From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Chapter 68: A Shadowy Figure

A figure shifted and bounced along the dark interplay of light, advancing toward Nana.

Todd, in a drunken haze, stumbled in, knocking Nana aside.

The ghostly figure began to wrap around Todd's hand as he crashed to the ground, causing the figure to struggle to escape.

Ty, thinking quickly, summoned an orb and began to use fire to illuminate the area.

As the dark shadow's cloak began to fade, an arm formed for a brief moment, bearing the print of a three-leaf clover on the edge of his wrist.

Ty launched a fireball in the figure's direction before it slipped through the cracks in the walls and disappeared into the evening night.

Ty was engulfed in small flames that wrapped around his body, traveling down his arms, with embers spewing from his mouth, acting as a beacon for everyone.

Ty's voice cut through the darkness as a soft whisper echoed, "Let me loose?" The voice vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

"I think so," Nana said, her voice tentative in the newly returned light.

The innkeeper, with a trickle of blood meandering down from her scalp, caught Nana's attention.

Moving quickly, Nana approached her, kneeling to assess the injury.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" Nana asked, inspecting the wound and preparing for the worst.

The innkeeper looked up, to Nana's surprise, and assured, "Yes, yes, just a bruise. It will heal."

"Thank you for saving me," the innkeeper said with a shaky relief. "I don't know what I would have done if he had robbed me. He took me by surprise during my laundry chores and plunged the place into darkness."

The innkeeper slowly rose to her feet, brushing off the dirt from her apron. "Thank you for all your help," she said, her warm smile a stark contrast to the chaos earlier. "You can stay the rest of the night for free." Her quick rebound surprised Nana.

Ty, hefting Todd, who was passed out and snoring, stared into the distance. He was deep in thought, searing the critical details of the skirmish into his memory.

Shadow man. Clover tattoo. Injured innkeeper.

Ty dragged Todd toward their room. "Nana, finish helping the innkeeper and then get some sleep," he called back.

Nana gave a slight nod in acknowledgment.

Ty's thoughts raced as he moved. Incidents like this don't just happen without reason, he reminded himself. We have to stay vigilant. And that voice he'd heard... He kept it at the forefront of his mind.

Ty opened the door effortlessly, dragging Todd inside and dumping the hefty figure onto the bed. Straightening up and panting from exhaustion, he quipped, "We need to put you on a diet," his words tinged with jest.

Nana burst in moments later, her smile bright and cheeks a rosy hue of red. "It's one thing after another, isn't it?" she exclaimed.

Ty eyed her with a hint of concern. "Have you been drinking or something? Your cheeks are flushed. And is the old lady okay?"

With a light laugh, Nana replied, "Just a bit, when no one was looking. So don't worry about me blowing my cover," followed by a slight hiccup.

Ty shook his head slightly, a bemused expression crossing his face. "Hopeless, I see. Well, try to get some sleep; we've got a long day of walking ahead of us," he said, pulling out a map and studying it to determine the best route.

"Walk? Why don't we just get some travel animals?" Nana questioned, her eyes curiously on Ty.

"Maybe we can eventually, but for now, we need to lay low. We've already had run-ins with bandits and now this," Ty responded, gesturing to their surroundings. "It's all happened in such a short span."

He traced a path with his finger on the map. "I think this will serve us well until we learn a bit more about their transportation system, so we don't accidentally wander onto any bad trade routes."

Nana looked at Ty with a mix of admiration and surprise. "Wow, you really think everything through, don't you?"

"I try to," Ty replied, his focus still on the map. "I want to make sure we meet the least amount of resistance and run into as few problems as possible," he said, even as his vision began to blur from the day's fatigue.

Ty, feeling the weight of his exhaustion, remarked, "Looks like I've hit my limit," before stumbling back onto the couch. "I still don't understand why my vision blurs and I lose consciousness, but the less I fight it, the faster I seem to wake back up," he said to Nana, who was only half listening.

As Ty's vision faded, he fell back onto the couch. When he next opened his eyes, he found himself engulfed in an unnerving vision -- a lake of water that was boiling and slowly evaporating around him.

Off in the distance at the edge of the lake sat a cloaked figure with a darkened beard and eyes along his cloak that weren't there the last time he had been in this place.

"Hey, Mr., why am I here again?" Ty asked, his voice echoing in the strange dreamscape.

The figure before him jolted its head up, as if waking from a deep slumber. Ty noticed scars marring the person's body and a profound fatigue in their heavy-lidded gaze as they looked toward him.

With a slow, deliberate movement, the figure spoke in Ty's direction. The voice seemed to resonate directly within Ty's mind rather than through the air.

"Someone has interrupted my casting and aims to undo my bindings," the figure's echoed message filled Ty's consciousness, laden with a weary urgency.

"The fragments of me are slowly breaking," the figure in the vision conveyed with a sense of fading strength. "I will trust you to figure out who is doing this, as my descendant. Your transformation is needed."

"Transformation into what?" Ty called out, but his words seemed to dissolve into the air as the vision faded away.

He opened his eyes to the mundane reality of their room.

Ty was covered in a blanket, Todd was out cold, snoring on the couch, and as he attempted to sit up, he noticed Nana using his left arm as a body pillow.

She was snoring softly, a contented smile on her face even in sleep, oblivious to the small pool of drool she had left on his arm.

Annoyance flickered across Ty's face as he tried to gently extract his arm from Nana's grip. However, instead of letting go, she only tightened her hold momentarily before finally jetting away, suddenly complaining of an intense headache.

"I told you not to drink. And why were you cuddling my arm?!" Ty exclaimed, a mix of frustration and curiosity in his voice.

"Well, Todd hogged the entire bed, and you were on the couch," Nana retorted, flipping her hair with a pronounced yawn as she stood up. "I wasn't about to sleep on the floor," she added, her voice betraying the remnants of sleep as she began to regain her full alertness.

"Besides, your arm made a good pillow, so thank you," Nana said with a mischievous glint in her eye.

"Does that mean we're even for what I did to your arm back on Alexira?" Ty asked, hoping to resolve past grievances.

Nana shot him a quick look, her expression half serious, half playful. "No, of course not," she declared. "It was my arm and my shoulder that got hurt," she said, pointing to the scar as evidence of the ordeal. Her tone left no room for argument, but the light in her eyes suggested she was partly jesting with Ty.