Genius Mage in a Cultivation World - Chapter 73

“Descendants? But I have yet to have kids on my… Oh.” Still riled up by the conflict with Uffer from before, Al surprisingly required a moment to digest the meaning behind Ation’s words. “What are your names?” Turning his face towards the silent duo, Al squinted his eyes a bit.

‘Now that I look at them… They really don’t resemble celestials… but they do not look like one of our own either.’ This observation was pretty simple. The celestials were surrounded with the stench of the energy that they robbed from the enslaved spirits. To a degree, it made up for the easiest way of detecting them at close range. On the other hand, though, while it didn’t seem to be the case for the female, the man that Ation brought was different than anyone Al saw so far.

‘Could it be that they are lying?’ Even though the explanation that Ation offered was pretty interesting, there was a chance that it was a false one. ‘I guess I can only wait for the situation to develop furt… eh?’ Al’s thoughts went into disarray when one thing happened to both of the strange visitors at once.

As soon Al just twitched, his massive body no longer concealed the girl still hanging by her hair from Lessen’s hand. And once those two caught a glimpse of that person, their eyes widened in excitement. ‘Are they enjoying this kind of thing or what?’ In a moment, all the positive emotions he felt towards those strangers instantly disappear. But it didn’t stop there.

“Incredible…” Uttering under his breath without even realizing that his voice leaked out, Markus took a step forward. Then another. Then, after lowering his head to a clearly important figure of the clan of his ancestors, he passed by the burly man before taking a closer look at the whispering girl. “Yelna, is she who I think she is?”

“It seems like it.” Following her husband, Yelna also ignored the burly man. Once she appeared in front of the girl, her hands twitched. Even though she wasn’t a sword-user, her long knife was more than enough to cut through the hair that another one of her ancestors held.

“Ah!” As the girl fell to the ground, she uttered a short shout of surprise. Even though the languages they were using were most likely completely different, simple sounds like that were easily understandable to anyone. “Go and make sure.” Summing the situation up in her usual, short manner, Yelna sheathed her knife.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Only now overcoming his shock caused by the duo’s audacity, Al shouted while fixing his grasp over his short sword. ‘Even if they really are our descendants, that doesn’t mean they are worthy of our attention…’ Al stepped forward… Only to stop in his tracks right away.

“Al?” Noticing the unusual behavior of his leader, Ation asked before looking to where Al’s eyes were directed at. And then, he froze in place as well. With her eyes only gently squinted, this strange girl didn’t even pull her weapon out. Just her intense stare alone was enough to make him feel as if he was an insignificant worm, standing up against the beings from legends.

“Yelna! Stop.” Before the tense situation could turn hostile, Markus’ words shook the girl’s intense stare, making her revert to her usual, barely noticeable self.

‘What was that…?’ Even though this peculiar moment has passed, Al was still unable to move even a muscle. Even though this strange petrification was quickly fading away, just the sheer power that was necessary to stop someone like him with just a gaze finally forced Al to reevaluate the worth of this strange duo.

“What do you think?” Ignoring the commotion that she caused, Yelna looked towards her husband. Kneeling on one knee in front of the terrified girl, Markus reached towards her head with his hand. Grabbing her chin, he forcefully pulled it down before glancing at the shaking teeth of the girl.

“There is no doubt.” After a moment of thinking, Markus let go of the girl’s head before standing up. Shaking his head to all sides, he looked around before his eyes finally fell on what he was looking for. A simple, straight stick like many in any given forest.

“Oh, I think they want to explain something.” Unable to understand more than just a few words out of what those self-proclaimed descendants of his were talking, Ation could only recognize the patterns in their behavior. And it wasn’t the first time when the man paid quite a lot of attention to find something as simple as a stick.

Markus moved towards a relatively more open area between the threes before kicking away most of the wet forestbed. Pulling out a simple knife only to sharpen his stick with a few lackluster moves, he then pointed his sharpened stick towards the ground he just exposed. Then, his arm made a simple move from right to left, leaving a long, straight scar on the ground.

“This is something like… A line of time?” Unsure how he was supposed to explain it, Ation rubbed the side of his head. “Whenever they point at something at mark it on this line, they will mean something about time period… I guess.”

Markus’s hand didn’t stop. Placing the first mark on the line he made a moment earlier, he raised his hand only to pat himself on the chest before pointing his finger at the girl he came with. Then, once again focusing on the stick, he moved his hand to the left over the initial line, placing another mark on it and pointing his hand at Ation, Al and all the others gathered in place.

“That’s what they already explained to me. That’s also why I call them our descendants. They came after us.” Doing his absolute best to squeeze every last drop of juice from his muscle brain, Ation continued to translate Markus’ actions to a human tongue.

Then, the strange man moved his hand a bit to the left to place another mark, then he placed another mark even further left then another… As his moves became more frantic, the marks no longer appeared directly on the initial line, but only in its general direction. Then, once he was done with putting simple marks, his sharpened stick made a circle as he circumvented all the marks outside the first two.

“Ancient.” Pointing his hand at the girl his female partner freed earlier, the man started tapping his stick at the roughly middle of the circle. “Ancient.” Repeating his words, he didn’t point at the girl with just a finger as he did to everyone else before, but this time, he used his entire hand.

“I have no idea what he is saying right now… But I think he wants to imply that we came after this girl. Or rather, that she came before us. Al…” Taking a few steps closer to get a better look at the doodles of the man, Ation saw how the man stopped tapping at the circle in general, but started to tap at all the marks within it in a random order… before suddenly shaking his shoulders.

“I don’t know.” That was one sentence the two of them already established that was the same in their languages. As his stick continued to tap at the marks he left on the ground, the man only continued to repeat as clear frustration started to grow in his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!”