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Chapter 33 - Agony's Reply

The red forest, or crimson forest... or whatever the place actually was, had given Ikky a good perspective on the true nature of the Realm of Augury.

The word, 'Haven' gave off the tone of security and safety within its five letters, perhaps because it bares a close similarity to the word, "Heaven".

But this place was not a region in the Lokahs. It was as far from the Heavens as everything down in the world of calamity was. It was a place in the Realm of Augury— a habitat in hell.

The people from the temples of Svarga say that the havens are almost like places just as where they sat; a home where they could feel at ease and unload their worries after a long day. While a dictionary made by Prophets would tell: havens are regions in the Realm of Augury, without evil spirits.

Simply, 'Without evil spirits' should be underlined to not cause confusion because, nothing was stopping the ground used as footholds from opening a mouth to swallow you whole, nor the wood you carve beds with, from snapping your back instead.

The sins of man was a repulsive and vicious concept... and everything born in the Realm of Augury was made of it.

———

Ivan had long slid out of the way of the falling tree, yet the impending danger did not seem to faze the amber-eyed man. With his arms out and standing rigidly, Ikky caught the falling tree... and was knocked right off his feet.

Ivan turned to look at Ikky with a blank expression on his face, then faced back ahead.

"What are you doing?" He asked as Ikky lay under the giant tree the strange looking person had just tossed.

This person's form had been altered by the Haven to make him look like some kind of grey coloured spirit, but Ivan recognised him as a prophet. What made his appearance strange though, was the small red tree rooted in the person's hunched back, spreading red pulsing roots all over his body. The prophet looked infected.

The sound of leaves rustling came from behind Ivan as Ikky got back on his feet.

"Ouch. Wait, isn't that one of your friends?" Ikky pointed at the man as he weirdly enough, went back to felling trees with elephant strength. It seemed the one it had thrown at them wasn't on purpose.

Ivan didn't answer as he continued to wonder what was going on. Moments later, another sound came from deeper in the forest, red eyes burning from within the darkness. It was another person with a tree on her back.

With the other tree person's appearance, it was clear that the trees on their backs were foreign. And from how the prophets being controlled looked, Ivan guessed that they had to have been infected by the forest. But in a typical situation, wouldn't the infected rather attack the regular humans instead? Why were they wrecking others of their kind then? The two Prophets wondered.

"Yollo!" Ikky tapped the shoulder of the man gradually pushing another tree from its roots. This was much to the bewilderment of the sky-man.

'What is he doing?!' Ivan had taken his eyes off the amber-eyed man for a few seconds just to be presented with even more confusing behaviour from him. Was his brain as blank as the colour of his hair?

But, maybe Ikky had a plan to heal them, or maybe he was trying to confirm whether the trees were really docile. Questioning thoughts came to Ivan's mind, but disappeared just as quickly as the tree-man swung his arm at the pestering prophet. Ikky fell on his butt as he dodged, but then threw a kick at the tree-man's feet, making it slip on the ground and fall. And in the next second, the amber-eyed man began to laugh maniacally as the tree-man chased him around the forest.

Ivan was very confused by Ikky's drunken behaviour, oblivious to the Cost of the amber-eyed man's Virtues. Ikky had lost the fears that made up half his sanity right from when they had fought. And although he had recovered his logical reasoning, 'cautiousness' was still one of the last things to come to his mind. So he sensed no danger or harm in whatever he was doing.

When he had seen the tree-man, he thought, 'What is wrong with this one over here? Let me go check him out.'

But then the tree man had resorted to violence, only for Ikky to dodge and retaliate by now attempting to annoy it. Ikky hadn't dodged out of fear, but as a method to not give the tree-man any form of satisfaction it'd get from landing a blow. This action was also done without the regard for what the consequences of angering the creature would be.

Ivan watched as Ikky and the tree-man ran around like they were playing death tag, but without the the suspense of whether the parties involved would die.

'What happened to these people?' The sky-man turned his attention away from the less urgent enigma towards the tree people.

Figuring he was the one who would have to answer his own question, his body suddenly rose into the air, leaving Ikky on the ground as he took to the skies.

After flying past the canopy of red leaves, Ivan soon sighed in relief as he suddenly fell on his butt, while still floating in mid air.

"Ahh~" A relieved sigh escaped his curved up lips, his expression loosening and then his body giving in to the winds, floating in the air like a free cloud.

He turned to lay on his stomach, resting his head on his folded arms while waving his feet behind him like he was swimming.

"Why did I come up here again?" He sighed out with a bigger smile as he watched the beautiful red trees below, the sanguine light tower up ahead, and listening to the pleasant quaking of the ground behind him.

He was in a blissful state, free of all worries... until he remembered,

"There are lives at stake!" He leapt back up on his feet.

"I'm too high up." He realised, trying to cling on to his memories as he reduced his altitude to just enough to get a good range of view of the forest.

"Focus." He steeled his mind.

Now that he gotten an aerial view after a long while, Ivan was able to notice details that he normally wouldn't when he was just walking on the ground. Some of those trees had their leaves glowing even brighter than the rest, while some had their lights pulsing on and off and the rest not glowing at all—

No, actually, when Ivan looked around, there were only three categories: those glowing brightly, those glowing even brighter and those that weren't glowing at all. There were no trees with blinking red leaves throughout the expanse that he could view. So that must have been some kind of hallucination.

Ivan shook his head with a sigh, bringing back the realistic memories his Virtue was trying to discard.

He soon flew closer to one of the trees without any glow. Its wilting leaves were black, rather than red, and its branches were getting dry. Not finding anything particularly obvious or revealing about the tree's nature, Ivan flew higher again.

He turned around, trying to see if there were more of these weird trees around, however only sounds of clashing and destruction were behind him as the earth continued to quake.

"What is that?" Ivan wondered before his disoriented mind let go of that worry to focus on the current problem.

'Wait!' His eyes opened wide as he scrutinized the forest. There was a good sum of black trees around, but he counted only nine of of such trees arranged barely far away from each other and closest to the direction of their campfire.

'These are the trees!' He exclaimed internally, recalling that the party of prophets were also nine.

But what use was that information anyway, when he still didn't know how to free the prophets from the trees' control.

"The red trees are alive, the black ones seem dead, but are controlling the prophets, while those blinking trees..." But again, there were no blinking red trees.

He clenched his teeth, racking his brain for answers, and reducing his altitude even further so he could remember.

However, there was very little he knew about this whole situation in the first place. Could the Prophets even be saved anymore? What if this was how the red trees were made — on the backs of fallen prophets? What if they couldn't even be turned back to normal.

'No! This is my responsibility. They shouldn't be in pain when I'm around. I have a destiny to fulfill.' Ivan frustratingly ruffled his blue hair with his hands, then suddenly realised,

'Pain! That's what it was!' He turned his head down to the answer he was looking for.

Down on the ground, Ikky was having trouble evading the tree-man's heavy strikes. The brute was faster and stronger than he was, but its attacks were basic and predictable, so the amber-eyed man had managed to remain untouched, while also throwing blows at its groin and butt mockingly.

He grabbed a tree branch, pushed on the stem and leapt over the approaching tree-man.

Without being able to stop, the tree-man rammed into that tree as Ikky successfully jumped over it.

"Where are ya aiming at, fool!" Ikky cackled.

The tree-man shook its head dizzily as it turned around to face the amber-eyed man standing readily ahead.

And just as it leapt off its feet, rushing mindlessly at Ikky, the amber-eyed man's eyes swung open in awareness.

"Hm?"

At the same time the tree-man rushed towards him from up front, a white spear bolted down at him from behind his head.

***

[Ivanhoe Ares' Prophecy:

Virtuous Name: "Agony's Reply"

When mankind was asked for the nine hundredth and ninety-nineth time, 'Are you still suffering?' They replied, 'Yes, we are still suffering!'. And so another was sent.

Hierarchy: Seer

Mark Grade: Dream Grade Mark

Totem: Instrument type— "Rain Maker".

This totem lets Ivan forge projectile weapons with his spiritual essence. If the weapons are made to strike down beings Ivan deems as evil, then they are guaranteed sure hits on their target at fixed times. This means the weapons can disregard the distance between Ivan and his target as long as both are within a certain area around each other.

If a weapon fails to kill the evil-doer, they attach themselves to objects, and Ivan can then teleport to those weapons, shattering them after teleporting.

If Ivan realises that he has made a wrong choice in deciding why a target is marked as evil, Ivan's Augur spirit has to suffer the same pain that Ivan has inflicted on that marked evildoer.

After every 99 projectile weapons made by the Rain Maker, the 100th weapon has 0.1 percent chance of being a special one that reverses ill fate or karma that the user believes is affecting them. If Ivan doesn't get this weapon after that, he has 1 percent chance of getting it on the 1000th forge, then 10 percent on the 10, 000th forged weapon. If Ivan still doesn't get this special weapon after 10, 000, the counter goes back to zero weapons forged.

Virtues:

• Safe Place— This trait lets Ivan escape the troubles of the earthly world and roam freely around the sky. The higher up he goes, the more he forgets about those troubles. But as a Cost, when he stays on the ground, the force of gravity pushes down on his body multiple times more than it would other people. The effects gradually increase the longer he's on the ground.

• The 999th Salvation— This Virtue lets Ivan sense, alleviate and store the pain of other humans into his body. But as a Cost, when the limit of this pain he absorbes is reached, everything pours into his body at once. His pain resistance is also permanently increased by a small fraction after every pain absorption.

Augur Spirit— Nephelia (A small female spirit made of clouds.)