Avrie didn't remember what had happened; all she knew was that she had awakened sleeping near a tree with Aether next to her.
She didn't even know where they were at first, but there wasn't a forest like this in the entire outskirts, so she figured that out quickly.
With that question solved, the next came up right away, like they were packed together.
'Why are we here?'
To answer that question, she retraced her steps.
From coming home and finding a fool sleeping on her bed with no care in the world, and then hearing his um... interesting story and his goal of saving the world, she decided to go with him.
Of course, she didn't believe him one bit.
While it was strange that she couldn't see his threads, who says that it couldn't be because of his affinity or an ability?
But then why did she join him? To use him, of course.
Then, this must mean that she was close to achieving her goal, if they were already in the forest.
And while she didn't know how far they were inside the forest, if they had met any monster, and hopefully not the forest guardian, Chaos, or how far away they were from the point she wished to reach, at least the hard part of convincing him to enter was done.
She doesn't remember how she did it, but why should she dread it?
She glanced over to her companion, who was sleeping, just as always, without a care in the world, like there wasn't anything that could touch him.
As much as she didn't want to run into anything that would delay their journey, how much she wished they met a monster to show to this fool that he isn't someone important.
And even better if it was someone like Chaos.
But if that were to happen, them meeting that tyrant, could they ever survive?
Hard to say. She knew they could never beat it, but maybe they could hide; they just needed to not let it enter their minds.
The bad thing was that no one survived to tell others how it did it and how to avoid it.
She sighed, getting back on her feet, and poking Aether to wake up.
[...]
As Aether awoke from his dream, he jerked, ready to fight whatever monster had just woken him up.
But it was just Avrie.
He stared at her with a bored face, as if he had wanted to be attacked.
Adrenaline was still surging through him from the event with the beast, and he felt on top of the world.
He wanted to fight and win, just like he had just done; after all, he had done the impossible.
It was unheard of for a reader to kill a creature of the bearer rank. And yet he had done it without even wanting to.
Speaking of killing a bearer, how much had it helped him with his knowledge rank?
Knowledge Rank — [Fragment]
>86/1000 knowledge shard
'Huh?'
Aether stared at the number of knowledge shards he had gathered.
He had more than doubled the number of shards he last had when he checked, and he had only killed one.
He was at thirty-five before, and while he didn't check after he killed the fisherman, he knew he only gained one from him, meaning he had gained fifty shards.
He could only stare in bewilderment, not because he was ecstatic, but because his brain was on fire.
'But the math doesn't add up.'
Aether looked at his fingers, raising four on one of them to represent the number of shards he, as a reader, gets from killing a bearer, and on the other, he raised all five, the multiplier of the demon knowledge rank of the creature.
"Four… times… five…" He squinted like it was some deep cosmic riddle.
"Twenty!" He grinned, proud of himself, then froze.
"…Wait. That's not fifty."
He stared at his hands like they had betrayed him.
He had mysteriously gained thirty more shards than he was supposed to; just where could he have gained the rest?
But before he could figure that out, he realized he had been spacing out for some time now, and not to make Avrie suspicious, he decided to let it go for later.
Getting up on his feet, he brushed the dirt off himself, glanced at the witch, who was waiting for him with her arms crossed, and started walking.
He still didn't have any idea about what her goal was, but he sensed it was getting closer.
'Yeah, I wish.'
He chuckled.
Sensed was a strong word to use; he saw a little change in her behavior and thought that they were getting closer, but that change could be the result of other things than that.
Like the fact that their minds were on the verge of being broken not long ago.
Before, she was more focused, not looking that much at their surroundings, and not at all at him, but now, she was stealing glances at him every once and a while, and constantly looking around as if trying to find something,
...or someone.
She also seemed more nervous than before and couldn't keep still.
Did he question her about these things?
No.
And not because they had this trust that could never be broken, that trust never existed in the first place, but because it was kind of convenient.
She was quite good at finding things hidden, so if she was looking, perhaps for a monster, then it was helping them.
If she were looking around for something else, then it didn't help him, but nor did it prove as an inconvenience.
That was why he didn't bother.
There was also the fact that his mind was stuck on another dilemma.
'The God of Praise.'
If he had any doubt that this was the real world, then its presence confirmed it to him.
Though why was it here, and why did it speak to him, and why did it help him?
And the strangest thing of all was the message from the Codex before he killed Chaos.
He didn't know what dream resonance was, but he did recognize it to be a threshold message, a log.
Thresholds are a little strange to explain because they are an anomaly to the system.
The exact opposite of what the Codex is trying to make.
For most, they are how much control the user has over their affinity, contradicting the Codex, which wants them together; the thresholds favour one side of the coin.
Though this wasn't always the case, for him, for example, it favored his affinity, allowing it to get control over him.
So, while the three principles of someone's Codex are the Class, Rank, and Sync, thresholds served as the fourth way to get stronger, or weaker, depending on how yours works.
His thresholds kept the key to his mental fortitude; whenever they fell or rose, it told him those messages were logs.
Aether's logs, and all logs just a little different, worked like this:
They had his new mental fortitude level and a message that explained to him the cause of why it had risen or fallen.
But enough of explaining how thresholds worked.
You have to have an affinity for one, that was why they didn't work at the moment in the first place, so how did a log appear, and with did it say something about dream resonance and not mental fortitude?
It of course had to do something with the God of Praise, but in what way?
It all made his brain hurt.
He was full of questions, and none were being answered.
He just had to draw an unjustified conclusion that the character he had taken over was related to the God of Praise in some way.
But another question rose up: if it was here, then why did it call itself the Killer of the Abyss?
To this day, he has never come up with an answer to the Abyss's identity.
The description of his powers told him he was some sort of forgotten god.
But just how powerful does one have to be for the God of Praise to hunt them down?
'Had there... actually been five gods and not four at the beginning of everything?'
Then why was he forgotten, and why was he fighting with the God of Praise?
The four gods have been known to fight alongside each other, working as a team, so then... did the fifth go against all four of them?
But while he understood that the power of the gods was far beyond the imagination of a mortal, how could he have fought all four at once?
And if both gods were present, then who could the figure who had given the Queen eternity be?
There wasn't anyone strong enough to do that, or at least until now.
He had an idea of who the figure was, but it was just a hypothesis.
Aether clenched his fists, and sweat formed on his forehead.
'The Abyss, it was the one who froze the world.'