ignoring their individual aura for now, he tried to ignore the anger and focused on the rest of the auras. As expected there was a mess of colors where the feral was destroying the wheelbarrow, but instead of slowly changing color to properly represent reality, he again saw a missing patch. Not only was this feral destroying everything in its path with unnatural ferocity, but it was somehow tearing away auras as well. Since the mirror spirit inside the observer orb still showed him the surrounding auras, then the amount of authority must still be conserved. That could only mean the feral was consuming spirit, eating up reality itself.

  Tom swallowed. Hopefully, it looked like it couldn't make any substantial damage from how effective the Ley Line was at patching things up. He could see why having a lot of ferals around would be alarming.

  The sound of a woman screaming echoed from behind him. Tom turned and Misha, fallen on the ground, eyes fixated on the corpse. "Who—." She bent forward and puked.

  "Fart. Misha, go get help!" Tom turned to look at the feral. It stood still, slowly turning its head towards him. He pulled Misha back on her feet and pushed her forward. "NOW!"

  She was still shivering, puke on her clothes, eyes wide, but fortunately she did as he said and ran.

  Tom jumped back, crashing into the wall, barely avoiding the feral that had lunged at him. It was on all fours and turned in an uncanny manner. They snarled, eyes bulging, focused on Tom.

  "Wait!" Tom shouted. "You — you are an otherworlder are you not?"

  The feral was silent. "Otherworlder," it repeated.

  Ignoring the slightly red skin, and all the blood, he could still make out a human. Perhaps he could calm him down?

  "Otherworlder," Tom repeated and pointed at himself. "Isekai."

  He saw a faint glimmer in its eyes. "Isekai?" The feral tilted their head. "Luther likes isekai."

  They weren't trying to kill him, that was good. "Is your name Luther?" Tom asked.

  Before the feral could reply, their entire body flew past him and crashed into a wall. Screeching, the feral quickly recovered but was pushed into the wall again.

  Tom turned to the other end of the alley and saw an error cultist walking towards them. They had a bucket in their hand, and every time the feral tried to get back on its feet the cultist could throw something out of their bucket at the feral. The cultist ignored Tom and walked up to the feral. Still not budging, the feral lunged towards the cultist, who in turn held up their bucket. In the blink of an eye, the feral disappeared.

  "Did the feral get sucked into the bucket?" Tom said. He walked up to the cultist. "Why did you—?"

  The cultist, a man, sighed. "Zero. Deal with this one."

  "Alrighty."

  Something crashed on the ground behind him. Tom turned to see another cultist on the ground. When he turned back to the other cultist, they were gone.

  "Ouch. Messed up my footing. Now who do we … Oh, it's you! Mister Tomassio Rossi. A pleasure to see you again. Did you think about my offer?"

  "Why did you two take the feral? I almost managed to calm it down!"

  The cultist pushed a fractured limb back into its socket. "Now, as curious as I am about your knowledge of the beyond, you would never be able to keep that feral calm for long."

  "Then are you going to transport it to the guards?"

  Zero shook his head. "I am afraid not. Finders keepers. Our organization has a certain … interest in these creatures. Normally we wouldn't be that desperate to acquire one, but the head of the cult wanted to show one off at the summit." He bowed. "Regardless of our disagreements, I do hope to see you at the summit. We will welcome you with open arms." Taking a step back, he threw a smoke bomb on the ground.

  "Space no, you—." Tom coughed, fanning the smoke away. When the smoke had disappeared, Zero was nowhere to be seen.

  Trash hummed. "There goes your ticket to get out of this camp. What do we do now?"

  Tom clenched his fist. No one took away his big moment and got away with it. "Time to take down a cult."