Warlock of Oceans: My Poseidon System

Chapter 19 Strange Orphanage

Who is this woman? Where am I? How did I get here? And... how am I still alive?

As soon as the woman finished slicing the apple into a flower shape, she took out a wooden plate from the bedside table and placed the flowered apple onto it.

Slowly, I maneuvered to the back of the bed, where I came out from the other side, but it seemed she noticed me since she suddenly said,

"Oh, that's where you were. Come here and eat some food. You must be starving,"

When I tried to break out through the window, I noticed it was already open, and I stumbled into a patch of fresh vegetables that dirtied me and just cleaned my body up.

"I need to escape," I muttered, but just as I reached the wooden fence, the woman called back out to me.

"Where are you going!? I swear I won't hurt you!" She shouted, and her voice was like honey that tried to soothe my mind.

I wasn't about to trust her that easily... but I had nowhere to go for now, so I decided to end up using her until I could just escape with a full belly and clean clothes.

"Also... Wait, my stuff? Where is my stuff?" I muttered as I patted down my body as if the things I had collected were going to be there.

Suddenly, the happy cheering and laughing of kids burst into the garden, which I noticed was not only made up of fresh vegetables but lovely-smelling flowers as well.

"Huff... Huff... Huff... Huff,"

The woman had caught up to me, and as she bent over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath, I slowly backed away.

"No, it's alright, I won't hurt you," She said as she slowly approached me as if she was trying to calm down a rabid beast.

In fact, that might be what the woman is thinking of me right now...

"Don't worry. We didn't go through your stuff, but make sure everything is there. I have to check up on the two we just passed," The woman said, and soon she quickly dashed into the hallway, leaving me alone in this small room.

Everything was cleaner than an ordinary house in the slums, but from what it looked like, the closer you got to the city, the less broken each home was.

I could see the central city was only about a mile or two away from where this house was, and everything around us seemed like a pretty typical town with extra small dwellings.

"Huh? Why is there... lingering mana in the air?" I muttered to myself after checking to make sure everything was in my makeshift sack.

And yes, everything was there, including the small sludge trait book I had picked up from that dungeon.

But that wasn't important right now because lingering mana in the air could either mean two things...

One, somebody placed a magic bomb, and it is about to go off, or two, somebody's magic core had broken, and it was leaking mana all over the place.

"Let's check if there's a scent... Nope, no scent of mana powder... meaning somebody's core was leaking...."

I began to trail the lingering blue powder that hung in the air before stopping in place.

I should be worrying more about myself first than anybody else.

And as there was nobody here, I decided to go ahead and use the trait stone, which I held in the palm of my hand while closing my eyes.

Sparks flew in the air, burning my hand, but I was already proficient in absorbing things like this, so this only lasted for a couple of seconds before the stone completely vanished into my palm.

A black horizontal lightning bolt symbol stretched across my hand, and before I could reach into the sack to grab the skill book, I heard a blood-curdling scream come down from the hall.