When my purifying dance was over, the children and newlyweds headed back home. Everyone else kept the party going, adding wood to the bonfires and merrily drinking the night away. It was already quite late, so most of the showy stuff was over, but some souls still found their way to the festival belatedly, drawn by the light of the fires and the chatter.
By the time the sun rose, most remaining souls had ascended, and the ones who had arrived late would most likely be purified by nature’s self-cleansing process sooner or later.
“Phew, it’s finally over,” I said, holding out a hand to shield my eyes from the rising sun.
“It is!” Teto confirmed.
After my performance, I had changed into warm clothes and spent the entire night huddled with Teto, the two of us wrapped in a blanket, watching the bonfires and the remaining souls swaying in the night sky.
A wave of relief washed over me now that everything was over, and I found myself yawning from exhaustion.
“Master, Lady Teto, you have spent the entire night outside. Your bodies must have cooled down considerably. I already called for a bath for you, so you may return home and warm yourselves up,” Beretta told us.
“We will. Thanks, Beretta.”
“Let’s go!”
I had used almost all of my mana during the offering dance, which had left me unable to cast Body Strengthening or anything to protect myself from the cold; I had spent the entire night sticking to Teto just to stay warm. I noticed that I had only recovered around thirty percent of my MP, while I’d usually have recovered most if not all of it by the morning.
Sleeping really is the best way to recover mana, huh?
As I soaked in the bath with Teto, I suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion crash over me.
“Lady Witch, are you sleepy?”
“I’m...fine. I’m fine,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.
I changed into my pajamas and slipped under the covers with Teto. The second my head hit the pillow, I was out of commission.
When I came to, I found myself in an oh-so-familiar black space.
“A dream oracle,” I noted.
Teto was standing next to me; Liriel and Loriel were already there, the former sitting at a table and the latter on a bed. Loriel seemed a little bit more lively than the first time I met her, but she still looked sleepy.
“Chise, Teto, good work on the festival. Your dance was lovely,” Liriel told me.
“The lost souls have found their way home,” Loriel said. “I have regained a bit more of my power.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Speaking of which, I have a question: from next year onward, I probably won’t be there to do the purifying dance. Would it be all right if I had someone else purify the lost souls?”
After hearing what Beretta, Shael, Raphilia, and the others had to say, I had decided to resume my leisurely travels. I would most likely leave the forest at the end of winter. Sure, I’d still have my trusty transfer gates to teleport me back whenever I wished, but I’d feel a bit weird popping back in to perform the dance before leaving again. No, someone who actually lived in the forest all year round should have the honor.
“So you’re finally resuming your travels?” Liriel said, looking slightly exasperated. “For the past decades, I’ve kept hinting at you to leave the forest and continue exploring the world, but you never noticed.”
“S-Sorry.”
“As for the purification dance, if several people do it at the same time, it should be all right. It won’t be as effective as when you did it, but it’ll be fine. Nature will help purify the souls too, so make sure that forest of yours stays clean and pure,” Loriel said.
Several people, huh? I thought. So it’d be more like a ritual rather than a simple performance. Either way, I was glad to know I wouldn’t be needing to head back to the Forest every winter to do the dance myself.
“Chise, Teto, did you notice the mana that fell from the lost souls? It was all absorbed by the earth; now it’s helping to stimulate the leylines,” Liriel told me.
“Um, and what does that entail exactly? Does that mean we should prepare for monsters to appear? A dungeon? Some sort of magic disaster?”
I knew all too well that nothing good came from mana stagnating in the leylines, so I was wary of the potential consequences.
Seeing the anxiety on my face, Liriel quickly shook her head. “Nothing of the sort, no. You have your leyline managing devices to help the mana circulate, so everything should be fine. It’ll just make the forest grow.”
“Make it grow?” Teto repeated. “Are the trees going to get bigger? That sounds great!”
“Not quite. Well, the plants will grow as a result, but what I meant is that the earth itself will grow.”
“The earth itself...”
What did that even mean? The scale of it all seemed way too large for me to understand, but, thankfully, Loriel provided some clarification. “Big sister Liri is the Earth Mother. Not only does she watch over crops and harvests, but she’s also the Goddess of the Earth itself, so she can make it grow.”
“By ‘grow,’ do you mean things like land upheaval and tectonic shifts?” I asked, still unsure of what exactly we were talking about.
“Nope. I mean it literally: the land itself will grow.”
Ever since its creation, this world had been suffused with mana. The gods used this mana to expand the earth itself, create the leylines and the waters, and so on, causing the planet itself to be twice as big as it used to be when it was first created.
“For the past two thousand years, we had to put the growth of the planet on hold due to the lack of mana,” Liriel explained. “However, between my powers and the sudden increase in the forest’s mana density, we’re seeing a net gain again.”
“How much will it grow?” I asked.
“About one percent of the surface area of the forest plus the Demon Den around it.”
“That’s...it?”
The forest wasn’t tiny by any means—it was the size of a small country—but an increase of one percent in land didn’t seem like much. But then I realized something.
“Liriel, will it only grow once? Or will it grow every year after the soul-purifying ritual?” I asked.
“Every year,” she replied with a slight averting of her gaze. “Well, not forever, of course. At some point, most lost souls will have found their way home, and purifying them won’t produce that much mana at once.”
“But it should grow about one percent every year for the next hundred years or so,” Loriel supplied.
This meant that, in the long run, the forest would be several times as large as it currently was, making it the size of a medium country. However, I couldn’t help but wonder just how much mana the lost souls released to cause such a change.
“But we have a bunch of World Trees in the forest, and we often release mana into the air to artificially increase its density. Does that not help the land grow?” I asked.
Teto tilted her head to the side at my words, staring at me with uncomprehending eyes as if I were speaking gibberish.
“If done right, releasing mana like the kind that enfolds lost souls can revitalize anything; people, objects, houses, and even the earth itself. People tend to call these phenomena ‘blessings’ and ‘protections’ from the gods. But if it isn’t released properly, it can give birth to curses.”
We had shifted onto a bit of a heavy topic, but I mostly got what Loriel was saying.
“I see. So the ‘blessings’ from the lost souls are being directed to the earth—which also happens to be Liriel’s domain—and that’s what is causing the land to grow,” I summarized.
“Exactly. You can plant all the World Trees you want, but the mana they produce won’t ever have a similar effect. They lack the directionality that dead souls’ mana takes on when purified. Mana only turns into blessings if it is being directed somewhere. Ah, but if spirits start haunting or possessing your World Trees, they’ll be able to grant you their blessings as well.”
I nodded. It seemed I still had a lot to learn about mana.
“That was some worldly wisdom for you. You’re going to give me a little something in return, right?” Loriel asked.
Liriel’s head snapped towards her sister. “Loriel!” she exclaimed, shocked by the other goddess’s brazenness.
But I wasn’t offended; a smile curled on my lips as I raised a hand in front of me. “Sure thing. What about this? Creation: assortment of traditional Japanese sweets!”
“Ah, Teto wants some too!”
A mountain of traditional Japanese confectioneries appeared on the table. Teto reached a hand into the pile, grabbed one of the sweet snacks, and sunk her teeth into it. A look of panic formed on Loriel’s face as she watched Teto steal her sweets, so she quickly grabbed one and shoved it into her mouth.
With this many snacks, Loriel would be satisfied for the rest of the dream oracle. If a normal, flesh-and-blood human were to eat this many sweets at once, they’d indubitably gain a ton of weight, but, well, Loriel was a goddess, so she was probably fine. Her cheeks bulging with food, she flashed me a smile and a thumbs-up, as if to say that she was happy with her reward. Meanwhile, Liriel looked fed up with her sister’s antics.
“You sure are cunning, Loriel,” she said with a sigh. “Oh well. It’s almost time for Chise and Teto to wake up, so let’s call it a night. I’m looking forward to seeing where your travels take you next, Chise.”
“Me too. Well, we still have to prepare and say goodbye to everyone before we leave.”
“Lady Witch and Teto are going to do lots of sightseeing!”
With those words, I felt my consciousness fade away. When I woke up, I was told that I had been asleep for an entire day, and my stomach wasted no time in letting me know it was painfully empty.