Despite some paranoid worries on Esperanza’s end, the people of Agur-Bas proved to be just as they showed themselves to be. A group of honest, straightforward people with nary a nasty bone in their bodies. They were a group content to live the life they had happily rather than to be forever slaves to ambitions that made them want to strive for unreachable heights.

Other than the hidden and secluded location of the town, it was a nearly idyllic settlement, really.

Over the two weeks that followed, the younger children had gotten much closer to the families that the locals chose to adopt them. The youngest ones were the first to refuse when it came time to be separated from their new families during a visit, at which point the rest of the group bid farewell to them and left them in the hands of the family that had accepted the child as their own.

The older ones – none of them older than six – followed one after another, as they slowly got closer to the families they met, and left the group one by one. None of the older – or rather, forcibly matured – children hurried the process, neither did Esperanza, as they all felt that the least they could do to the younger ones was to see them properly taken care of, with new families to call their own.

Two weeks after their arrival in Agus-Bas, the last of the younger children, a six year old who used to be neighbors and often played with Ilavakide, left the group to embrace their adopted family. It was a more solemn farewell, in some ways. The older children had understood more of their circumstances compared to the younger ones, after all.

For them, they knew it would be a separation from those that used to be their friends, likely for the long term, as their paths ahead branched apart there, and were unlikely to cross again in the future. It was a rather stark contrast that Esperanza wished didn’t have to happen, to see one child being able to remain a child, enveloped in a helpful measure of blissful ignorance, while another had a path that promised hardship and suffering before them, as they had been chosen by the gods themselves to be a recipient of a part of their power.

That was, after all, practically what the [Progenies of Yore] were.

While it was true that none of the children – regardless of older or younger – begrudged what happened to them, be it the forced maturing of their physical forms ahead of its time or the destiny laid out before them without any input from the individuals concerned. In fact, every single one of them had told Esperanza that it was a choice they had made for themselves.

They had other class options after all, but every one of them still chose to be a [Progeny of Yore].

It was a choice they made on their own will, they all said.

She knew that some of them likely said it to make her feel less aggrieved over it, however, as some of the children had indeed struggled with the sudden maturing of their bodies. It was fortunate that some of the notable hormonal influx that typically accompanied puberty had not affected them, their bodies forcibly maturing practically skipping that phase, but it was still a rather awkward experience to have to explain some other things to the kids, especially the younger ones.

It was not a fun experience to have to explain things like periods to the younger girls, after all. The boys got off easy in that regard.

During that time, Esperanza also learned from the older girls – Tiesya and Mel-Ivas were both already old enough to have had their periods before the forced maturity – that humans were particularly worse off in that regard. Humans and Tesh’ka women both had periods along with the cramps and discomfort that inevitably came along with it on a nearly monthly basis.

By comparison, Ma’Varok women only had the cycle every hundred days or so, while the Ragah-fiq had them even less often, roughly every one hundred fifty days. The Nevilosk on the other hand only experienced it once a year. Tiesya was a half-breed between a Nevilosk and a human, so she had them roughly twice a year or so.

It was something that the human girls like Resitia and Iryl were envious about, to say the least.

There was nothing they could complain about during their stay in Agur-Bas, other than the sometimes overenthusiastic way the people of the city treated them, especially the more devoutly religious ones. The kind treatment allowed the children to truly relax themselves and recover from the strenuous months they spent in the depths of the jungle.

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It was a recovery many of them likely didn’t know they needed, Esperanza thought. The progenies were still young children at heart after all, and they had never known that one might break down from excessive pressure and overdoing things without rest. It was something she would need to talk with them in the future, she realized, since those children had practically told her that they would follow her.

Down that path lay plenty of hardship, struggle, and bloodshed, Esperanza knew that would be the case. After all, it was likely that neither the demons nor the humans would look upon her group kindly, worshipers of the old gods on a mission to destroy the world and all. Most would just cast them as the villain right away, probably even the [Heroes] who she had known and had some connection to in her previous life.

She doubted that O’Connor would look kindly upon the mission the old gods saddled her with.

Not even the chats she had with Oldies in the past two weeks offered her a solution.

In fact, Oldies had told her with what she felt was blatant honesty that once the new gods were removed, the world was bound to come to an end one way or another. The new gods and the system they created were the life support that forcibly kept the terminal patient that was the world itself well past its expiry date against its will.

It was an unnatural thing to do, and Oldies admitted – in a way that almost sounded like a plea – to her that they feared that what the new gods were doing might throw a hitch into the cycle of destruction and creation. A hitch that might mean that after the world came to an end, there might not be a new world that would be born out of its remnant wisps to continue the cycle.

No future for all the souls that inhabited the world, which was supposed to continue onwards through the endless cycles of life and death.

As a matter of fact, Oldies admitted that from the limited bits they could glimpse of the world at large that the souls of the living beings in the current world were starting to fall apart. It was something they feared, as it was a side effect of the world being kept “alive” against its will for so long. Maybe the system’s touch on those souls might have accelerated the issue, they were uncertain.

Esperanza confirmed that for herself when she checked the hundreds of souls in her [Soul Storage]. At a glimpse she didn’t notice anything, but when she peered really closely at the souls, she noticed how all of them had started to fray at the edges, like old fabric that was unraveling. It wasn’t very noticeable unless she inspected it closely, but the fact that it was there at all was worrisome in itself.

Out of curiosity she picked a tiny insect’s soul and tried to pull at the frayed edges to see what would happen. To her horror, while the soul resisted her tugs at first, as she pulled harder it started to unravel like a spool of thread and broke apart before her, seemingly dissipating into the air. Something within her told her that the little bit of soul had simply ceased to exist after what she did.

With some dread in her heart, she couldn’t help but to turn her eyes at her own soul and peered closely, but fortunately it seemed that there was no such fraying within her own soul. The activity also granted her a new general skill called [Soul Sight]. It did just about what she expected it to do, as activating it caused her sight to seem as if it went through some sort of filter that allowed her to see the souls within people.

She couldn’t manipulate any of the souls other than those within her [Soul Storage], however.

What she saw through the [Soul Sight] alarmed her, as she could see how every soul in her sight had the same signs of fraying at the edges. She also quickly identified another use of the skill, as it seemed to allow her to easily tell who amongst the people had some connection with the gods and deities as well. The progenies had what looked like purplish threads wrapped around their soul, in a protective manner, and when she looked at her own she saw an even greater multitude of similar threads around hers.

Both the color and the feel of the threads reminded her of Oldies, so it was likely a mark of those who carried some sort of blessing or power from them. Some of the priests of the temple also had a thread or two wrapped around their souls, probably something they earned through their years of devotion and worship.

In contrast, a few of the souls of the demons she had killed back at the village had some signs on them as well. Most of what she saw took the form of little red spikes – not many, maybe one or two of them on the soul – which were present on those who had classes that had Ner’vhok’s name on them. There was another that had a mark that looked more like a tiny patch of green moss on it, which after some checking turned out to be a healer who had a class from Elugurenas that was part of the invaders back then.

If those marks were indeed signs of people who received some sort of blessing from the gods – both old and new – then it would help her identify friend from foe, at least. It appeared that some classes also inherently count as that sort of blessing, since the only souls she noticed had those signs were people who specifically had classes that mentioned the gods’ names.

For the next few days, Esperanza walked around Agur-Bas, seemingly just taking in the sights and chatting with people, but in actuality she was checking the souls of the people in town. She still remembered all too well what happened in Navef, and had no desire to see such a scene repeat itself ever again.

Fortunately enough, she saw no sign of marks on the souls of the people that lived there, other than a few that had purple threads around theirs. She even went to the underwater parts of the town – her physical body allowed her to do so easily enough – and swam around while meeting the locals and saw nothing troublesome.

Even the nearby villages of the aquatic peoples were clean of people that might be associated with the other gods, which was a relief to her. Then again, she guessed that Agur-Bas wouldn’t have been so peaceful had their location been so easily leaked out to begin with. It made sense that only people that were trusted or lived there would know the town’s actual location.

At least that was one worry that Esperanza could strike off her long list of worries for the time being. Not that she was lacking in worries anyway, but at least the rest were more worries for the longer term and did not need to be addressed immediately.