Mila
“Is it true Aalam tried to commit suicide? Is he okay?”
As soon as Mila stepped out of the portal to the blessed land into a cave on the Greek Island of Zakynthos, Diana rushed up to her with a somewhat frantic expression, and the first question to enter Mila’s mind wasn’t how to make her friend feel better, but how Diana’d learned about Aalam’s intentions in the first place, something she’d deliberately decided to hide.
The answer, however, was obvious with barely a second of thought, and, given both Diana’s and Nana Xara’s personalities, Mila quickly had a good guess about what exactly had happened.
Not wanting to give their teacher the satisfaction of seeing any of the drama she’d created, Mila then took Diana to one of the secret rooms in the blessed land and spent about half an hour calming her down, getting Diana’s side of the story along with everything which had happened on Earth, and then telling Diana everything.
“So the sin around Aalam is all gone?”
“Yes. And the curse is gone as a result as well. I even advanced my racial ability during the process.”
It had only taken a couple days for Mila’s Heroic grade Sin Eater racial ability to advance to Fabled grade, and that, while not a fundamental change to the ability, had greatly sped up the rate at which she’d been able to take away all of Aalam’s accumulated sin.
The old ability had read as:
Sin Eater (Heroic): You may slowly absorb the karmic sin or karmic merit of those whose souls are at your mercy, and you may slowly transform your own karmic sin into karmic merit as well.
While the new ability read as:
Sin Eater (Fabled): You may absorb the karmic sin or karmic merit of those whose souls are at your mercy, and you may transform your own karmic sin into karmic merit as well.
The removal of the word ‘slowly’ from the two effects drastically increased the speed at which she could take away sin or merit and the speed at which she could transform her own sin into merit, so, even with only four months to work, she’d already been able to completely clear Aalam of all his accumulated sin and transform half of that sin into merit for herself.
“Why hasn’t Aalam woken up then?” Diana still looked worried and Mila placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder, having had the same worry as, given past cases of Id, Aalam should have woken up already
“According to the AI who controls the blessed land, Aalam not waking up has almost nothing to do with Id and everything to do with absorbing enough primal energy to advance well past the start of B rank. It’s changing him for the better somehow, but neither the AI nor Nana Xara will give me details, as apparently knowing would cause the effect to not happen.
“It’s a good thing, though, so you don’t have to worry.”
“And you trust them?” Diana’s aura showed some rather obvious hints of anger. “Earth was some big experiment for the Yin Yang Sage and she is the base cause of our apocalypse.”
Mila nodded in understanding. “I trust the AI. It was programmed by a now long-dead god named Steel Swamp Sorin and I believe it truly just wants its master’s legacy to live on, so it has no need to lie.”
“How can you be so sure?” Diana sat down on the ground in the cave they’d been standing in, the closed off room originally designed to be a prison cell, not a comfortable area of the blessed land at all. “For all we know this blessed land could have a fragment of the soul of the dead god and that fragment is currently trying to take over Aalam’s soul.”
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“Nah.” Mila sat down as well and shook her head. “Aalam’s following the path of the Heavenly Spark. No one in their right mind would try to take over his soul. Even with his race and classes they’d never advance to C rank, let alone higher.”
Diana opened and closed her mouth a few times, obviously trying to come up with a counter argument, but she couldn’t seem to think of anything. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Admittedly, most of what we know comes from Nana Xara.” Mila shrugged. “But I’ve compared the information we’ve gotten from her to what I’ve learned from the blessed land’s hidden library, which has even more knowledge, and I’ve yet to find any incongruities.”
“You think she’s being straight with us?”
“No. Of course not.” Mila shook her head. “I read a biography about her during the tutorial, which I believe was generated by the System and not her, and I looked up more information about her while in the Violet Mountain Sect.
“There are obvious incongruities in the information available, which likely means information about her was suppressed.
“We already know she has issues with several gods. But we don’t know why. And we know she’s our ancestor, which implies she had children at some point, but we have no idea with whom.”
Mila looked directly at Diana’s eyes. “My instincts are that she is being honest with what she wants from us. She is, however, old, bitter, and a bit petty, despite the kindly grandmother act she likes to put on, and I think some of her worst actions are more out of loneliness than anything else.
“My best guess currently is that what she’s hiding from us isn’t due to some nefarious scheme, but because she doesn’t want to face her own emotions.”
Mila was reminded of something Aalam had said while she’d been trying to convince him suicide was a bad option, about how he assumed her not talking to her grandmother about anything personal was a form of self punishment.
It was quite possible Diana had been right before when she said she and Nana Xara were quite similar, only with Nana Xara having many, many, many more years of baggage.
“No matter what, I’ll be talking with the Alchemist of the Deep Woods soon, so we’ll hopefully have another A rank to give us information.”
Diana nodded. “I already talked with Krysta. They’ll be expecting you.”
They then both stood up and Diana gave Mila a hug. “Thanks for looking out for Aalam, Mi. I don’t think we deserve you.”
Diana then left and Mila stood there for a few minutes, making some decisions. First, she deliberately ignored her impulse to listen in on the argument which had started between Diana and Isaiah about a kilometer away, in the room where Aalam was still sleeping. Second, she ignored her other impulse to go check on Aalam in person again as she could already tell from her sensory domain that nothing had changed.
Instead, she obfuscated her bond with Nana Xara so the old lady wouldn’t be able to watch her, then left the blessed land and went to find her grandmother, who was meditating under Aalam’s favorite tree outside his crafting hall.
“Grandma.”
Irena opened her eyes and quickly stood up, her aura shaking with excitement and nervousness at Mila addressing her by such a term, and Mila almost ran away again. But, instead, she took a deep breath and continued. “I would like us to have a non-work relationship. How should we go about doing that?”
Irena just stood there, not really moving for several seconds, and her aura showed absolute panic overwhelming her excitement, pretty much the same emotions Mila was feeling.
Then Irena seemed to come to her senses and asked, in a somewhat rushed manner, “Would you like some tea?”
“Um...”
“It’s something your mother and I used to do every morning.”
“Okay.” Mila felt her heart start to race faster. “That sounds nice.”
Irena reached down and touched the ground, two stone chairs and a stone table rising from the cliff they were on through the use of her earth element Law Pupa, along with two cups and what looked like an ornate teapot. Then she reached up and, through the use of her wind and water element Law Pupae, extracted water from the air into the pot.
Taking one of the seats and indicating Mila to take the other, she then summoned some tea leaves out of her spatial storage ring, put them in the pot, and quickly heated it up through the use of her fire element Law Pupa.
“I hope you like it. It was your mother’s favorite.” Irena poured the tea for both of them and Mila took a sip.
Never really having been much of a tea drinker, she found the drink very bitter, but, the more she sipped at it, the more pleasant she found it, and it made the awkward silence which had descended a bit more bearable.
Then, unable to bear the silence any longer, Mila deliberately chose a topic unrelated to the things she found scary. “Your Laws are very advanced. Do you have any tricks?”
While Irena had the assistance of being on Earth, which was equivalent to a B rank planet when learning Laws during the integration process, as well as the enlightenment zone, her Attunement stat and Law affinities were much, much lower than Mila’s, yet all of her Laws had advanced to Law Pupae while none of Mila’s had.
“Yeah.” Irena’s aura, which had been a jumble of nervousness and panic, calmed down. “I don’t have the same level of talent as you, Isaiah, or the Alvaro siblings, but I’ve found a method of Law study which works for me.
“Would you like me to tell you about it?”
Mila nodded, and she and her grandmother then started their first real conversation, even if they didn’t talk about any of the truly important topics.
And it was kind of nice.