The wafting embers and the descending marbles of light were lamenting the fallen. A trail on the ground appeared with that of a golden hue, leading Jack to a newly opened giant door of light.
With the large halberd in his hand, he carried on after sending his hope to whoever at the end of the other side, the receiver of his friend's soul.
His every step birthed a glinting pulse, until he placed his foot beyond the portal-like mammoth door of light.
On the other side, he was met with the scenery of a glowing pathway, surrounded by the darkness of void. The path stayed true and straight. Jack however, could notice that it was slowly descending.
"Sephiroth, I know that you're silent because you wanted to give me some time." Jack soberly smiled. "I'm fine now, so explain all of those changes to me."
[You're strong as ever, Jack_
[Firstly, if you notice about the changes of your status and level of this world, you can grasp some obvious changes that hint on how the system of this world works.]
"Indeed. I noticed that my species deliberately changed and now I'm at a higher level than the recommended minimum for Galamor Forest."
[Level 311, that is a huge leap from two digits.]
"Sounds surreal even though I didn't feel that much stronger than before. Well, aside from the newly acquired mutation that seems."
[A Unique Mutation, it could be great if you get another of those. Thanks to it, your survivability is four digits.]
Jack then tried to see if he could willy-nilly immediately use it. It was the same as normal mutation where he was given an enlightenment to activate the newly acquired ability. This time however, the One Sin And One Hundred Good Deeds, had a little bit of a special activation.
Thanks to it, Jack now discovered that the tentacle was actually connected to his soul the entire time.
Because the ability was literally calling out and waking the holy souls that resided within a fine tread between the connection of his tentacle and himself—he needed to perform a 'sacred' act that stimulated those one hundred souls to be available at his command.
The enlightenment was rather vague at best, but it seemed like he could control the amount of the awakened holy souls by doing a minor 'sacred' act. Surprisingly, he was able to awaken five of the holy souls by just thinking of something sacred to him.
Petra Tentacle glimmered in white light, even to its flame. Jack then tried to see if he could shift the healing and strength-inducing souls beneath his skin to his arms. Just by using an intent, he managed to do so.
He was spectacled by his newfound power, lightly admiring it as he analyzed his glowing left hand as he walked. Although the rest of the ninety five holy souls were hibernating, their unconscious presence alone had strenghten the vessel it carried—hence the increase in stats recorded by the world.
"I wonder why there are only one hundred souls, while we clearly saw and heard that there were more than thousands of them."
[It's all related to the incident that happened within the past of this world, it's recorded within the very same thing that you have acquired, an interestingly vague existence. That somehow, causes your existence to be partially concealed and protected_
[It's the thing that Cruciatus referred to as, the 'Forbidden'. After looking into it, I rather agree on why he refers to it as so.]
"Now that we mention it. It seemed like the world started to hide both of my traits and abilities for both of us. Will that work the same way with the Appraisal Gem that those Players have?"
[I did emulate some data if it behaves with the usage of Appraisal Gem. Basically, your existence is being protected by the world. There is also a chance that you're being surveyed_
[And it's all because of this little fella, the {182151315111111}]
"Guess so... What exactly is that again? A hidden code? Key password?"
[It's a uniquely encrypted file, apparently. I've already cracked the sublime puzzle but I think you will have fun finding it out yourself_
[I also already traced the original value of the puzzle and the row of numbers that you saw was actually an almost complete form of it. Meaning that, someone or something had already deliberately decoded this for us_
[It could be Cruciatus himself who did this as far as we know. It could be the 'Mother' too.]
Jack closed one of his eyes. He caressed his chin while donning a mild smuggish smirk. Feeling challenged, he was up for the fun task.
"Ohoho. Well, give me a hint or two, will ya?"
[Come on, it's as easy as opening a bakery for kids after knowing the order of your alphabet cookies showcasing location.]
"Alphabet?"
Jack tried to see the possible pattern. There must be a reason why Sephiroth mentioned alphabet cookies and bakery.
'Hmm, showcasing location. Ah! The sequence order!'
There were 26 known universal alphabets that he used till this very day as a normal language comprehension tool. Jack then spread the code within his mind, the results was as common:
18-21-5-13-15-11-11-11, and then turning it all to the corresponding order of the alphabet. With the 18th alphabet being R and so on and on with the rest of the digits, Jack got something that was quite readable than the jumbled mess of numbers.
"Ruemokkk, with triple K. Wait, is this even the right answer?"
[You're close. I did say that it was sublime but there is one tricky part about the last six digits of ones. In particular, you took only one digit of it after the letter K, so it's actually 11-1-11-1 instead of 11-11-11.]
"Ruemokaka?"
<
<
Jack's chest could be felt burning intensely. He was almost down to his knees with his left hand to his chest and the glaive helping him stood still, although barely. He could see an unknown purple sigil that appeared to be two infinity symbols stacked on top of each other, it was burning in curses on his right eye.
And then, a floating scripture of more ancient purple runes manifested everywhere at his sight.
They all traveled faster and faster in every direction. With every runes appeared within his sight, his right eye became more and more coated in pain.
"The hell are these!?"
In just a moment right after, everything instantly disappeared. What was left was dripping blood on his eye. He couldn't comprehend anything either.
<
"What is all of that for!?"
[Pfft, it's a way to give you an access to perceive and acknowledge the existence of the content, Jack_
[I already encrypted that mess of this ancient scriptures into a fully comprehensible file. But without this process, it wouldn't even be allowed to let you perceive it. As for me, the unwanted foreigner, it seemed like the world didn't acknowledge my existence so I'm free to take a look at it without any complications.]
A shrugging emoticon could be perceived on Jack's consciousness.
"What a hassle." Jack wiped the dripping blood on his right eye and continued with his journey to reach the end of this glowing path. He could be seen reluctantly smiling because of what had happened just now. "Give me the data, let me read some of it. I don't want to have my eye electrocuted for nothing."