"I can't believe we did it!" Paimon shouted excitedly. "We defeated Dvalin! I hope he can live happily now".
"Indeed" Jean also had a happy smile. They had solved the problem and at the same time saved Dvalin from the taint.
Lumine nodded feeling satisfied, and even Diluc had a small smile.
But the one who should be the happiest, Barbatos had a frown.
He had sensed Kenshin's anger, but now he had disappeared. He knew Kenshin was probably thinking about something, but he had no clue.
'I will ask him tomorrow' he thought, the reality of Dvalin being free now sinking in his brain. 'We will solve the problems that surge and move forward. That's what Mondstadt is about after all'.
"Now, to celebrate!" Barbatos shouted, making everyone deadpan at him, but he didn't care. Why? Because he had a bottle of a very special wine on him, and he was ready to empty it.
"Where is Kenshin?" asked Jean, knowing that Barbatos may know about it.
"Busy right now" replied Barbatos, but his smile twitched. "I will speak with him tomorrow morning".
Jean nodded, and with a smile and a wave of her hand, she left for her house. The problem with Dvalin was solved now, but the aftermath remained and she would need to wake up early.
'I can't wait to tell Kenshin how everything went' she thought with a smile.
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"I'm in a very bad mood now" said an angry Kenshin. "And I don't know what the fuck you are or what you want, but I'm not interested".
"I saw everything" replied a blonde boy with a long braid, his face showing a soft smile. "I'm Aether, Lumine's twin brother".
"And you reek of curses" replied Kenshin, not impressed at all. Lumine and Aether looked the same, except for the modest boobs Lumine had, and maybe the little stick Aether might or might not have.
"And that's why we are here" a discombobulated voice spoke near Aether.
"And you are even worse" replied Kenshin, looking at the guy under an armour.
"He is, and that's why we are interested in you" said Aether with a soft voice. "We know about your prowess with souls, and are interested in making a deal with you".
"Well, you are certainly better than those fuckers" Kenshin replied thinking of the Fatuis. He had given them knowledge, he had helped Arlecchino, he had given them even a Gnosis, and all they gave him was this shit. "But I don't think your goals are any better, right, Abyss Order's leader?"
"They call me Prince" shrugged Aether. "That means there is a King or a Queen no?".
"True" Kenshin nodded. "But I'm still in a bad mood".
"I'll be quick then" added Aether, not feeling hurried at all. "We want your help with the hilichurl curse".
"...now you have my attention" Kenshin knew that even if he was angry about his parents, there was nothing he could do that would help them. But hearing more about the hilichurl curse is something he could only do now.
"Of course, someone as interested in souls and curses as you didn't go unnoticed by us" commented Aether, looking down at Mondstadt. "We knew about you when you were sealing the Remnants in Liyue. A 5-year-old child sealing millennia-old god, even if they were weakened, was something never seen before in Teyvat".
"This world is too big" Kenshin was not at all impressed. Seeing the Being made everything people considered 'amazing' a fart in a glass. "Never seen before does not mean absolutely anything".
"While I would agree with you, your case is different" Aether replied without missing a beat. "Souls are an integral part of Teyvat, and the ease with which you can manipulate them is terrifying".
Kenshin just looked at him without changing his face.
"You can be one of the strongest beings on this planet" Aether continued with a calm face. "You could obliterate souls near you and nobody would be able to stop you. Not Barbatos, not Signora and not the Tsaritsa. Not even us".
"I'm not so sure about that. I don't know about the rest, but your soul is too...nebulous" Kenshin said after thinking about it for a while, making Aether wear a deprecating smile.
"Maybe, but the fact remains" Aether continued, hiding his discomfort. "The only reason why you haven't reached that level is because you are afraid of taking that step. I don't know how you killed those fools, but that's not how your ability is supposed to be used, for attacking at least. You could have erased their souls without needing to physically harm them. I suspect you have a technique similar to the Raiden Shogun, a place into your soul, considering your ability to manipulate souls it makes you a formidable enemy".
"But not an invincible one" Kenshin said. He was aware of his weakness, his body. If by some chance he got poisoned, there would be nothing he could do even if he entered his Plane. For good and bad, he could only manipulate souls.
"Of course, there is nobody invincible in this world" Aether nodded. "But the fact remains, when you pulled those guys into your soul, you could have eradicated their souls, and yet you chose to physically kill them. Is it because you are afraid of doing it?"
"Yes" Kenshin simply replied.
He felt that souls were something that should never be tampered with. Of course, some harmless things like disconnecting the body for a while or his 'love touch' were not harming them at all, but erasing them was something altogether.
He felt nauseous just by thinking about it. But there was another reason, a more important one.
"Does it have something to do with how you lost your sight?" for the first time, Aether was curious.
Kenshin didn't reply, but it was the truth.
When someone died their soul returned to that place or the Being, maybe.
Everyone had their soul when they died. Tainted or not, jaded or not, bigger or smaller, degraded or not.
Even the hilichurls, cursed and twisted as they were, had their souls.
So the amount of souls was the same at any time. No matter how fragmented the souls were, the overall mass of every soul together was the same.
And Kenshin thought that the Being was something transcending worlds, so it didn't matter if the souls went from one world to another, the 'soul mass' of the worlds stayed the same.
But.
He could change that.
He hadn't lived for long, but he hadn't seen anything able to disintegrate or eradicate souls like he could do.
He could not only spil a soul or shatter it, he could make it disappear in a puf.
And he feared that doing that, diminishing the amount of 'soul mass' would make the Being alert. He didn't think destroying the soul of a squirrel would amount to much, but in a way, it was an earth-shattering thing.
From a NO change in 'soul mass', to a YES.
It was a 0 to 100 change.
And he feared the Being detecting that.
So that made him scared of even thinking about it.
"Even knowing as much as I do, I wonder what could make someone with your potential willing to cut it short" mused Aether, but decided not to delve into it. No matter how much one lived and knew, the world was too big to be able to say 'I know it all'.
"What do you want?" Kenshin asked with an inexpressive look.
"You help with the hilichurl curse" replied Aether with a calm voice.
"And maybe a few more things" scoffed Kenshin. "Even if it's only that, my solution could help you reach your goals, which I'm sure will harm me or mine in some way or another".
"No" the armoured guy beside Aether spoke with his twisted voice. "We don't need your help to reach our goals, we are steadily moving forward".
"As he said" Aether nodded. "Even if your help would make us reach our goals way, way faster, we genuinely want to solve this curse. I don't care if you keep the solution for yourself, or share it with us. We want our people to be freed of the eternal suffering the curse carries with it. I'm sure you can see it".
Kenshin looked at Aether gritting his teeth in anger, and thought seriously about it.
His objective of helping the hilichurls didn't change. He still felt their pain as if it were his, that's why he tried to avoid approaching them.
But he had to shelve the idea as he didn't know enough about them.
Barbatos and Morax didn't want to help, and Makoto wore a frown every time he mentioned the topic. Makoto, a gentle soul who you could slap and she would only smile and call for her sister to get revenge for her.
So he could only give up. He wasn't going to go in blind with this curse.
But now a new source of knowledge happened, one that was probably biased, but one he could get information from to corroborate with Morax and Barbatos later.
But obviously, the Abyss Order wasn't planning to help orphans get some toys to play with.
"No need to answer now" Aether said with a light-hearted voice. "Think about it, or ask that old dragon about this, we don't mind. We have waited for 500 years, we don't mind another 50".
Kenshin nodded and kept walking ignoring the 2 people looking at him.
He wasn't going to help them with their plans, but merely helping the hilichurls couldn't be a bad thing.
They were people suffering a lot more than Xiao, at least a few thousand times more, and he had been able to sense that some of them were children.
There was no way helping them was a mistake.
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"Aaahhh" Eula woke up taking a deep breath. "What the hell happened?"