We entered Truth and began making our way to the plaza in the early morning after having traveled all night. It was good to be on solid ground again.

“If you perished and I survived, how would I even rescue you?” I asked since that had been bothering me.

“I left a message behind. I would tell you where it is, if the situation got desperate,” the Astrologer replied.

“And you would expect me to follow through?” I asked.

“That Michael is a question that is impossible to answer until you are confronted with it. But I suspect you would be motivated by my saving you,” the Astrologer said. That was a load of garbage, but it wasn’t a lie perse’.

“Do I have a living tumor in me?” I asked.

“No, but I have my assurances. Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.” That confirmed he did have something over me. Ahhh! I screamed in my head since he was telling me he was going to force my hand and possibly betray me. But killing him would do nothing except hurt me from getting more knowledge.

“You really are impossible,” I muttered. The Astrologer didn’t respond. The worst part was that I was dealing with something inhuman. I had no doubt it would not reveal things it didn’t want to. A human might slip up, but this thing was more computer program than human even with its emotional outbursts, I was struggling to understand its thought process combined with its actions.

The only thing I could do was to either flip the board and make him an enemy or go along. I had expected more of a reaction from increasing my other stats besides Spirit and Absorption, but he just had acted disappointed instead. I didn’t believe that for a second.

It was the same thought process I had become stuck in while grinding. I had ideas, but in the end it came down to power. The Astrologer was a big unknown and helpful. I needed power to turn the tables on him when the time finally came.

The fact that I had a living tumor inside of me was creepy and when did he even manage to put it in? He had clearly said no, but I wasn’t believing that for a second. You don’t come up with new things if they worked the first time. It was probably in my head too, which meant it would be impossible to remove. When did he put it in was the real question?

We reached the plaza. I went over to the pillars and put my hands on them to access the store. I purchased a restoration, and nothing happened. No messages or alerts like when the pillar had broken. “Looks like you were wrong, the System isn’t going to do anything,” I said to the Astrologer.

“How odd. I was sure something would happen.” We stood there in silence in the deserted city each contemplating our own thoughts. The ground started to shake.

“Or it just took…time,” the Astrologer trailed off as he looked about and began waving his arms. “Oh, this is very bad. Beneath the golem crys-“

The shaking increased and a monochrome wave swept over everything near instantly. It came from the Southwest where that shard had been. But that wasn’t important at the moment. The Astrologer’s outer clear human shell body disappeared.

The nightmare parody of a human hit the ground and burst into white flames. A scream came from a hundred different directions, piercing and wailing. It only lasted a second. Then the monochrome wave was gone, and color snapped back into existence. The white flames covering the Astrologer disappeared. The shaking ground went still.

I went over and saw the thing that was the Astrologer twitch. Its lidless eyes snapped towards me. Its lipless mouth trembled. “Well, it seems you messed up,” I said with a sigh. He hadn’t betrayed me yet, and I wasn’t about to start. I turned to the pillar next to me and purchased a cart, wooden box, lots of cloth, and a big shovel like the one you use for snow.

I put the box on the ground and filled it up with cloth. I then took the shovel and carefully lifted the Astrologer into it. I was not going to touch whatever he was. I noted some leaking green and black fluid and some flesh burnt onto the ground, but I wasn’t about to do anything.

“If you want me to kill you give me a sign,” I looked at the pathetic form as its lidless eyes kept looking at me. I moved a finger in front of it and the eyes didn’t track me. The Astrologer was probably unconscious. I would have killed him without a moment’s hesitation, but he wasn’t the real threat. Whatever he had done to me, and the real body were the threats.

This thing was a distraction with its knowledge at best and an annoyance at worst with its blunt honesty. I lifted the box and put it on the cart. The smell was rancid, and the burning didn’t help. The Astrologer needed a shower or something.

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I checked the pillars one more time. Everyone was dead who owned property in the city. Well, the city had officially been reset and the Almighty System had intervened. Using some form of what the City Shield did to obliterate whatever was out there or deal with it.

“Almighty System, perhaps a reward? A meta-point?” I asked out loud. Nothing happened. “Stingy,” I muttered loudly and still nothing happened. I shook my head in frustration. It was good to know that the City Shield would be able to deal with the Astrologer’s fake body as well.

I purchased a lid for the box and closed the Astrologer up in a coffin, or human type transport container. I then dragged him out of Truth and back towards Purgatory. Well, that had ended unexpectedly, and the Astrologer was right, the Almighty System was watching in a way.

I was just an ant in comparison and had witnessed the power of two titans. I couldn’t even put the power on a scale, with what just happened. The Astrologer was right. It could easily be a level 100, but after a certain point it was impossible to tell.

I would have to go back and check. I hesitated before heading East and turned to the South part of the plaza. I was going to take a look. But that might bring trouble to the Astrologer who was boxed up with me. I had been wondering if there were pet mechanics, and I had just got an Astrologer. I didn’t want to lose him, there were uses for a barely alive chunk of flesh calling itself the Astrologer.

I turned back to the East and began to make my way out of Truth in that direction. I would dump the Astrologer back at Purgatory, update Clarissa, find this letter, get some rest, and then head back out in this direction to see what had happened.

Getting the before and after was critical in my mind, since that would be two key data points, and I could draw a line based on them. At least that was my hope. There was also the letter I needed to find. At least the Astrologer had gotten that out of his mouth before he burst into flames.

That was another reaction I had to sort out. The City Shield created a static using energy from a lower layer according to the Astrologer. This disrupted things outside of people. How was the Astrologer disrupted?

He was the product of skills, obviously and some radical biological experimentation. He healed somehow, after getting wounded from the Ritualist, but he didn’t use the store from what I could tell. His explanations on restoration implied he couldn’t heal himself using one. That meant he healed himself in some other way.

That wasn’t a surprise since he had the skills of the original, if I had to guess. There was a biological skill in there somewhere and he could adjust his skills using his power word, Shatter. Why was the effect of the City Shield and that wave monochrome and why did the ground shake?

Well, the ground probably shook from the power of the wave correcting or adjusting the Systemic Land. I had no clue about the monochrome effect and had never managed to ask the Astrologer about it. Since the Almighty System intervened, it could be a sign of its focus or an exertion of its power.

I frowned, that didn’t explain the monochrome. Level 4 monsters had color. The Ritualist had lacked color, maybe. His body had turned silver and the white eyes, weren’t colorful to begin with. I wasn’t sure about him, but the level 4 monsters still had some color.

They had more energy, and were better able to resist the effects of the City Shield. So perhaps the lack of color was how the Almighty System perceived things and that was leaking over? Like the gaze of God sweeping over the land.

Then back to the Astrologer. He had burst into flames. White flames that went out when the effect passed. Why flames? There was nothing else to think about as I dragged the thing that was the Astrologer back to Purgatory.

There was power in understanding how these interactions worked. I felt that. If I could grasp how energy was interacting with other energy, then I would have incredible power. Unfortunately, I was no Ritualist. Inspiration did not exit my rectum and surround in its worldly glow, allowing me to make intuitive leaps.

Fire was the result of purging something, combustion. The color of the fire was probably the result of the monochrome wave. If the body was primarily of the life type and the wave was null type, then perhaps it created a fire type. Or something was being purged from the Astrologer.

I had felt off kilter ever since learning about meta-points and how wrong I had been about the one million point mark and Death. Maybe the one million point mark was a trigger for the System. Still I had felt so hesitant about being so confident again. My foundations were tilted and as I carted the Astrologer I felt more off kilter.

I was right about using crystal powder, but that felt like a small consolation in the grand scheme of things. I thought I was going to die, going with the Astrologer over the void to peak at a physical shard of energy, but nothing bad had happened. I was wrong about the System not intervening.

I was wrong more often than I was right. It was depressing and made it hard to have confidence in any of my deductions. Normally Naran would have been here as well to bounce my ideas off of and make sure I didn’t get off kilter. Now I only had myself once again.

It was hard to believe in myself when there was such a long list of failures, and the list of successes was much shorter. The Astrologer was welcome company for his insight no matter how untrustworthy he was. Whatever this lump of flesh was, it hadn’t betrayed me yet, but knew of plans to betray me. Like a dog obeying its master it was in even a worse position than me, since its existence was only measured by what it could accomplish for the main body of the Astrologer.

I couldn’t even imagine such an existence and it cemented in my mind that the Astrologer was no friend of mine. It also hadn’t escaped my notice that while he didn’t lie or make a big scene about it, he put himself as an equal or superior to the Divine Empress and only talked down about her to pressure me.

Why had no one else gotten meta-points in these ten years? Why was there no one to help him from outside the range of the calamity? He had sent the Ritualist at that Uday character to eliminate him, not to help rescue the Astrologer from wherever he was trapped. Well, the letter secreted away in my belongings should be an interesting read. And I had this thing.

Resonance was a thing. Perhaps a way to find and search for remnants of this Astrologer. If I had any in me, this hunk of flesh might provide a way to extract or locate them. The good doctor had a new research project to work on.