Days Ago, At The Start Of The Anointment Exam:
"Astrid! Astrid! Asael!"
Its eyes came alive with sentience.
The ambience was like deep black fluid, stained as golden shimmers swam through the air. It was so dark and isolated, one would always think there were walls closing down in a cube around their figure, but the swimming gold light wandering freely exposed that illusion.
Regardless, Astrid was quite literally inside a container.
*Crack!
A bright yellow arm reached out from within a cocoon, sliding back into the open hole it had just made, before punching through the shell again.
She made an exhausted low growl as she sat in the now open shell for a few seconds, before crawling out of it completely.
"LEtz!!..." She tried , but couldn't speak properly.
Sighing through her wide mouth with sharp exposed teeth, she placed her claws on her throat, before pulling her head off her shoulders and then screwing it back on.
Her grotesque visage soon began to mold into her body— her wide mouth fading into blank, her red eyes turning into mere golden slits, and her spine straightening so her body could look more human-like and feminine.
Although she was still a glowing creature with not even a tiny fabric of cloth on her body, she'd fit right into the exams.
After screwing her head back on and properly merging with the newborn spirit she had woken up in, she could now do the things a regular human should be able to do, and a newborn— whatever this thing is— could do.
Not only that, but she also had the natural instinct of the glowing spirit, and therefore an extent of information about this dark place.
"Are you going the right way?" A voice spoke to her as she began walking down a random path. Astrid's Augur spirit was familiar with her behaviour, but disliked it nonetheless.
Although she was probably going the right way to escape this place, the woman often either let her mind wander about irrelevant things or make her body walk off to a place where she could cleanse herself first— which was also irrelevant.
"There is no hot spring, nor bath house in this place, Astrid. You are in a nest of evil spirits, not a spa." The Augur spirit's masculine voice informed.
Without stopping, Astrid replied,
"There is a sea of condensed essence at the center. It smells clean." She sniffed in the golden shimmers floating all around her silhouette.
"That... is the food source for growing evil spirits..."
"I shall bathe in it." She turned in another direction as she continued walking.
The place Astrid was heading for was the one and only source of energy for young spirits in the nest, so undoubtedly, it would be swarmed by those growing spirits who all went there to feed.
"The numbers this time will be absurd. You'll waste time."
"No "
The voice finally kept quiet.
———
Several minutes later...
"Stupid creature!" Astrid exclaimed as she fell into a pile of dead glowing spirits. Barely covering her bleeding and beaten body in the pile, an army of spirits began to run past and over her body, all moving towards the same direction of their king's call.
This place was not only a nest, but a habitat for these creatures, so unsurprisingly, there was a hierarchy. This hierarchy is formed by how many of their brethren any of the spirits could eat, and the King, was the one with the most count, and therefore, the most authority.
Astrid had gone to provoke this profane existence precisely to create this scenario. She had also placed a body of dead spirits at a close location so she could hide from the rest in it.
Normally, hiding from these spirits could never work, since these creatures had a particular sense that acted as a compass to find victims to feed on. But that sense was disorientated by the pile of spirits Astrid hid under.
They all possessed crystals, however seeing as they weren't responding to the king's call, the hoards of spirits could only see anything among that pile as dead and irrelevant for now. So she was safe... kind of.
After the area was completely devoid of the living spirits, Astrid crawled out of the pile of bodies, herself covered in the black blood of other spirits and her own. The hoards of evil spirits had not passed without colliding and running over the dead spirits she took shelter in.
With a sore body and a limping leg, Astrid begun to move in another direction, towards her original goal.
"A pool of spiritual essence— the purest substance known to man. You know, a bottle of it could make you a fortune in the Lokahs?"
Astrid did not reply.
The pool of spiritual essence Astrid was going to bathe in was a very rare substance, even rare enough for most nests to not have. And it was especially coveted by humans because it was more absorbable than crystals. Prophets could only absorb an eighth of spiritual essence from crystals, and this amount was only a few drops of an entire spiritual essence pool. Increasing essence capacity and leveling up virtues is easiest by just drinking from an essence pool.
The pool is the most coveted substance in the world of prophets, yet Astrid was going to take a bath in it...
"You'll at least drink from it, won't you?" The Augur spirit asked with an expecting tone.
"Yes."
The Augur spirit sighed in relief.
Astrid was soon sitting at the edge of a golden lake, her legs dangling inside it as she cupped some of the fluid in her hands and rubbed on her body. She took another cup of the extremely light-weighted fluid and spread it over her stomach to be absorbed by her body.
While she was busy washing up, her spirit started another conversation,
"It's strange that the king of the spirits doesn't use this lake, even though it's so beneficial."
"I'm done here. Let's leave." Astrid stood up.
"How do you feel now? Are your spirit instincts also guiding your appetite? Your spirit body is a lot stronger than before, so you should feel like the rest and start craving living prey."
"I have no mouth to feed on flesh, so the cravings don't matter to me." Astrid replied, a golden halo suddenly appearing behind her back, before molding into asymmetrical white wings. She had summoned her totem.
"Hm. I feel a debtor's presence." She informed.
The spirit's voice sounded surprised as it questioned, "Debtor?"
After a moment of silence, the Augur spirit's voice added,
"Oh. Good. That person is below us. So you've found your ticket out of here."
Astrid focused on her 'debtor's' location, then her body suddenly blew off into dust, amongst the golden shimmers swimming out of the golden lake.
In an instant, she found herself standing in front of a giant— Ikky.
———
"'Good morning'. She greeted."
Simon finished his story.
"Concept type totems have the power to accomplish the most bizarre of things. Yet, it doesn't even compare to the amount of absurdities Virtues have the potential to reach. Wonderful, isn't it?"
Izel looked behind her, at the man also sitting on her dragon as they flew through the dark sky.
Simon continued, "For example, my totem allows me to read lives as stories— the most exciting ones in the region, that is."
"Then tell me where Ikky is." Izel asked.
"When he starts another worthwhile tale, I'll have clues. But for now, I suspect he's just sitting around and doing nothing to note."
"What? You can't just 'read' what he's doing now?"
Simon explained further, "Well, if you actually read books, you'd know that not every second of the characters' lives are written down. It's a sort of a short time skip before the action."
Izel grunted at the limits of Simon's Totem as she urged Axe to fly faster.
The scenario she had expected to be the least plausible was actually the one that had come to pass. Ikky had been found by the last person Izel would have wanted— a powerful Believer from a more powerful clan of prophets.
Astrid as a prophet, always fails the recruitment part of the Anointment exams, yet, every single year, the groups she has had made contact with, always followed her back to join her clan.
Izel did not want her new friend to be involved with those problematic people for now. Ikky was barely getting used to walking around people, much less joining a large corporate group known to work their members like dispensable tools.
Ikky might be smart, but he was still very ignorant to how the world of prophets worked, so he could get himself into unintentional trouble and make regrettable decisions. She wanted to at least be there before Astrid could manipulate him into doing something he'd wish he hadn't.
"If things escalate into a fight between me and her, don't interfere." Izel warned.
"My virtue only allows me to watch the stories I've read from the sidelines. You saw what trying to interfere almost did to me earlier, didn't you?"
"It's good you're useless." Izel said.
"I suppose." Simon laughed. "In the meantime, I can continue telling you the stories I've read about your friend."
Izel didn't refuse. While they waited for Ikky to cause another ruckus so they could find him, she wanted to know what the amber-eyed man had been up to for the past few days.
Simon exposed it all— how Ikky made Astrid join his group instead; how the two had found the group of ten Prophets; how Ikky and Agony's Reply fought; how the charm Izel had helped Ikky make, malfunctioned; how he had nearly died because of it; and finally, how he once again made another unwise choice at choosing a teammate.
Before the fear and suspense had completely shrouded Izel's reasoning, Simon exclaimed in surprise, recalling her attention.
"Ah! There she is. The star of this story; Asael, god's favourite child."