Cough, cough, not long after, the staff member’s coughing sound was heard.

We crouched on the messy floor.

The toe of my small shoe was covered in dust.

“Achoo!”

After sniffling, I sneezed and frowned.

No light could be seen. It seemed that the entrance had been completely blocked when it collapsed earlier.

“It must have been a tremendous earthquake.”

The staff member, whose coughing had stopped, said with a serious expression.

“Damn it, today’s just full of incomprehensible events.”

But this… is it really an earthquake? Maybe because I touched the stone…

When I looked at the cave entrance while running away earlier, somehow the outside scenery looked very peaceful.

Suddenly, I remembered the story of how when Dad resonated with the stone, a vibration like an earthquake occurred due to the powerful elemental force.

“Cough- Cough-“

The staff member kept coughing, probably because a lot of dust had gotten into his mouth.

To get out of here…

I placed my hand on the floor with a hopeful thought and tried to gather elemental power.

Although no one had taught me, it was a method that came to mind without me realizing it.

Then the floor started shaking again.

Whoosh-

A stream of water shot up forcefully through the floor in front of where I had placed my hand.

The sudden pressure caused the countless piled-up stones to collapse to the side with a rumble.

The high-splashing water droplets obscured my vision.

“Child! Be careful!”

The staff member next to me tightly hugged my waist and lifted me up, and he started climbing up the pile of rocks where the ceiling had been opened by the water stream.

“Hold on tight.”

Due to the water making the rocks more slippery, he almost lost his footing a few times, but he managed to climb up somehow.

I clung to the staff member, completely soaked, and barely managed to breathe the outside air.

Phew. I thought we were going to be hopelessly trapped in the collapsed cave, but somehow we survived.

Looking down from the top of the rock pile, I could see water pooling around the ‘Breath of the Goddess’.

And that rising from the water… Huh? Steam?

“A hot spring suddenly… erupting… what on earth is this?”

The staff member looked down at the scene below with a blank expression, as if at a loss for words at this absurd situation.

“$!”

“$%$!”

After a while, we could hear other people calling from outside.

Although it was hard to hear clearly because of the water sound, they seemed surprised to see us.

He, who had been watching the rising water, reached out to me again.

“Let’s go down first, it’s dangerous here.”

“Yes, mister.”

We went down to where the people were.

“Oh my…!”

“Good heavens!!”

The elderly Elementalists with white hair, who weren’t visible earlier, had rushed over after hearing the news.

Other test-takers who had come to the test site were also standing in a circle around, wondering what was going on.

“What is this all about!”

“We saw the cave shaking.”

The Elementalists approached us.

“Who touched the Breath of the Goddess?! This scale surpasses the vibrations from the time of the Great Elementalist!”

The elder Elementalist was so excited that veins were popping out on his neck.

Faced with the elders’ pressing questions, the staff member blinked and asked back.

“Wasn’t it an earthquake?”

“No, it wasn’t. The vibration was clearly felt only around the cave. The vibration meter exceeded its maximum reading.”

“That was definitely an elemental wave! Is there someone else inside?”

One elder wearing a pointed hat asked, widening his eyes behind his glasses.

“An elemental wave, like this? That can’t be…”

“Look at the trees and people! If it were an earthquake strong enough to collapse the cave, would they be unharmed?!”

The staff member looked towards the cave.

The place where the ceiling had collapsed was turning into a hot spring bath.

The murmuring of people was growing louder.

To be honest, I was just as bewildered.

When I touched the stone called the ‘Breath of the Goddess’, elemental power flowed through my whole body and it glowed, and then I saw what was probably the past in a different timeline.

The past related to Parmes, and Dad.

And when I came to my senses, the cave shook greatly as if an earthquake had occurred, even causing part of it to collapse…

Moreover, I only thought of using water to escape, but even hot spring water bursts out from the ground.

“…No. There’s no one inside. How could there be such an elemental wave when there was no one but us…”

The elders questioned again in response to the staff member’s dazed answer.

“Then the one who touched the Breath of the Goddess… is it one of you two, you or this little one?”

“You’re an intermediate Elementalist, and the child is…”

As people’s gazes suddenly turned to me, my shoulders slightly hunched.

The staff member looked down at me with a dazed gaze.

He still seemed stunned, but his eyes held a certain question.

A look that seemed to say, ‘Could it be… you?’

He had clearly seen me touching the stone.

And he had also seen the elemental light flowing into my body.

‘Shh.’

I slightly raised my hand to my lips with a somewhat anxious heart.

If I say here that I touched the stone… judging by those people’s reactions, I might not be able to go home today.

“….”

“Speak up now!”

In response to the pressing voice, the staff member who had been quiet for a long time opened his mouth.

“…There was no one.”

Phew.

Fortunately, it was the answer I had hoped for.

I inwardly sighed in relief, grateful for the staff member’s consideration in pretending not to know.

However, the elders of the Elementalist Association who had gathered began to press the staff member again.

“Are you sure there was no one? Then what was that tremendous vibration?”

“Yes. It’s impossible unless an unprecedented Elementalist touched the Breath of the Goddess. It was even greater than the recorded wave of the Great Elementalist Marquis Mylar!”

“That…”

The staff member, after thinking for a moment, continued.

“The stone has been strange all day. The Breath of the Goddess, I mean. It… kept glowing. Isn’t that right?”

The staff member passed the word to another staff member who had been talking with him before entering the cave earlier.

“Ah… That’s right. It kept glowing all day. So we couldn’t determine what kind of elemental affinity the test-takers had based on the color.”

“What? How could such a thing happen?”

“I don’t know the cause, but the state of the Breath of the Goddess was abnormal. So I told the child not to touch it…”

The staff member’s brown eyes looked at me for a moment. Then, looking back at the elders, he said, “The child listened to me. But suddenly the cave shook and we felt a very strong vibration, so we thought it was an earthquake.”

After his words, a long silence followed.

The elders looked very dubious, but they couldn’t disbelieve the testimony of the staff member who had come out of the cave.

“The Breath of the Goddess… was like that, you say.”

“It’s truly strange. The stone has never been like this before.”

“Then is that gushing hot spring water also a result of the stone’s abnormality?”

They exchanged words with serious expressions.

As their conversation lengthened, the waiting test-takers began to leave one by one.

I was pretending to look elsewhere, but I often felt the gaze of the staff member looking at me.

After a while, as if the meeting had ended, the person who seemed to be the representative among the elders said.

“Today’s Elementalist test will be terminated due to circumstances. If we find a way to resume, we will contact those who couldn’t take the test.”

The people who had finished the test looked indifferent, but those who hadn’t taken it murmured with expressions mixed with disappointment and irritation.

“Still, consider yourselves fortunate for not having entered here. You could have been injured in the collapsing cave. There were people who almost got hurt.”

The murmuring stopped at the elder’s words.

Certainly, looking at my soaking-wet appearance, they seemed to realize it could have been dangerous.

People gradually began to disperse.

“Felix, we have a few more things to investigate, so come with us.”

‘So the staff member’s name was Felix.’

The elder, with his eyebrows set, patted the shoulder of the staff member who had helped me and said,”Understood. But first, let me see off the child who was almost in danger.”

“Alright. Give the child some travel money. Even though there doesn’t seem to be any injuries, the child must have been very scared.”

I started walking with him.

When we were far enough that people couldn’t hear our conversation, he opened his mouth.

“…Was it your doing?”

His hair, as he asked this, was soaking wet like mine, and his face was darkened with stone dust.

I smiled awkwardly and said.

“I’m not sure… but maybe it could be.”

“Then you… who on earth are you…”

The place where we had stopped was at the entrance to the Elementalist Association.

I was about to go outside now.

To his bewildered gaze, I silently took out my registration slip from my pocket and placed it in his hand.

Then I bowed slightly.

“Thank you for keeping it a secret.”

And then I quickly turned around and started to run away.

I could feel the gaze of the staff member named Felix staring blankly at the back of my head.

Soon after, I heard him gasp as if he had opened his fist and looked at my registration slip in his hand.

“My… My…”

As I ran further, his voice grew fainter, but I could still clearly hear,

“Mylar?!!!”

Anyway, I didn’t stop running.

I’ve already thanked him, so he’ll probably keep the secret out of loyalty.

“Whew, today was dynamic too.”

I wanted to get home quickly and wash up.