THE INSTANCE he defeated the Father Darkness, the murder of crows immediately fled with a raucous cah. A whistle from the wind brushed past him as he remained on his knees. How had he fallen into such a situation in the first place?
Maze remembered visiting his Soul Tree to observe the cost of his third skill, staying conscious even as he heard the Heirs bickering.
If his first skill cost a leaf and his second followed suit, for one could not manifest without the other, then his two-edged blade required a full leaf to activate both shipping and drifting. Then, there was the third Attribute: Observer's Mind.
The assessment from the silver statue had regarded it thus:
「[Observer's Mind] Trait Attribute Assessment Result: Who can tell who is who? It is the Observer who can separate what is from what was, dividing memory, identity, and consequence without severing continuity. Yet the extent of this separation remains undefined, for even an Observer must question whether discernment is clarity, or merely another form of division.」
Maze realized that his third Attribute was a skill that triggered automatically the moment he cast the first and second. It cost another leaf as the ultimate price of forbearance. It was a . . . necessity.
To be precise, this was how the trinity functioned.
For the Ship of Two Personas, Maze could create an avatar to which everything could be transferred. The price was the potential loss of either the copy or the original, for he could not initially determine which was truly which. To create this vessel, the original body had to experience a life-and-death crisis; only then could he choose between them and decide where the damage would be placed. The transfer of damage relied on the logic that, in that moment, no distinction existed between original and copy.
Existential Drift, on the other hand, was the transfer of existence itself. Since there were two bodies, imitation and original, shifting his consciousness from one to the other resulted in a successful drift. Its weakness lay in the fact that both bodies shared the same thinking and memory. The imitation possessed no skills of the original, for it only copied his history and form; it could never be wholly original. This covered the danger, for had the copy possessed his skills, both existences would have fought for the right to exist.
If the copy existed for more than a minute, it would begin to question its own nature and become a machine that would kill the original to claim its life. It was a perilous game. He had to drift his existence and let the former body die, or transfer the damage and let the created one perish.
To Maze, the Observer's Mind was discernment made manifest. It was the ability to recognize difference without collapse, to know which self acted and which endured, even when both shared memory and form. Where the first trait created division and the second allowed movement, this one granted awareness. It did not choose which was real, as it allowed both to exist without confusion. In this case, recognition was the key. If he knew who he was at every moment, then neither imitation nor drift could betray him.
It was exactly what had occurred during the cat-and-mouse chase with the griffin before his arrival at the Tower.
Maze observed his knuckles.
There was no mark of a bite, no wound, nor a bruise. Yet, there was blood, and truly it was not his own, but the ichor of the defeated enemy. The bigger truth was that every time he cast his drifting, the wound was not copied to the new body. It was a form of automatic healing.
When I visited my Soul Tree, I had consumed four leaves from activating my abilities twice. However, I borrowed agility, which cost another two leaves, and borrowed strength for every strike and parry. The total consumption was twenty. There are eighty leaves left.
He would need to conserve his remaining essence lest more problems arise.
What was important, however, was the knowledge he had acquired. If there were four types of Heirs in Yonder, the gods of two had been revealed: the God of Time for the Heirs of Time, and the God of Death for the Heirs of Death, as there was a specified Heritage called the Black Horse.
Maze picked up the sword and stood.
It was the steel he took from the unconscious Heir, as he now sheathed it, the holster clinging to his waist. He looked at the corpse of the girl, whose face was stained with tears and whose eyes were wide with a flummoxed end. Maze leaned closer and closed her lids.
Sighing, he turned and walked away.
He might have to find the woman who had placed him in this predicament.
In the end, he used his drifting to make haste, for he was quite lost.
⠀
THE SEEMINGLY unconscious Heir named Westershire opened his eyes with a smug grin. As he got back on his feet and dusted off his dirtied uniform, the blonde boy scanned his surroundings and tilted his head. Squinting his eyes, he had not forgotten the figure.
"That blindfolded guy," Westershire muttered in a low voice. "Was he so easily fooled that he thought I was unconscious?"
He remembered the foil-gold blindfold of the man who took his sword and the suit he wore that bore the shade of black. It was no doubt an outcast. An Orphan.
"A mere leech, huh." Westershire rubbed his chin. "Where on earth would he go?"
He was thankful that his feint was acknowledged by the Father Darkness as it chased away his loser of a partner. The very girl who dared to slap his precious face! Such an idiot deserved to die.
His heavy feet strode forward and found the torn body of his partner after a while. Shaking his head, he kicked her body and spat. Too weak — those two words were etched on his face.
It was certain to him that the doom this girl faced was fated.
What quite interested him, although, was how the chunks of the Father Darkness had scattered across the area. Madness, madness. Perhaps that blind fool was much more ruthless than him. Too crazy to even be befitting of a key. He only hoped that the man had wounded himself and was eventually facing his death.
The smug look never wore off him.
Fixing his stance, he thought, If I get to acquire a key, I will definitely claim that I was the one who killed this damn Darkness. I deserve that! I restrained the bastard! It is only worthy that I take the credit. My Heritage will eventually be dignified among the rest here in Camp.
After all, no one had seen who killed it.
If that blind fool were indeed to take the credit, who would the Directors and the Heirs believe?
The Orphan?
Utterly preposterous!
⠀
MEANWHILE, the woman who was at the mouth of the barren forest was playing with her black nails. Her buggy dark eyes were as much intrigued by the result as she loitered in such a position. As she blinked, her thick and lustrous lashes glazed in the dullness of the noon.
Then, she heard faint murmurs that grew nearer and nearer until they became audible.
"Did you really see it, Hesperia?" It was the voice of a girl. "Are you sure you are not seeing otherwise?"
"Yes, Quintin!" It was another girl.
Two figures passed beneath the woman in grey perched upon the tree branch. They wore the high-waisted trousers and cropped jackets of the ensemble, though theirs were struck in gold hide rather than her muted charcoal. One wore her hair in a short boycut, the other in a high ponytail, both with their sleeveless hoods pulled tight and harnesses cinching their frames.
"Pray tell, an Orphan defeated a Father Darkness?" the one in the ponytail probed to affirm.
"Yes! When we got lost and I went deep into the forest, I definitely saw someone wielding a sword. He had this blindfold, so I assumed he was blind. But he was . . . fast. Terribly fast!" When the girl with the boycut hair ran out of breath, she paused, wriggling the shoulders of her Sibling. "He cut the Father Darkness into pieces and — he was ruthless, Quintin!"
"Wait . . . Is he handsome?"
"Well, YES! An absolute flower-face!"
"Crap! But he is an Orphan!"
Both of them looked at each other and heavily gasped.
"Wait, we still have to find keys." The girl in the ponytail named Quintin went to the edge and looked over the central little land. "Unless we want to survive, we surely must find one."
They went silent for a while.
"Go to the land right next here, the right of north."
The girls looked at a certain tree and saw a woman sitting on a branch, looking at her fingernails.
The one with the boycut hair, perhaps the one whose name was Hesperia, scrutinized this woman. "An Heir of Time? From what Heritage are you?"
Quintin poked her. "Uh, she is that woman from the single Heir path."
Her partner creased her forehead. "I see. The path withoutbond?"
"Do not waste any time in gossips, children." The woman glanced at her. "It is best you go where I point you to go."
Hesperia crossed her arms. "And why should we trust you?"
The woman shrugged. "Because others will prove my claim."
"And who are these others, huh? A single Heir path means you cannot be bonded with any Siblings."
"Right," Quintin agreed. "Even if you are indeed from an Heir of Time, your Heritage is to make you a lone Child."
"What is your name, again?" Hesperia tilted her head. "Your infamous identity has spread all over Yonder, you see. A cleansed awakened."
Are they here to make insults or to survive? The woman scratched her ears.
"Wait, I remember your name!"
"The name that is . . ."
The woman scoffed. "Athelstan."
She put a hand to her chest.
"The freak of a lone Heir."