"Is... Is that thing gone?" Irene staggered onto her feet but her sense of balance was absolutely contorted.
"Ugh..." She groaned, suddenly finding a crutch to lean on.
"Hello? Irene?" Athelei felt the woman's arm on his head and gave her a nudge.
He received no reply. It made Athelei tilt his head as he noticed the state Irene's ears were in. He then ruffled through her belongings in search of a familiar concoction.
He easily found what he was looking for, draining the liquid onto both of Irene's ears. A weird scent spread from her injury and some kind of reaction occurred.
The Rank 3 Dictator's expression crumpled, clutching her head once more. She writhed for a few moments before passing out. Athelei glanced at the bottle he had emptied and read the label.
"...Oh," Athelei suddenly felt guilty, "This was one of those that you have to sleep through else the pain would be unbearable... Why does Irene have this?"
Athelei willed his wings into a mattress of cloud, allowing Irene to sleep on something that was not solid stone. He then spread himself thin and went about exploring the dungeon while the lady slept.
Irene was not able to answer his questions in this state so he went about with his own devices. His multi-coloured Cosmic Interface flickered madly as he assessed all that fell into his eyes.
Every rock, brick, mark, drawing, crack, and plant came under his scrutinizing gaze. When Athelei found something suspicious enough, instead of requesting information on what that suspicious object was exactly, he asked for the intentions behind its creation.
Most of the objects were unexciting, predictable objects. A small portion was naturally generated without any intention behind it, and if Athelei wanted to look into how it came to be, he had to wait for a day to pass before he could run Inspect again.
Only two things caught his eyes.
One was a stone tablet on a pedestal, and the other was an eerily familiar green shard.
"A Manifestation of Spirit," Athelei softly gasped, taking the object into his grasp.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
- Detecting Information body...
- Identified as a Manifestation of Spirit.
- Analysis Skill: Appraisal is requesting permission to download: Accept? (Y/N)
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
A screen that Athelei hadn't seen in a while popped up. Without fear for what was to come, he accepted the request.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
- Download accepted...
- Download complete.
- Displaying information...
=o=o=o=o=
"For years have ▢ trudged upon mossy soil,
Many a mountain have ▢ lived through,
And yet ▢ still stand in one place, left to toil.
To think we thought ourselves greater than beasts,
With years of history and artistry, our ▢▢▢▢ of honeydew.
All of which could fall the moment ▢▢▢ partake of ▢▢▢▢▢▢.
For we are but poultry sods,
And ▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢."
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Athelei shivered when he received this information, and true panic welled up inside him.
"Silence!" Athelei boomed in his native tongue.
The world shifted, space creaked, and time swirled. Athelei's garbled word brought about an indiscernible shroud that hid him from reality. The small pocket where he existed became a spot of great privacy.
Athelei felt a gaze move over him, one that felt cold and merciless. It was a gaze that he found similar to the way humans looked at an ant crawling on their paved roads.
He did not dare move as that gaze passed over the region he hid himself in. He was as still as a statue despite having a body of fog.
The moment was but a moment, but Athelei experienced a taste of relativistic time dilation. It felt much longer than it actually was.
'I am not here.' Athelei chanted to himself, 'I do not exist. I am a normal fog incapable of thought... Yes,'
'I am fog. The fog is I.'
When the gaze saw nothing to note of in particular, it looked away. Only then was Athelei able to calm down.
'I finally understand knight Harley's dreadful reaction to the first Spirit Shard I encountered.' Athelei chuckled wryly to himself, 'What lesson can I learn from this? That some information is more dangerous than others?'
"Curiouser and curiouser," Athelei laughed as the effects of him speaking in his native tongue began to dissipate.
He then muttered, "Now that I think about it, when I speak the tongue of Infinity, it's like I'm performing those street magic tricks. I say a magic word, and something happens... am I the true magician?"
Athelei squinted before realising his thoughts were going astray again.
He pulled himself out of his ruminations and glanced at the other interesting object that caught his eye. Inspect was swiftly executed.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Oxhor's Requiem
- "We leave this here so that others may still remember who we were; a song for our restless souls."
[ +1 Exp to Analysis Skill: Inspect (Current Exp: 9/20) ]
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
'This should be where that living song came from,' Athelei noted, 'But why did Irene hear it as noise?'
To Athelei, it had been a tear-jerking tune that weighed more than he could ever have expected. When he ran Inspect on the monster, he learned of every note that comprised it. A screen had appeared, but all the information that appeared was,
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
- Detected a [Special Circumstance]
- Uploading information into Analysis Skill, Appraisal's data bank...
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
And through it, he learned of a beautiful song where the screams of the unjustly oppressed echoed out. Victims of genocide and annihilation were all lamenting their fates at the same time.
It tugged at his heartstrings as he imagined how the creators of such a song had met their ends. A special energy came into existence when he received these ideas, swirling silently around him.
It was a starry black, and it swirled with multi-coloured constellations.
It then dissipated as swiftly as it came, but Athelei had already felt his body weirdly change. He executed Inspect on himself.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Angel (Hidden: Athelei, Inactive: Guardian Angel, Orien)
- Race: Human (79%), Starless (1%), Unnamed Mutation (20%)
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
'So many weird things in such a small place,' Athelei smiled when he saw his progressing mutation.
Perhaps being 20% of whatever that mutation was, meant that he could turn 20% of his physical body into fog and vice versa. He had already been capable of turning his fingers and toes, so Athelei felt that such a guess made sense.
"Urggghhh..." A low groan echoed from outside the room he was in.
It seemed like Irene was regaining consciousness.
'Perfect timing. I just ran out of places to look for answers from,' Athelei thought as he drifted over to the golden sleeping beauty.
"Hi~" He greeted with a wave of his foggy hand.
"...How long was I out?" Irene asked, feeling so much better after the special concoction ran its course.
"About an hour or two. I was snooping around while waiting for you."
"The weird noise monster is gone, right?" Irene asked while stepping off of her cloud mattress. She admired the versatility of Athelei's wings as she did so.
"It was a song, Irene." Athelei then held the woman's hand and dragged her towards the pedestal where the stone tablet lay.
"The words on this tablet should be lyrics. You probably read it and triggered a special function. Let me help you this time, so try reading it. I have no idea how to."
Irene nodded, but she was slightly hesitant when she recalled the sorry state her ears were put in. She covered her entire body in a corporeal golden light as a precaution and began reading the text in a monotone voice.
To Athelei, all that she was saying was incomprehensible. But it sounded ancient. He had no idea where Irene learned how to read the text and he was going to ask her later.
When Irene finished reading the text aloud, the stone tablet rumbled as a song began to play. To Irene, it was a dreadful noise, but to Athelei it was a song.
"It still sounds like noise to me, Angel," Irene spoke up after fleeing from the stone tablet and shielding her ears.
"Hmmmm, I already tried adjusting my wings to conduct the sounds differently but it seems like it isn't doing anything. Weird." Athelei replied as he relaxedly rubbed his chin.
The song to him was beautiful, given the emotions of an end present in them. He could both sympathise and objectively appreciate the tunes. It was intriguing to see the two of them hearing totally different things despite being in the same room. It was as if one of them was experiencing auditory hallucinations.
"Open up your soul a bit more," He then said, "I'll use my mark to let you hear what I'm hearing."
"Okay..." Irene's head was throbbing as the sound monster kept rattling her brain, but she successfully widened her connection to Athelei.
When she did, she felt her Angel's senses blend with hers. What it could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell flowed like a stream into her mind.
The noise that rattled her brain magically changed.
"...It really is a song." Irene's mouth was agape as tears pooled in her eyes. She felt a palpable sadness emanating from the notes that played in her ears.
"But..." Irene started and Athelei finished the question, "Why can you only hear a noise monster instead?"
The pair glanced at each other, and Irene knew she met Athelei's eyes despite his fog-body not having any. At least, that's what their connection was telling her.
"Can you try running Examine on the song?" Athelei asked, and Irene shook her head.
"I did it before... Nothing occurred."
"Maybe it's different now that you share my senses."
Irene gave it some thought and shrugged. It wasn't much of a task, and she just had to think about it. It was easy to try again.
"Huh?" Irene's brows went up as a gasp escaped her supple lips.
She was surprised when a special screen appeared in front of her. Athelei saw what was written and nodded.
It was the same screen he received. At least, most of the text was the same. For Irene, it was in the colour of cyan and instead of Appraisal storing information, it was directly sent to her mind.
Irene was then stunned when she received the waterfall of information. A flicker of realisation appeared in her eyes.
"The legends were true!" She exclaimed, and Athelei suddenly felt a sense of deja vu.