With the wind as a witness, and the crackling of the fire to listen to, Astrid stared ahead, trying to decipher the murmurs the trees around her were passing onto one another, and leaving her out of.
"It's not like I'm interested anyway. I know what you are." She glanced at the gentle swaying leaves.
Astrid inhaled and exhaled again, this time to steel her mind for what she was about to do next— which was to pull out the sword that had been plunged into her body.
Its handle and hilt poked out of her luminous flesh below her ribs and its blade had pierced completely through her, popping out of her back. This sword was a five feet tall, soot-black Zweihänder, the sword that had belonged to the Failure king of Nocturni.
But now, that blade was fused with her body, not killing her but just staying there. And strangely enough, only she could see and touch it.
It also didn't hurt, but she wanted it out anyway. It was a good looking sword, so she figured holding it with her hands would be much more satisfying than having the thing stuck in her chest for eternity.
She took another breath then quickly struck her stomach with her open palm. Sinking her fingers into her own flesh, she ripped out an organ hiding within it.
Her eyes shut tightly as she tried to assimilate the pain. Then the hole she had ripped in her chest soon covered itself, her size turning centimeters smaller, as the flesh in other parts of her body was used to seal the bleeding wound.
After taking a while to breathe... or just calm down since she neither had a nose nor mouth to do so in the first place, she opened up her palm, revealing what she had just pulled out of it.
"This wouldn't have gotten too deep in my body if that man hadn't severed control over my organs." She said in a shaky voice.
Holding a small golden egg in her hand, she lifted it above her head and smashed it, letting the content pour all over her.
The fluid looked like thick black oil. As soon as the fluid bathed her entire body, she shook in disgust.
"Why is it so concentrated?!"
With the fluid completely spreading to cover her luminous form, lines suddenly appeared on her face where her mouth and eyes would have been. Those lines gradually tore open, revealing thin white voids. Her body began to make cracking sounds as her bones rearranged themselves, while her frame grew slightly bigger.
After her silhouette had been moulded completely, the black fluid soon faded away.
Astrid had now transformed completely from a small luminous and pure angelic being, to a tall pale young woman with quite the sinful body.
Her long white hair flowed down like a milky waterfall, coincidentally hiding parts of her bare body, like the two velvety slopes on her chest and her shapely backside.
But the trees could not see what was underneath the hair nor do anything about the parts that were not covered anyway; yet the winds caressing her untainted figure had better luck.
Her beautiful form was disturbingly reminiscent of Equinox's appearance... In fact, she looked just like an identical clone of his, moulded into a woman with slightly longer and silkier hair, with the familiar amber glowing eyes.
Astrid's totem was still active, leaving her bright white wings to float behind her back. These asymmetrical wings were unattached to her slender body, exposing their nature as just the Mark of her Concept type totem.
Her dreary golden eyes shone with a small glint as she breathed in the air, focusing on her totem and then suddenly starting to grow in size.
But as soon as her form grew to reach up to ten feet in height, she collapsed back to her regular size, barely six feet tall.
"Hm. Peculiar."
Astrid recalled her past conversation with how Ikky had thought she was an evil spirit, then said something about a Virtue of his that gave him the giant form as a side effect, so she drew out her own conclusion for what he had meant, and more importantly, what she could now do.
"Ah. Is it some sort of situational Virtue, like my own?" She clenched her fist, white light suddenly pulsing around her silhouette as she begun to increase her mass and strength, rather than size.
"Your blade is mine." Astrid declared, after pushing her entire body mass and strength to weigh about fifty times more than an average human's. At this point, just waving her hands were enough to make trees for more than ten feet away bend from her brute force.
With that strength in her grasp, she slowly wrapped her fingers around the sword's handle and pulled with all her might.
Shockwaves spread out from her clenched palms, pushing the wind to bash the trees and make them bend. She pressed her feet inches into the ground, making the earth quake as she struggled.
The raging wind she summoned finally knocked down some of the trees, assisted by the small intermittent earthquakes Astrid's actions were causing. She was a believer in a haven with very low spiritual density, so the ecosystem could only shatter just like how wild spirits would under her current power.
Nevertheless, the falling trees and earthquakes were still a testament to her destructive capabilities.
After pulling, yet wrecking the environment without even taking a step forward, Astrid's attempts were to no avail. But just when she had thought about stopping to try again later, the sword finally budged.
———
Ten days. They had ten more days until whatever evil spirit, or spirits that had shrouded the sky comes crashing down. Ikky wanted to leave the haven, and Ivanhoe also made the choice to go, but not before making every single person involved follow right behind him.
Ikky wanted no part in helping the sky-man with whatever he was doing. He'd much rather be looking for more sprites to feed his wraith. That thing had proved its worth with its superior night mist weapon, but its overall strength was still not enough.
"So... you'd rather be playing around while you know the lives of people are at stake?" Ivan asked with a seemingly indifferent countenance.
Ikky rubbed his neck with a yawn. "Well it's not like I'm the one who's going to kill them. Besides, working on my own self does me better than wasting time on random people. I don't have anything to do with almost everyone here."
The sky-man looked at Ikky with clear contempt. There was all sorts of reasons why a team with both of them in it would not work.
The two had set out to look for Ivan's friends so Ikky could forfeit his cryptex to someone else. By then, their own rag-tag team would get scattered.
This move would leave them with zero cryptexes at hand but, now that they were already more than a week in, cryptexes would have already begun dropping at random locations for them to find.
They would be in for a world of trouble and hiding, nonetheless, to the sky-man, it was worth it, if it meant he could be free from Ikky's inexistent leadership.
Meanwhile, Ikky was tagging along with Ivan with no real intention to fulfil his end of the deal... again.
One reason was because of his first and foremost goal of making friends in the higher Lokah. He'd braced for them to be just as diabolical or deviant as he was too, so Ivan's sharp and painful exterior wasn't much of a deterrent.
Oblivious to how the concept of, 'friendship' even worked, he failed to see just how abnormal and dangerous the dynamic between he and Ivan could get. By his own misconception, 'friends' were just people he could get to waste time with when he was bored. That was it.
He would still ditch them in times of desperation and as a survival tactic, because why not? Friends were people he'd know who are not related to him by blood, and there were billions of these 'things' in every Lokah after all.
But the term, 'friend' was a lot more deeper than his shallow misconception of friendship. A person walking around with Ikky's kind of mentality, would undoubtedly end up living a life of dissatisfaction and longing. And if he keeps on with that behaviour of his, Ikky would come to know this pain from experience.
On the way, while the two trod the forest in silence, but not awkwardly since neither of them gave a damn about what the other was thinking about them anyway, Ikky looked at the sky-man and then thought back to the amount of cryptexes he had gotten after seizing Ivan's cryptex.
He had only gotten one, meaning Ivan hadn't gotten any at all. The sky-man seemed quite close to the other nine Prophets, but to think he wasn't.
'Why?' Ikky thought. He was sure Ivan was strong enough to even take on two or three of those prophets on his own, before showing the rest hell and luckily walk off alive.
More so, although he was kind, he was also ruthless and seemed to lack the braincells that allowed second guessing himself— just like Ikky did. So why would he leave that many cryptexes alone when he could take them, and boost his ranks in the exam?
Ikky asked, but to his surprise, Ivan replied,
"I don't care for being a captain or member of any group. I'd rather be a solo prophet and engage as many omens as I can before dying—."
"You're pretty dumb, aren't you?" Ikky suddenly blurted.
"What?" Ivan rose a brow as he glanced at the amber-eyed man with one eye.
"Leaving out the fact that you'll know nothing about the omens you take, nor about the people you're working with if you're Solo... why didn't you just skip the anointment exams then?"
Solo Prophets were about the unluckiest kinds of prophets in the Lokahs. This was because being 'Solo' didn't mean you'd get to go into omens on your own, but with random people each and every time instead.
The Realm of Augury was about as unpredictable and confusing as can be, so why would anyone want the burden of also being ignorant about their own peers within a realm of uncertainty? Furthermore, Solo prophets had to face an extra risk of just being bait for an existing group's master plan.
The Omen was fair and grossly logical— the dumb and unlearned prophets died first, while the smart ones use their corpses to hide from passing evil spirits.
And as cool and dauntless as the sky-man's demeanor was, Ikky had dubbed him as one of those dumb prophets.
'Does he even know what he's doing?' Ikky wondered, predicting a regretful death in Ivan's future. Only when Ivan had been left alone in the dust to rot would he begin to embrace scenarios where he hadn't put fate on humanity.
Ironically enough, as Ikky was seeing this, Ivan was also foreseeing a future where Ikky would be left with only sour memories and the haunting ghosts of those he had chosen to abandon.
These two people were looking at the exact same coin from different sides. The sides of that coin had different appearances, yet signified worth of the exact same value in the end.
"Being in a group will cause inevitable attachments. I have a Dream Grade Mark, so I'll outlive most people. You don't have to worry about me. And as for why I'm participating, that's none of your business." Ivan replied, once again, disregarding Ikky's point.
"Ares. That means ram, doesn't it? Your thick skull is true to the name." Ikky waved the sky-man's vibes away as he continued,
"Attachments... If it can be attached it can be detached. So why not just try to have fun when you're lucky enough to find a chat buddy? I suspect leaving people in the gutter is just as easy as playing with them."
Ikky had seen many examples of this and come to the conclusion that even man was no more than a resource. Getting friends was really just to get more perspectives of his own self through other people's eyes.
'Other people exist just to make you better.' And while that reasoning was true, it was still too shallow.
The sky-man was curious about why Ikky was the way he was, but only a little bit.
Because what good reason could justify how negligible Ikky saw other people's lives as?Why he measured worth based on what value those people could give him? What reason other than being evil? Because this was how Sins thought.
The importance of goodness is always being preached throughout the Lokahs. No human born in Svarga could ever become so selfish after all they have been blessed with.
... If Ivan had said all of this out loud, Ikky would have been very confused. Who were those preachers of good? Were they among the people who had treated Equinox like a pest? Or were they hiding behind those who looked at Nox like rotten corpse?
The forest suddenly shook, interrupting their deep philosophical thoughts. In the next second however, a large tree was suddenly hurled towards them, Ikky and Ivan catching sight of the figure who'd thrown it.
This man who had just appeared in front of them had red light pulsing in his eyes... and a tree growing on his back.