The Omniscient Author gulped audibly at Gilgamesh's question.
"Well, isn't it obvious?"
Gilgamesh's brow raised questioningly.
"You won. Everything worked out. Was there ever any doubt in your mind?"
Since it did not even know how to explain what had transpired, it decided to just stroke Gilgamesh's ego while also telling him the truth.
Gilgamesh thought about it, but the answer did not come to him. He tried again, but he could no longer even feel the Omniscient Author's nature.
"Why can't I use your power?"
"Ah?" The Omniscient Author paused.
Suddenly, it dipped its quill into the true energy and drew the image of a clueless, shrugging stickman.
' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ '
"I dunno..." The Omniscient Author said.
"Something about your soul... and your body.... and... mumble mumble mumble... and now you're all better!"
Gilgamesh's face twitched all over as he tried to figure out whether he should laugh or cry.
"Did something happen when my soul was disturbed by the Holy Shaman?"
Hearing this, the Omniscient Author nodded both its quill and its page.
"Did my soul do something to change the outcome?"
It nodded again.
"And it was my soul that cut me off from your power?"
A final nod sealed the deal.
Gilgamesh digested the information with a thoughtful expression.
"Just what is my inherent nature."
"I really wonder sometimes... What am I?"
The Omniscient Author stiffened before flying down to try to drown itself in Gilgamesh's sea of energy.
It was afraid that he would ask it to use its power to find something out that it did not know.
In other words, the Omniscient Author had become somewhat katagelophobic.
Finally, Gilgamesh's eyes opened in the outside world, and he saw Law and Wyg.
They were covered in injuries and splashes of blood, but they both seemed ecstatic.
As for the Holy Shaman and Aerial Guardian, Gilgamesh saw them lying on the floor.
When he saw the Holy Shaman, his memories stirred and all of a sudden he felt his blood boil.
He recalled the way she had touched his soul, and unbridled anger arose from the very depths of his being.
Gilgamesh himself did not know what was happening at first, but his innermost thoughts began to provide him with understanding.
He was feeling raw, pure emotion, coming straight from his soul.
He walked over to the Holy Shaman's corpse and picked her up by the throat, and his red eyes glowed intensely.
"I remember now..."
Gilgamesh's aura oozed out of him slowly, replacing the mist in the room with its cold indifference. At the same time, his sea of energy was experiencing a similar kind of reaction.
There was a shift in the entirety of his sea of energy, and the Omniscient Author freaked and panicked, trying to sink itself deeper into the lake.
In the air above the lake of energy, an image was slowly taking shape. It was incomplete and oddly shaped, so it was impossible to see what it was without it fully manifesting.
Gilgamesh's grip on the Holy Shaman's neck tightened.
Wyg and Law exchanged clueless looks.
"Um, Gilgamesh?" Law called to him, but he was ignored.
Wyg tried to reach out and touch him, but the aura leaking out of Gilgamesh reacted and stopped his hand from moving any closer.
Gilgamesh stared at the Holy Shaman, unblinking, but he was not actually seeing her despite her being the only thing in his field of vision.
No.
He was seeing images of lives he had never lived and things he himself had never done.
He was seeing messages from the depths of his soul that were activated once he felt those emotions.
Gilgamesh suddenly opened his mouth.
"Oh. So that's what that was?"
The aura around Gilgamesh's body was slowly retracted, and he tossed aside the Holy Shaman.
The image in his sea of energy also stopped materializing and faded away.
Gilgamesh finally turned around to face Law and Wyg, and he flashed a bright smile.
"Ummm..." Wyg was stuck for a moment.
"What happened there?" Law asked, seemingly unbothered on the surface but worried for his safety underneath.
"I was finally able to feel... myself. It's like I was looking into cloudy water before, but now I can see."
"I can truly see."
"See what?" Wyg asked.
Gilgamesh smirked and walked over to Wyg, then placed his hand on Wyg's shoulder.
"I see the vague outline of my inherent nature for the first time."
With a thought, Gilgamesh performed an action that instantly sent Wyg over the moon with ecstasy.
The scrawny, wild-haired young man felt a wonderful sensation coming from within him, and when he looked into himself he saw all of the power and energy he had expended returning to him.
When Gilgamesh did this, the Omniscient Author finally lost it.
That was because, in Gilgamesh's sea of energy...
The dormant seed of the Obscure Spark had been forcefully awakened!
On top of that, Gilgamesh was forcing it to restore Wyg to his peak state!
"Obscure Spark... is that you?" The Omniscient Author asked.
"Shh..."
The Omniscient Author tilted its quill. "Huh?"
"Shut up! Do you want Master to kill me!?"
Hearing this childish voice coming from the seed of the Obscure Spark, the Omniscient Author was taken aback.
"You aren't the Obscure Spark! I would know, because I created you!"
The image of the Obscure Spark suddenly started seething, until it exploded in a fit of rage.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP! PLEASE! I DON'T WANT MASTER GILGAMESH TO KILL ME! I WAS ONLY JUST BORN!"
The Omniscient Author: "..."
On the outside, Gilgamesh had fully restored Wyg.
Then, he did the same to Law.
Both of them were completely shellshocked, and Gilgamesh did not immediately offer an explanation.
Instead, he walked over to the purple candle and stared intently at it. He found the purple fire to be quite interesting, as it exhibited no heat.
It felt cool, but also somehow inexhaustible.
'Author, explain this candle to me. Immediately.'
Caught off guard, the Omniscient Author scrambled a bit before answering.
'Oh- uh- that's something called a Soul-Spark. It's a type of soul-treasure that can increase your output of soul power without needing you to actually overdraw and damage your soul.'
'It does so by creating a source of neutral soul power that adapts to your own, taking on the properties of it and essentially creating more of your soul's power.'
'However, this particular one is incomplete. It's lacking something for its development.'
Gilgamesh's raised his brows, 'Missing what?'
'It needs souls. A lot of souls.'
Suddenly, the strange aura returned and Gilgamesh eyes glowed bright red once again.
Once again, the indiscernible image appeared in the air above the lake of energy, and this time Gilgamesh performed another miracle.
"NO FUCKING WAY!"
The Omniscient Author shrieked as it saw the dormant seed of the Endless Cycle come to life, giving off the same kind of fluctuations as the seed of the Obscure Spark.
"Brother Endless!" The Obscure Spark called out in a happy, childish voice. As if it were glad to no longer be alone.
"Brother Spark!" The two images suddenly moved together and bounced into one another, embracing.
The Omniscient Author was feeling especially suicidal at this point.
Once the seed of the Endless Cycle came to life, the incomplete image in Gilgamesh's sea of energy vanished once more.
On the outside, an express of satisfaction appeared on Gilgamesh's face.
"Ah... It feels good to experience my own power for once. Now it makes sense why I'm such an arrogant asshole at heart."
Wyg and Law felt like they were watching an insane person, but when they saw Gilgamesh approaching the purple candle again, they inched closer to observe with wide eyes.
Gilgamesh put his hand into the fire of the candle, and a change instantly took place.
In his sea of energy, the seed of the Endless Cycle looked to the sky with a "Hm?"
It quickly realized that Gilgamesh was going to need its power and said, "Oh! Gotta go to work."
It activated the power of its nature after a wordless command from Gilgamesh, and got to work doing what he commanded it to do.
In the palm of Gilgamesh's hand, tiny black particles appeared, releasing an inky black aura of death and reincarnation.
"You all were probably looking forward to reincarnating," Gilgamesh talked down to the souls in his palm before watching them get fed to the purple fire.
"But I need to use you all for something. Tough luck."
Wyg and Law heard him speak, but the words went over their heads completely.
Gilgamesh was using the Endless Cycle to feed actual souls to the Soul-Spark, and it was slowly undergoing a change.
With each soul it absorbed, its color would become a deeper and deeper shade of purple, and the flame also burned with greater intensity each time.
However, it steadily became colder and colder.
Eventually, Gilgamesh heard the Omniscient Author speak in his head.
'That's it! Now it just needs a steady supply of pure energy! I suggest you use the Obscure-'
Before the Omniscient Author could finish, the seed of the Obscure Spark acted under Gilgamesh's wordless command and did the very thing.
'Yeah... that.' The Omniscient dejectedly sighed. It was finally being useful, but now it had gotten competition.
Worst of all was the fact that the competition was newborn versions of its own creations.
It was impossible to imagine the kind of frustration the Omniscient Author felt.
'I thought the other Gilgamesh said that he wouldn't be able to use true energy natures anymore. Was he able to wake them up because he already possessed the dormant seeds?'
'And what is that weird image that keeps appearing and reappearing?'
'It must have something to do with his inherent nature, but I have no idea what that even is!'
'I want to understand so bad!!!"
The Omniscient Author's thoughts trailed off, and it lost itself.
Meanwhile, Gilgamesh had forced the Soul-Spark to undergo a transformation.
Now, it was a brilliant purple flame with specks of black souls fused within it, creating a core layer of dark flames, far colder than the outer purple layer.
Gilgamesh saw that the quality was now much better, and he finally felt like it was a treasure worthy of him.
He picked the candle up and asked the Omniscient Author to explain its current state to him, but it was in such deep thought that he would have to give it a command to get its attention.
As he was about to do that, Wyg and Law noticed the difference in the Soul-Spark.
"Wow," Wyg marvelled.
"You couldn't do anything like that before," Law stated. "What happened to you?"
Gilgamesh turned to them with the candle in hand and smirked.
"I've been reminded of who I am and what my power is. This is what I should have always been able to do, but too many things were getting in the way before."
"This is my power. Always was, and always will be."