Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Nati - Ch. 114

"Wow Nat, where is your belly?"

"Hah, your method worked," I pushed my chest out, answering Emi proudly. We no longer looked alike, but now our ribs matched. "Maybe I overdone it, turning all fat into mana, but I never felt this full. Almost as if I craved magicules and not food all this time. I feel so light too."

"Magic is cheating." She noted jealously. "But don't level this jungle."

"I will try not to." I blushed. The spell Omerta cast was devastating even for her standards, but still less gruesome than my black hole in Baran.

"You better." The orc witch giggled.

Magic seemed more powerful inside the dungeon, and I had to remind myself as we advanced slowly in the thick undergrowth to explore the area, barely seeing ahead, but the orc shaman acted like a radar. He wouldn't even open his eyes, using his nose and the magicules to map our surroundings. I still considered spirits inferior, but useful in situations like these, and Gitaut also turned out to be the most powerful among us.

"We should turn left here, there is a rift in the mana ahead." He said, and while some arguments arose about who led this party, nobody questioned his ability to navigate us.

The place looked spectacular: purple skies and a permanent sunset without an actual sun, the vivid colors in the thick vegetation drove the point home that we were in a different world, not even in the same dimension as before. The forest we traversed could have been anything from tundra to a tropical jungle and simultaneously anywhere on the equator or at the poles. The air was relatively cold but heavy and damp, and I sweated a lot on our trek.

Compared to being transported and encountering new species on the continent, that place looked ancient, but nothing strange; this was a literal fantasy setting, making my head spin. The trees were completely alien with leaves ranging from blue to red.

The flowers looked much more plain in comparison, but some grew enormous. The different smells tickling my nostrils made me think about how severe my allergies would be in a place like this if I were still in my old body. Emi's looked just like the original, but she got a new shell from the Goddess, tougher than it seemed.

"Ouch, careful with these vines." After getting entangled with some hostile-looking plant, she warned and tore it out of the ground before realizing it. She barely noticed, no sign on her skin either, but that strange vegetable looked enormous and hostile. It had spikes and long tendrils looking for victims but haven't anticipated my little sister running into it with her homunculus body.

"You all right?" I asked with my brotherly worrying, but not even a scratch on her. "Stick to the path the ogre cuts into the jungle, sis."

It was like strolling on another planet, curious luminous beings floated around us like plankton, flies and other insects were more suspicious of our group and only buzzed in the distance. I noticed some mice-like creatures with reptile skin, so our relatively normal looks stood out here. It made me feel less bad if I thought about fighting anything in the future. They seemed more like creatures from a vivid dream than actual living beings. And then, my sister stood out even more.

"I'm kind of getting hungry." She noted, the surprisingly normal-looking, yet out-of-place tomboy. I was so happy she came after me, I missed her a lot, but she didn't belong here.

Not to mention her school uniform. I saw her try to cut, burn, and most importantly, get dirt all over it, but it was like nothing happened. Her clothes looked the same as if she just come out from the tailor with it, putting it on for the first time no matter what kind of abuse it went through. It seemed completely normal, but here it was anything but that.