Letting the negligible surge of sadness and bitterness I felt following the revelations regarding my birth circumstances run its course before fading away, I refocused on what mattered.
Not the past.
The present.
And the future.
"Is there anything I should know about being a Serafae fairy? Like, I'm never going to fly or anything?"
"To my knowledge... nothing?" Idell looked at Esion in askance.
"Yup, Serafae fairies are just like any other fairy, normal proportions, normal size, normal weight, normal wings, normal Essence." Esion shrugged. "Sorry to disappoint, but your extraordinary conception only gifted you a pretty body. Though if you really want to extrapolate from there, your beauty can be seen as either a blessing or a curse. Your choice."
Idell didn't argue his point, but it was plenty obvious that she disagreed with it to some degree from the way she sighed and shook her head from side to side.
"Nothing, it is." Hearing nothing of significance, I decided it was high time to move on from that topic and changed the subject, wisely ignoring that blessing or curse thing. "Time to tell me what you can about Origin Aspects, then."
"Are you aligning with your Origin Aspect or are you rejecting it?" It was Esion who took the lead this time instead of Idell.
"I'm aligning with it. According to the book I read, that's what I think I've been doing since I was born. All my Path Aspects have formed as a direct consequence of me aligning with what my Origin Aspect wants me to do."
"A weird way to say it, but that's essentially what it's about." He shrugged again, then smirked as something seemed to come back to his mind.
"Want to know what we tell young fairies like you in the Fairy House when they ask about what to make of their Origin Aspect? We tell them that if their Origin Aspect is [Craft], then they're either a crafter or whatever they want. Hahaha, the look on your face! It's the same as theirs!"
With Esion devolving into a fit of laughter, Idell took over and clarified their perspective further. "One's Origin Aspect isn't the end-all be-all of your Essence development path, it's just a reminder of your Essence's first echo with reality."
"What about its advancement? All the books I read presented different advancement models, but they all pretty unanimously agreed that an Origin Aspect's advancement is unlike that of any other Aspect, being intricately tied to one's overall Essence development, including Path Aspects."
In one breath, I had uttered the entirety of my knowledge on what actually mattered the most to me.
[Guided]'s advancement.
Idell pondered my question for a moment, then suddenly had an enlightened look, her eyes opening wider and all that. "Do you have one of those simplified Aspect formation tables the Faith likes so much? One using the triangular numbers?"
I jolted awake, the terms she was employing being more than a little familiar.
With practiced ease, I opened my backpack and pulled the Essence Encyclopedia out of it, then flipped through its hundreds of pages, relying on nothing but my memory to know where to find the exact table she wanted me to find.
"This one?" I excitedly asked upon finding and displaying it.
Simplified Triangular Aspect Formation Table
Aspect Formation
Relative Aspect Formation Difficulty
1
1
2
3
3
6
4
10
5
15
6
21
7
28
8
36
9
45
10
55
11
66
12
78
13
91
14
105
15
120
16
136
"That's the one. And that's also the one we tell our younglings to use as a reference for how advanced their Origin Aspect is in relative comparison to their Path Aspects. To make a Tier equivalence estimation, add all the tiers of your Path Aspects together, treating Tier 0 as being worth one, Tier 1 as being worth two, and so on."
"As if she already advanced an Aspect to Tier 1..." Esion mumbled to himself, his fit of laughter having lapsed, and though I heard it, I was [Guided] not to react whatsoever.
I indifferently did just that.
What was the point of revealing myself as some sort of prodigy to anyone other than Magister Eliott, after all?
I already had all I needed to develop on my own, solely needing time to elevate my [Exertion] further while learning more about literally everything.
And if there was one thing I didn't want or need while I was doing that, it was attention from a world that was revealing itself to be more perilous with every book I opened whose content involved events that had transpired in the real world.
It was already weird enough that I could speak so fluently and had learned to read, write, count, and had even begun undergoing the education required to become a Seeker Acolyte as it was. There was absolutely no need to add my overdeveloped Essence on top of that.
As for the estimation of [Guided]'s Tier...
[Guided] (Origin)
[Exertion] (Tier 1)
[Cycle] (Tier 1)
[Insight] (Tier 1)
[Perception] (Tier 1)
[Tempering] (Tier 1)
[Darkness] (Tier 1)
[Will] (Tier 0)
Seven Path Aspects, one Tier 0 Aspect worth one, six Tier 1 Aspects worth two times six, for a total of... thirteen?
Thirteen.
Which put [Guided]'s effective estimated Tier at...
Tier 4.
Halfway to Tier 5.
I looked back at Idell after I got my result, about to argue the reliability of the method she had just given me, as it delivered an impossible, irrational, and obviously wrong conclusion, but I held back, [Guided] to keep my perplexity to myself.
Well, at least that definitely demonstrated how the Fairy House wasn't filled with all the answers I had previously imagined it contained.
That, or Idell and Esion never intended to share the knowledge of the Fairy House with a baby fairy they didn't know to begin with.
The two scenarios were plausible.
[Insight] was truly putting in the work today, allowing me to comprehend so much with so little information...
"Anything else?" I ultimately dismissed the matter of my Origin Aspect. "Do we fairies have any innate advantages we can leverage to develop our Essence faster? Any Aspects we ought to form at all costs? How do we defend ourselves against giants with our size and weight?"
"To answer all these questions at once, I have bad and good news for you."
"The bad news is that your Essence obeys the same rules as everyone else's. Same Aspect formation difficulty increases with every Aspect you have formed, Origin Aspect included. Same Aspect advancement difficulties. Same failings towards Essence corruption."
"The good news is... your Essence obeys the same rules as everyone else's," she stated gravely, as if this was some sort of profound revelation, her bright green eyes staring deep into mine.
"Anything anyone else can accomplish, you can too."
"Others may be born with bodies capable of crushing metal, of surviving and regenerating from having their heads and hearts blown off, of defying aging, of still being able to fly despite being a hundred times heavier and more massive than us, and a whole load of honest bullshit that would infuriate you simply to hear about, but..."
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"No gap is insurmountable," she emphasized, the intensity of her voice reminding me of my own [Will]. "Reality is only unfair up till it touches on Essence, and from there, only pure fairness reigns. If those godly-gifted beings do not develop their Essence and simply rely on their absurd innate gifts, they only have one fate awaiting them."
"Being crushed by a single slap from an insignificant fairy a thousand times lighter and smaller than they are."
"And that, of course, applies to all Essence Entities," Esion apathetically added, ruining some of Idell's momentum, but not any of her fervor.
"That's all you need to know," she wrapped up her discourse like that. "We can fly, we're small, we're light, and if you want to form Aspects revolving around making the best of those traits, do that, but be aware that someone who's a thousand times stronger than you can do the same for their [Strength], and once an Aspect is formed, there is no unforming it, only synthesizing it."
I instantly wanted to ask how that was fair, exactly, but chose instead to take her statement at face value.
There was an underlying logic to what she told me, after all.
What could a Tier 0 [Strength] Aspect do for a monster a thousand times stronger than I was?
And by the time we each advanced our hypothetical [Strength] Aspect to the likes of Tier 10, wouldn't a balance of sorts have been reached, with me only having a minor disadvantage due to my weight or something?
But then my size could maybe become my greatest [Strength]...
And that was without taking into consideration the endless combinations of Aspects that led to overwhelming synergies, such as, in this case, the likes of [Strength], [Exertion], and [Tempering]...
Add [Will] on top of that...
"Interesting..." I muttered, finally getting the point she was making.
"Thank you for that answer, it was enlightening," I thanked her sincerely.
"It was nothing. You would have stumbled upon this kind of opinion in one of the myriad books residing in the Seeker sanctuary at some point."
"Talking about that... Why aren't there any fairies in the Prime Temple? Shouldn't it be, like, the place to send any fairy that wants to learn anything?" I voiced a fact that had frustrated me to no end since I got here.
The Fairy House couldn't possibly have a better Seeker sanctuary or Sentinel training grounds, could they?
"Well, it's not that I don't have an answer for you about that, but..." She struggled to find the right words. "The thing is, the Fairy House decided to leave this Sector entirely years ago. So what's left behind as of now is... pretty much the last generation."
The answer, as it turned out, had been staring me in the face the entire time.
There just weren't any fairies for me to meet.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
With every ticking day, the date of the Seeker examination for officially joining the Faith Of The Aspects was drawing closer, and yet...
Nothing changed.
My [Exertion]s were still as extreme and endless as before.
Arguably, they were even growing more excessive with time as I overcame the [Tempering] they generated.
Just like now, when I was tranquilly giving my all to untangle the knowledge buried inside "The Two Sides Of Reality - Essence And Civilization", and [Guided] chose this moment to urge me to perform an all-out [Will] manifestation.
There was no rationale for it.
I was only [Guided] to do it because I could.
And with everything I was learning about the same topics being tackled by the book before my eyes...
What else could I do but resign myself?
Warmth manifested throughout my entire body before focusing entirely on my head, causing the world to slow down.
I could feel the drain that maintaining that manifestation was creating, pulling at everything I had, my energy, my emotions, and I simply accepted it.
I already knew the outcome I was being [Guided] towards, having carried it out too many times to count.
Thus, I satisfied myself with the momentary euphoria of the world gaining such clarity and my mind growing into such a focused state, leveraging it all towards... the simple act of reading a book.
The two sides of reality.
Essence and Civilization.
The former embodying the foundation upon which reality was built and all the endless miracles that could be born through it.
The latter... being much more complicated to define, as the nature of Civilization itself was what gave rise to the very words I was reading.
In one book, it represented the structure built upon that foundation, the order, knowledge, and systems through which the miracles heralded by Essence were shaped, controlled, and endured.
In another, it was defined as the force that twisted and refined Essence, birthing in turn both the strictest order and the wildest chaos, along with the most unnecessary, heinous evils and the most unwarranted acts of kindness.
Paradoxically, while Civilization could witness and elaborate on the wonders of Essence and its underlying omnipresence throughout the Endless Realms, it utterly failed to define itself.
How ludicrous.
Page after page, hundreds of sentences, thousands of words, tens of thousands of letters, all to arrive at the idiotic conclusion that Civilization symbolized the most exalted potential of Essence.
Then my energy finally ran out.
The world lost its luster.
My vision became blurry in comparison to before.
I lost all [Will] to continue studying.
But even that was not enough for [Guided].
I had to keep my [Cycle] going.
Keep defying the pain of my [Tempering].
Keep my [Perception] sharp.
Keep reading and deriving [Insight]s...
There was no escape until I either touched the absolute bottom or surrendered.
To this day, I had never surrendered.
And just like that, I was being [Guided] to put the core of my [Will] Aspect into [Exertion].
All in preparation for the day I would need to endure through a [Will] manifestation that demanded I extract absolutely everything I could potentially give.
And weird as it was to think that even as my vision started to fade and a sense of impending unconsciousness came over me, I was happy I hadn't been [Guided] to go beyond that yet.
Because I knew.
I knew what lay beyond absolutely bottoming out.
I got a glimpse every time during the last seconds this [Exertion] lasted.
A rapturous feeling of clarity.
A blissful sense of omniscience.
Everything coming back into focus, as if I still had an abundance of energy to give.
All I had to pay to experience that state of bliss was simply an enduring weakness that grew exponentially for every second I [Will]ed myself to go beyond my limits.
Not this time.
At the first glimpse of this state manifesting, I was [Guided] to stop enduring, finally allowing the [Darkness] of oblivion to take me...
For a couple of minutes, that was.
Then I woke up, feeling like my body was devouring itself, and my [Exertion]s resumed all the more normally, starting with my [Cycle], then my [Tempering], then my [Perception], and before I knew it, I was back to reading the same book.
Except everything hurt, I felt like eating an entire paste box, and my exhaustion was threatening to take me back under if I didn't [Will] myself to remain awake at all times.
With that, and until I was fully recovered three to four hours from now—down from what felt like much longer compared to when I had just begun this sort of [Exertion] back in the ruins of Volow, though I didn't have precise timekeeping arrangements back then, obviously—I would be [Guided] to perform mostly regular [Exertion]s.
As for the Seeker examination...
It was really but an afterthought.
I wondered how different my mindset would be if I didn't pertinently know that merely allowing myself to be [Guided] through it would make me succeed without any complications...
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
"...so stressed I feel like I'm dying."
"...remind me what the faction overseeing the [Vitality] and [Lifeforce] Aspects is called?"
"...I already got a spot in a harvest team anyway."
"...this time or next time, either way I'm becoming an Acolyte."
"...what are some [Light] Aspect syntheses? [Radiance]? [Hope]? I don't remember."
"...believe me, the Sentinel training is way too hard to succeed without years of preparation."
"...isn't your mother a Scribe? You still need to pass the examination?"
"...it's the Creed that's the antithesis of the Conclave, right?"
The examination hall I stepped into when I was told to arrive was already crammed with people, and from what my [Perception] allowed me to make out from their numerous ongoing idle conversations, each appeared to be in more or less a similar state of mind.
Restless.
Some obviously more than others, probably owing to their respective urgency in formally becoming part of the Faith.
Indifferent to any sort of idle chatting, I scanned the hall until I found a group of individuals I was already acquainted with due to our respective diligence in spending most of our days in the Seeker sanctuary.
Another way to describe these individuals was as the children or relatives of official members of the Faith who thus enjoyed privileged access to the Prime Temple, just like I had personally been granted by Magister Eliott.
"Hi." In other words, we were all a bunch of cheaters who were only going through the motions of this examination to be admitted as official members.
"Yo. You're cutting it close."
"Weren't you taking the next one?"
"How haven't you been stomped to death?"
I shrugged off all their terse replies to my greeting and climbed on top of the table they were using by utilizing an empty chair, then pulled the Faith Dictionary out of my backpack, which was becoming more and more of a nuisance to my wings that had since grown to extend above the top of my head and below my hips.
I wasn't the only one to have opened this exact book, and there were three good reasons for it.
First, it was a mind-numbing book that could be opened to any page at any time, and one could still hope to actually learn something new.
Second, no one could properly concentrate in such a noisy place.
"Order in the hall!"
"Please gather! The Seeker examination is about to begin!"
And third, no one knew when the examination would begin.
"Damn my luck," I mumbled before putting the Faith Dictionary back into my backpack with an apathetic eye roll.
"Bad timing."
"Aren't fairies supposed to be lucky or something?"
"We just got proof they're not."
"Or maybe we just got proof they're actually unlucky."
The others evidently made the most of this last moment of respite before they were going to be subjected to a most mentally taxing event.
I couldn't resent them for that.
Not when I had no intention of undergoing this examination the fair way if I grew even the slightest bit worried about failing with my own knowledge.
"Who wants to carry me and be touched by luck?" Making the most of the mood, I habitually asked for a lift with a slight twist to it, and someone wordlessly grabbed my backpack, lifting me along with it.
"Negative luck? Yes, please," Armand, who took upon himself the task of being my steed, said.
"She's additive, not multiplicative. You fucked up."
"Or maybe she's negative, and negative negative luck turns positive."
"That's actually genius."
Idle chatting filled the time it took us and the rest of the examinees to gather close to the front of the hall, where two giants I didn't know, an older Human female with long white hair and a Toro male with two massive horns and uncovered skin covered in brown fur, awaited.
Then the Seeker examination truly commenced.
"Taking turns, each of you will receive an examination paper from us, after which you are to immediately proceed to the table corresponding to the number indicated on the first page. This number. Do not open your examination paper until we officially announce the beginning of the Seeker examination."
The Human giant demonstrated where the table number could be found, then immediately shuffled the examination paper in question back into the massive piles they had to distribute.
When it was my turn to be handed my examination paper after I jumped down from Armand's shoulder, the Toro directly asked me, "Do you wish for your designated examination paper to be put on your assigned table? We will allow an exception in view of the fact that the paper is taller than you are."
"Yes, please," I agreed without hesitation, unashamed by this ridiculous reality of life as a fairy I had long since become used to.
It wasn't like any book I had read since entering the Prime Temple had ended up being shorter than I was, the Faith Dictionary and the Essence Encyclopedia being permanent reminders of my size.
I followed after the Toro and shortly climbed on top of my assigned table, the chair proving thoroughly useless again, as always.
At least I didn't have to write with a giant-sized pen, or this examination would have been a massive bother.
"You have four hours before you are asked to hand over your paper! No early collection will be allowed! If you do finish early, please wait for the end of the allocated time! If any examinee is caught talking with another examinee, both will be summarily expelled from this hall and banned from taking another Seeker examination for one year!"
The loud voice of the Toro echoed through the entire examination hall, which had grown as silent as a private study room underneath the Seeker sanctuary, giving everyone the last instructions they needed to know.
What came after that was obvious.
"The first part of this Seeker examination, the written test, begins now!" he declared with a firm voice.
At once, the shuffling sound of examination papers being flipped open sounded from every table, filling the hall with a truly unique wave of noise that I momentarily lost myself in.
Then I unhurriedly started flipping through my own paper to get an overview of the questions it contained.
Aspects.
Aspect formations.
Aspect advancements.
Aspect synthesis.
Aspect types.
Essence development paths.
Essence Entity types.
Essence corruptions.
The Nexus Realm.
The Faith Of The Aspects.
When I flipped to the last page and read the last question asking me to detail my motivations and intentions for joining the Faith Of The Aspects as a Seeker, I breathed out in anticipatory weariness.
That was going to be a lot of writing...
And there was no better time to get started than right there and then.
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