We found out two things today—I'm incredibly good at this game, and Gale is a sore loser. Well, after his little outburst just now, we didn't really have another choice but to stop playing. As Sab was tearfully picking up all the tiny fragments of the controller, the rest of us were dismissed from the room to give him time to grieve.
"He... does realize it'll just get put back after the reset, right?" Gale contemplated walking back in to remind him.
"No no, you've done enough." Sheep dissuaded him, however, "Come here. While we wait for him, we should discuss what our next move is properly—As a team."
"That much is obvious." Vastoria immediately replied, "We're going to the Shrine."
"Hold on, now." Gale shook his head, "We should try our luck with the Gods again. Whatever's in that Book has to be the key to everything."
"How come you're so sure?" Sheep raised an Eyebrow.
"Because the Gods weren't defending the Shrine." I explained, "Gale probably means to say that the effects of the Shrine are meant to be found out, whereas the Book isn't."
It isn't that illogical to think this way. The Gods obviously don't want us reading whatever's in that Book, but barring Throne's case, Vastoria entered the Shrine without any repercussions. Not only that, but she did clear it and leave safely, despite the fact it permanently changed Heaven 2.0. If we keep limiting our playing field on the palms of the Gods' hands, then I'm afraid we'll never get to the real meat of the matter—Resurrection. I wanna leave this place, find out who I was before I died, and go back to being that person down in the Living World. As curious as I am about the Shrine, Gale is totally right for this.
"In that case, we won't even make it to the front entrance without Throne." Vastoria argued, "Mad or not, he's the most capable seraphim out of us all. We need him if we want to stand a tiny chance against the likes of Prylos and Selzion."
"That's..." Gale looked astonished.
"She's got us there." I struck a thinker's pose as well.
We can't go directly to the end, that'll only lead to us being underprepared. We got off with only a slap to the wrist this time, but I don't at all doubt the Gods can quite literally send our souls into an endless torturous fate with the snap of a finger. If we wanna do this right, we're gonna need a pretty solid plan.
"Then, the Shrine it is?" Sheep tilted his head, "But what then? Are we just gonna keep perpetually moving the days over and over for the rest of time? What'll that achieve?"
"No, we're not going for that reason." Vastoria shook her head, "Energy, I need to find him."
"Energy?" Gale furrowed his brows, "The guy you explored the Shrine with previously? Is he still there?"
"Right, obviously he'd wanna go back there as soon as possible to investigate just like you." I turned to Vastoria, "He must've flown there the moment he woke up."
Suddenly, her face soured up. Vastoria had apparently failed to notify us of a certain fact about Energy that sort of makes us question her plan's success.
"Actually, he doesn't have his wings with him either." She shrunk back in her chair.
"Eh? Then he's definitely not there!" Gale frowned, "You said it yourself, right? Given the location of it, there's no way anyone but a seraphim with wings could ever reach the Shrine."
"No, I think he's there." She kept looking down, "I know him."
She knows him. Great, then everything's settled... Not! Come on, what's with that blind faith? Obviously, I don't mind a little bit of optimism sprinkled into a plan every now and then, but this is too much! What if we wasted our time going all the way there just to not find him? She's gonna be adamant either about us sitting around outside to wait for him or she's gonna tell us to go inside and start looking for him, both of which just won't amount to anything—Because he's not there! She needs to face it, her plan doesn't at all sound good.
"Absolutely not." Gale disagreed completely, "That's a shallow plan with stupidly low chances of success."
"We'll find him!" She fussed, "Trust me! I know what I'm saying sounds rough, but I genuinely believe...!"
"Believe!? So you admit that what you want us to do is take a leap of faith?" Gale shot back.
"That's not what I said!"
The two were in an uninterruptible squabble, throwing arguments at each other that soon stopped making any logical sense altogether. At some point, one person threw an offhanded insult at the other, and thus the arguments were quickly substituted with good old fashioned swear words. It took until Sab rushed down the stairs for them to stop and take a breather, giving Sheep the opportunity to end the debate for good.
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"Alright, let's review our options, then." Sheep clapped his hands together to get everyone's attention, "We can 1) Try and look for Energy which is highly improbable, 2) Try and look for Throne, which is risky and possibly even dangerous, 3) Try and steal the Book away from the Gods again, which will definitely result in failure, and 4) We can go to the Shrine."
"As someone who only just now entered the room and knows only what Sheep just said, I definitely believe option 4 to be the best." Sab joined in on the conversation, "It's the only one that doesn't involve us possibly coming up empty handed."
"That's completely wrong!" Gale shouted.
"Oh, so Gale dislikes that option?" Sab gave him a smug grin as petty revenge for breaking his TV and controller, "Even better."
"You...!" Gale fumed.
Thus, the meeting was adjourned with a successful resolution. Not everyone was happy with it, but the rest of us knew more or less that if we wanted to move forward toward the end goal at all, we were gonna have to go and visit the Shrine.
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"Hey, so, could you just give us a brief rundown of what all you saw inside the Shrine?" Sab asked.
"Honestly, you wouldn't like it." Vastoria plainly replied as we walked out of the house, carrying hundreds of pillowcases with us, "Just entering for the first time and experiencing your body go from numb to fully sensitive is super disorienting."
"Oh right, our White and gold parts get inverted." Gale recalled, "So essentially, we'll feel just like we did when we were alive in there for the most part, right?"
"That's the gist." I began tying the ends of the pillowcases together.
"I still think we should have just gone out and found some rope for this..." Sheep sighed.
"We don't have time, it'll be bedtime by the time we get ahold of it." Vastoria shushed him, helping me tie the ends up as she sat down beside me.
Onlookers were staring at us in confusion, but as expected, none dared to ask what we were doing. As we discussed before, the only way for all of us to travel through the air as a group would be if we had some sort of tethering attachment to Sab. He doesn't have the grip strength to hold all of us, so we need something to tie around his torso instead. Thankfully, my quick thinking saved us in our time of need, and I thought to use the thousands of pillows Sab just had lying around in his home. By doing this, we essentially get a makeshift rope. It's not as durable as regular rope, but it more than gets the job done, I'd say!
"...No, that knot won't work." Sheep begrudgingly explained, "It'll undo itself while we're flying. Give it here."
"I know what I'm doing." I tugged it back slightly, only giving in after seeing his tired expression.
"Thank you. Look, it's the same as how Vastoria is doing it." He began to teach me, "Make a loop with the two ends, like this and..."
"That looks flimsy as hell." Sab smirked, "Give it here... Hnnghhh!!"
Flimsy, my foot. Sheep's right though, I'm not that good at tying knots. Guess I never learned that skill in the Living World. Gale and Vastoria seem to be handling the task just fine, I see. In fact, Gale's pace is scarily fast. He must've been a master craftsman... or a sailor, given the era he's from. I'm pretty sure ships existed back then, right?
"Slow down there, captain." I joked a bit, "I think the rope's more than long enough."
"For one length." He muttered.
"Come again?"
"It's long enough to go from us to Sab once, but that won't nearly be enough to carry our weight." He further went on to explain, "It'll snap in an instant like this, which is why we need to go for multiple lengths."
"H-Hey, you wanna tie multiple ropes together into one giant rope?!" Sab jolted, "You can't be serious!"
"I thought that's how we were gonna do it from the start, no?" Vastoria looked at Gale, "It's pretty obvious that one layer would snap under the tension. Twisting them together into a braided rope, on the other hand..."
"You get it!" Gale gave her a proud high five.
They sure seem to be getting along... No, what am I thinking? Eyes on the prize, Maggie! This isn't a teenage romance drama. I-In any case, I should get back to the knots...
After we spent a good half an hour purely on tying knots until we were sick of them, we eventually had enough rope to braid them together into one. Unanimously and unsurprisingly, this task was delegated to our two master craftsmen. Vastoria stood on one end, holding three loose ends together as Gale braided them from the other side. Soon enough, we had a pretty large pillowcase rope to work with.
"Okay, now can we go?" Sab asked, "Oh come on!"
"What are you doing now?" Even Sheep was confused.
"Tying two more medium knots." They glanced back with aloof stares.
"M-Medium knots? You call this medium?" I kicked the one they just finished combining, "In other words... You're gonna be making a large?"
"Any less and it'd snap." Vastoria explained.
"There's no way this thing is gonna snap!" Sab furiously stomped on the ground, "You guys won't even be able to tie all of us together if you make the diameter of the rope too fat!"
"Don't you worry about a thing, we know what we're doing." Gale brushed him off, "Hey, hold here..."
After that, it didn't take them too long before they had a fully braided "large rope", made of three combined medium sized ones. Note that the medium sized ones are already derived from a fair length of one layer ropes. It's overkill no matter how you slice it, medium would have been fine.
"Sab, it's time." Gale walked up to him before tying the rope over his arms.
"What are you doing?" Sab glared.
"Your arm movement isn't that restricted this way." Gale shot back, "And in case you haven't noticed, smart guy, you have two very sensitive golden hoops around your abdomen that would most definitely chafe if I tied the rope around your waist."
"...Let's just go already." Sab groaned, giving up on arguing with them anymore.
"Thanks for this, Sab." Vastoria gave him a warm smile accompanied with the words of gratitude, "It goes without saying how impossible this whole thing would've been without you."
"...No big deal." He looked away, his ears bright Red from the honest praise.
Aww, look at him~! He's all shy now! Ehe, I'd tease him right now, and I'm sure the others feel the same way going off of their stifled snickers, but we all know better than to do that now. Let's not forget he can untie us at any moment if we misbehave... Or can he? Ah, was that the reason why Vastoria and Gale insisted on overbraiding the rope? To make it impossible for Sab to cut us loose? Man, they really are smart...