Before his words fell, a sudden force landed against his stomach. He felt his feet detach from the ground and, for some reason, the hill became smaller in his eyes. The breeze hitting harshly against his back indicated his high velocity towards somewhere, although he wasn't quite sure of where he was going.

"Fuck! What the hell?!"

Between strands of hair that violently danced in front of his eyes, he got to see the arms of the Crystal pushing against his body. He was about to shake her off, when he saw the distance between him and the ground. With a nervous gulp, he gritted his teeth and held onto the arms of the girl, staring into her eyes.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm giving you a chance to prove your goodwill."

As she said that, they stopped dry. She held Thom by his left arm and left him to dangle in the middle of the air, a cold breeze still hitting against his body. His breath had been thrown into disarray as soon as he saw the hills become small like mounds of soil and the trees look like grass. Sweat began pouring— his fear was evident in the way his chest went up and down.

"Ha... Ha..."

The memory of holding onto Runa's waist, observing the moon shining above the clouds, came to his mind. Only, this time, he wasn't feeling the same feeling of comfort he felt back then. He wasn't focusing on how high he had climbed. He wasn't thinking of what to become king of next.

"230 sancts, approximately. Or, for a human like you, 2 miles above ground. A being above The One, even one of the fallen... No, that doesn't matter. If you truly want anything from me, then you should at the very least be able to do this much."

"Ha... Ha... Ha..." Thom tried to calm his breath, but his dangling legs seemed to distort and change under the terror he was feeling, and his accelerated breathing seemed to get harder as his head got lighter. "I... This is... Very fucking high, huh..."

He tried to maintain his calm. He was trying, but it got progressively harder. Even accounting for his regenerative skill and the hardness of his skin, if he hit the ground from this height, he would be turned into a piece of minced meat.

"So what if it is high? I can take you back to ground. You just need to tell me. You will be able to walk away safely with the demon girl, and you will not have to speak to me again. That will be the end of our relationship, lesser human."

"Lesser human, lesser human... Ha..." Thom gritted his teeth and looked up to find Crystals' unchanging face. "Ha... Ha... You're making a mistake! I'm a human, since the moment I was born! Ha... Ha... Or at least... I think so..." The crack in his voice didn't make him feel any more confident.

"It seems like you're showing conflicting emotions. Has fear overrode your unfounded self-trust?"

"Fear?" He squinted his eyes and held his chest with his free arm. "I'm... I'm not afraid! I'm going to be the... The lord of this forest! And you'll serve me too! How could I be scared of something like this?!"

Although he said those words his whole body was trembling and his stomach was about to be emptied. The crystal seemed to catch that, since she lifted his body up to the height of her face.

"You have the aura of a king. But your body belongs to a peaseant. Don't fool around. Give up and let me—"

"Shut up!" He yelled, practically slapping the girl on the face. "Even... Even if you drop me from this height, I won't die! I definitely won't die! Do you know why? Because I'm the luckiest man alive!"

His bloodshot eyes demonstrated a burning rage that the girl couldn't understand. She was simply calling him what he was, she was trying to be merciful. Was this man's pride so big yet fickle that he would prefer to die over accepting to give up?

"Ha... Ha..."

Thom looked down one last time. Was there any way in which he could fall from such a terrifying height and still be able to survive? He knew Skill Master worked miracles, but it would not give the ability to fly to someone who did not have wings. Did he have any other options besides trusting his luck or his divine skill?

The first thing he needed to do was to calm himself down. A stirred-up mind would not be able to come up with solutions. Even if he had to decide to give up on the idea of getting the Crystal to go with him, if he thought about it well, nothing was more important than his life.

However, it was still extremely frustrating to think about his incapability to convince this girl. He was not willing to give up now. There had to be a way in which he could make it out alive of such a fall.

"Huff..."

"You're taking your time to think."

"Silence..."

Could I stop my fall somehow by using my aura? That thought flashed past his head. Certainly, he had been capable of picking up objects and exerting physical pressure by using his aura before, so the idea could not be discarded. Actually, it's the only thing that could save me right now. Using my aura as a cushion to save me from hitting the ground... That could work.

"Alright... Alright. I can do this. I can do this just fine I just have to be careful. Huff, huff." He closed his eyes for a second. "However, I have a condition for this whole thing to work."

"What is it?"

"I'm the leader of a community. We're preparing for a... dialogue with an enemy. It could go badly, however. If that happens, we'll have to fight or retreat, but we're only a handful of people. Air support like yours... That would be extremely useful. So promise me that... If I survive, you'll come with me."

"I cannot do that." The crystal girl shook her head immediately.

"You will." Thom said. "You'll come with me. We'll have a chat. And you'll join me. Alright?"

"Hmph." The girl seemed to pout slightly, although there was no expression on her static face. "What an arrogant being."

"Then..."

Thom took a deep breath in, and took a last glance towards the ground.

"Let me go."

"Hm."

「Learning successful. The passive skill [Courage] has been acquired. Effects nule.」

The grip around his arm was loosened, and Thom began free-falling towards the forest's ground.

Swoosh!

His terrified screams echoed in the distance for a short time, before he could manage to steady his mind. The wind pressing his skin to his bones seemed to hurt even more by the second as his body rapidly accelerated, quickly creating the feeling of being pushed against an iron slab. His body spun in its place without finding the way to stabilize, his arms flailing around in an attempt to grab onto something that wasn't there.

Stolen story; please report.

"Shit!" He cursed the skies for his decisions. "Focus, you dumbass! Your aura! Your aura!"

He did his best effort to control himself, but it was useless. His aura exploded from his body in strands and with too little denseness, as if he was spraying his power across the sky and creating dull, streamlined fireworks. He tried to gather everything he had at his feet to stop the fall, simply knocking him out of position and sending him into a violent loop of mid-air spinning.

The sky was decorated with branches and vines hanging from nowhere in the air, hanging from the man's feet like a funereal decoration of really bad taste. It dissolved into the air like steam and reattached to Thom's body, a miserable show of a man's demise being prolonged in an unsavory manner. The only thing he could was curse.

Fuck! Am I really dying here?! Is this really it?! After everythingI've managed to do, I'm dying because I couldn't keep my fucking mouth shut?!

He closed his eyes as the image of balding trees began to make itself clearer, and with a vague attempt to protect himself from inevitable damnation, he covered his face.

Swoosh!

A pair of hands suddenly grabbed his stomach and gently moved with him to gradually decrease his speed, turning the loud breaking air into a soft tune spelled by the breeze.

He opened his eyes to see Crystal slowly floating while holding his body between her cold arms, descending gently until they finally touching the ground with no danger or harm. Completely dumbfounded, he stared at the crystalline colors reflecting from Crystal's clear face, and formed a small rainbow in every direction he looked at. Had he been saved by that being that had thrown him down cold from the skies?

"I correct myself." She said. "I previously stated you had a good head on you. It seems I was mistaken. You are incredibly stupid."

Erina stood with her arms spread a few feet away from them, blinking as if surprised. It seemed like she was thinking of catching Thom on his way to the ground.

"Ha... Ha..."

Thom fell from the crystal being's arms to the ground, hitting his knees on the dry branches laying around. He touched the dirt with his forehead as if giving his thanks, panting and gasping for air.

"Saved again... Is it? Haha... Haha..."

He whispered with a dry chuckle, feeling a burning pain in his heart that formed a knot on his throat.

•••

"It was during the age of the champions. The gods were unmerciful back then. War had clouded their minds, their only desire was to dominate over something they thought was theirs. I didn't know it myself, and I still do not know it: the reason why such hatred had suddenly sparked between divinities that were meant to keep the world safe from harm. Still to this day, every reason from back then escapes my grasp. With this old mind of mine and little to no recollection of the past five thousand years— the only thing I found reason in was to fight for what once cursed me."

Crystals' tone was frigid and somber, but there was a glimpse of humanity inside her that could not be denied. Thom found himself staring at her with malevolent curiosity, while Erina delighted herself in her beauty. The words she was saying, still, did not go unattended. Crystals had requested for the pair to lend her their ears, maybe trying to remove from her chest a heavy burden that had gone unheard for years.

"Gods saw the elven as nothing but pawns." She shifted in place and let her body bask in the sun from above. "I remember the names that the elves gave to us. To the sons and daughters of Ladai-Saras, angels. To the descendants of Anphatos, demons. They wished to distinguish us, simply because they couldn't conceive that there were no sides in a pointless war. They labeled us, the angels, the good ones. Soon, they ended up siding with us to fight that war."

"Demons and angels...?"

Thom pressed his finger against his lip. Although [Lexicon] changed the original words into something he could understand, there were no such words in any of the elven languages he knew. The real pronunciation of them, in elven, "Lir-ven" and "Arl-Ven", meant nothing more than "good ones" and "bad ones". They were composite words that did not exist in his lexicon, but they were also a clear taste of the elve's way of seeing the world. Was there something like good and evil?

The girl saw that Thom was falling into thought, and resumed her speech without knowing what he was pondering over.

"Back then, Ladai-Saras had still not lost her mind completely. She needed elven champions to win her wars, but her influence was little at the time. The angels had fought long years alongside the elves, and many of them had formed bonds. The use of elves as mere pawns had begun to greatly upset the angels. Since we lost our faith in her back then, her powers diminished. Ladai-Saras had no choice but to negotiate with us."

"Using faith as a bargaining chip..." Erina blinked in surprise. "I never thought threatening a god was possible..."

"We formed a pact. The treaty consisted of a long list of accords, which demanded from both sides. Angels and elven became allies, and dissolved their former link of subservience. However, there was one strict law that could not be broken under any circumstance, made especially by Ladai-Saras." The girl traced an arch with her hand from her waist to her chest, her voice sounding heavy. "That was, that no angel would stain their grace by forming sexual or romantic bonds with the elven."

"That's... Kind of fucked up." Thom sighed. "If they asked for collaboration from the beginning, that was probably the reason behind it. This was just a big slap on the face for the angels, wasn't it?"

"Correct." The girl nodded. "But the angels had already learned that their rebellion weakened the goddess. They searched for a way to deceive and corrupt the accord, and they found that in the human race."

"Eh?" Erina raised her head with utter surprise. "What do you mean? Weren't we talking about the elves? Why are we involved in all this?"

"You see, humans came to the world as slaves of the elven." She explained as she pointed towards the girl with a surprised expression. "The reason was never clear to us. However, an elven Heart once said that humans are nothing but the descendants of elven slaves for hundreds of generations. In other words, a lesser version of the elf. Since they were always slaves, and would always be kept as slaves, humans never enjoyed the power and development that the elven society bestowed. However, this is not something I could have been witness to. Five thousand years ago, humans and elves were already clearly distinct."

Elven Heart...? A Heart?

"So you're saying... Humans descend from elves...? Huh?!" Erina held her head, now even more confused than she had been before the crystal girl explained. "W-Well... Elves have superior eyesight, better hearing, have longer lifespans, and their innate magic is greater than a human... I'm not saying it doesn't make any sense, but..."

"Well, that is still only something a ruler said." The crystal girl shrugged it off as if it did not hold any importance. "The truth was still that humans were slaves to elves for millennia, until the accord was established."

"Lemme guess. One of the demands given to the elves was to absolve slavery." Thom said with arms crossed. He was more or less understanding the reason why there were none of these so-called elves in any of the places he had visited since he arrived at Kulkus.

"To reach a conclusion, angels were divided into factions. The ones that stood by Ladai-Saras, and the ones who were against her. From this last group, there were also the ones who still fought for intimacy with the elves, and the ones who found their peace in the ephemeral love that a measly human could give. At that time, humans were still not allowed to be named. All humans were lesser, until we angels sacrificed our magic to name them."

"I'm getting a headache..." Erina whispered.

Although Thom was carefully paying attention ever since the girl had mentioned something about a Heart, the other black-haired girl wasn't as interested. Even if she was, she still couldn't fully concentrate. She decided, instead, to stand up and start closely observing the girl's structure while Thom continued listening to her lecture.

"I imagine the angels had started to crumble from the inside. They had begun to lose a war by starting an internal one... Correct?"

To Thom's supposition, the girl nodded. However, she added something else: "But the demons were busy with their own matters as well. Their leader, Anphatos, had made a deal with the Father Of The Grotesque, Aguur-Nilaan. Their society was close to crumbling as well."

"I see... But then, regarding the treaty: as lesser elves, didn't humans fall into the accord both sides had signed?"

"Also correct." Crystals nodded. "We thought we could trick her, but we failed miserably in our attempt to rebel. The accord we had signed made its rules clear, and our souls were bound to it. The penalties exerted by it were not optional. I was one... Of the angels who decided to lay with a human being."

"I see..." Thom muttered, seizing her up from her head to her feet, the same thing the other girl was doing from much closer. "You had a relationship with a human and then you were punished for it. I feel sorry for you if that is the case... Now that so much time has passed, you must regret—"

"Foolish."

A sudden ripple of energy extended through the hill with the crystal girl as center. The birds cawed and flew away into the distance, leaving the trees in flocks to escape the sudden change in the atmosphere. Thom felt like a rock had suddenly fallen on top of him, which was nothing but the ire of the girl. If rage could be transmitted in ways different than speech, surely this one would be the most effective.

"If you say such things, it is because you have never truly loved. I thought all humans understood, but now I am disappointed in how foolish I was. If you are willing to believe it, then I will spell it for you. There has not been a single day in which I repent to have loved as dearly as I did back then!"