The Sixth School Ch. 024

"Are you telling me that I am killing Roka just by being part of his body?" Greg asked unsure how to feel about this revelation.

An amused smile crossed the face of the one before him. "Yes," She replied succinctly. "However, you needn't waste your time feeling guilty," She added, clearly unbothered by what they had done to Roka. "It's not like there was a situation where he would have come out alive," She relayed. "Roka was dead the minute your uncle accidentally opened a doorway to my realm," She declared calmly. "If I wasn't interested in making use of the opportunity that the doorway opened to me, I wouldn't have bothered to restrain my aura at all," She declared. "Would you like to guess what would happen to a mortal that is exposed to my unrestrained aura?" She asked.

Greg couldn't help but shudder at the thought of it. She had been restraining her aura and yet, Roka's body had been in shambles for almost two weeks afterward. Even during this summon, when Greg's soul have been exposed to a weakened version of her aura for just a fraction of a second, he had suffered a serious soul fracture! Hard as it was to swallow, Roka's fate had indeed been sealed. Still, this didn't make it any easier to accept the fact that he was currently consuming someone else's soul.

"If you wish to blame anyone for what has happened to Roka, Greg, feel free to blame me," She declared. "Whether it was your soul or some other individual's, I would still have used Roka's soul as nourishment for them. You didn't have any part in what happened to the boy. You are just a poor soul that was caught up in a game they weren't prepared for," She relayed. "And if it helps ease your guilt, know that my aura wouldn't have just affected the area immediately around the portal. That mountain and everything on it that couldn't withstand my aura would have perished," She informed him. "It wouldn't have just been Roka who died. His mother, his sister, and everyone else in that little town would have been reduced to nothing just seconds after the doorway was opened," she relayed. "A single soul lost for the sake of hundreds of others is a fair trade, wouldn't you say, Greg?" She calmly posed.

Greg had been paying attention when Olivia told him of the indifference of deity-level beings to human life. Whether they flourished or perished meant nothing to these lofty beings. Listening to her speak without the slightest care about what would have happened to the whole town if she had not restrained her aura, and then using that as justification for using Roka's soul as nutrients for his, drove home the spine-chilling truth of Olivia's words in a way that a simple explanation never would have. From the calm smile that remained on the face of the one before him even though she could read his thoughts, it was clear that she didn't really care whether he thought of her as cold or not.

"W... what is a herald of the abyss?" Greg forced himself to move on from the thought of what had happened to Roka. Even if he decided he didn't want to go on living off the poor boy's soul, it wasn't like he would gain his life back. All that would happen would be Greg being replaced with another soul that was more willing to take advantage of the offer this powerful being was offering.

"The title of the third most powerful beings in the abyssal hierarchy. Above the Heralds are the Archeons. And above the Archeons is the Hegemon," She relayed. "Heralds are at the very least as powerful as Olivia's original. Most are more powerful than she is," the being added. "If ever you go to the abyssal realm, try to keep as low a profile as possible. No matter how powerful, Abyssals are known to be vindictive to an absurdly petty degree," She relayed. "Your uncle is little more than a worm in the eyes of a Herald. He was nothing more than a toy that the Herald would have amused themselves with for a short while and then forget as soon as it was broken. You, however, broke that toy. It's not enough of an offence for the Herald to actively pursue you. If, however, the chance ever presented itself for them to harm you, you better believe that they won't hesitate to do so," The being informed him with an amused smile.

Greg could feel his scalp go numb as he processed the information. One high-tier mage and three beings above the tiers in just one month. Was he really so much of an anomaly that he needed to be eliminated at all costs? Greg found himself wondering. With those kinds of powerhouses, Greg didn't harbor any delusions of grandeur. Just a sneeze from any one of those beings would mean the end to a mundane human like him. Two of them were using him for their own, unknown purposes, One was a vindictive powerhouse from a realm that sounded nightmarish even just by the name. And the last one was a mage with her own secrets. Secrets that could probably lead to his death a hundred times over if he was to involve himself. The more he looked at the larger picture laid out before him, the less Greg was inclined to believe that it meant that he was fated for great things, In all likelihood, he was an error that fate was trying to correct!

"Finally, we come to your rewards," The being cut into his thoughts, bringing Greg back to the present.

Greg couldn't help his brows furrowing with suspicion as he regarded the one before him. "Rewards for what?" he posed. "I haven't done anything for you as yet," He added.

"I believe the correct term from your former world would be an investment," She replied. "Think of these rewards as my investment in you. I do realize that you have a long road ahead of you before you reach the seventh tier. A road that, if not trodden carefully, could very well mean your second death," She relayed. "In that time, however, I won't be available to you," She declared. "Until you become a seventh-tier mage, you probably won't hear from me again," She informed him. "Think of these little gifts as my way of making up for my absence in that period. That way, you won't resent me and do something stupid when I come calling once you've reached the seventh tier," She explained.

Understanding dawned on Greg. She was relaying that she wasn't a backer that he could call on whenever he needed. Until he was useful to her, he would be on his own. The gifts he was about to receive were just her way of placating him so that he didn't feel abandoned in that time. With this new understanding, Greg simply nodded in acceptance.

"The first is the secret room," The being spoke up with a wave of her hand.

Greg's brows furrowed as he felt a small measure of discomfort in his head. It took a while for the feeling to go away, but when it finally did, Greg could understand what was meant by a secret room. The easiest way to explain it was that, a section of Greg's mind had been hidden behind layers of nigh-impenetrable protection. While he could easily access it whenever he wished to, Greg doubted that anyone else could.

"I may have succeeded in keeping your thoughts and memories about your former life hidden from the primordial, but in the future, you might have other secrets that you'd rather not have shared. Either with her or with some other party," She explained. "The secret room will act like a safe where you can keep all the problematic memories and thoughts that you don't want to be known. Any thoughts you have, memories you review, or plans you make within the secret room will be completely inaccessible to anyone other than yourself," He stated. "Unless another being comes along more powerful than myself, no one will be able to break through the barriers I've set up," She informed him. "If you were to meet someone more powerful than myself, however, the barriers will be the least of your problems," She added with an amused smile.

Greg could see the utility of the secret room he now had in his mind. Much as Olivia and her original hadn't shown him any malice, Greg couldn't afford to be so naively trusting in the goodness of others. Especially when he was still so weak!

"Your second gift," The being continued, not allowing Greg to get lost in his thoughts. "Is the appraiser's eyes," she informed him. Unlike the last time where she only waved her hand, this time, a pair of eyes appeared floating above her palm. The two orbs were white just like any other human pair of eyes. The uniqueness of this pair of eyes, however, immediately became clear when one looked at the irises. Rather than taking on any particular hue as the eyes of most creatures tended to, the irises seemed to be glittering almost as if a nebula of stars were gleaming inside them. The more one looked at them, the more they'd feel like a whole galaxy was hiding in those eyes. "I took them off someone who forgot their place and thought they could plot against me," She gave a brief explanation. "As you might guess, they are a bit special. They only have two abilities. The first is treasure appraisal," She informed him. "No matter the item, if it has any value, these eyes can appraise it and figure out what that value is," She stated. "The other ability, and my personal favorite, is that whatever these eyes have seen before, they will never forget. Faces, items, writings, patterns, and so on, once they are seen, they are recorded forever," She explained.

"Now, the being I took them from was powerful enough to not buckle under the weight of all the information they had gathered over the eons. The same, however, is not true of you, especially while you are still a mundane human being. I have both modified and placed seals on the eyes. The special abilities of these eyes are usually always working passively. The modification, however, made it so that they will only work when one channels mana into them. Otherwise, they'll be no different from normal mundane eyes. The seals placed on them are to prevent your mind from buckling under the load of information already within the eyes. To break through any given seal, all that is needed is simple mental fortitude. Once you can push through a seal with your mental fortitude alone, then you bear enough mental strength to carry the load of knowledge placed behind the seal," She explained. "You could also get someone else to push through a given seal for you," She added. "There is, however, a very real chance of going senile if you gain access to more knowledge than you can handle, so I'd strongly advise against that," She said calmly.

Half of what Greg had just heard made no sense. How or why a pair of eyes would be able to independently appraise treasures, let alone have memories, was a complete mystery to him. He, however, was the soul of someone that had died on earth, was brought back to life in a world of magic, and was now seated across from a being powerful enough to be considered a deity. He had left the realm of what was rational and made sense a long time ago. As such, he didn't raise any objections, once again, he just gave a simple nod.

The bestowal of the first reward only offered slight discomfort. The second one, however, was nowhere near as pleasant. Flying from the being's palm, the eyeballs slammed into his own faster than Greg could blink and began to fuse. Clenching his jaws tightly, Roka tried to ignore the pain of feeling his eyeballs merge with a pair that was not his own. It took a few minutes, but in the end, Greg managed to make it through without screaming his head off. Gasping for breath and with eyes red from irritation, Greg looked at the one before him. Part of him was curious to see if there would be any difference from before. The only difference between now and before, however, was that his eyes were much more irritable.

"As I said before, Greg, the eyes are modified to require mana," She relayed. "Just looking at something without mana being injected into the eyes, won't achieve anything." She explained. "Also, if you don't want to blind yourself, I'd recommend that you don't try to look at deities with those eyes," She added. Despite the ominous nature of her words, Greg couldn't sense any anger, threat, or malice behind the words. It was almost like it was off-hand advice that she'd chosen to give on a whim. Whether Greg abided by it or not was his prerogative.

It was a while before Greg could comfortably open his eyes without the irritation. When he finally could, however, Greg noticed the look of indecision on the being's face. It was almost as if she was unsure whether to proceed with something or not. Greg didn't say anything. Instead, he waited for whatever decision the entity would make. In the end, he watched a small golden crystal the size of his pinky's nail, form atop the woman's palm. Before she even said anything, she flicked a hand forward sending the crystal flying at his chest faster than a bullet. Greg's eyes had reflexively closed as he'd been expecting pain. Much to his surprise, however, there was nothing. Forget pain, Greg didn't even feel like he'd been touched by anything. This, however, didn't put Greg at ease, not in the least. While the crystal had been on the being's palm, Greg couldn't feel a thing from it. Now that it was embedded in his soul body, however, Greg could feel the indescribable amount of power that was locked within. It was almost like a nuclear power plant had been shrunk to the size of a fingernail and placed inside him.

"What is this thing?" Greg couldn't keep quiet any longer and was forced to ask.

"That... is a fragment of divinity," came the reply.

Greg's eyes shrunk to pin-sized at the revelation. His shock, however, quickly turned to a mix of rage and fear. "Take it out, now!" This was the closest that Greg had come to shouting at the being. Greg could quite clearly remember what had happened to his uncle as a result of forcing his mundane body to interact with powers that were way beyond him. Olivia had also warned him about the fate of all tier zero mages. As vast as the power he felt inside the crystal was, Greg wasn't the least bit tempted by it. To him, it was no different from a pill full of cyanide.

An amused smile crossed the being's lips as she regarded him. None of his thoughts were hidden from her. "If I wanted to Kill you Greg, there are easier and far less wasteful ways to do it," She said, clearly having seen through his fears as to what the fragment of divinity would do to him. Greg calmed down a bit at her words as he realized that the being, so far, had no motive to kill him. "You are right though, as you currently are, that fragment would kill you a million times over," she went on to say, crushing what little relief Greg had just been feeling. "That's why the fragment is sealed," She informed him. "Until you reach the fourth or fifth tier, depending on how firm your foundations are, you shouldn't try and access what's sealed inside that fragment," she cautioned him. "And before you let your imagination run wild, the answer is no! The fragment won't grant you great power. At least, not directly. As the primordial warned you, you humans are not built to handle the kind of power that we possess. All that is locked away in that fragment is knowledge. Once you unlock it, you will gain not only a greater affinity for but also a deeper understanding of magic and its principles. How you convert that knowledge into your own power is entirely up to you," She relayed.

"If it is so harmless," Greg spoke up, in no way placated by the being's reassurances. "Then why were you so hesitant to give it to me?" He asked, not bothering to hide his suspicion. She would pick up on it from his mind whether he wanted her to or not.

"My hesitation is not borne out of any danger that the fragment itself would cause you," The being spoke up. The smile faded from her lips and her expression became serious even as she continued. "My hesitation is because of what danger it might attract your way," She went on to say. "You may not know this Greg, but fragments of divinity are highly sought-after items. You cannot even begin to fathom just how precious an item it is. Planar wars have been fought over far inferior fragments to the one that I've granted you," She relayed. "So while the fragment might not harm you directly, believe me when I say that it will be the certain death of you if you are ever stupid enough to reveal that you have it," She declared gravely. "No one, and I mean no one, not even the primordial, is ever to be trusted with the knowledge that you have it, is that understood?" Greg could only nod at the dire warning. It was clear that even the one before him took this seriously, unlike the carefree way she had spoken about most other topics.

"And now we come to the most important part of this discussion," The being continued calmly. "Do you wish to go on with your new life knowing that eventually, I will call on you to serve me, without question or reservation?" She posed calmly.

Greg was silent for a while before he spoke up. "A few questions before I answer," He said.

The being nodded once in assent, clearly not bothered by this. "The staff made my uncle a tier-zero mage connected with the abyssal realm. If I'm understanding you right, it was linked to a Herald of the abyss. How then is it that it linked me with you and not this Herald?" He asked.

"The moment your uncle opened a doorway to my realm, I left what you might call a backdoor in the staff. A way for me to hijack and make use of it to connect to you," She answered. "I knew that he'd try to kill you. If he succeeded, you'd be a failed experiment," She callously relayed. "If you somehow succeeded in killing him instead, then the staff would end up in your hands and I'd be able to reach out to you," She laid out her reasoning.

Greg was silent for a second, unable to argue against her logic. Part of him wanted to know why he didn't kill the man directly. The answer, however, was all too clear to him. The being before him didn't care one way or the other. In the end, he just chose to continue with his questions. "Do your plans involve harming the innocent?" Greg asked.

"My plans care not for any 'innocent', as you put it," She answered candidly. "I have no intention of targeting the innocent if that is what you are asking. However, whether some people get hurt in the process or not, really makes no difference to me?" She relayed. "Besides, you will be my agent, the one who executes my plans on my behalf. Whether you do it in the most bloody manner possible or shed no blood in the process, it makes no difference to me," She informed him. "So long as my end goal is met, then the details don't matter," She concluded her answer.

Greg turned this over in his head for a while. It wasn't the best answer he could have hoped for, but at the very least, she seemed to have been honest with him. Greg also liked that he would have a choice in how to go about the missions. This would allow him the flexibility to go at them in the most optimal way possible. "Second question," He spoke up. "How long will I be in your employ?" He asked. "Do you plan to have me as your lackey for the rest of my life after I've reached the seventh tier?" he asked.

"Serve me well, and you will have the chance to earn your freedom," Came the concise reply. Once again, there was no hesitation on her part in answering. It was clear that she wasn't hell-bent on convincing him or trying to win him over with pretty answers. To her, he was a tool in her hand that was very easily replaceable. If he wanted to work for her then she would allow it. If he didn't she would just replace him with someone else that would.

Greg couldn't help but clench his jaws a bit as he moved on to the next question. "How can I earn my freedom back? And how long will it take?" he asked.

"You haven't even begun to serve me and already you seek a way out," She stated in an amused tone. "As I told you, Greg, you'll first have to get to the seventh tier before I let you know what I need from you," She replied calmly, not offering anything beyond this.