Chapter 36: The World Awaits.
Thank you very much, as always, for reading.
Today, I'd like to briefly introduce two of my recently published stories.
Jōkipon
What if a nation had chosen steam instead of electricity?
What if Edison's inventions had never reached that country?
Jōkipon is an alternate-history world where steam power and kinetic engineering became the foundation of civilization.
The Submarine Pitcher Who Created the Impossible Pitch.
A promise between a pitcher and her catcher.
To reach the national championship—and to win it together.
To keep that promise, Ritsuko creates the "Depth Charge," an unconventional pitching technique that combines a submarine delivery with a forkball, despite everyone telling her to abandon it.
Although these stories belong to completely different genres, they both share a theme that is important to me: never giving up.
If either story sounds interesting, I'd be delighted if you gave it a look.
Thank you again for your continued support.
Morning.
I arrived at the training grounds as I usually do. The crystal walls held their usual light. The ground was worn smooth by months of practice. The air was still.
The Fairy King was already waiting.
No lesson today. No magic circles. No sword practice. Just silence.
He looked at me for a long moment, his star-dusted eyes carrying the particular weight of something ending.
He studied me for a moment, the way he always had, as if he could see the shape of what I was becoming. "You have learned the foundations. The rest will come from the world itself."
"Thank you." The words felt small. Inadequate. But they were true.
He inclined his head. "Remember, Elsbeth. The world is a better teacher than I am."
I understood.
My training was over. Not because I had mastered everything, I hadn't. Not because there was nothing left to learn, there was always more. But because the Spire had given me what it could. The rest would have to come from somewhere else.
I stood there, letting it settle.
Two years. Two years of circles and sigils and ink and echoes. learning to command the doll, to wear the armor, to read the emotions that lingered and the vibrations that connected. Two years of becoming someone I had not been when I arrived.
The Fairy King did not offer congratulations. He did not offer praise. He simply stood there, present, the way he had been since the beginning.
Then he summoned someone.
A young woman stepped forward. She was not Caelwyn, this one was built differently, compact and practical, her movements carrying the economy of someone who had learned to survive. Her hair was dark, pulled back. Her eyes were steady.
She bowed.
The Fairy King introduced her. "This is Kaede, she will accompany you."
Not as a bodyguard. Not as a teacher. As a companion.
I looked at her. She looked at me.
I hope we could get along. I had spent years learning from the Fairy King, from Caelwyn, from the warrior. Now I would learn from someone closer to my age.
The fairy king then took out a pendant and handed it to me, saying. "Take this with you, Elsbeth it will erase your presence to the elementals, the effect is not as strong as the ring was, but it will help."
"Thank you," I said.
I took the pendant and wore it around my neck.
The Fairy King inclined his head. "You are no longer learning magic. Now you will learn consequences."
"Go," he said. "The world has been waiting for you."
I turned. The young woman fell into step beside me. The grimoire was under my arm.
I walked out of the training grounds.
I did not look back.
The end of training. The beginning of something else. I did not know what it would be. But I was ready to find out.
The goodbyes were quiet.
Caelwyn was in the archive, as she always was. She looked up when I entered, her pale eyes already reading my face.
"You're leaving."
"Yes."
She set down the book she had been cataloguing. The silence between us was not awkward, it was the particular silence of two people who had worked together, learned together, and understood each other without needing many words.
"And I presume Kaede will be going with you." she asked.
I nodded.
"She is a good warrior; she will be able to help you." She added.
"And Caelwyn, thank you." I added.
She inclined her head, her silver hair catching the light. "You did not come to me for the right answers. You came to me for the right questions. That made you easy to work with."
The warrior was in the training ground, as if he had known I would come. He did not stop his practice. He simply continued the sequence he was working through, his blade moving in precise arcs.
I stood at the edge and waited.
"I am leaving," I said.
He did not pause. "I know."
I waited for something more. Some acknowledgment of the months we had spent together, the hours of instruction and correction and the particular rhythm of learning through repetition.
He completed his sequence. Only then did he turn and look at me. "You learned to think before you moved," he said. "That is what keeps people alive. Keep doing it."
He did not say goodbye. He simply resumed his practice, giving me permission to leave without ceremony.
***
The next morning, I stood at the boundary of the Spire. The crystal corridors stretched behind me, holding the years I had spent here. The jungle was ahead, and beyond it, the world.
I didn't look back.
If I did...
I wasn't sure I would leave.
Kaede stood beside me, her pack secured, her eyes scanning the horizon with the particular attention of someone who had never been to the place we were going.
She was curious. I had not needed to ask.
"Why do you carry blank paper?"
"Because it's the grimoire," I said. "It's what I draw my armor from."
She looked at the book under my arm. "And the doll? Why a doll?"
I glanced down at my side. "She was the first thing I made. She stays because she's mine."
A beat. "Have you ever been outside before?"
I considered that. "I was born outside. I was raised in a village, a lifetime ago. But not this world. Not since I became who I am now."
"And the Fairy King," she said. "Why does he trust you so much?"
I thought about the question.
"Because I didn't stop asking," I said. "Even when I didn't know the answer."
She studied me for a moment. Then she nodded, accepting the answer without pushing further.
We started walking.
The Spire's familiar light faded behind us. The jungle's green closed around us. The path ahead was unknown.
But I was not alone.
And I had questions I was still learning to ask.
We walked for three days before we saw the town.
The jungle had thinned gradually, the canopy opening to reveal sky, the undergrowth giving way to cleared land. Then the road had appeared, not a path, not a track, a proper road, with cart ruts and worn stones and the particular quality of a route that had been used for generations.
And then the town.
I stopped at the crest of the hill, looking down at it. The first civilization I had seen since leaving my village.
Smoke rose from chimneys. The sound of voices carried on the wind, not the close, intimate sounds of a village, but the layered noise of a place with more people than I had been around in years.
I could see the market square. The stone buildings. The wall around the perimeter, not high enough to keep out a determined enemy, but high enough to mark the boundary.
People moved through the streets. Merchants with carts. Adventurers with weapons. Children running between adults. A woman hanging laundry from an upper window. A man arguing with a stall-keeper over the price of something I could not identify from this distance.
The world suddenly felt much larger than the Fairy Realm.
Kaede stood beside me, following my gaze.
"First time in a town like this?" she asked.
"Actually, I have been to this town with Fairy King before." I said. "But that was long time ago."
“I was not able to see all these.”
She did not press. She simply waited, letting me look as long as I needed.
I watched the people. The merchants, the adventurers, the children. The monster materials laid out on stalls. The magic tools, glowing faintly in the afternoon light. The shape of a world that had continued without me, the way worlds always do.
"I need to get to the Adventurers' Guild," she said. "To work legally, we need registration. Identification. Quests."
I nodded. "Then let's go."
We walked down the hill, toward the town, toward the people.
I did not know what to expect. But I was ready to find out.
***
The Adventurers' Guild was a large stone building at the center of town, its doors wide open, its interior bustling with the particular energy of people who had come to do business. I followed Kaede inside.
The receptionist was a woman with sharp eyes and a practiced smile. She looked at us as we approached, assessing, efficient, the kind of person who had seen a thousand new faces and remembered the ones that mattered.
"Registration?" she asked.
Kaede nodded. "Two of us."
"Identification?"
Kaede took out a card. The receptionist pressed a small crystal against it, and it glowed briefly. "Kaede," she said. "Previously registered with the Northern Guild."
The receptionist nodded, noting something on her ledger.
Then she turned to me.
"Name?"
"Elsbeth."
"Place of origin?"
I hesitated. "A small village. I've been away for some time."
She did not press. Instead, she reached below the counter and brought out a blank card, pale, smooth, the kind of object that was waiting to become something.
"Please state your Unique Phrase," she said.
I stared at her. "...Unique Phrase?"
"Every adventurer has words that define who they are. Those words become the key to your Guild Card." She said.
Kaede looked at me, her expression unreadable. She already knew hers. She had said it without hesitation. But I had not prepared for this.
The receptionist explained, patient but not indulgent. "A phrase only its owner truly believes. It becomes part of the magical authentication. Only someone whose heart still resonates with those words can activate the card."
The other guild members, absorbed in their own business, did not notice the small moment unfolding at the counter. But to me, it felt large. A threshold.
I thought about it.
A phrase I truly believed. Not something I had been told. Not something I had learned. Something that was mine.
I thought about the years I had spent believing I was nothing. The months I had spent learning that I was not. The moment I had drawn the doll and signed it with a name that belonged to another life.
I thought about the grimoire. The ink. The armour. The connections I had learned to feel beneath the earth.
I did not say it immediately.
The receptionist waited.
I thought about what I would want to remember. What I would need to remember, years from now, when the card was in my hand and the world was different.
I spoke.
"True art comes from the soul."
A pause. The card glowed, warm in the receptionist's hand. The words settled into it, becoming part of it.
The receptionist looked at the card, then at me. Her practiced smile softened, just slightly.
"Registration complete."
The receptionist nodded. "Your identification is now linked to your soul, not just your body. Keep the card close. It will not work for anyone else."
I took the card. It was warm in my hand.
"True art comes from the soul."
The phrase was true. It had always been true. I had just not known how to say it.
Kaede looked at me, something shifting in her expression. Not approval—she was too practical for that. But acknowledgment.
We were registered. We were legal.
The world was waiting.
The room was quiet.
For the first time, I felt like an adventurer. Not merely a student. Not someone who was still learning the basics. Someone who had chosen a path and would walk it.
Kaede moved to stand beside me. She did not say anything. She did not need to.
We turned and walked out of the guild hall, into the afternoon light.
I thought about the Fairy Realm. The Spire. The years of training that had brought me here. The Fairy King's final words: “The world is a better teacher than I am.”
The Fairy Realm had taught me how to create.
Now the world would teach me why.
Now Elsbeth has obtained an adventurer guild card...
What kind of quest will she take?
Next time, same place, same time.
