*You have to die many times over before you can make it...*
It was the exact same phrase Kian had told her four days ago. Her heart pounded in her chest.
"Thank you so much for answering our questions," Celia said, bowing her head. "I know your time is valuable, so I have to thank you somehow. Can we pay with silver coins?"
The Assistant Director waved her hands frantically. "Oh, no! Actually, I answered your questions because there is something I want to ask of you. A favor."
"A favor from me?" Celia asked.
"Yes," the Assistant Director said shyly, her cheeks turning slightly pink. "Can I... you see... if you would..."
"What is it?" Celia tilted her head.
The Assistant Director took a deep breath and almost shouted the words. "Can I please touch your ears?!"
She tightly squeezed her eyes shut, entirely embarrassed by her own outburst. Celia stood completely stunned by the simple, strange request.
Ever since I met the Director, I've been wanting to touch her ears, the Assistant Director thought, her hands fidgeting nervously. But I am terrified to ask her. I'm just so curious what it feels like to touch a real elf's ears!
Celia smiled softly. She moved her blonde hair away from the side of her head and gestured with her hand, offering the Assistant Director a polite go-ahead signal.
The Assistant Director reached out with trembling fingers. She gently pinched the tip of Celia's pointed ear.
Oh my goodness! she exclaimed internally, her heart soaring with academic joy. It's so soft! It feels like velvet! Finally, I touched an elf's ear! My life is complete!
"Thank you again, kind lady," Celia said warmly.
Celia and Lumina turned around and walked away from the grand stone building.
A woman with long silver hair walked out of the main doors and approached the Assistant Director, who was still staring at her own fingers with a goofy smile on her face.
"What's going on here?" the silver-haired woman asked.
The Assistant Director jumped, completely startled. "Oh, Director Rho! It's nothing."
The guard immediately bowed to the new arrival. The Director looked at her assistant suspiciously, then she said, "Come to the magic lab. We have more things to do."
"Yes, Director," the Assistant Director replied quickly.
The Director looked out toward the bustling street, but she did not see anyone out of the ordinary. She turned around and went back inside the Institute.
---
Two weeks had passed since Celia and Lumina visited the Vireldrian Institute of Etheric Research, and the party now found itself deep inside the stone corridors of a mid-level dungeon.
The air smelled of wet moss and stale dust, but the group moved with a rhythmic steady pace while the sound of their boots echoed against the uneven walls. Lumina gripped her wooden staff with white knuckles, and she kept a constant stream of Mana flowing toward Kian to maintain the floating spell.
Celia stood on the opposite side while her palm glowed with a soft green light, and she channeled a low-level healing spell directly into Kian's arms just as he had commanded weeks prior.
Kian hovered ten centimeters above the filthy floor while he casually reached into a small pouch, so he pulled out a bright Glisberry and popped it into his mouth. He chewed the sweet fruit slowly, and he seemed entirely unbothered by the fact that his two backline members were physically shaking from the continuous strain.
Then the silence of the cavern shattered. The light surrounding Kian's body suddenly flickered and vanished, and the invisible force holding him in the air evaporated in a single second.
Tap-clack.
Kian's expensive leather shoes hit the hard dirt of the dungeon floor with a sharp, heavy sound. He stumbled a half-step forward, but he quickly caught his balance while he frowned in deep annoyance. Brown and Red stopped their march and looked back, and they fully expected to see Lumina sitting on the ground to complain about her Mana Exhaustion.
But the scene was different this time.
Lumina did not drop to her knees, and she did not let out a tired sigh. She fell flat toward the ground like a tree with severed roots, and her face slammed directly into the hard grit of the cavern floor.
Thud.
Her wooden staff slipped from her fingers, and it rolled across the stones until it hit a rock with a hollow metallic ring.
Clang.
The rest of the group stood still for a heartbeat, and they assumed she had simply reached her limit again. But Lexi was the first person to notice the anomaly. As a Thief, her eyes were naturally tuned to the biological leak of energy, and she pushed her radar toward the fallen girl.
Lexi froze in place, and her breathing stopped while a cold chill ran straight down her spine. She looked at Lumina's body, but her senses registered a terrifying void. The air around the young Mage was entirely empty, and the natural hum of being alive had vanished into a dark silence.
What is happening, Lexi thought. Why is she not emitting a single drop of Life Force.
Celia was the second person to realize the gravity of the fall. The Healer stood perfectly rigid for a second, and she felt a wave of raw terror consume her chest. Her mind raced back to the words of the Assistant Director at the Institute, and she remembered the warning about the imploding glass bottle. Celia realized what Lumina had done, and she feared the girl had finally attempted the impossible gamble.
"Lumi, don't tell me... you..." Celia whispered to the empty air, and her voice cracked with a heavy desperation.
The elf Healer rushed toward the fallen girl in a state of pure panic, and she dropped to her knees on the ground beside her friend. When Pink and Yellow reached Lumina's side, the young Mage was already entirely unconscious.
Kian watched the chaos from a few meters away, and he stayed quiet while he swallowed the last bit of his Glisberry. He saw the girl lying in the dust and wondered if she was out cold because this specific type of collapse had never happened before. He thought about her limit, and he wondered if his unreasonable demands had finally broken her.
Celia frantically grabbed Lumina's wrist, and she searched for a throb of life against the skin. She hoped with everything she had that she would feel a throb from the girl's heart, but the wrist stayed silent. She pressed her fingers against the neck, and she felt nothing but cold, unmoving flesh.
Lumina's heart was not beating.
"Lumi!" Celia screamed and began to shake the girl's small shoulders violently.
The sound of the scream echoed through the entire tunnel, and caused Brown and Red to stop taking monster parts from a nearby corpse.
Red ran back toward the group
"What is happening?" Read asked while he gripped the hilt of his sword.
Pink stood over them and stared at the void. She thought about the possibility that the girl was already dead.
How it is possible? Pink wondered.
Without waiting for an answer, Yellow immediately began to press her hands against Lumina's chest. She performed CPR with a rhythmic, desperate force. She used her body weight to pump the heart that refused to move.
Yellow was the only person in the cavern who possessed a clue about the cause of the disaster. She knew that Lumina had deliberately exhausted all her Mana to absolute zero. She understood it was a foolish and risky move born out of a raw desire to be strong.
The girl had done it out of pure desperation to impress Kian. She had ignored the high probability of death.
Celia knew she most likely only had two minutes or so to revive the girl before the Mana Core shattered into pieces forever. She did not know what she was doing but she had to try everything she can.
No matter how much Celia pressed the chest, the heart stayed silent. She pumped the ribs while she simultaneously tried to cast a healing spell, but the green light refused heal. Everything failed to work, and the panic in Celia's eyes turned into a deep, suffocating grief.
Kian walked slowly toward the group, and he looked down at the scene while he thought about what a mess it was. He actually had no idea that Lumina was about to die, and he did not understand the medical emergency unfolding on the dungeon floor. He saw the girl's pale face and concluded that she simply lacked energy because she forgot to eat breakfast earlier that morning. He thought she was just hungry, and he decided to help in his own lazy way.
Kian knelt down in the grit and picked up two fresh Glisberries from his pouch. He reached out and placed his index and thumb finger toward the mouth of the unconscious girl. He forced her jaw open.
When his fingers entered Lumina's mouth, he crushed the fruit between his tips. The sweet, sticky liquid scattered across her tongue. It reached her throat before trickling down toward her stomach.
Nothing happened for a long ten seconds. Celia continued to sob while she pumped the chest. Kian frowned while he looked at the girl.
She probably needed more fruit to eat, Kian thought.
He placed more Glisberries inside her mouth and crushed the juice directly into her throat until the purple liquid stained her lips.
Suddenly, a faint beat was felt by Celia beneath her palms. The throb was weak and erratic, but it was undeniable. Pink's eyes widened while she watched the air. She saw a very tiny amount of Life Force begin to emit from Lumina's body. The void started to fill with a flickering, biological hum.
Celia's panic vanished in an instant, and she realized the heart was moving again. She felt the warmth return to the girl's skin. The crushing weight on her own chest lifted.