"and.... Even after all that... I couldn't even get strong enough to get myself a steady standing among the awakeners. Compared to someone like seriché, I am just so much more inferior"
Deski's eyes squinted, her legs were tapping against the ground with frightning speed.
"If only.... If only i hadn't been 'locked'."
Locked, it was a term rein had become familiar with during his training with dias.
It had come up when rien inquired if all Awakeners were as strong as seriché.
It was an extremely rare 'ailment', a type of curse, that makes it so that the person that bears it cannot gain 'anything' via the system.
They can upgrade and evolve what they have but they cannot gain anything like skill, wing, feather or even affinities if they didn't have it before they were 'locked'.
Suprisingly, a person could still unlock bloomings and evolve their mandate if they have it.
Dias had mentioned that deski and gotten 'locking' years before she Awakened, rendering her incapable of having anything other than basic skills.
If a world like this, where strength often defines status. An ailment like that is a crippling a sentence.
Rein stayed still. Fiddling with his fingers, he thought of the life deski had gone through. Yer he couldn't fathom the depths at all.
A person who hadn't experienced the pain can never understand it.
"I..."
Rein fumbled with his words in his mind, having a hard time picking out the correct one.
"I hope it gets better for you in the future"
Deski looked a bit suprised, then turned to look at him. Her remaining blue eye reflecting the small amount of light in the dimness of dusk.
"..."
Then, slowly, there was a smile on her face, which changes into a gleefully smug smile.
"Hmmmmmm?"
Rein could feel warmth reach his cheeks as he said.
"W—well, What do you want me to say!"
"N—no... That was g—good enough"
Deski responded as she chuckled.
"Oh! The s—skewer went cold"
Rein turned to look at the two sticks of kebab in his hand, they were both cold by now.
'man... Whatever'
With that, he brought the cold skewer to his mouth and took a generous bite.
"Mm, they're still a bit warm on the inside, quick. Eat it"
Deski, following his words, also took a generous bite of her vegetable and meat kebab.
The scenery was quite comical, to say the least. Two people so differently dressed than eachother, one barely 18 and the other well in her mind 20s. Chomping down on two sticks of kebab like they hadn't eaten anything in ages.
Eventually, rein handed both sticks to deski who threw the four sticks to a wooden dustbin multiple meters away.
"You know... Your mandate, whatever it was called, what are the exact particulars of it anyway? you mentioned it increases the level of control you have over your environment based on your singleminded focus.... How exactly do you quantify such a thing?"
Rein looked a bit confused as he talked.
"Like what defines how much control you have and how much focus do you need? Is the level of control proportional to the level of focus? How does—"
"Y—you don't"
Rein blinked, then turned toward deski with a complicated expression.
"You don't quantify i—it"
Deski smiled, then continued.
"See, you're p—putting too much logic into all these t—things. The system is... M—mystical in ways our feeble minds cannot
c—comprehend"
Deski stood up, and gestured for him to do the same.
"It is theorizes t—that the system is a tool for t—the will of the world. These day, i—its less of a story and more o—of a belief. And... The will of the w—world something even more mysterious t—than the system"
She waited for a moment, pondering, before saying.
"Some People aren't even s—sure that the will of the W—world exists. My elders used t—to say that the will of the world is a p—primal thing. But people of my generation t—theorized that it is more t—than just a primal sense, but less than a c—conscious. Somewhere in between"
Deski turned to look rein in the eyes, a soft smile on her lips as if she had found what she wanted to say
"The way the w—will of the world works is not logical, s—specific or quantifiable. It is just l—like a judgement of a kid, just on a much v—vaster level"
Rein felt a little confused on the analogy. How could something seemingly as magnificent and grand as the 'will of the world', the implication that the world itself is alive and very much capable of thinking, be compared to a mere child?
Suddenly, as they were walking towards the inn, a person came running towards them and shouted at deski.
"Hey! Deski... Haah... The, the cult of abjuration—... The haah, there were spotted near the forest"
Suddenly... It felt as if the air around deski had shifted, even rein, an unawakened person, could faintly sense the immense amount of bloodlust exuding from her.
"Let's go, no time to waste here. Gather everyone else"
She started walking before stopping in her tracks. She turned her head over her shoulder to stare at him.
"Rein, go to the inn and rest—"
"No i'll come... If I am allowed to"
'to wherever you're going'
If it was something related to one of the four giant cults, the cult of abjuration, rein judged that it was something that concerned everyone in monolithos, including rein.
And thus, his paranoid mind wouldn't rest unless he had sufficient information on the matter.
Deski stared at his for a moment, something deep moving beneath her eyes
"Hm"
Then, she started walking with a hurried pace.
.
.
.
In a wide room situated in a somewhat fortified house in the middle of the city, there were over three dozen people present.
There was no table of anything to sit down on, in fact, the entire room was mostly empty except for a cupboard and a map of what rein assumed to be monolithos and it's surrounding forest, the forest of spion.
There were some people rein recognized, like seriché, shionelle, and ofcourse, deski.
There were also dias and a person who rein vaguely recognized.
Half of the people present here were Awakened, and the other half were unawakened people.
There were Awakeners who hadn't arrive yet, or were simply not going to arrive, like dias.
"Why isn't he here anyways?"
"I really dunno. My old man said something about that Gloomy old man having a devorce or something"
Shionelle answered rein's inquiry, tilting her head downward to the side to stared at him from the corner of her eyes.
Rein's brows knitted together a bit.
"Isn't this supposed to be really important? Like... Thousands of lives worth of important?"
Shionelle put on a awkward smile on her face.
"Well, this is the second time a cult emergency had been called this month, and we aren't even halfway through the month. Stuff like this happens a lot, and it is most of the time, if not all, false alarm"
"AHEM!"
A booming voice took rein's attention immediately, it was a women in her mind to late thirties, she had black hair and was wearing brownish black clothes. Her dark green eyes focused on shionelle for a moment, something akin to a glare present in them.
Shionelle lifted her hands with a cocky grin, resembling a mock surrender.
"If all of you aren't already aware, this is a meeting called because of the unusual, supposed, appearance of the cult of abjuration near the southern side of the forest"
Her voice was loud, but not enough to be irritating. It was steady and held a calming sense of confidence in it.
Rein observed as the women, named ironyel, the chief of monolithos, gazed over the people present. Her gazed stopped at a few people, including rein, who met her eyes with an composed, almost impassive expression.
"Most of you know what an appearance of a cult signifies, but if you don't, then all you need to know is that..."
She took a deep breath, then said.
"They are a bunch of shrewd, psychopathic bastards who choose to ascend not through the path given to us by the gods but ones given to them by devils, by evil gods who ravaged our lands all those decades ago, during the cataclysmic 'war of the
She put her hands behind her back, her gaze turning fierce as she said.
"These bastards use means that are not only unethical but simply horrifying, sacrificing human life and... Sometimes even worse, to ascend through the ranks of sin"
Rein gulped, wondering if what she was saying exaggerated or the actual truth.
Dias, who stood beside ironyel, turned back and handed her a fountain pen.
"And so, i, alongside the memeber of the assembly, have decided to conduct a thorough search for any traces of these cultist"
She said as she turned to the map behind her and marked four straight like on the southern part of the forest.
"For the next week, Awakeners like you, alongside expert fighters like arnold and pamin will conduct a search on a three kilometres radius surrounding the forest. Starting from the southern side. The Awakeners and fighters will be divided into four groups, each consisting of six people. While ten awakeners will be staying in the village as at all times"
She set the pen down, then looked out rhe window situated at the top of the room.