“Th…thank you sir. Thank you.” The small, halfling-looking world spirit sniffled against my chest, her arms wrapped tight around . After I returned the class orb to the spire, there had been no imdiate sign of her return. As such, I had imdiately left for the twenty-third floor of Fyor.
Starting from the nineteenth floor, there were five consecutive layers, each attuned to an elental world. Water, Earth, Wind, Fire, and finally… the elental world of life. The area where this spirit had been trapped for so long. In order to save her, it was first necessary to surpass these five floors.
Thankfully, Ryone had already sealed all of the special ore found within this floor, but… that also severed the link to allow the world spirit to return. I had to seek her out myself, using my domain. When I did, I found her once again being hunted. There was a thin, black dagger in her hand as she cowered within a heavy bush.
Just going by her expression, I knew imdiately that her situation wasn’t good. If I waited much longer, she might be devoured again. So I pulled her through my mirror by force, startling her. Out of instinct, she whipped the dagger out at , slashing my chest. The feeling of pain that brought… It was surprising that such a small weapon had enough power to hurt .
Once she saw who I was, however, that dagger vanished and she let out a cry. The spirit imdiately began tending my wound, retrieving the energy her dagger had left before holding onto and thanking repeatedly.
“It’s fine.” I whispered gently to her, stroking a hand along her back to comfort her. I could feel her body shaking from the touch. As if she had been conditioned over countless battles to know that anything touching her would only an pain. “You don’t have to fight anymore…”
When she heard those words, the world spirit lifted her head to look at , tears streaming down from her eyes. “I can… I can stop fighting?” From the almost desperate tone to her voice, the thought of being able to stop hadn’t crossed her mind in a long ti.
“That’s right. Unless we hit a true disaster, I won’t ask you to fight again.” That was a promise I felt I had to make her. After her years in the elental plane, she was undoubtedly the most powerful world spirit among any of my worlds. Her battle instincts and control would have grown to a point that no other world spirit could rival her. But at the sa ti, being locked in an eternal torture like that, how could I ask her to continue?
“Really… I can stop…” She muttered again, leaning against as her strength seed to leave her legs. Her hands grabbed the sides of my shirt, and I could feel her trembling. However, this ti, the trembles from her body were not rely those caused by her tears.
“I got out!” She tilted her head back, laughing loudly. “I made it! I’m free!” Her tears continued to stream down the side of her face as she cried out, and I could feel the energy surging within her body. In order to hide from the predators of that world, she had to restrain her energy to the bare minimum.
Finally, she seed to start to co to her senses, gathering strength in her legs to stand up. She stepped back, looking down at her own arms. “It’s true… the world isn’t rejecting anymore. I don’t have to go back to that elental plane. I can finally join the others…”
I gave a small nod of my head, reaching up to brush the tears off of her cheeks. “That’s right.” There were so many questions I wanted to ask her, but now wasn’t the ti. When my eyes glanced over her level, I saw that it had risen to over a thousand, far above what the level cap was for Fyor. Since she was outside of my ‘domain’ within the elental planes, she had been unrestricted by the level limit of this world.
Thanks to my own experiences, I knew that it would still be possible for her to move between layers effortlessly, as long as she took detours through the world of world spirits. That was not a concern.
“Oh!” The world spirit spoke up suddenly, as if rembering sothing. “I’ve got to tell you sothing, sir!” When she said that, her face went serious, and she turned to face .
“Go on?” If it was important enough to snap her out of her own celebration, I couldn’t help but be curious.
“I wasn’t the only person living in that world. They were scattered, but there were others. One of them taught how to make the dagger that I… err…” She suddenly grew embarrassed as she ntioned the dagger. “The one you found with, sir.”
“They showed you how to make a dagger that could harm a god?” Okay, now I was even more curious. Just what kind of people did she encounter?
“Not specifically a god… but yes. And one of them asked to pass a ssage, to ‘the man who made ’. He seed quite confident that I would et that man again, and that I knew he ant you…”
Imdiately, I began thinking back, wondering if there had been any other people who had mysteriously vanished after being connected to . However, I kept drawing a blank. Was there really soone like that? “What did he say?”
“Uhm… hold on, let think.” The world spirit closed her eyes to focus. “It was… odd, but he said that I had to deliver the ssage exactly. ‘What’s one less than ten thousand?’ I think that’s how it went. Sorry, sir, I was eaten not long after I t him, so my mind is a bit blurry…”
…Terra! I shouted within my mind as soon as I heard the spirit’s words. Soone knows things that nobody in this world should possibly know! Explanations, please!
What was one less than ten thousand? Anyone could give you an answer to that question. But not everyone could understand its aning. There were only a select few that had the ‘right’ to know what it ant. A group of nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine individuals.
It’s… Terra’s voice actually seed to be shaking as she responded to , recoiling from the surprise herself. An Anomaly. An Anomaly among Anomalies, even. He was reborn.
Who was? Don’t tell it was the lazy bastard I hit! My hands were shaking at the thought of that, the idea that he could be back spelled nothing good.
No, not him. The one before. I-I’m sorry, this really shouldn’t happen. His soul should have been destroyed at the beginning of the last cycle. It’s part of the normal procedure. I need to think.
After saying that, Terra went silent for a few monts, while the world spirit looked at in confusion. “Do you know him, sir?”
“Not directly…” I shook my head. “But he should have been soone like , at one point in ti…”
“Think, Terra, think!” The catgirl muttered to herself, reviewing the records within her mory to identify the origin of this anomaly. She had already found and confird its identity, but this was sothing new. For a System Companion, new was scary. New ant that, out of the trillions of worlds that had existed in the past, this was the first ti an event had happened.
“The soul was destroyed, I’m sure of that.” She nodded her head, pacing in the bedroom as she recalled those logs. “The energy was perfectly dispersed into the stream. Follow it…” Terra ‘tagged’ one part of the spirit’s energy in the record, following it through the cycle of rebirth.
She saw the soul fragnt joining together with randomly discarded souls to be reborn in another Keeper’s world, its mories erased. She watched its life and death, making sure to keep that exact piece of its soul tagged to follow it into the next life. And the next.
Through thousands of lifetis, she followed the fragnt of a soul, ensuring that she never lost track of it. At tis, it would encounter a few other pieces of its forr Keeper soul, but nothing that had ever caused mories to resurface.
“I don’t have ti for this.” She growled, and the process sped up trendously. Hundreds of lives passed in every second. Sotis, he would be reborn as a frog or a cat, a man or a woman. Once he was a dragon, and once even he ascended to godhood.
Finally, the soul fragnt found its way back to Dale’s own world, at the sa ti as a large number of other fragnts found their way back. It landed in Fyor, on a relatively higher floor. Terra felt resistance when she tried to track it, but forced her way through. “I’m not going to tell him anything he doesn’t need to know. But we need to see how this happened.”
After she said that, the resistance loosened. She saw the fragnts, which had been apart for so many years, rging together into a new life. Maybe it was because of just how compatible the fragnts were with one another, but they caused an anomaly within the ga system. One that allowed its archived mories from this world to return. The mories from when he was a Keeper.
“Jas… you’re actually back.” Terra muttered in surprise, shaking her head.
Okay, I’ve got what I can tell you. Terra spoke, seeming only slightly agitated now.
Please don’t tell that there’s critical information you have to hide from because of the system’s rules? I was practically begging at this point.
It’s not… critical, no. I can’t tell you exactly what he has been through, or how to find him. But… yes, it’s him. No, he doesn’t still have his Keeper authority. Even the greatest anomaly in the world can’t override that ruling. Instead, he has his mories from his ti as this world’s Keeper.
And you said that it was the guy two generations before , right? The really hardworking one? I asked to clarify.
That’s right. His na is Jas. I can easily tell you that much, at least.
And… does he know that I’m not the Keeper imdiately after him? That I’m not the one that killed him? I gulped nervously as I asked that, and waited for a while for a response.
…No, he doesn’t. His mories end at his death, and resu when he was reborn as an anomaly. I can’t tell if he holds a grudge or not. I’m not allowed to check that right now.
I had to note there… she didn’t say that she wasn’t allowed to tell , but that she wasn’t allowed to check. aning she herself didn’t know, because the system wouldn’t let her. So, correct if I’m wrong… the most hardworking, labor-intensive Keeper in our records for this world has been reborn, and could possibly be under the impression that I’m the one that killed him. Did I get that right?
Yes…? He’s not the type to go out of his way for revenge, I think, but I don’t know if his new life changed him. He was a really nice and caring guy when he was the Keeper. His companion had nothing but praise for him.
I gave a small nod at that. I could hope that he didn’t want revenge thinking that I killed him, that his ssage through the world spirit wasn’t a ‘warning’ that he was coming. I could hope for a lot of things. If he truly was as understanding as Terra’s described him in the past, he could be one of the most powerful allies I could ever get.
Otherwise… he might be the deadliest enemy as well. Depending on just how high up he was born, it was entirely possible that his power might surpass my own at the mont. Hell, he might even be a god that awakened outside of my territory, since he could know how to cultivate to that level.
I’d just have to wait and see.
Reviews
All reviews (0)