My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World
Chapter 105: The Illusive Woods

Chapter 105: The Illusive Woods

After the group of soldiers from the Droman Empire were taken to safety by the knights of the 7th, Vespera, Gina, and I decided to check the Illusive Woods and look for the two missings.

Yoru stayed inside my shadow in case of emergencies, and Commander Valentina saw us fly away from the top of the border wall.

The entire forest felt like it was shrouded by some strange energy.

The grass was dark blue, and the tree leaves looked like sapphires, which I thought looked quite pretty and enchanting.

As we flew above the blue forest, we kept our eyes peeled for any soldier we could find. However, we didn’t even see a single animal walking around.

It took us a few minutes of flying in all directions when I spotted something using my "search" spell, and when we quickly arrived at the destination, we found one of the missing soldiers unconscious.

I told Gina to stay in the air while Vespera and I checked it out, slowly descending onto the pretty but eerie forest.

The soldier had a bruise on his head and was missing his helmet, so it was safe to say that something hit him hard enough to make him lose consciousness in the middle of nowhere.

Using a healing potion on the guy, I asked Vespera to carry him back while I searched for the other.

My companion flew up first, carrying the soldier as I took one last look around. However, as soon as my feet started elevating so that I could fly away, I felt a strong pull that kept me grounded.

Gazing around me again, I noticed my vision was getting shorter as I realized I couldn’t see past two meters in front of me, with a black fog shrouding the distance from my eyes.

To make it worse, I could feel something watching me and moving around the bushes.

I readied my bo and adopted a combat position while listening closely to the sounds that came beyond the fog.

"Ichiro!" I heard Gina yell, followed by a massive gust of wind that blew away the fog, turning my vision back to normal.

When I looked up, I saw Gina still flying in the air after casting a wind surge.

Flying quickly towards her and getting out of the woods, she told me that for a moment, I just stood there without moving a muscle, making her worry.

"I think I was being targeted by the illusions..." I said, explaining to her what I had seen.

"After you cast that wind spell, the illusion disappeared." I continued.

Feeling glad that we decided to keep someone above the ground in case of emergencies, we kept flying, looking for the last soldier.

An hour later, Vespera caught back up with us after leaving the first survivor at the border and told us that she had felt something with her "search" spell.

Following my companion’s directions, we found what looked like a hole in the ground.

It wasn’t a big hole, but the radius was large enough to make a person fall to the bottom.

"You guys stay here..." I said to Gina and Vespera, asking them to stay flying in the air in case I got targeted by another illusion.

When I descended, I inspected the hole closely, which only made it seem more uncanny to me, as if the orifice wasn’t supposed to be there.

’An illusion?’ I wondered as I put my hand through it.

’It’s a real hole... what?’ I thought, racking my brain with possibilities as to what was happening.

The hole just didn’t look real, and I couldn’t see the bottom of it either, making me cast a tiny light mote and drop it inside to see how deep it went down.

Nonetheless, the light kept going down, seemingly into a bottomless pit, slowly fading into the darkness.

’Yeah, there is no chance I’m jumping in...’ I thought.

However, just as I was about to stand up to try something different, the hole’s radius expanded significantly and caught me.

I tried activating my enchants to fly away, but the same force from before prevented me from doing it and made me fall into the bottomless, dark pit.

Honestly, I started panicking a little, so I cast fire and wind magic in all directions, but my attacks weren’t hitting anything as I kept falling into nothing.

Darkness expanded all around me, and I could feel my body was still falling, but I couldn’t tell how far I was from the bottom.

"Hey!" I yelled, thinking that someone or something could maybe hear me.

Nonetheless, no sound came out of my mouth when I spoke, which only made me panic even more.

Gathering more than half of my MP, I focused on casting a massive radiant light that could illuminate the area. If I could at least see where I was for a moment, I could plan something out.

Seeing the light reflecting on an object not too far from me, I kept falling in the direction of the thing until I noticed it was a piece of the soldier’s shoulder armor that reflected the light.

’The missing guy!’ I thought.

The man wasn’t lying on the ground or anything. He was falling unconsciously into the empty space, just like me.

Diving down and gaining more speed on my fall, I managed to catch up with the soldier and grabbed him by the shoulder.

As I quickly racked my brain for another idea, I felt something sticking to my back and pulling me up, stopping our fall and leaving us hanging in the middle of the darkness for a brief moment before it began pulling us up.

Looking back, I saw a thick spiderweb stuck to my torso that kept wrapping around me and securing me as it quickly pulled us upwards.

’Vespera?’ I thought, getting a strange feeling inside me that was trying to make me go unconscious.

’Something doesn’t want me to be awake...’ I deduced, slapping myself to keep me awake as Vespera kept pulling me out of the hole.

Suddenly, the light of the outside came into view, which blinded me momentarily as I fell on my back and saw Vespera with a somewhat distressed face.

"What the hell was that!?" Vespera asked with a worried tone.

"No idea. But we should get out of here, now." I said, quickly standing up and grabbing the unconscious soldier before flying back to the border.

When we arrived at the base of the 7th order and left the man at the infirmary after giving them healing potions, I explained what I had seen to the group and Commander Valentina.

"Valentina. Have the Illusive Woods always been like this?" I asked the commander, knowing that she had been in Sephyr her entire life.

However, she told me that ever since she was born, the Illusive Woods had been the same way, which was why most of the trading for the nation was done via ports and not through land.

The fact that the Droman Empire had sent a group of soldiers through the woods meant that they were desperate since cutting through the forest was a much shorter trip than taking a boat, although a more perilous one.

I was getting more curious about the Droman Empire, and seeing that Gina was getting nervous whenever they spoke of Kalusia’s attacks, I decided we should check it out.

Gina was against me at first, saying that it wasn’t our problem. But I could tell she just wanted us not to get involved.

"I’m not saying I’m gonna go and fight Zagor. I just want to see what’s really happening." I told the battle-maid, who was adamant about us not leaving the country.

"I understand if you don’t want to go, Gina..." I said, but my words only made her angrier.

"Ichiro..." Gina said, looking down with a blank expression.

"You may be really strong, but you have no idea what a war against a devil looks like..." she said coldly.

To be fair, she was right. I had never been in a war, or at least not a big-scale one.

"Who said I was going to war?" I replied with a question.

"Gina, we are checking it out, and then we will think about a solution. First, we need to identify the problem." I said, making the maid snap at me again.

"The problem is Zagor!" she exclaimed, her voice slightly breaking.

"Alright, then let’s solve the problem!" I yelled back at her with confidence.

The maid clenched her teeth and looked down with apprehension.

"Why? This doesn’t concern you..." she responded.

"Well, I had already decided to help you the first time you told me about Kalusia. This war could also become a problem in the future for us, so... It kinda is my problem, you know?" I said.

"I don’t understand... Why would you decide to help me back then...?" Gina asked again with a sad tone.

"Because you are my friend? Do I need some sort of grand reason to help my friends?" I asked.

"You could die!" she quickly replied.

"True, but I’d rather die helping someone than dying like a coward," I said, making Gina go silent momentarily.

"Fine..." the maid whispered.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said fine! Let’s take care of this problem, then!" Gina replied with confidence and a little tear rolling down her cheek.

Giving her a bright smile, I told the group we would leave the following morning.