"It's thin... it's so thin...!"
Weeks after returning from the dungeon, I still haven't adjusted to the faint presence of Aether in the outside world.
The Aether is so thin!!
I felt like a fish out of water; it was almost suffocating!
Was this what Meta meant? Was this supposed to be my alleged Blessing?!
Ah, I don't want it...
The truth was, it wasn't like there was a sudden decrease in the quantity and quality of Aether in the world while I was gone; I had just grown so used to the overabundance of Aether in the dungeon, that now, anything less was barely sufficient.
'Is this what it means to be addicted?'
It was like when a poor man who was raised and lived his entire life in poverty finally stumbles on a well or riches and luxury, and finally tastes the good and bests parts of life... only to tumble back down to a depricating living once more.
Yeah, that kind of thing.
I have already tasted life!
Anything else Is a counterfeit!
And the worse part was, this would make leveling up from here on harder.
Sigh. It's ironic how everything seemed much easier down at the Dungeon. There, all I had to think about was what to have for dinner and breakfast.
But out here, in the real world, the weight of all my responsibilities have fallen against my shoulders.
The more I thought about it, the more my time in the dungeon felt more like a vacation.
Is this what they called Graduation Googles?
Releasing another melancholic sigh, I stared up at the expansive blue sky. There was not a single cloud in sight, and the azure blue sky remained like an almost illusionary mirror.
I was currently standing outside in a vast plain of grass, on a cool spring afternoon. Next to me, impaled deeply in the ground were a volley of wooden javelins standing upright. And across from me, a few meters away were targets and training dummies staring at me.
I took a break from my hunting activities for a while to sort out my thoughts and explore the new skills and changes in my body. I was bored and I just decided to throw some spears and practice my aim.
Restraining another sigh, I grabbed one of the javelins next to me and pulled it out of the ground and easily raised it in my hand.
...
[Skill {Lock On} has been activated.]
...
Applying the minimum force, I threw the javelin spear forward as it ripped through the air and traveled across the plain. The wooden javelin pierced through and hit one of the targets right dead in the middle.
Now, I know what this might look like: 'you can't call it training if you use your skills...' well maybe it really is what it looked like actually.
The truth was, I've been doing this a lot lately.
Everyday, I'd come out to the court yard like this and throw some spears, or shoot some arrows. It's how I've been able to cope with my stress and clear my head these days.
Who knew pierceing things was a great way to sort out one's thoughts and bring peace of mind.
So I wasn't just here to practice my aim.
I was here to think of and re-evaluate my next steps in this life. Things are clearly a lot more different than I thought.
I pulled out another javelin from the ground and launched it into the air at the target meters away from my position. I felt the wind caress my skin and my mind wandered.
'The Demon King is descending.'
No, better still. The Demon King will descend sometime in the future.
Haa...what am I supposed to do about that?
Ah, I don't care anymore. I've thought about this over and over lately, but I still have no clue.
I grabbed another javelin and threw it again.
The world can just burn-
I'm kidding.
I watched the javelin strike the center of the target and sighed.
There's still a chance. The Hero...the one to challenge the Demon king, he was the last and final hope of this world.
Er...but didn't he fail? Wasn't the whole world dead by then?
The world ending was a bad thing, but to be honest, I was more worried about myself.
The quest asked me to survive a great calamity; in the vision,the Demon king descend and the entire world was wiped out. Clearly, I wasn't in it.
Well in the first place, maybe I never really even existed in the world shown in the vision. That was a reasonable speculation, in the first place, I'm not Victor Bright.
I am, or was formerly, Zach Harper who now currently inhabits the body of the alleged Victor Bright. Maybe my current existence was an anomaly of some sorts - some kind of variable for the future?
"Mhm. Makes sense." I nodded.
I've asked myself this countless times already, how am I supposed to survive that?! And there were the mysteries and questions, meanings and symbolisms inlaid with the vision I needed to decipher.
I shook my head deeply.
It can't be helped, I'm to weak and incapable to do anything like this. If I wanted more answers from the system, I had to first of all get stronger and unlock the third Sequence. Maybe then I'd also get new features just like now.
While I was in thought, I stared at my left hand. On my ring finger, there was a smooth golden bronze ring resting fittingly around it.
Ever since that day, I still haven't been able to take the damned ring off. Since I haven't gone out much in the last couple of weeks, I haven't gotten much chance to thoroughly test the effects and Enchantments of the ring, and even my other artifacts.
I've mostly been avoiding the Murmurs Mask too.
That thing...was just damn scary.
As for the God Slaying spear, Goliath, I have zero intentions of letting that thing out. At least not where there's a human civilization. Not until I'm able to thoroughly wield and control it's power, which I suspect will be once I've ranked up a few times, or have completely collected and found all of its missing fragments.
Until then, I'm keeping it locked in my soul. It was also a notorious weapon, a replica, of the original used by Demon Lord Laplace; I couldn't be careless with showing it around.
Goliath was without a doubt, my strongest card in my arsenal.
In the worse case scenario, Goliath would be my trump card for if something truly bad happens. And it has to be something really, really drastic enough for me to pull out a weapon belonging to an actual Demon Lord.
Same thing applied to the Solomon's Court enchantment of the Ring. As a whole, I had to make some research into who exactly...or what... Laplace was.
It sounded troublesome that I've been branded his heir. Apparently now chaos resides within my soul.
I drew my gaze from the ring and and looked at the blue sky languidly.
"Oh yeah...now that I think about it, I no longer have Aether."
Instead, the Aura that flowed within my body was changed to Ether. The system called it a higher plane of Aether, and an inverse of the universal energy that was created by Entropy.
From what I've seen, it still worked normally just like how it was when it was still Aether or Aura, only a bit slightlore erratic and chaotic. I could still use my Art in the same manner as I did before, with only a qualitative boost to the output.
Meta said with Ether, I was no longer only limited to just using Aura, but even had the capacity to use Mana.
That clearly meant I could use magic!
Ether wasn't the opposite of Aether. It was just a higher, unique form of it that followed the inverse laws of the original which was that Aether was split in two aspects; Aura and Mana respectively.
But Ether does the reverse of that, and retains the two aspects.
Ultimately, it's like the opposite of Aether, but not entirely literally. Ether was like the freer form of Aether from what I've seen. Something that goes beyond the natural laws.
Unlike the way it sounds, Ether doesn't cancel out or negat Aura in anyway, it was just like a purer more refined form of it.
As for how I ended up with it, this was probably the 'inheritance' from Laplace. After all, the system said it was Laplace who discovered the higher form of Ether.
At that moment my mind drifted like the nonexistent clouds in the sky, I felt a presence quickly approach me from the side. I turned my head to look and saw a young woman with short black hair that reached her shoulder and was styled in a type of pigtails.
She wore a frilly black and white maid outfit with my family's crest.
She was Nina, my personal and assigned maid.
Noticing my gaze, Nina stops and lowers her head respectfully in a greeting.
"Will you be joining the family for dinner tonight?" She simply asked.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and hummed thoughtfully for a while.
"No. Tell my mother and father I'll be out for a while. I might return a bit late for dinner, until then, I want you to bring it to my room on my notice."
Nina nods and shows a little smile.
"The lady will be a little sad..." She was refering to my mom who has become extra clingy this past few years since Adrianne barely came around anymore now that she started attending the Academy.
Speaking of which, she should be in her final year by next year, huh.
I smiled languidly at Nina and said as I walked passed her.
"Tell my mother we'll have plenty of time to spend with each other later."
"And ,what might you be doing before the evening?" Nina asked from behind, and I didn't stop to turn around as I casually responded.
"Visiting an old friend."
Ah, I need to hunt.