"Then, I'll cut to the chase." Selzion reclined in his seat, "Prylos and I are looking for someone."
"We figured as much." I then noticed a tiny detail, "Wait, the other Gods are in on this as well?"
"No, just the two of us." He elaborated, "As you may have heard before, Prylos and I govern over Heaven 2.0. Call us the sole developers and moderators of that plane of existence."
"Heaven... 2.0?" Anna tilted her head, "So are there two? What happened to the first?"
"The first Heaven was far too clunky in nature." Selzion then went on a side tangent to explain this concept to us, "The meta was mainly focused on good deeds, which was in theory a very fair way to separate the good humans from the bad ones. However as time went on, humans found many exploits and loopholes that essentially changed the definition of a "good deed", leading to mistakes occurring. Even still, we far underestimated just how much you humans reproduce, and the original iteration of Heaven became crowded in no time."
"And so the Gods banded together to make a new and improved Heaven, right?" I inquired with a smirk.
"No! Only Prylos and I took it upon ourselves to take care of the deceased souls!" Selzion got all angy, "Only the two of us chose this noble path, the other Gods were far too immature for it, hence why we're now back here scrambling to find that damned man!"
"Noble, my ass." Aru rolled her Eyes, "In case you haven't noticed, since you're spending all your time playing Garden of Eden up there, you're never there for your people when they need you. If you're gonna call someone immature, then you two best look in the mirror."
"Hold on, so where is Prylos now?" Adam immediately skipped the fluff in favor of the important stuff, "Is he here with you, or did you split up in your search?"
"We split up, yes." Selzion nodded, "He is currently in Little Egg, if nothing went wrong."
"Little Egg isn't a big letter city, though?" I recalled the map we checked just before the attack on Centralis City.
"Big letter...? Never mind, that is unimportant." Selzion shook my statement away, "What is important is that we find that man at all costs. If you haven't guessed already, he is someone who has escaped Heaven 2.0, which we fear might bring imbalance to the Time Cycle."
What? Someone who escaped Heaven? But wait, back on Mount Ivrys, the Gods specifically said anyone can leave freely whenever they want as long as they wish to. Something's fishy here, and hearing this bold-faced lie from the big man himself is only adding to my doubt of him.
"Yes, we did say that, Edward Saint." Selzion read my mind without permission, "And in a way, I did not lie one bit. This man did indeed wish to leave, and we tried our best to stop them from doing so. Sigh, at least he's the only one that got away. There was originally more of them, you know?"
"...And what happened to those other guys that didn't make it?" Adam gave a suspicious look.
"Simple." He shrugged in his seat, "We killed their souls in Heaven 2.0, thus reducing them to nothing."
"I don't get it." Anna asked, "So they went to like, a Heaven for people who died in this Heaven? Like a Heaven 3.0?"
"No, their souls are completely destroyed." Selzion grimly corrected her, "They are forever dead. They exist no more, completely reduced to stardust."
"So..." I figured, "Basically the same as just dying here, given how difficult it is to return from Heaven 2.0."
"In a broad sense, yes." Selzion agreed, "Alright, now that you know why it is we are doing all this, will you join the cause to bring peace to the universe?"
"Not so fast, you still haven't told us nearly enough for us to answer that." Adam raised a point, "First of all, why send animals to attack the humans of Cardina if you say you're just searching for one man? I understand he may cause an issue in the world, but what the animals are doing is already causing an issue for the continent."
"An astute observation, king Adam." Selzion praised his keenness, "It is as they say - Four Eyes are better than two, and eight better than four. We simply used this logic to kindly ask the animals to work with us on this matter, and they kindly obliged. The deal was only to enter the cities and search for him. No one was meant to be harmed in the process, but as you know, animals aren't all that bright."
"Yet another lie!" I objected, "The animals I've met were all incredibly intelligent, so it can't be their fault for attacking the humans!"
"Sigh..." Selzion moped in his chair, "You answered the question yourself just now, Edward Saint. The keywords are "the animals you've met thus far". Be it Allucius' favor or just your own dumb luck, you just so happened to always stumble upon the intelligent ones. That is nothing but chance."
"Grr...! Then..." I calmed myself down before asking the next question, "Can you at least give us a name? I mean, how do you even expect us to find the shadowy man if we don't even know his name."
"That I cannot." He shook his head, "All will be made apparent when the time is right, so until then, I will have to ask you to trust me."
This guy just keeps dodging the questions, never really giving us any answers. He's the God of Knowledge, so why the hell is he so stupid to think we'd be that gullible to listen to him?
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"I take great offense to that adjective, you know?" He once again read my mind, "Edward Saint, calling the Knowledge God stupid is a death sentence in most countries of the world, regardless of the God they worship."
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"Don't worry, I'll vouch for him on this one." Aru giggled deviously in her seat, "No one's gonna trust you if you don't give us anything, y'know? Even I don't know who this guy is, since I've never been to this updated Heaven of yours."
"Allucius, you too?" Selzion looked tired, "Well, no matter. I know for a fact that I'll find him eventually, so your help isn't necessary. However, that does make us enemies until we do find him."
Snapping his fingers as all the animals in the room turned their heads to us and growled, we knew all too well what this move meant. He was threatening us with a pretty dangerous situation, or at least he would have if Aru wasn't on our side. Still, even if she does use her powers to protect us from the animals, Selzion will just use that extra time to run away to the next city, and we'll lose our chance to put a stop to this. Right, we're gonna need to think of another way to go about this...!
"Run!" Aru showed the path we needed to take with a trail of water as she jumped up and out of her seat, "You guys won't do shit against a God, so for now your best bet is to run back outside while I deal with Selz!"
"Smart idea." Selzion praised her, "You always were the smartest of the group. Well, apart from me of course."
"We can't just leave you here, Aru!" Anna yelled as Adam grabbed her by the wrist.
"Come on, she'll be fine." He looked back, "Gods can't die, but we can. Our priority is to see tomorrow with our own Eyes for now, so get moving."
Just as he said that, a snair slithered up to us at a moments notice, blocking the tunnel we were supposed to go through to leave this place. Right now we only had Anna's makeshift shield, so fighting it head on wasn't gonna cut it. I needed to do things my way.
"Quaeso." I closed my Eyes and silently prayed for the snair to hear me, "Ne nos occidas. Vivamus ut dictum velit."
"Cur vivere vis?" The snair asked a rather philosophical question all of a sudden.
What the hell? Why do we want to live? What kind of stupid question is that? And besides, is that really something you ask someone you were just about to eat whole? These beasts, I tell you, it's like they're being way more pretentious than necessary on purpose or something...
"Cur vivere vis?" I returned the question right back at it.
"Quia volo coire." He replied as a matter of fact.
Surprised by that rather straightforward reply, I actually glanced back at Anna before just agreeing with it wholeheartedly.
"Idem volo. Obsecro, transeamus." I shrugged and hoped he'd at least find me humorous enough to pass.
"...Ssssss!!!" His sizzling laugh echoed throughout the room, "Bene, bene!"
And with that, the snair allowed us to pass through. Great, that's one enemy blocking our path, and at least a thousand more to go! Of course, Aru saw this whilst preparing to fight Selzion, so she got annoyed we still haven't left and just blasted a hole through the animals to procure us a safe way out.
"There, don't say I never did nothing for ya'!" She yelled, "Now stop wasting everyone's time and leave already!"
"Aru!" We saluted as we ran out the room, "We're forever grateful for your sacrifice!"
"Oi, I didn't die, dammit." She chuckled as she gave Selzion the meanest glare, "And this much is child's play for someone as great as I. I got like a billion more of those water blasts left in the tank, y'know?"
Looks like she'll do just fine on her own, but even though she gave us this opportunity, I'm still scared the animals might come running after us even after that, so we need to seriously book it if we wanna make it out of here in time. Running straight ahead through the tunnels, leaning entirely on the left side and hoping to every God on our side that we don't hit a dead end, we eventually see something in the distance that resembled the morning sunlight. Happy as can be, we increased our speed even more before realizing it was all too good to be true. In front of us stood one of, if not the most dangerous beasts alive.
"A scirp." I clicked my tongue, "Of course it had to be a scirp."
"That beast's thick shell is impossible to break through with our gear." Adam looked troubled, "Usually you would climb onto its head and attack the Eyes directly, but with how cramped this tunnel is, I don't think that's gonna be possible."
"Well we have to do something!" Anna yelped, "Maybe with the shield or, or maybe if we bury it in the tunnel?"
"No, if we do that, then we'll lose our one and only way out." I held my breath as I spoke, "Besides, that thing's used to being buried in the sand, so dirt probably won't make it no difference. It seems it doesn't really use its brain to think like the other beasts we've met either, so talking things out isn't an option either..."
"Then, Edward, my Boy." Adam finally used the term correctly, "It's the last hurdle before we make it to safety. Think we can do it?"
Looking at him with a face that went from sort of unsure to blindly confident and optimistic, I gave him the best darned fistbump I could muster before turning to Anna and telling her to stay away for now.
"You got a plan?" She smiled, brimming with hope.
"Nah." I turned to Adam, "Let's go the Grim route - I'm winging it!"
"Haha! A fitting answer!" He guffawed as he took out his family sword from its hilt, "We've got 12 Eyes to poke out, and I have just the pointy stick to do so with! Let's leave everything to luck and go all out!"
"Aye!"