"The young master wishes to see you." The head escort said with so much respect than he gives even his peers.
"Okay!" he said with so much curtesy as would be proper for a messenger of a high noble like the vip they were escorting.
"I guess you are now your proper self. Good thing." The very creature who was responsible for the position he was in said.
'How won't everyone treat me like a walking time-bomb if they believe I contracted an Enthroned. After all a transcendent or an Unparalleled can never even damage a usurper or an Enthroned and this thing just killed freshly ascended enthroned in three moves.'
"If you want, I can tone down my power a little bit since I am in a good mood, given you have finally awakened your second potential soul. That thing called the system was already getting on my nerves to the point where...just forget I said what I just said."
That was the point, the problem. His major problem was not the fact that the creature, which resembled a man clad in seemingly light-devouring black apparel and which seemed to be covered in pure 'blackness that made light to twist around their person, always remained by his side, invisible to all except he order's it into reality, or the fact that it was always muttering one thing or the other to him. No! It was the very fact that he could not keep even his thoughts private when it came to this creature.
Good thing he had already arrived at his destination.
The V.I.P was a boy roughly in his age grade. He stood on the balcony facing the Horizon watching something....
Thomas' voice caught in his throat. His eyes should not have been able to make out the details which a fledging Transcendent V.I.P. was seeing, and yet it did.
Far away, a fully fledged Unparalleled was locked in battle with a wild Unparalleled who was also fully fledged.
One question came to his mind;
'Is it that thing I signed up to protect the young master against?'
"I see you are here!" the young master said after having taken notice of him due to his sigh.
"come sit with me." The V.I.P. offered.
Thomas looked like he had just been offered to sit on a cushion of pins and needles.
'sit with you and let those noble bastards take my head for 'insubordination and breach of etiquettes, no thank you!' naturally, he never said this aloud.
"Sitting would show me that you trust me enough to not talk about it, which would be enough proof of faith to be each other's confidantes." The V.I.P. said, as though reading his mind.
He sighed and walked to the chair by the side of the Transcendent.
'If any one brings this up, I will just reference the clause on my employment contract which states that all contracted escorts must treat his words as the highest orders except when his orders would compromise his safety. But how do they even expect us to keep someone as powerful as a Transcendent, no matter how freshly awakened away from danger or his desires. Any threat that would threaten him would have wiped us all off…..
"You flatter me your honor" he said as he took his seat. "But tell me, why me. You have many at your beck and call, all more powerful than me in one way or the other? Why me then who has been forgotten by the System itself?" he said curiously. The moment they had been thrown out of the clan his Father had belonged to and where they once lived, it was as though, a traumatic switch had flipped in him, causing him to forget everything he ever was Class-wise or how he got to the Contracted stage.
The terrible twist of his story was that he seemed to have been forgotten by the system itself. Even if someone lost all the memories, a simple summoning of their system status would have been more than effective to tell them of what their path was made up of. For him though, the only thing that pointed at him ever awakening happened to be the contracted beast that always followed him about claiming to be his contracted beast.
His condition was further made complex by the fact that he remembered everything about himself and the life he lived aside from anything related to his awakened path; all but knowing he had a contracted beast.
The Transcendent looked at him with a smile that betrayed his deep thoughts and fatigue? before responding.
"I chose you because you and I are similar in more respects than one. You see, we both have, or seem to have powers that we barely understand and we both have seen enough of the underbelly of the society and nobility to parse that not everything is as it seems to be or as the nobility tries to put it. I need someone similar to me at least in these respect to confide in."
Thomas Zoned out in silence. He did not hate nobility by default, but he had seen, as the Transcendent before him said, enough of the underbelly of society to not care about the ripple effects of their actions. He always wished that he could have the power to hold the guilty amongst the upper echelons of the human society to account. He did not harbor the wish out of a heroic sentiment to punish those who held society at ransom. Rather, he did so because, he was one of those who had been badly affected by the ripple effect of the callousness of the human administration enough to care about causing a change when he could.
That is why he decided to pay a listening ear and offer comfort to anyone he could. In his current position, that was the bit he could.
"If you have something to share about the current society's callousness, then I am all ears" he said with a sigh that revealed the weight of his conviction, which he always carried in his mind.
"Thanks!" for once, the V.I.P sagged his shoulders, cracking the image of the well composed Transcendent with everything in control which he had always put on.
"My name is Carmen." The V.I.P. began, his eyes and focus distant as he reminisced the past. "I was born into the De'Grace family as a Promiseless kid. My condition should have been a sign of a good thing in itself, the sign of natural awakening just as you are, but with how rare the chances of stumbling upon any awakening conditions for myself were, the way it is for the vast majority of the promiseless population who are not born naturally awakened already, I was cast aside and left to fend for myself, suffering in the midst of plenty and having to defend myself from stigma and bullying.
At times, I was even punished for defending myself. So, I resigned myself to being beaten every time the bullies came. When it got to much, I relocated to the outskirts of the clan's manor without anyone's knowledge or permission, subsisting on rats and vermin to survive. Even when my absence was noticed, no one cared to check on me.
On one stormy night, I encountered a wounded Enthroned of the Humanoid species, the one called the Enthroned of the Rains, who had fallen unconscious at the outskirts of the De'Grace property, after having slain three Usurper Grade beasts and a host of corrupted unparalleled.
Beside her, a wounded white and furry cat, probably her contracted beast, purred and meowed desperately in fear of the probability of losing her.
Three Awakened beasts had been drawn to the corpses of the Higher ranks from far away despite the rains and one of them were about to make a meal out of the lady and her Contracted beast unable to do anything.
Somehow, a burning desire to help overcame me that day, and when I acted, I did not know, nor can I fully remember how a Promiseless kid like the then me was happened to overpower three Awakened beasts close to the next rank. What I knew was that after that, I took the both of them to my worn down shelter, salvaged what was left of the fury of the storm to repair it and nursed the both of them back to full health in it.
When she regained her consciousness, she felt heavily indebted to me, teaching me everything I currently know about the Natural path. It was from her mouth I came to understand that I had somehow stumbled upon transcendence. Through her efforts, we came to discover how my transcendence stemmed from my drive to help others and how the power-up I received was my transcendence, as well as what it does; fueling me with enough power, mystical or otherwise, to carry out anything i wish to do to be of help to others.
When it was healthy enough to leave, she expressed remorse her inability to take me along with her, given that it would put my life at risk. She was like a big sister to me then and I, like a kid brother to her.
Thus, as her parting gift, she gave me her spatial ring made by the best blacksmith and spatial mage in her realm, which she informed me to keep hidden at all times, erasing her mark from it so I could claim it. She had said I might need the content of it when it was time. She also left me a way to contact her, telling me not to do so unless it involved a matter of life and death as well as informing me that she would come to get me once she, as she had said, fixed up some things."
At this point, the V.I.P. grimaced as though recalling something unpleasant.
"She made one mistake though; in a bid to better my living conditions, she almost killed the De'Grace family head, asking him how he would have left me outside the family grounds to die, promising to come take his life if even one mishap befell me.
When she left, all hell broke loose. The Family head, the only Contracted stage expert to have ever risen in our clan and the highest ranking person in all our clan history, revealed to me my crimes of nursing the Enthroned of Rain, a bitter enemy of Humanity's forces, to full health. He almost handed me over to the forces of humanity to be put to death.
The next few days where I waited for the Inquisitors of Humanity to come were one of the most hellish days of my life.
Just few days to the arrival of the Inquisitors, it was discovered that I was a Transcendent.
As though a switch had been flipped, every person who had been eager to see my death suddenly seem to enter into a competition to butter me up, having seen the opportunity for our family to rise from a nameless house to a Great One once I am fully fledged.
The Family head reported a 'suspect escape' when the Inquisitors arrived and paid heavily for wasting their time, in a bid to keep me a secret from those who would have poached me from the Family, which would have ruined their planned rise. He kept me in line by promising to take the fall and make the definitive report of what I did should I prove difficult to control. Fearing death after being branded as a traitor of my race, I obliged.
But given the nature of my transcendence, they could not safely train me to being fully fledged behind closed doors. Thus, they organized for outings like this where I would be escorted by those beneath me in power as I find the means to grow on the natural path and become fully fledged.
I am sure you may have wondered why people as weak as your colleagues were recruited to keep me safe. The truth is that you all were rather employed to tie me down with responsibility. This is to make sure that I don't risk my life trying to battle anything at my level as I would have to know that anything that can engage me in combat would have long since killed you all off."
The V.I.P. smiled before asking;
"can I trust you with something Thomas?" The V.I.P. asked.