Five months.
That was how long Ren had been in this world.
Three months had passed since the night he escaped the ronin.
Two months since he had first encountered the strange kitsune in the forest.
And one month since he had finally understood what Spirit Vision was actually showing him and learned that the supernatural world was larger than he had imagined.
Five months.
It wasn’t a particularly long time.
Yet sometimes, when Ren thought about the person he had been before drinking the potion, it felt like another lifetime.
He had arrived with nothing except for the clothes on his back.
No identity.
No money.
No family.
No understanding of the world he had been thrown into.
Now he had a name people recognized.
A reputation, however small.
A handful of self-made divination tools.
Spirit Vision.
Danger Intuition.
And, most importantly, a growing understanding of the strange power that had entered his body the moment he swallowed that impossible potion.
He still didn’t know where the road would lead him.
But at least he was no longer walking it completely blind.
And yet, despite all those amazing discoveries, his daily life had remained remarkably ordinary.
Wake up.
Eat.
Work when there was work.
Practice Spirit Vision.
Practice divination.
Observe people.
Sleep.
Repeat.
It was almost boring.
Ren had begun to appreciate boring.
Boring meant nobody was trying to kill him.
Boring meant he could eat without worrying about whether someone would steal his food.
Boring meant he could sit beneath a tree for half an hour and experiment with a pebble tied to a string without having to explain himself.
The village had also grown accustomed to him.
People still called him a Seer.
Some believed him.
Some thought he was merely lucky.
Some treated his divination as entertainment.
A few had begun bringing him genuine problems.
Ren didn’t mind the latter as much as he had expected.
Not because he particularly enjoyed helping people — he didn’t, at least not enough to start doing it for free.
Food still cost something.
So did clothes.
So did living.
But there was something satisfying about taking a question, breaking it into smaller pieces, and watching the answers slowly form a picture.
He was beginning to understand why the potion had told him to act as a Seer.
Not because he was supposed to know everything.
He couldn’t.
He had already learned that.
If anything, the opposite seemed true — the more he practiced, the more aware he became of how much he didn’t know.
That morning, Ren sat beneath his usual tree with his pendulum resting across his knee.
He held the pebble between his fingers.
“Is there a river within one day’s walk?” He released it.
Clockwise.
Strong.
“Is it east?” The pebble turned counterclockwise.
Strong.
Ren nodded.
“North?” Counterclockwise.
Weak.
He frowned.
“West?” Almost nothing.
“South?” Nothing.
Ren looked toward the eastern hills.
“So it’s east.”
The process was simple.
Almost painfully simple.
He had started to notice something, though.
The pendulum wasn’t really becoming smarter.
He was.
That distinction mattered.
A month ago, he might have asked where is the nearest river?
and expected the answer to somehow reveal itself.
Now he knew better.
He needed to ask a sequence of smaller questions.
Was there a river?
Was it nearby?
Was it east?
Was it north or south?
Was it closer to the village than the forest?
Each answer reduced the possibilities.
Each answer gave him something he could work with.
Ren had begun thinking of divination as narrowing a path.
The more branches he removed, the clearer the remaining road became.
He leaned back against the tree.
Then he remembered the kitsune.
Her aura.
The strange way her spirituality had clung close to her body instead of spreading outward as much as a human’s.
At first, Ren had thought the difference meant she was somehow less healthy.
That had been wrong.
She had been perfectly healthy.
She simply emitted less spirituality.
That realization had completely changed how he understood Spirit Vision.
Before that, Ren had thought of the aura as something belonging specifically to living things in a physical sense.
Now he understood it differently.
Spirituality was everywhere.
People possessed it.
Animals possessed it.
The kitsune possessed it.
He possessed it.
The difference was that his spirituality was far more abundant and accessible.
The potion had changed something fundamental about him.
It had not created spirituality from nothing.
It had given him vastly more of it.
And, perhaps more importantly, it had made him sensitive enough to perceive and manipulate it.
Ren lifted his right hand.
He rubbed his ring finger.
Spirit Vision activated.
The ordinary world changed.
The tree remained a tree.
The dirt remained dirt.
But the people in the distance became covered in faint colors — white, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.
Ren watched them for several seconds.
A man carrying a bundle of firewood walked past — mostly white, the colors around his arms and shoulders slightly darker from exertion.
Nothing unusual.
A woman passed him carrying vegetables.
Her aura was mostly white as well, though a faint yellow coloration seemed stronger around her stomach.
Ren had learned not to immediately interpret that as illness.
It could simply be her emotional state.
It could be something she had eaten.
It could be nothing important.
That had been another lesson.
Spirit Vision showed him information.
It did not explain the information.
He deactivated it.
The headache hadn’t appeared yet.
That was good.
Ren looked at his pendulum.
“Information.” He had started thinking about that word more often.
That was what his abilities gave him.
Information.
Not certainty.
Not understanding.
Information.
And information was only useful if he knew what to do with it.
Ren had learned that lesson several times.
Unfortunately, learning something several times was usually what happened before he finally understood it.
He put the pendulum away.
A voice called from the road.
“Seer!”
Ren looked up.
A farmer stood there.
Ren recognized him — the man had asked him several questions over the past few weeks, mostly about his crops.
The farmer walked closer.
“Are you busy?”
“Not particularly.”
“Can you help me find something?”
Ren sighed.
“Depends on what it is.”
“A hoe.”
Ren stared at him.
“A hoe?”
“I lost it,” the farmer said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.
Ren looked at the farmer.
The farmer looked back.
“…How?”
“I left it somewhere.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“I know.”
Ren rubbed his forehead.
The farmer scratched his cheek.
“I was working near the field yesterday.
I put it down somewhere, then forgot about it.”
Ren looked at the man.
“Did you search?”
“Of course.”
“Properly?”
The farmer’s expression became offended, his brows knitting together.
“Yes.”
Ren sighed.
“Fine.” He stood.
“Show me where you were working.”
The farmer led him toward the fields.
Ren followed.
This was a simple problem — he could probably solve it without divination.
That was exactly why he was interested.
If he already knew the surroundings, how much easier would divination become?
The farmer pointed toward a field.
“I was working here.”
Ren looked around.
There were several rows of crops.
A small path ran between them.
Beyond the field was a shed.
Ren took out his pendulum.
“Is the hoe still in this field?” Clockwise.
Strong.
“Near the western side?” Counterclockwise.
No.
“Near the eastern side?” Clockwise.
Strong.
Ren walked east.
He stopped near the edge.
“Is it closer to the road?” Clockwise.
Weak.
“Closer to the shed?” Clockwise.
Strong.
They walked toward the shed.
Ren looked around.
Nothing.
He held the pendulum again.
“Is it inside the shed?” Counterclockwise.
No.
“Behind it?” Clockwise.
Strong.
Ren walked around the shed.
The hoe was lying in the grass.
The farmer stared, eyes wide, as though he half-expected it to vanish before he could reach it.
Ren picked it up.
“Here.”
The farmer’s mouth opened, then closed.
“You actually found it.”
Ren handed it over.
“You knew roughly where you had been working.
That made it easy.”
The farmer looked at the hoe, turning it over in his hands.
“I searched here.”
“Apparently not well enough.”
The farmer laughed, a short, embarrassed bark of a sound.
“How much?”
Ren named a small amount.
The farmer paid him.
Ren accepted the coins.
It wasn’t much.
But it was food.
More importantly, the entire process had taken only a few minutes.
Ren looked back at the field.
He had barely needed to think.
The farmer had supplied the first piece of information.
The rest had been simple questions.
It made Ren wonder.
Perhaps divination became easier not only when the question was simple, but when he already possessed information about the subject.
That seemed obvious in retrospect.
If he knew where the person had been, what they had done, what they owned, and what had happened before the question was asked, there were fewer possibilities.
He stored the thought away.
It might be useful later.
Several days passed before he had an opportunity to test it properly.
The opportunity arrived in the form of a woman.
She approached him in the afternoon.
She was perhaps in her thirties.
Ren recognized her face but not her name.
She sat down across from him, hands twisting anxiously in her lap.
“I want to ask about my husband.”
Ren immediately became more attentive.
“What about him?”
“He hasn’t come home.”
“When did he leave?”
“Four days ago.” New chapters come out on g.com first.
“Where was he going?”
“To another village.”
“Did he say when he’d return?”
“No.”
Ren frowned.
“Does he usually take this long?”
“No.” Her voice trembled slightly on the word.
That made the question more serious.
Ren brought out his pendulum.
“Is your husband alive?” Clockwise.
Weak.
Ren watched the movement.
Alive.
But weak.
That wasn’t particularly comforting.
The woman noticed his expression, leaning forward.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes.”
She exhaled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.
Ren continued.
“Is he still in the other village?” Counterclockwise.
No.
“Has he returned to this village?” No.
“Is he between the two villages?” Clockwise.
Weak.
Ren frowned.
He was beginning to encounter something he didn’t like.
The answer was there.
But it was faint.
He asked another question.
“Is he injured?” Clockwise.
Weak.
The woman stiffened, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Seriously?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t you tell?”
Ren shook his head.
“I can ask whether he’s injured.”
“You just did.”
“Yes.”
“And the answer was yes.”
“Not exactly.” She looked confused, brow furrowing.
Ren tried to explain.
“The answer was weak.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him, something between frustration and fear flickering across her face.
Ren understood her frustration.
He was frustrated too.
The pendulum wasn’t giving him a clear answer.
That meant one of two things.
Either he was asking the wrong question, or he didn’t have enough information.
Ren chose the second explanation.
At least for now.
“What was he carrying when he left?”
“A bag.”
“What was inside?”
“Clothes.
Food.
Some money.”
“Anything else?”
She thought, eyes drifting upward as she tried to remember.
Then she reached into her sleeve.
“He had this.” She placed a small wooden comb on the ground.
Ren stared at it.
It was simple.
A small comb carved from dark wood.
Nothing special.
“That belonged to him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he use it often?”
“Every morning.”
Ren picked it up.
The moment his fingers touched it, he felt something.
It was faint.
Almost nothing.
But it was there.
A sensation similar to what he experienced when preparing to activate Spirit Vision.
Ren looked at the comb.
His expression changed.
The woman noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He didn’t know what to call the sensation.
He didn’t even know if it mattered.
But it felt familiar.
Not because he had touched the object before.
Because something about it seemed connected to the person he was asking about.
Ren sat straighter.
He held the pendulum.
“Is your husband alive?” Clockwise.
The pebble turned immediately.
Strong.
Ren’s eyes widened.
The woman leaned forward.
“What?”
Ren repeated the question.
“Is your husband alive?” Clockwise.
Strong.
He removed the comb.
Asked again.
Clockwise.
But weaker.
He put it back.
Strong.
Ren stared at the pendulum, then at the comb, then back at the pendulum.
He repeated the experiment several times.
The result remained consistent.
His heart began beating faster.
Not from fear.
Excitement.
He had discovered something.
He just didn’t know what.
“Can I keep this for a moment?”
The woman hesitated.
“Why?”
“I want to test something.”
She slowly nodded, though worry still creased her brow.
Ren placed the comb in his palm.
He concentrated.
The sensation of spirituality moved through him.
He didn’t force it.
He let it flow gently toward the object.
The connection became stronger.
He didn’t understand what he was feeling.
But he knew it mattered.
He held the pendulum.
“Is your husband east of this village?” Clockwise.
Strong.
He removed the comb.
Asked again.
Clockwise.
Weak.
He put it back.
Strong.
Ren’s eyes narrowed.
“Interesting.”
The woman looked worried.
“Is that good?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I’m learning.”
She stared at him, unimpressed, and Ren realized that probably wasn’t reassuring.
He continued.
“Is he still moving toward the village?” Clockwise.
Strong.
“Is he alone?” Clockwise.
Weak.
Ren frowned.
He removed the comb.
The answer became weaker.
He put it back.
Stronger.
This wasn’t a coincidence anymore.
Something about the object made his divination easier.
Ren didn’t know why.
Perhaps it was because the object belonged to the person.
Perhaps it retained something of him.
Perhaps it was simply easier for Ren to focus when he had something physical associated with the subject.
He had no way to know.
But he had discovered a useful rule.
Personal belongings helped.
He didn’t know the mechanism.
He didn’t need to.
Not yet.
The woman eventually found her husband two villages away.
He had injured his ankle and been unable to continue.
He had stayed with a family along the road.
He was alive.
He returned two days later.
The woman thanked Ren repeatedly.
Ren accepted a small payment.
But his mind was elsewhere.
The wooden comb had changed everything.
That evening, Ren sat beneath the tree.
The comb was no longer with him — the woman had taken it back.
But he could still remember the sensation.
It had been subtle.
Almost like touching the edge of something invisible.
He looked at his own hands.
“Everyone has spirituality.” He had already accepted that.
The kitsune had proved it.
His own aura had proved it.
The villagers proved it every day.
But perhaps spirituality wasn’t simply something that existed inside a person.
Perhaps it could interact with the world.
Objects could retain traces of people.
At least, that was his current hypothesis.
Ren wasn’t confident enough to call it a fact.
He had learned not to trust his first conclusions too much.
He looked at his pendulum.
“Divination becomes easier with more information.” That was certainly true.
But the comb had done something else.
It hadn’t given him information.
It had made the answer itself clearer.
That was different.
Ren frowned.
He didn’t like mysteries that didn’t have immediate answers.
Unfortunately, he was beginning to suspect that being a Seer meant living with them.
A few days later, another person came to him.
A young man.
He looked nervous, fingers picking at the hem of his sleeve.
“My brother has been acting strangely.”
Ren motioned for him to sit.
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t talk much anymore.”
“How long?”
“Several weeks.”
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know.”
Ren studied him.
“What do you want to know?”
The young man hesitated, eyes dropping to the ground.
“Is he angry with us?”
Ren thought about it.
That was a good question.
Not because it was complicated.
Because it was specific.
Ren rubbed his right ring finger.
Spirit Vision activated.
The young man’s aura appeared.
Mostly white.
There was a noticeable amount of red around the chest and arms.
Ren observed it.
Agitation.
He had seen enough examples by now to recognize it.
Not certainty.
But a strong indication.
He deactivated Spirit Vision.
Then picked up the pendulum.
“Is your brother angry?” Clockwise.
Strong.
The young man’s face tightened.
“At us?” Counterclockwise.
No.
Ren paused.
That was interesting.
The man was angry.
But not at his family.
Ren looked at him.
“Did something happen outside your family?”
“I don’t know.”
Ren asked another question.
“Is he angry about something that happened recently?” Clockwise.
Strong.
“Is it related to another person?” Clockwise.
Weak. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“Is it related to money?” Counterclockwise.
“Work?” Clockwise.
Strong.
Ren nodded.
“Then it’s probably his work.”
The young man looked surprised, sitting up straighter.
“He lost his position.”
Ren’s eyebrows rose.
“Recently?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Ren thought back to the man’s aura.
The red coloration.
The agitation.
The man’s silence.
The pieces fit.
But Ren noticed something else.
The young man had come expecting his brother to be angry at the family.
He had been wrong.
The brother was angry.
But not at them.
Ren had not needed Spirit Vision to learn that.
Nor had he needed divination to know it.
He had needed both.
One had given him an observation.
The other had given him an answer.
Neither had given him the explanation.
He had created the explanation by putting the pieces together.
Ren leaned back.
That was becoming increasingly important.
An answer was not an explanation.
He repeated the thought silently.
An answer is not an explanation.
If he asked: is this man angry?
Yes.
That didn’t tell him why.
If he asked: is he angry at his family?
No.
That didn’t tell him why.
If he asked: is it related to his work?
Yes.
That gave him another piece.
Eventually, enough pieces could form a picture.
That was how he needed to approach divination.
Not as a magical oracle that answered every question.
As a tool for gathering information.
Ren found himself almost enjoying the process.
Almost.
His understanding continued to develop over the following weeks.
He experimented constantly.
He asked questions he already knew the answers to.
He used objects belonging to himself.
He used objects belonging to other people.
He compared results.
He discovered that personal belongings could make divination faster.
Not always.
Not perfectly.
But consistently enough to matter.
A man’s knife.
A woman’s comb.
A child’s wooden toy.
A farmer’s hat.
The more closely connected the object seemed to be to the person, the easier it was for Ren to work.
He still didn’t know why.
He simply called them “anchors” in his mental note— not because he knew that was their proper name, but because it was simply what they felt like.
Something that anchored his divination to a particular person.
He also discovered another limitation.
Distance mattered.
If someone was nearby, questions were easier.
If they were far away, answers became weaker.
If he had a personal belonging, the weakness diminished.
That made him wonder whether distance itself was really the problem.
Perhaps it was his connection to the subject.
Again, he had no proof.
He simply wrote the observation into his growing mental list.
Personal connection helps.
Information helps.
Simple questions help.
Specific questions help.
Complicated questions are difficult.
The list grew longer.
Ren was beginning to think that someday he might need an actual notebook.
For now, he couldn’t afford one.
So he memorized everything.
One afternoon, he decided to test another combination.
He sat beneath the tree with a wooden cup in front of him.
Inside was a small cloth belonging to a villager.
Ren had borrowed it.
He held his pendulum.
Spirit Vision activated.
The villager was sitting approximately twenty paces away.
Ren looked at him.
The aura was mostly white.
There was some orange around the chest.
Comfort.
Warmth.
The man was talking to another villager and laughing.
Ren watched the aura change.
The orange became slightly stronger.
Then yellow appeared.
Happiness.
Ren smiled.
He was getting better at recognizing emotional changes.
Red for agitation.
Orange for warmth and comfort.
Yellow for happiness.
Green for calmness and serenity.
Purple for detachment or estrangement.
Purple was rarer in this village.
Ren had barely seen it.
He suspected there were many more emotional changes than the handful he had identified.
But he wasn’t in a hurry.
He had enough to learn already.
He deactivated Spirit Vision.
Then he held the pendulum.
“Is this man happy?” Clockwise.
Strong.
He smiled.
That was almost redundant — he could have simply watched him.
And that was another useful lesson.
He didn’t need to use every ability every time.
Sometimes ordinary observation was enough.
Spirit Vision was a tool.
Divination was a tool.
His eyes were tools.
His ears were tools.
His brain was a tool.
The Seer potion had not made him omniscient.
It had simply given him more ways to gather information.
Ren found that strangely comforting.
One evening, he sat beside a small stream.
The water was calm enough to reflect his face.
Ren looked into it.
He could see himself.
And when he rubbed his finger, he could see his aura.
Mostly white.
Purple around his head.
Blue around his throat.
Green around his chest.
Yellow around his stomach.
Orange lower down.
Red around his limbs.
It looked ordinary.
Almost exactly like the villagers.
That still amused him.
For a while, he had thought his spirituality made him fundamentally different.
Now he understood that wasn’t true.
He was different in degree.
Not in kind.
Everyone had spirituality.
Everyone unconsciously emitted it.
He simply had more.
Much more.
And the potion had made him sensitive enough to perceive it.
Ren looked at his reflection.
“So that’s what I am.” A human with too much spirituality.
A Seer.
Someone who could see what ordinary people couldn’t.
Someone who could use that spirituality to ask questions that ordinary people couldn’t ask.
But none of that meant he could know everything.
Ren dipped his fingers into the stream.
The reflection broke apart.
The colors disappeared.
He watched the ripples.
He thought about fate.
He had once hated the idea of fate.
The thought that something unseen might determine his life had angered him.
Now…
he didn’t hate it as much.
Perhaps because he had begun to understand that even if fate existed, he couldn’t simply ask it to explain itself.
He still didn’t revere it.
He didn’t worship it.
He didn’t trust it.
But he no longer felt the same instinctive resentment.
If fate existed, then he would simply have to live with it.
And if it didn’t?
Then he had nothing to worry about.
Ren smiled faintly.
That seemed like a reasonable position.
He stood.
The sun was beginning to set.
He gathered his things.
The pendulum went into his pocket.
The stick was tucked beneath his arm.
He rubbed his right ring finger once.
Spirit Vision appeared.
The world filled with color.
He looked at the villagers returning home.
A farmer with orange around his chest.
A child glowing faintly with yellow.
An old woman with mostly green.
A man whose red coloration had begun to fade as his anger passed.
Ren watched them.
He no longer thought: that person is healthy, or that person is sick.
He thought: their spirituality is being emitted differently.
Then he interpreted what he saw.
That distinction was small.
But it mattered.
The aura wasn’t a health bar.
It wasn’t a magical status screen.
It was a stream of information.
Spirituality leaving the body.
Physical conditions influencing it.
Emotions influencing it.
Perhaps other things influencing it as well.
And Ren was only beginning to understand how to read the changes.
He deactivated Spirit Vision before the headache came.
Then he started walking.
He had learned a great deal over the past month.
Yet strangely, he felt less certain than ever.
Every answer seemed to create two more questions.
Every discovery revealed another unknown.
The kitsune had taught him that spirituality wasn’t unique to humans.
His own aura had taught him that it wasn’t unique to others.
The comb had taught him that spirituality could somehow connect a person to the objects around them.
Divination had taught him that information could be gathered.
Spirit Vision had taught him that information could be observed.
And his own mistakes had taught him that neither was enough by itself.
Ren looked toward the road.
There were many ways forward.
He could ask which one was safest.
He could ask which one led to the next village.
He could ask which one had fewer bandits.
But none of those questions would tell him what waited at the end.
That was fine.
He didn’t need to know everything.
He only needed enough information to take the next step.
Ren reached into his pocket and felt the smooth stone tied to the string of his pendulum.
He smiled.
He had once thought being a Seer meant seeing the future.
Now he was beginning to suspect that it meant something much less impressive.
Looking.
Asking.
Listening.
Thinking.
Then asking again.
Ren walked beneath the fading evening light.
Behind him, the village continued its ordinary life.
Ahead of him was another road.
Another question.
And perhaps, eventually, another answer.
He just had to learn what to do with it.
If we get to 120, I’ll provide 2 chapters on Sunday instead.
As boring as most of you will find it, it is important for Ren to grow.
Throughout volume 1, Ren will face a lot of misunderstandings, so let’s all cheer with him along his journey!
Please leave a comment and add to your library if you enjoyed it so far!
If you endured till here, your gift will become the motivation for my creation.