Mir felt hungry, not quite famished, but hungry enough to have a few bites during dinnertime.

Murray hadn't returned from the Church. His communicator was turned off, making everyone feel somewhat worried. But they were used to his brief bouts of absence, which was happening a lot these days.

Nevertheless, the fact that his body felt normal again relieved Mir immensely. He was starting to think that the diary had fucked him permanently.

"It's good that you managed to get the license. Hadn't Murray gotten several during his time in college? Even though he never formed a contract with any mutated creatures, the experience had to have been useful. When...if you reach the Transcendent tier, you can visit the Sacred Ground again with him. The reserves of those places won't be running out anytime soon."

Mir's dad had expressed the least amount of emotion upon hearing the news of his sudden success. And Mir preferred that reaction over the exaggerated surprise from his mother and sister. They asked too many questions, leaving him rather annoyed.

"A Green-Coded Sacred Ground probably won't have any rare creatures left by now, Dad. I think it would be for the best if Mir doesn't try to form a contract with the rabble there. It's just a waste of potential in our levels," Murin commented. Their father grunted noncommittally, which prompted their mother to snort and voice her thoughts.

"I suppose it's for the best if you're careful. But all the talk about potential isn't something people like us should be concerned about. Mir should try to form a contract with some type of harmless, but useful creature which can help him perform better in the exam. Isn't there a variant subspecies of the Pureheart Pigeons in all three Sacred Grounds with Sunbreaker's Touch? What was its name again-"

"You mean the Pigeon of Sacrifice?" Murin helped her recall.

"Yes, that one! Eating that pigeon's meat helps strengthen the body and spiritual consciousness, doesn't it?"

"First of all, I'll have to form a contract with a Pigeon of Sacrifice to be able to consume its meat without side effects. And eating a creature that you can mentally communicate with is a downright cruel notion. I'm not doing it even if I can find and contract one.

"Secondly, someone at my level, without any prior experience, is quite likely to mess up the contract process if conducted all by myself. The backlash could cripple me for a long time.

"Thirdly, and most importantly, killing a contracted creature leaves a negative spiritual residue that affects the future contracts with creatures of the same species. I know you care more about immediate results than some faraway concept of future potential, Mum, but I don't. I'm not as talented as Murray, to begin with. I don't want to harm my chances further for something so silly as the National Exam."

Mir's rant went on for a minute, silencing much of what anyone else had to say. But the last part of it made his mother flare up.

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"Something so silly as the National Exam? Silly?!"

"You know what I'm talking about. Stop pretending like they give a fuck about students from ordinary backgrounds. Even someone as talented as Murray didn't get proper access to justice. What hopes do I have to make a mark?"

Mir's mother stared at him with a fiery look in her eyes, but she did not reply.

Clunk.

Mir's father set down a glass on the table, attracting three pairs of eyes on him.

"I understand your point, son. But I think you should understand something about yourself. It's not that you're less talented than your brother; you're just less willing to work against odds, less capable of seeing a bigger picture...and too pessimistic to hope."

Murin straightened up and said in a deep, masculine voice, "Your willpower is pathetically weak, young one!"

Mir, almost about to flare up as explosively as his mother, choked on his food, losing his rage in the wave of laughter that ensued inside the dining room.

"Quit quoting that to me. I said that, like, two times when I was eight!"

"Never gonna let you forget, bro."

The tension left the room. Seizing the opportunity, Mir stuffed one last bite of flatbread in his mouth and ended his dinner.

Back inside his room, he pulled out the red diary from within the pile of old textbooks.

"If Murray doesn't want the Church to know that he let his brother use this artifact, why did he tell that Deacon? The two of them couldn't have known each other for very long..."

Something about the whole situation felt off. Murray's agenda had gone from being overly helpful to being so long-reaching that it was about to get Mir inside a Sacred Ground of the Church he had joined.

If Murray wanted something from that Sacred Ground, he could just wait till becoming an official Deacon of the Church of Sunbreaker. Officials of the Church had a permanent license to hunt companion creatures inside three of the seven Sacred Grounds around Enet District.

The facts didn't add up. There had to be a problem somewhere that Murray wasn't telling him about. But until he returned, Mir couldn't really do anything about it. Placing the diary back into its hiding spot, Mir decided to play his favorite game on the data terminal.

But the moment he turned his terminal on, he realized that someone had logged on to his account from an unknown device, kicking him out.

Dumbfounded, Mir quickly tried to log in from his terminal, praying that the password hadn't been changed.

It opened!

Mir exhaled in relief and checked the activity log of his account in the last couple of hours.

It seemed that the anonymous visitor had only spent 6 minutes inside his account, spending most of it in a...

"Notebook software? What the fuck?"

Mir quickly opened the only notebook software on his terminal, checking to see what the visitor had done here.

There was a new file added into the pile of his homework folders, sorted alphabetically so that it didn't appear on top. Knowing the ins and outs of his terminal, Mir found this new addition immediately.

"It can't be a corrupt folder. This software is too old to support those programs..."

With some hesitation, Mir clicked on the folder and saw the familiar layout of a notepad open up. There was a paragraph typed on it, with the heading:

"Delete after reading.

"The visitor must have enquired about it. If you admitted to possessing it, throw it away in Mackie's pond, NOW. If you didn't confirm the inquiry, stay the night awake to guard against intruders. The solution will arrive next morning."

"...Who? What? How?"

Mir sat in dumbfounded silence for a long minute before the clues clicked.

The only people who knew his password were his family members, specifically Murray and his dad.

The anonymous user had to be Murray. Then this 'visitor' Murray spoke of could be... The young Deacon who had visited this evening to hand over the Permit.

As for the thing that Deacon had enquired about... The diary?

That advice to take the diary with him to the Sacred Ground was a test? He wanted to see Mir's reaction?

What had Mir's reaction told the man?

"Fucking hell, Murray. What have you landed me into?" Mir cursed his older brother for the third time that day, feeling completely in over his head.

The Deacon had set up a software in his communicator. He couldn't have done anything else to it, right?

As soon as the thought occurred to him, Mir jumped up to check the communicator.

In its tiny screen, there was not much to go through. He checked the software, which said that it would go online when he reached the Gateway to the Sacred Ground. Then he went through his messages there...and found something that made his heartbeat speed double in a matter of seconds.

There was a new message in the catalogue from an unknown ID. Mir clicked on it and read the text.

"If you don't want your brother to die without a trace, bring the diary into the Sacred Ground. Don't even think about telling him that it's in your bag. He'll not let you hand it away, and that will spell both of your deaths."