While Reivan would have loved to return to the Tower immediately, he had other matters to handle.
Namely, upholding his end of the bargain with Aguru, the wise simian hermit hiding in some out-of-the-way forest. Reivan had initially wanted the pearls of wisdom that could take the knowledge of someone and distribute copies of it to an infinite number of people. Now, however, his main purpose was Aguru himself. While the instructions stated that he was to go ahead with the terms they had agreed upon initially, Reivan was open to the possibility of renegotiating those terms.
It was a dick move, he knew. And it was even worse because he was taking advantage of Aguru's pacifistic nature. Had the monkey been the violent and unreasonable kind, Reivan would have never considered such a thing. But Aguru was not, in fact, violent and unreasonable.
"This should be far enough away from his perception range. More than far enough, hopefully." Dame Mordred set him down on the lush forest floor. Even though she didn't need to physically carry him during their flight, as every other Ascendant Reivan had ever met demonstrated, she insisted on doing so. It was insolence of the highest degree, and quite frankly, Reivan felt mortified at being a princess carried by a little girl.
But what's done is done. Things happened far too fast for his mortal senses.
Reivan smoothed out his clothes and adjusted his glasses. He'd already transformed into Clover on their way here and worn appropriate clothing, so there was no need for anything else. He started walking toward Aguru's haunt, with Mordred walking right beside him. Apparently, she could sense Aguru and had already blocked off his perception of her. Which meant she could listen in on their conversation and guard Reivan without any the wiser.
There was no need to inform Aguru of who he was truly dealing with, so for all intents and purposes, Reivan was just an insignificant battlemage called Clover Salwyn.
"By the Sun God..." Mordred murmured, seemingly looking at something. "You weren't kidding when you said he was crazy strong."
Reivan, of course, didn't reply. His fellow Aizenian could speak as much as she pleased and do whatever she pleased, but if Aguru was close enough for her to perceive, then he shouldn't out her existence by responding to her in any way. They could have talked through the dream crystals processed from materials taken out of The Outlands, but that would require Reivan to take it out—and there was no way Clover Salwyn would have something like that.
Dame Mordred knew this too, so she wasn't really expecting a response, speaking more to herself than him. "Stronger than an orc, too. Hm... If it comes to blows, I can't throw down with this ape. Martial skill won't even be a factor when the physical disparity is this wide. I'll have to go for the kill. Having four arms is unsettling, but the throat looks soft enough. The stomach, too. The heart, on the other hand, is too dangerous to go for, so I'll have to refrain from that. I don't even know if he only has one heart..."
'We're not here to kill him.'
He wanted to remind her of that, but she probably never forgot. It was, perhaps, typical of a knight known as Mordred the Insidious to think of how to kill someone before being introduced to them. She was similar to Valter in that the essence of her fighting style hinged on taking out the enemy before a fight ever ensued.
Assassination, so to speak. Though others called it pre-emptive combat.
Not that they couldn’t fight like normal knights, slugging it out with steel and muscles. They were just extremely proficient in murdering their opponents before it devolved into a slugging match. Reivan could get behind such a fighting style. It would be nice if he could fight like that but when the chips were down, he went right back into being a brute that just hit stuff until they died—assisted by elementalism, of course.
“Ah. He sensed you, Your Highness, I believe he’ll either retrieve you or come to you.” she helpfully informed him, holding a naginata that may have been twice as tall as her.
It was strange seeing a Japanese weapon wielded by someone dressed in a knight's uniform. Much less, a knight that was so lacking in height. But of course, Reivan caged his thoughts, not letting them see the light of day. Angering someone who was supposed to be guarding him seemed incredibly unwise even if she was incapable of betraying him.
“Well, let’s hope this works.” Mordred shrugged. “Fighting such a monster wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, but I really imagined myself dying in a more heroically tragic setting… This? This would just be tragic.”
Just as she’d predicted, Aguru appeared nearby. Perhaps it was a consideration on the simian’s part that he’d teleported in Reivan’s peripheral to avoid causing too much of a shock.
“Young Clover.” Aguru nodded in greeting, a big smile on his face as it offered a large hand with rocky black skin. “It has been a while.”
“Of course.” Reivan nodded. “I hope you haven’t forgotten me.”
“Thankfully, I have not.” The white-furred monkey chuckled as he led Reivan deeper into the forest instead of simply being there. Which would have been convenient since he wouldn’t have to walk.
Apparently, though, they wouldn’t have to walk all the way to that hidden pond Aguru stayed by. Just a short dozen paces away from where they met was an abandoned hunter’s cottage that Reivan was fairly sure shouldn’t have been there.
“Spatial manipulation…” Mordred muttered from beside Reivan before trotting over to Aguru and observing the ape’s face closely. “No strain. Guess it was easy? Or was it optimistic of me to come here and expect to understand simian facial expressions?”
Reivan tried very hard not to look at Mordred so he wouldn’t give anything away, but the fact that she could simply get within a step’s distance from another Ascendant without the other noticing was jarring to behold. She even went ahead of them and peeked inside the cabin.
Aguru looked at Reivan and smiled while gesturing at the hut. “Care to join me inside?”
“It looks clear, Your Highness,” Mordred offered, entering the cabin by flying through the window she’d peeked through. “It’s just an ordinary cabin. He subtly teleported you both so I just followed the… Ah, well, it’s complicated. You’ll understand when you’re older. Or maybe not, if you think spatial manipulation is too boring to study.”
Reivan nodded respectfully. “I’d love to, Elder.”
The inside of the cabin was, justifiably, quite run down and it was clear that nobody used it regularly enough to stave off rats from making nests out in the open. They were gone already, but their little footprints on the dusty surface of the floor made it obvious what stayed there.
Well, it could also be squirrels or ferrets, he supposed. It didn’t have to be rats—his most hated vermin in existence.
“I apologize for the disrepair.” Aguru fixed him with a sheepish look before waving his hand. Immediately, all the dust and dirt was gathered into some giant puffball of ick before being unceremoniously thrown out the window—where Mordred was standing by.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, barely getting out of the way in time as she glared at the simian hermit. “How rude. Doesn't he know how much effort I put into keeping my uniform clean?”
‘Probably not. Plus, he couldn’t see you… And you’re technically being more rude by eavesdropping like this.’
Aguru gestured toward a table with two rickety old seats and both of them chose one as their perch. “I’d offer you tea, as is your customs, but I have no reliable way to procure it. I can make something similar, but I've been told that my creations taste terrible to humans.”
“There’s no need, Elder.” Reivan shook his head and procured the pink pearl that Valter had given back to him earlier. “I still have your gift.”
“So it seems.” the simian said with barely disguised excitement. “Your return bodes good news, I hope. Particularly about our little exchange of knowledge.”
“I have taken it into consideration and view it favorably.”
“That's fantastic.”
Reivan drummed his fingers on the table hesitantly while rolling the pearl in his other palm. “It’s just that I have certain… misgivings.”
Aguru grunted in confusion, fixing him with a gentle but inquisitive gaze. “About what, if I may ask?”
“Well… first off, how can I be sure that you won’t renege on our promise? Or if you'll stop at being satisfied by what I offer. I’m just a weak little mortal boy, Elder. I can’t do anything if you threaten me.”
“A fair argument.” The white-haired monkey murmured, seemingly not offended in the slightest. “I don’t believe that all your concerns are aired out?”
Reivan lowered his head. “I also fear that you will spread the knowledge you obtain from me. Or use it and the power you obtain from it against me and my people.”
“I see… I suppose trust is not something freely given.”
“My apologies, Elder. I do not intend to call your integrity into question.”
“It is fine.” Aguru chuckled, gesturing around him. “Does the fact that I live as a hermit far away from civilization not prove that I don’t actually trust that easily either? Pay it no mind, young one. Your worries are warranted.”
Reivan dipped his head. “I thank you for your understanding.”
There was a moment of silence as Aguru rubbed the dark rocky skin of his chin. “Then I will make an oath, young one. And you may place doubt on it if you wish, but beings such as I cannot go against such things without drastic consequences.”
“Really…?”
“A vow freely given is stronger than an agreement.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
To the side, Mordred nodded. “So he knows. You can trust that he won’t betray any oaths he swears to, Your Highness. He’s too powerful to do so now. It would have been different if he was a newly Ascended whelp, but that’s not the case.”
Reivan frowned. No lies were spoken in his presence but he was ignorant of these matters, which irked him more than he cared to admit. Still, he supposed there wasn’t any reason for him to know of knowledge that only really applied to the top percentile of people in the world—it would be a long time yet before he sat at the same table as them.
“That is acceptable then, Elder Aguru.” Reivan bowed. “Thank you for humoring me.”
The monkey of white fur and black skin smiled, baring terribly unsharp teeth. “Pay it no mind.”
With a soft clunk of the chair, the towering Ascendant stood up and closed his eyes, placing a hand on his chest. “On this day, I swear to three oaths. I swear to never betray the intentions of those whomsoever I make deals with. I swear that the knowledge I obtain, the knowledge of the deal being made at all, and all further assumptions gleaned from the entire affair, are for my mind only. And I swear that I will never harm humanity and its interests, except if it involves harming me, in which case, I will simply flee. Now and forever more.”
A moment of solemn silence followed the pacifistic hermit's words, but nothing else. No loud gong reverberating through the air or some kind of pulse of power that would make nearby mortals tremble. Just a vow punctuated by a moment of silence before Aguru sat down once again.
‘That’s it…?’
Mordred nodded with a smile while playfully waving a dagger at Aguru. “Seems absolute to me. Trust me, Your Highness. I’ve scammed a lot of people over my lifetime.”
Reivan’s cheek twitched and he wanted to retort on why she sounded oddly proud of that. But he knew he’d get a typical knightly answer that the ones she scammed were enemies, and so every successful scam was a badge of honor. Or something like that. Maybe she was right, in some twisted way.
The knighthood really attracted a lot of weirdos. Or maybe it was the knighthood itself that made ordinary people into weirdos?
Mordred giggled as the dagger and the naginata she’d been holding vanished. “We have slightly more ostentatious ceremonies regarding these things but it seems to work without them. The oath has been sworn, Your Highness. I can feel it on my skin. Unfortunately, he swore to keep his hands off you and the entire human race. Not just your people. Guess we couldn’t scam him.”
‘Indeed. This works fine, however.’
At least Aizen could now be sure that they wouldn’t have to worry about Aguru suddenly entering the fray. It would have been ideal to receive help of some kind, but that struck Reivan as incredibly unlikely.
The bright side was that Aizen still got out of the deal with a way to accelerate the training of knights. For all the physical conditioning they did, squires spent a lot of time poring over scrolls after all. They could also have the entirety of the knighthood learn every single language Aizen knew of among other things.
Also, if Aguru became a Transcendent, his presence itself would threaten the powers around him. Which would likely involve the empire, as by then, the Sage King would be dead.
Hopefully dead, anyway. That part was still up in the air.
Reivan nodded. “Once again, thank you for your understanding, Elder.”
“I’m sure you still have your misgivings,” Aguru smiled as he sat down. “But please accept my sincerity. There is quite literally no other way for me to assure you that I won’t renege on our agreement other than what I’ve done… There is that oath spell the Tower uses, but…”
“There won’t be a need. I have felt your sincerity, Elder.”
“Is that so? That’s wonderful news. So, about what you promised…”
Reivan couldn’t help but chuckle at the hesitantly eager monkey in front of him. If Roland and their father were here, maybe they wouldn’t have doubted Aguru. Perhaps they would have seen that deep down, the monkey was just one massive lore hoarder.
‘Time for my end of the bargain, then.’
He looked down at the pearl with a bit of apprehension but dove in anyway, willing all sorts of otherworldly knowledge into it. As an avid consumer of stories, the “knowledge” was mostly about that, as it was obviously too dangerous to let Aguru know about quite a lot of the things that show up on Modern Earth.
Like the existence of nuclear bombs. Reivan didn’t know how those were made, but the possibility itself should never be revealed to anyone.
Honestly, he was about to include things like cars among other things. But given how the founder of Aizen left behind all sorts of incomplete knowledge about technology and whatnot, there was a high chance that they would show up in this world eventually. Other than that, he added a bunch of other inconsequential things he discovered in his travels from before he got sick and quite a large chunk of ultimately useless trivia about Aizen’s culture.
There was one incredibly heavy piece of information included, however: the knowledge that there were other worlds out there.
Of course, it wasn’t that knowledge directly that Reivan would store in the orb. No, that felt like a recipe to turn crazy. He would still have knowledge of otherworldly stuff among other things, so what would happen to his mind if he suddenly forgot that otherworlds existed? Wouldn’t he have a breakdown? Maybe he wouldn't, but he certainly didn't feel the urge to risk it.
Rather than send that information directly, since he’d added maps of Earth in there, by assumption, Aguru would come to know that other worlds existed. Because as Reivan knew, The US of A didn’t exist in this world, nor did the land of hockey and maple syrup.
‘Hopefully, it’s enough to satisfy his conditions for Transcendence.’
Reivan gasped as he felt the information being ripped out of his head. It was, in a word, strange how vital puzzle pieces in his life were just… gone.
His memories took a particular hit. Because he spent quite a lot of time reading in his past life, but now, he couldn’t remember any of it. Like a massive part of him simply disappeared. A lot of the conversations he had with his dear sister rang hollow too, as they talked about their shared interests quite a lot.
It was… horrible.
Though it all happened a long time ago and was ultimately insignificant, it was important to him. Every second spent with his loved ones, before and after his sickness, was a treasure. And now that treasure felt defiled. They were still there, but the words spoken grew muddled and everything felt disconnected from the other in strange ways.
“The pearl…” Reivan held it out with trembling hands, fighting the dreadful feeling of something missing and knowing that something was supposed to be there. “I will need the knowledge back quickly, Elder…”
“Of course.” Aguru nodded as he gently plucked the comparatively tiny pearl with his big hands. “Once I have taken the copy, you may have the original back.”
Reivan closed his eyes. It felt like he should be making some kind of joke about what he’d just heard, but a fair amount of stuff in his head was currently not there. Strangely enough, the most vivid ones that came to the surface were the memories that didn’t involve reading stories at all.
All those lonely dinners before Kyouka was born. The anguish of trying his best in his studies, hoping it would urge his parents to come see him. And that one silent night in his hospital bed when the final embers of his love for them died as he mourned the pain his existence caused the people who actually cared for him.
Depressing was not a strong enough word.
But in the darkness came light. He had new parents now. Ones that actually loved him. And though he still longed for his loved ones in his past life, he had family here too.
It was because of them that he was here, far away from home.
Reivan clenched his fist under the table. He’d never forgotten his purpose. But now, with all manner of other drivel missing, he felt even more motivated. Everything else seemed trivial in comparison.
Morals? Especially ones from his old world. Ones he’d never truly gotten rid of. Was that going to protect his family’s interests? When the monsters came, were his morals going to keep the night away? War was coming, and after that, there was still the Outlands to worry about and the eastern continent’s vendetta against his warbeast bloodline.
Yet, here he was. Was he really doing all he could to prepare against those threats?
Maybe not. Maybe he was doing the best he could and he should be proud of that.
But maybe he could do even more.
For he was no longer that sad lonely boy who could only wait and hope for the situation to improve. He was Reivan fucking Aizenwald. Prince of Aizen. And he had the power to grasp his own destiny.
‘Do not forget those nights. Never forget. Never return.’
Reivan was jolted out of his thoughts when the knowledge he’d lost was returned to him. And all the bad memories receded like a black tide, back into the corner he usually kept them in. But the fire had already been lit, and it would not be quelled so easily.
“This…” Aguru murmured absentmindedly as he gently put the pearl on the table and gave it a soft flick, rolling it toward Reivan. “This is…”
“A secret,” Reivan finished for him. “One that, as I understood it, should not be shared with others or spoken of.”
The white monkey still seemed dazed but clear-headed enough to speak. “Ah... Of course, of course... But this is a monumental discovery... Enlightening, even.”
“And how many pearls is enlightenment worth, Elder?”
“Hah.” Aguru chuckled, taking out what appeared to be a large leaf folded into a pouch. He placed it on the table and sighed. “All yours...”
Reivan picked it up and peered inside to find nine pearls instead of the six he was promised. In their previous encounter, it was mentioned that there were eight pink pearls. But including the one Reivan was sent off with, there were ten.
‘He wasn’t lying last time, so something must have happened for him to create two additional pearls.’
Seemingly sensing the questions behind his gaze, Aguru smiled. “I have recently acquired a new non-human friend that granted me knowledge about the lands to the west, beyond the sea, in exchange for what I know about this one. Hence, I was able to form a few more pearls because of that.”
“West?” Mordred’s brows shot up as her jaw slackened. “Was it an elf? But they don’t leave their forests…”
‘Elves… Yet another variable. Fuck.’
Reivan cleared his throat and carefully packed away the ten pearls that he now legally owned and stood up. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Indeed, young human.” Aguru smiled, a bit slovenly. It was almost as if he’d gotten drunk from the information. “This was a very fruitful exchange, though one that I admit cannot be done repeatedly. I cannot produce pearls so easily now that I’ve accumulated so much.”
“Of course. Next time, it’ll be knowledge for knowledge.”
The white-furred monkey nodded and closed his eyes, saying nothing but implying that it preferred to be left alone now. Mordred shrugged and flew out the window as Reivan stepped out.
Just as he did, he suddenly found himself somewhere else. Somewhere very close to civilization, if the buildings he could see in the distance were anything to go by. Clearly, however, it was Aguru's doing because his invisible escort hadn't been included.
A few seconds later, Mordred appeared beside him, giving him a smile that somehow managed to be elegant and impish at the same time. “Well, that worked out well. Didn’t it, Your Highness? And don’t worry, he’s not paying attention to us now.”
Reivan licked his lips and nodded, taking out the pearls. “Take eight back with you, Dame Mordred. I’ll keep two for now.”
She respectfully received them with a bow. “This will be a wonderful contribution to the nation. I thank the prince for his generosity.”
“Don’t thank me. I am, after all, someone who lives off taxpayer lumens,” he joked. "Also, this is ultimately to strengthen the royal family's forces. Selfish reasons all around. Take your pick."
Mordred straightened up and smiled. And maybe his eyes were deceiving him because he thought the way she looked at him turned a bit more warmer than earlier.
"Well, with that done," she said. "Let's get you back in the game, Your Highness. Or do you have anywhere else you want to stop by?"
"No, let's go back. Oh, and do you mind if you don't carry m—"
"Very well! Onwards!"
Mordred blurred to his side and easily took him into her arms like a princess, which just so happened to be exactly what he was about to tell her not to do. She knew what she was doing, however. The impish smile on her face was conclusive evidence of this. If they took it to court, he would win. Unless the judge and jury were her zombie puppets.
Just as he was about to protest, his vision blurred and he could no longer speak.