"Emotionless cry?"
"Yes."
"But… doesn't that seem to be the opposite?"
Ran, who now knew the name of Bob's sigil, was also now confused by it.
"What do you mean?"
"Like, isn't the whole thing with it is that it uses emotions? Wouldn't that be 'emotionful' and not 'emotionless'?"
"Yes, that would be correct. Which is why I'm pretty sure it's a metaphor."
"Oh."
Upon hearing that it was a "metaphor", Ran lost most of his interest. He was a simple person who was fairly direct in his way of handling things, so alluding to something with, in his words, "wishy-washy" language was just a waste of time. And let's not even mention the fact that Ran's entire life could be considered a neverending metaphor—a mystery that, for some reason, I feel the need to mention at least once in every chapter.
"Well, I say it because of its origin."
But hearing these words, Ran's interest was reignited. Maybe this would be a nice surprise just like Queenie's.
"Yeah, so it says:"
"'In the Land of Desires, emotions run rampant, savagely corrupting everything in their way in order to survive. But, things never last. Soon, the land will once again return to a state of grayish emotionlessness, and everything will enter a dark age. Such is the way of decay and renewal.' That sounds pretty metaphorical to me, doesn't it?"
Hearing the words that Bob said, everyone, not just Ran, began contemplating. For them, this sounded really deep, as if they had traveled back to the time when they were fourteen.
Okay, but to be serious, this did indeed sound much like a metaphor. However, unbeknownst to them, this story was as literal as it gets.
"Wow, that's so deep! As expected from someone as sophisticated as Bob!"
Ran couldn't help but tease Bob a little, causing his lips to squirm in cringe.
So, now what? What was Ran supposed to do with all of this? Well, you probably know the answer; nothing! Okay fine, but if I, as the author, were to be completely honest, then the truth is that this was less for Ran and more for you, the reader.
Basically, it's world building, or I guess character building? Well, it's really both but at the moment, in this context, it's extremely important.
This all pretty much boils down to the path that these people will take in order to gain more power.
And in many ways, this was one of, if not the main reason why Ran hasn't been able to create a rune formation for his sigil.
Look at Bob for example:
Believe it or not, as I don't remember stating this, but Bob already has and used a rune formation in the story so far. It was actually the gibberish that he speaks during combat. In reality, it was an auditory rune formation that he created after contemplating his sigil name "Emotionless Cry". And it was specifically the "Cry" part.
In other words, using just the name alone, he was able to translate that into raw power. And now using the rune formation, he can directly incite the emotions, boosting their desire to corrupt and making his attacks stronger.
That, my friend, is the power of knowledge—the so-called phrase, "knowledge is power". The same goes for the rest.
Now, Ran can technically go with something like what Ann does, which is directly focusing on the properties of his sigil, and reinforce or manipulate them, but it was extremely tough in his case.
For one, like we saw in the last few chapters, he doesn't have complete knowledge of his own sigil's properties, like the seal that showed up. Before all this, the most he could figure out was that his sigil was somehow related to the element of space or space itself.
He also didn't know how all of that was related to the stealing of other people's soul juice, so he was truly at a roadblock. And now, he had to include the mechanism for the stealing, which was the seal, while he knew nothing of its properties. So while it answered one question, with what does one steal, it brought out another question, how does one steal. Those are a bit interchangeable but you get the point.
Worse of all, even with the full awareness of all ten thousand runes, there was none that was specifically related to space itself as a concept. In reality, there was only one rune in the set of ten thousand that was space related, and that was the same rune that Fluffy uses to store all of her fresh fish.
However, he could not use this rune for himself, and in fact, nobody can. And this was because it was related to a very specific dimension, or universe if you will. In this way, Ran had his own space, the rune had its own space, and they couldn't mix. At least, not with just the current set of runes.
This was a problem that was kind of an exception though. This is because every rune is different from each other, with different origins, but as long as the fundamental properties coincide, they can harmonize with each other. But different spaces can't do that though.
Not even the special runes in Ran's mind could help as he had to use the medium of normal runes to call out the special ones.
And so, for those curious as to why Ran was the only one so far who wasn't able to create a rune formation, no need to fret. As the author, do you really think that I wouldn't have a good reason and that I was simply holding it off because I couldn't think of anything and because I'm uncreative?
Please…
Finally, as Ran thought about his current circumstances, he looked towards Ann. However, seeing the way Ann glared back at him, he didn't dare to ask her about her sigil. This time, it seemed that his curiosity got the better of him and almost landed him in deep shit.
…
"Are you guys ready to leave?"
"Yes."
"Sure."
"Hmph, you have some nerve saying that, Ran!"
Coldly, Queenie criticized Ran who had questioned if they were prepared to leave.
"Wait, why do you say that?"
"Why do I say that!? Who was the one who held everyone back for half an hour because their hair had been 'ruined'!?"
Indeed, according to Ran, his hair had been ruined during the testing of everyone's soul avatars. He didn't know exactly when it had been messed up, but he thought it might have been all the way back when Ann activated her skill. He supposed that all the steam from the melting snow had made his hair all fuzzy and puff up, and it's wavy nature made it tangle a little, so he could only fix it.
"Pssh, okay. You're just jealous that my hair is better than yours."
"You!"
Clearly, this had hit a soft spot in Queenie's heart. She was, indeed, a little jealous of Ran's divine hair, but that didn't excuse his behavior right? In actuality though, Ran was extremely well-versed in accommodating people and following their way, but when it came to his hair… Well, there was no compromise. If he had to fix it, then he would do it as slowly and methodically as he saw fit.
Everyone knew this, which was why they didn't dare to speak out, but Queenie had missed out on the majority of the bonding between the group on their journey to Angleford, so the extent she knew about Rans relationship with his hair was not extensive enough.
"Hmph."
In response, Queenie pouted and gnashed her teeth a little before running ahead of the group and leading them. She would give him a point for now, but she would break even at some point in the future; on this, she vowed.
And so, with the group finally moving forward towards Queenie's home, a few days passed peacefully.
That was, however, going to change on this day.