Chapter 6: The Stigma
Levi sat at the back of the wagon, his fingers idly tracing patterns in the wood as the forest scenery swept past.
His thoughts drifted back to the events of yesterday. While he was having dinner with his family, a horde of monsters attacked their village, killing almost everyone.
Fortunately, his father, a strong mage, was able to protect them to some extent. However, a man who commanded the monsters appeared, seemingly knowing Levi's father. Immediately, his father instructed him to take his sister and leave.
Realizing he would only be a burden, Levi didn't protest. He took his little sister and ran toward the forest he was familiar with.
Despite his sister's pleas to go back, Levi denied her with a firm heart. The enemy was strong enough to demand his father's full attention, and he couldn't afford to distract him by staying.
After running for two hours, he was forced to stop as monsters blocked his path. His heart pounded as he faced them, but he couldn't show fear with his terrified sister beside him.
After reassuring her and vowing to protect her, he struggled to fight the monsters. Levi lacked the talent to be a magician or a warrior, and he was barely stronger than an ordinary human due to his years of training and hunting animals.
Just when he was about to succumb to despair and death seemed imminent, he felt a sudden surge of strength, accompanied by a strange message appearing in his vision.
The sudden boost gave him enough strength to not just fight back against the monsters, but with each one he killed, he felt himself growing stronger.
The feeling of getting stronger filled him with joy, consuming him as he fought the monsters. But when he finally defeated them all and turned to his sister, she was nowhere to be found.
He called out to her repeatedly, but received no response, filling him with dread once more. Fear gripped his heart as he considered the worst, that she had died. Yet, he quickly shook his head, convincing himself that she must have felt scared and fled.
Just as he began to search for his sister, a sudden shift occurred, as if the space around him shattered, and he was thrown into an infinite void before finding himself in an entirely different place.
He was still in a forest, but it was unlike the one he had just been in moments ago. The monsters' corpses had disappeared, and the trees were larger and taller.
Stunned and bewildered by the sudden change, he didn't let his thoughts delay him from searching for his sister. However, shortly after wandering through the forest, he encountered a group of hunters who claimed he was trespassing in the temple's forbidden zone and attempted to kill him.
Outnumbered and exhausted, Levi fought to the bitter end. However, he was just too worn out, and his enemies were much stronger than the monsters he had fought. In the end, he lost consciousness after receiving a powerful attack.
After regaining consciousness, he found himself in the mines, and after a few inquiries, he pieced together his situation. It turned out that after the hunters beat him unconscious, they brought him here to work as a slave.
Gritting his teeth with resentment, Levi recalled those heartless individuals. They hadn't even given him a chance to explain himself before subjecting him to such brutality.
As much as he longed for revenge, he knew he had more pressing priorities. He needed to escape from this place somehow and find his sister. That was the last request his father had given him—to protect her.
He was certain that whatever strange phenomenon had happened to him, it must have affected his sister as well, possibly transporting her to an entirely different location. Yet he was determined to find her, no matter what.
****
Levi's thoughts were interrupted as he witnessed a man suddenly leap off the wagon, bolting until his figure vanished behind the trees.
Stunned by the man's boldness, Levi stood frozen for a moment before quickly surveying his surroundings.
The wagon carrying the guards was still far back, so they couldn't possibly see as one of the slaves escaped.
This realization made Levi's eyes light up. Since the guards weren't keeping a tight watch, didn't that mean he could escape as well? If he entered the forest, he was sure they wouldn't be able to track him down, as he was familiar with it.
After checking several times and seeing no one going after the escaping young man, Levi made up his mind.
He stood up and approached the edge of the wagon. Just as he was about to jump off, a voice rang out, stopping him in his tracks.
"Don't!" someone yelled.
Glancing behind him, Levi turned his head, expecting the driver to be the one who spoke, but he was wrong. Instead, he saw a young man who looked about his age with short black hair and gray eyes looking at him.
Before Levi could say anything, the young man with gray eyes spoke. "I advise you not to do what you're about to."
"What do you mean? How do you know what I'm about to do?" Confused, Levi asked.
"You are planning to jump outside the wagon and escape just like that man did."
The young man spoke with a tone devoid of doubt, seemingly confident in his conclusion.
"So what? Are you going to stop me?" Levi saw no point in hiding the truth since the other passengers seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion, and it wasn't hard to guess after one had already escaped. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at the young man. If anyone stood in his way and tried to stop him, then that person could only blame himself for sticking his nose in none of his business.
"No," the young man replied surprisingly, seemingly having no intention of stopping Levi as he expected, and continued, "Like I said, I only advise you not to be foolish and do that. You're only going to suffer."
"Huh, what do you mean?" Levi questioned further.
"Let me answer your question with another question of my own," Eric said. "Why do you think there are only a handful of guards keeping watch over tens of us? It would be impossible for them to watch us all the time. So, someone can slip away at any time. Yet they don't seem to care about that. Why?"
"I don't know," Levi replied.
"Ignoring the fact that after escaping from the wagon, the only place you'll go to hide is the forest filled with dangerous monsters that could tear you apart, Some might not even last a day if they were unlucky enough to encounter a monster."
"And the second reason?"
"It's because of this," Eric revealed the temple's stigma, the coiling snake on his shoulder. "As long as this stigma is still on you, you can never hope to escape."
"I don't understand. What does this stigma exactly do?"
Unlike Eric, who was familiar with the novel, Levi didn't know anything. This was his first day in the mines, and when he woke up, he found that tattoo on his shoulder. He thought it was only a mark that branded him as a member of the temple, but from the man's words, it seemed like it was more than that.
"The stigma is a runic spell that would activate once you left a certain distance away from the temple's territory. Once activated, it would immediately crush your heart, killing you on the spot."
"What!!" Levi was stunned, not expecting that the stigma would have such a deadly effect.
"What? Did you expect it was a decoration put on us to mark us like sheep?" Eric mocked.
Levi looked at the snake tattoo on his shoulder, lost in thought. His father was a rank 3 magician, so he had some knowledge about spells, as his father used to perform them on him and his sister, but he had never heard of a runic spell before.
Not knowing whether Eric was lying or telling the truth, Levi turned his attention toward the other passengers and asked, "Is this true, what he just said?"
"Yeah, everything that young man said is right," said the driver. "It's a pity, but the fate of the man who just jumped is doomed."
Seeing the others nodding their heads in agreement, Levi clenched his fists. Deep down, he knew something was fishy after seeing the lack of security back in the mines, but he ignored his gut feeling and convinced himself that the guards wouldn't expect someone to try to escape.
But he never expected that the small tattoo on his shoulder would have such a lethal effect.
He was in a hurry to find his sister, but if what they said was true, then he would die if he tried to escape while the stigma was still on him.
"Sorry, Liz, just wait for me for a little while," Levi thought. "I will definitely get out of here and find you."
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