"What exactly is this mark?"
In Anna's room, Durandal studied the mark on her arm. She couldn't sense any harm from it, but it didn't seem to do anything either.
Still, she had an intuition that this mark was important to her. It wasn't something malicious...
It simply hadn't been activated yet, so it was still unclear what it actually was.
It had been about a week since Durandal and Rita had received their marks. Because of them, they had not left the village during that time.
Instead, they had stayed at Anna's home, trying to figure out what was going on with the marks on their hands.
But they had tried many methods, and none had caused the marks to change. Moreover, every night that week, Durandal and Rita had gone to the lake in hopes of seeing that strange lake spirit again.
Yet ever since she had appeared that one time and given them these things, she had never shown herself again.
They had even ventured into the center of the lake the previous night, intending to enter the dimensional passage that led who knew where.
However, they gave up the very second they entered it.
It wasn't that they couldn't go. After all, Durandal and Rita could freely enter and leave even the Imaginary world and the Sea of Quanta, let alone an unknown dimensional passage.
The problem was that the paths within that passage were too densely packed. They crisscrossed each other, making it easy to lose one's bearings! And they were rather unstable as well...
There was no telling how that "spirit" had appeared, or why she had appeared at all!
If this mark truly was something good, then why had she given it to them of her own accord...? Was it to forge a