Libra answered Athelei's prayers.
At least that's how it seemed.
On the outskirts of what was now a ruined camp, several knights and a few Mist Pine survivors were huddling up together. All of them looked worse for wear with the former group heavily wounded and barely able to stand while the latter all looked to be wearing rags.
Squish, squish, squish.
Athelei's leather shoes made sounds with every step he took over the bloodied ground. Upon his approach, the knights all reacted in fright. Their hands sprung to their weapons despite their exhaustion.
The survivors noticed their behaviour and held their own weapons as well. From what Athelei could see, he wasn't the only one who had to take a weapon into his hand.
Squish, squish, squish.
The darkness still hid Athelei's figure but it wasn't long before he was in the range of the torchlight.
"Hold yourselves!" A familiar woman's voice sent a command to calm her stressed knights.
It was at this moment that Athelei stepped into the light, looking no different than before, save for an awkwardly bandaged wound and burned clothes.
The knights and survivors relaxed upon seeing a child emerge. In the place of their frightened emotions came a slight astonishment. The knights had incurred many losses despite their greater numbers...
...Or perhaps it was because their numbers were greater than their enemies that they lost more people... but that's beside the point.
The point was that the battle was chaotic. The Exiled had surrounded their camp and ravenously ran through them with the element of surprise acting as wings on their backs. In the end, the Exiled had suddenly made their retreat without annihilating them all—that was the only reason they were all alive.
It was amazing how such a young boy stayed alive despite those odds. Their eyes even drifted to the weapon at his waist as they asked themselves, 'Did the kid have an opportunity to use that dagger?'
They couldn't tell. No matter how impossible it could've sounded, in the heat of the moment, anyone could kill someone and be killed as well. Whether or not they were weak, strong, young, or old.
"...Orien!" Another familiar voice rang in Athelei's ears.
"Sir knight!" Athelei smiled happily which eased the tense and sad atmosphere of the defeated knights and survivors. "I did what you told me to. I'm alive! Haha~"
Athelei's proud yet innocent laughter caused a few chuckles, but not too many. A lot of the Harmonic Knights lost good friends in the battle. They were all grieving silently in their hearts as they stood, warily holding their torches against the night.
For all they knew, those Exiled might come back for them for whatever reason they had attacked so aggressively in the first place.
"Glad to see you're alive, kid." Harley sighed as a flicker of relief and surprise flashed across his eyes. "Do you still have the scroll? And what's that thing at your waist? A Dagger?"
"Mhm. I still have it, but I wasn't able to read it just yet. And this dagger? I picked it up! It's some kind of knife, and it's really sharp." Athelei answered, admiring the lie he had subtly crafted to avoid people knowing of his tri-coloured Cosmic Interface.
'I really need to be careful with this. The universe itself seemed to reject me for some reason. And my Cosmic Interface was obviously formed because of my uniqueness and native tongue. If other humans find out about me, the spread of information could trigger the universe's attention... especially with how it had reacted so strongly to me simply thinking about it.' It was a dilemma that Athelei had no answers to. He didn't know why the universe was so hostile without a proper consciousness.
Whenever Athelei looked back to the destruction of his 'soul', it really felt like what happened was a reflex the universe had. It wasn't a natural reaction similar to his physical body blowing up due to conflicting physics and whatnot. It felt like he was a fly and the universe was subconsciously trying to slap him into oblivion come.
Athelei talked to Knight Harley for a bit, happy to have a familiar face to be with.
He asked the knight about what happened and he learned about the Exiled seemingly looking for something. Athelei asked what this something was, but no one—save for Athelei himself—knew. The green shard had been stolen from them even before the Exiled attacked. Thus, everyone was baffled.
The latest theory was that the Exiled who stole the shard had been intercepted by a third party. Who that third party was, they also had no clue. They were on point with such a theory but who would ever think that that third party they were trying to guess was the kid in their group?
Thallium Yan led her knights and the survivors to a place away from the bloody battlefield. There, they rested while the morning sun rose beyond the horizon.
It was a new day, but no one really felt good about starting such a day in these circumstances. The survivors had gone through two tragedies back-to-back while the knights lost many of their comrades.
The only thing helping the atmosphere was the cheerful kid who somehow survived both tragedies and could still smile. None of the survivors knew who 'Orien' was, but one or two had heard of the boy's parents. The town was pretty large, after all. Not everyone knew each other, especially since it was halfway there to becoming a city—which shows just how many had been slain and how ravaging the flames had been. It was a surprise to see the boy still up and about despite his family's deaths.
When the morning sun had completely shown itself, the tired group moved back to the battlefield. Together, the remaining knights and survivors cleaned the area. Athelei was even handed a Nebula Gem from the deceased so he could help out.
Thallium Yan had been the one who gave it to him saying, "Take this and use the Skill, 'Judgement' as much as you can on the things you are going to touch. Tell me if you find something dangerous and we will deal with it, okay?"
"Okay!" Athelei smiled and ran off. When he received the gem, he felt the Trinity Gem inside him synchronize with the stone. Perhaps he could safely use an orange Cosmic Interface as long as he did not use anything related to the other two colours.
"It seems like I don't have to worry about this kid. He's doing well to stay positive. I wonder how Knight Harley helped him. That man could be a good brother or father... Perhaps I should recommend a few of my single friends..." Thallium Yan muttered with a small smile on her face before getting to work.
When the battlefield had been sorted out and cleaned, it was already late in the morning. The bodies of the deceased Exiled had been stripped and burned while the corpses of the Harmonic Knights were wrapped in salvaged cloth and put at the side.
Weapons, armour, and random objects had also been placed in a pile.
As for Athelei, his assumption had proved true. Through the orange Nebula Gem, he had no trouble using his Judgement Skill with an orange interface. Given how there were numerous different objects that Athelei used Judgement on, the Skill had swiftly overtaken Appraisal's experience bar and now sat at the satisfying number of 430.
On a more unfortunate note, Athelei didn't gain any more Interface Authority Levels through the new gem in his hands. The grain-sized gem wasn't absorbed by his Trinity Gem at all. It even had a smaller authority level at 0.2 which caused his orange screen to be barely functional.
'I probably need three higher-quality gems to combine into another Trinity Gem and raise my authority.' Athelei mulled over such a process. Normal Nebula Gems did not combine with each other—at least that was what the people of Illyas knew. If there was a way to combine them, they did not have the technology nor the ability to do so.
Athelei wondered if he could simply speak into the gems to combine them, but there were too many people around. His native tongue had too many eye-catching effects. He only got away with lying to Harley because of the green shard. There was nothing of the mysterious sort on this battlefield that Athelei had spotted.
He also intuitively knew it wouldn't work. If the Trinity Gem was not triggered into fusing by his native tongue and then contained in his body, it would inevitably separate. The gems were like opposite magnets even to their own colour brethren. Different pieces had different wavelengths and were all unique, separate, and indestructible individuals.
Going back to the cleaned-up battlefield, a few knights and survivors who went out to hunt had returned with their catch. Breakfast was quickly served with the newly hunted animals and the salvaged food.
Almost everyone rapidly devoured their food. Some barely had an appetite given all the corpses they had to wade through and move, but the tantalizing smell of cooked meat and soup for breakfast erased all their queasy thoughts.
After breakfast, Athelei was finally able to change into decent clothes.
Despite being slightly too large, save for his shoes, Athelei was satisfied with what he was wearing. He had adorned a white cotton shirt, a plain brown letter vest, brown shorts, and iron-studded black leather boots.
Athelei loved the boots in particular. It had come from the ruins of Mist Pine and had miraculously survived the fires. It was brand new and had been found by people who had been salvaging clothes from the ruined shop. Seeing that there was no other child who made it through the initial fire and the subsequent battle, the seemingly pricey boots went to Athelei.
There were perks to his baggy clothes as well. He soon learned about such perks when a caravan of merchants had passed by later that day.
The merchants were stunned by the ruined town and the traces of battle. Then, in exchange for the salvaged materials, brought the remaining Harmonic Knights and survivors with them as they headed to the nearest city. Athelei followed after his fellow survivors who he had gotten familiar with and boarded one of the carriages with them.
Because of the bumpy road and the solid wood of his seat, Athelei was delighted to discover that he could use the bagginess of his clothes to his advantage and stay relatively comfortable. He would fold parts of his clothes onto each other to create more cushioning.
One of the survivors that sat with Athelei saw what the boy was doing and chuckled.
"This yer first time in a carriage, lil' Orien?" The survivor asked.
"It is, brother Falti! It's also my first time leaving Mist Pine." Athelei answered as he looked to who asked him the question.
It was a young man, perhaps in his late-teenage years of either eighteen or nineteen. Falti wore expensive-looking clothes that didn't really match but still fit well. Athelei identified him as the one who had given him his boots.
Falti was definitely one of the raiders who salvaged quite a lot of nifty items from Mist Pine.
"By the way, where are these carriages heading?" Athelei asked curiously. He was far away when he watched Captain Thallium Yan and her knights negotiate with the merchants.
"Well, the route of the merchants is a long one," Falti answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "They should be heading around the mountains to the North and onto the far West of Illyas. There, ye could find the great city of Avina near the sea... but it would take ya about a month or two of travel at the rate these merchants are going."
"Whoa... that far?" Athelei asked in surprise.
"Yep. Yer going to be passing through many villages and the city of Aren before we get there. That, and navigating the mountains to our North is gonna take at least two and a half weeks. After that are wide plains but many ferocious animals roam those." Falti answered before continuing, "But 'nuff about them merchants. Where do ya plan to go? The Harmonic Knights are most likely stopping at Aren, and most of us as well. Any plans?"
"...I want to try going to Avina." Athelei smiled.