AMBROSIA

    Now, I could have rushed straight to Belial''s Castle like before, but there was still a sort of leftover desire to goof off and spend time with Nevras. I also vaguely remembered Belial being kind of invincible. Having read some crappy novels, like one about some guy who killed people and split his soul seven times in order to make himself mostly immortal, I wondered if there might not also be a secret to this demon''s strength. We would need a good library or something, I decided, so we elected to explore these towns a bit more. After all, we had skipped them last time and things went badly.

    Bahamut was currently unable to be summoned, as the Transport Coin took a lot of energy to summon living things. As such, we instead summoned our ship into the waters of this dimension. My Tao ability protected us, and the ship was protected by the Transport Coin, so for the first time since we had been here, we had the opportunity to sit outside on the decks and watch the ocean. To be honest though, it was rather lacking. The Realm of Void had sun that only occasionally appeared since stuff kept getting eaten by the Void and renewing, and the same for the wind. So there was no wind in my hair that I loved so much, and the sky around us was a depressing grey. Not gray like an overcast day, grey like the absence of anything cheerful in the universe. There was no color at all around us, almost like we all had... Elias says this type of colorblindness is called achromatopsia. But I knew that wasn''t the case, because the ship and ourselves were in full color. It should have been interesting to see a grey sky and sea, but it definitely wasn''t. After about an hour or so, most of us went below deck, except for Yazim Jianne, who decided to steer. We piloted the ship in two-hour shifts.

    The journey took a few days. We slept, we ate, we paced around, and occasionally we talked about what were gonna do after things ended, assuming we all survived. I knew Lilith wanted to work in a restaurant, but it sounded like she''d managed to find a spot in Aiken Monastery. Aqorm had already become an accomplished musician so it was no surprise that she wanted to do that, though she said she might do more than just that. Apparently, this journey had given her confidence, and she talked about working at a nightclub. Elias wasn''t joining her, it turned out, his dream seemed to be to become some sort of researcher and/or work at a library. Michael didn''t have any firm plans, mentioning that his duties in Heaven usually kept him busy enough that he didn''t typically have too many hobbies. I may have just imagined it, but he seemed to be rubbing his stomach a lot. Azrael and Zoe said at around the same time that they would probably travel together, before blushing that they both had the same idea. Those two were weird. Selqui said that she''d probably join Yazim Jianne in his experiments. Since he was above deck, we never found out what those were, but we were probably better off not knowing. His experiments tended toward the depraved, the kinky, or both at once.

    We docked on an island in the outskirts of one of the towns. None of the towns of the Realm of Void had ports, since they were simply too hard to maintain, and once people lost faith in the durability of their towns, everything would fall apart. The map had somehow transposed this town of Futanari with the Tower of Sorrow. But I''d seen this sort of thing happen before. Powerful wonder-workers sometimes moved entire towns, for various reasons. Sometimes they wanted to be near a landmark, sometimes they just were tired of where they were. Rather than try to levitate the whole town, and have some people fall to their doom, what usually wound up happening was they''d simply swap one location with another. Galaxia and Kushiyama used to be in different places too. Of course, this was hell for map makers, because even with runes updating stuff, the runes used to display the map had been fixed in place. Short of redrawing the map by hand, there wasn''t much they could do. I was pretty sure this was Futanari though, the sign said so, and that really helped. Well, unless vandals has changed the sign too...

    At first glance, this town seemed to be all women. But even I knew this couldn''t be the case from basic biology in school. They taught us there are two major sexes (aside from intersex conditions). We learned that gender was mostly a mental construct, and there were not 72 genders. Most people didn''t have time to fuck around with 21st century gender theories, being able to magically change sex. If they didn''t want to be male, they weren''t angsting about being a female in a man''s body or protesting the injustice of it all, they paid a wizard and suddenly they were able to bear children and weren''t able to write their name in the snow. That was it. In all of what I learned in school, they impressed upon me that under normal circumstances, two males or two females could not produce a child. So how had this village survived? Sёarch* The Novel?ire(.)ne*t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    ELIAS

    Over the course of my studies, I read about how during the later period of Earth''s old history one town had experimented with genes. They wound up creating bees that were resistant to cold, mold, and moisture, allowing them to gather honey when humans weren''t mowing lawns. There were also slimes that burbled quietly. There was even talk of them creating a separate race of humans by isolating certain genes. Somehow, this all seemed very familiar...

    In any case the town seemed normal enough except for its disproportionate amount of females. My eyes were getting used to color again, so I could not examine more closely. The Void had very little of what we know of as magic, it was a bit like the old Earth, having some faith abilities but the average person couldn''t use so much as a Fire spell. And neither could we, not visibly. Oh sure, we could increase the heat of something already burning, or make the air slightly warmer or colder but visible magic was something that only worked away from other people, and the Void ate a large portion of it outside the towns. What they did have was technology, and the power of existence. By gathering together as a community, somehow the town kept from ripping apart and turning to nothing. This power of existence kept the town in color... at least in the center. Towns typically couldn''t have major ports in the Realm of Void since at the edges population was less dense, and the creeping nothing of the Void would decay matter. And soon, this panic would undermine the existence of the entire town. This was a lower technology town than some, on account of being a farming town. Despite this, a giant golem of a sort I had never seen (I suspected they were what was known from records as robots) picked the tomatoes and parsnips, creepy bees of the sort you would see from the movie The Swarm pollinated the crops, and large combines using energy to move without any smoke harvested the wheat and rice. The town seemed to be sustaining itself, somehow or other. We decided to talk to the people to find out how they managed.

    “Ummmm,” I talked to one of the women as she passed by, “we''re new to this town.” She looked at me, then at the rest of us, “I imagine you are. Well I''m sorry, but without significant adjustments, I''m afraid none of you can be permanent residents.” She wore a green tunic and a matching skirt with black stockings, and a pair of green open-toed heels. Her red hair was tightly bound in a ponytail. All of the girls here were beautiful women, but there was something odd about them. But then, I''d already pieced this together just from the town name and my knowledge of history. I kept the information to myself. Instead, I said, “No, we don''t want to be residents, we want to know more about this town.” She nodded in understanding, “Sure thing! I''m a postal worker, so I''ll take you on a tour as I finish my route,” she pointed briefly to the badge on her chest. The logo had an African swallow delivering a coconut in its beak and the familiar Latin words ?Tabellarius Caenum Sunt ? emblazoned at the bottom. I watched as the other members of my group figured things out about the town with some amusement.

    Nevras seemed to notice right away. Next were Aqorm and Lilith, who seemed to notice when she passed near us, despite having a very floral scent to her, there were woody musky undertones to her scent, and her voice seemed odd for such a petite body. Michael was uninterested in the affairs of regular people, and barely a member of our group lately, having secrets of his own. Our tour guide/postal worker picked up a large stack of boxes and shoved them on the three-wheeled cart which she started peddling with her feet, alerting Azrael that she was abnormally strong to be holding this stack with one hand and the bike with the other. Zoe noticed something amiss as the girl sat on the cart facing her. They started mumbling to each other, as the postwoman said, “On your right is the post office. Over here, is the public library. And this is the bar where we hang out and have fun.” Yazim Jianne and Selqui seemed to be ignoring the tour guide entirely, and had wandered off to instead talk to some sort of researcher. From the looks of it, they were fascinated with much of the research the town was interested in. I don''t need to spell out that he also knew about this town by reputation. As for Ambrosia? She didn''t figure it out from any of the oddities of this woman, not from its history, not even by piecing together that a town like this would have to depend entirely on tourists or have another means of keeping itself alive. In fact, it took her walking in on them in the public bath to finally say, “Heaven and Earth. This town. They''re all...”

    AMBROSIA

    I''m not sure I want to see that again.

    Anyway, we visited a ton of the places that postal person pointed out. Lilith went straight to the bar, while Elias headed to the library. I had been interested in how farming worked, having never been at all good at it. In the New Earth, all people (except me) could grow stuff instantly with little effort. But I couldn''t do that. So I asked them for technical advice. The problem was, I lived in a world where roughly thirty centuries had gone on with only thaumaturgy and alchemy, so I had no idea what silicate-based colloidal hydroponics were. The farmer sensed my confusion and gave me a bunch of bags of seeds. “Here,” they said, “these seeds will grow in any soil, and so will their seeds.” I took a look, and they were covered with some sort of gel. She showed me how to do basic farming using a shovel and hoe, and was impressed with the fishing pole I had that turned into a farming tool. Apparently they had never seen things work like that.

    Elias exited the library later that night, deeply disturbed. Whatever he had just read had shocked him beyond belief. He was even crying.

    ELIAS

    When I visited the library, I had originally intended to do some light reading. You know, reading a 6000 page report on the history of alchemy, followed by an equally short discussion on the spread of magic from ancient Mesopotamia into China and Europe. While these were interesting books, somehow I got sucked into the 28 volume history of Earth. As I understood it, a large amount of matter was pulled when the Earth split into the Realm of Void and the New Earth, so in some cases sections of libraries got split between the two of them. I recognized this library from a set of missing shelves in Kushiyama. The number of books, the subject matter, even the size of the books, everything was the missing material.

    I was a fast reader, but the further back I got, the more concerned I got. Everything I knew of history was wrong. Aliens, suppressed history, evil organizations running things from behind the scenes, this wasn''t history written by the losers or the winners, this was history written by someone who had lived through it, and seen everything. The author in the copyright page was listed as Archangel Estheriel.

    Worse than that, given that this book contained uninterrupted history of the Earth until it became the Realm of Void (after that, history essentially stopped) as written by someone who saw everything, there were parts of the past that simply didn''t add up. Earth''s timeline played out like this, with underlined sections for major changes:

    1. God creates Light (Begin)

    2. Stone Age (Begin - 13,000 BC). Earth is created. There are also hidden advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis and Martians, also time travelers regarded as "gods" by early humans

    3. The Suppressed History (13,000 BC to 2000 BC) - There is a nuclear war, around 2000 BC where there is seven years of famine, due to nuclear fallout. Hindu records confirm this. The pyramids and other ancient structures are actually secret technology. There are organizations that cropped up after this, and replaced most history with nonsense about cavemen while occupying major government systems. This marks the beginning of the State.

    4. History Starts (2000 BC to 2001 AD). During this time most of what is read in history books is true, but with noticeable omissions. Most history books, for instance will not talk about secret technology, magic, evil organizations, and all the rest.

    5. Move towards increased globalization and overall corruption (2001-2030 AD).

    6. Great Revision (2020 AD).  God alters the state of reality. First Soulfires appear.

    7. Conditioned Opinion Viral Immunodeficiency of 2019 (2020 AD)

    8.UN and EU become active again (3031-3075 AD). Religious and political-religious groups try to take over and control/kill.

    9. Last Christian martyred on Earth (3075 AD)

    10. Religious zealots surrender to angels, origin of Sakun (3075 AD)

    11. Rapture of remaining Christians (3080 AD)

    12. Ungorr the Untamed rises to power (3080 AD)

    13. Wormwood meteor found (3081 AD). Ungorr becomes an evil immortal

    14. EU and UN support move to support spread of Immortality research (3081 AD)

    15. Zombie False Apocalyse (3081-3088 AD)

    16. Jewish Apocalypse (3088 AD). The dead rise, and purify these zombies with holy touch. Temple rebuilt and Messiah comes.

    17. Buddhist Apocalypse (3200 AD) . Miroku Buddha comes and teaches pure dharma

    18. Other Apocalypses (3201-3700 AD). Earth begins to darken from influence by Belial

    19. The Great Intersex Revolt (roughly 3778 AD). Men become less able to grow facial and body hair.

    20. Taoist Apocalypse (3990 AD). Lao Tzu appears and says the Earth is restarting, people start joining Taoism

    21. Atheists saved directly by God (3999 AD). Some people stay behind on ruined Earth.

    22. Earth split into New Earth and Void (Roughly 4000 AD)

    23.Humans are imported to New Earth (4001 AD). Dead are reborn without memories to balance the New Earth.

    24. Town of Fitzxembor burned to the ground (4605 AD)

    25.Great Phoenix War (5105-5115 AD)

    26.Anti-Government Council formed (5116 AD)

    27. Lich King of Ghobli (5600-6199 AD). Undead attack until stopped by Exorcist Yuriel

    28. Present Era (7000+ AD)

    Besides the fact that the history books had all taught us that the UN and EU were protectors of peace in the world, that aliens never existed, and that these ancient cultures had built their architecture much later than I''d read here, there were things in this history that simply didn''t make sense. What exactly happened before God created Light? And most importantly, with all of these miracles and strange events, why did I get a growing sense of dread? An idea struck me. If things like the pyramids could be much older than I thought, and the books I read could barely scratch the surface of known history, could not the reverse be true? What if history was far less than what had been planted in books and movies and the like, and all we knew actually only existed a few years ago, made up on the spot by someone''s fertile imagination. What if everything was a lie?

    Aqorm had watched a show with me called Big O, in an attempt to get me to understand pop culture aside from just books. I hadn''t really liked the story, but now I understood why. It was set in a city where people had no recollection of events before 40 years. It turned out that in fact there was a good reason for this. I stopped reading entirely, not liking where this train of thought was heading.

    Despite there being plenty of reference books I had yet to read, I was taking a break for a bit. When first light came, I arose and urged the rest to leave this village. The women wanted to see us off, but I''d had enough. Maybe the next town would be better.

    AMBROSIA

    Elias was wrong, the next two towns were even worse. After we left Futanari, we headed straight south to an island roughly shaped like a fish. There, we found the city known as Hotaru. It was a metal city unlike any I had seen in the New Earth. There were buildings that seemed tall enough to touch the sky made from glass and some type of steel. There were portals allowing movement from one part of town to another, all kinds of technological conveniences, and holograms so you could talk to people from long ago. There were machines that fabricated food from organic compounds, much like the one in the hotel awhile back. And yet, I hated it. I mean, I really hated it with a passion.

    Let me explain. There were no actual people here. We talked to the holograms, including a writer named Raymond Chandler. He was about to tell us some writing technique when all of a sudden a man came through the door with a gun and sprayed bullets around. The next second, ninjas also dropped from the ceiling and the two started fighting. It turned out later these were holograms, as real ninjas and gunman couldn''t exist in this town of pollution. I never got to ask Chandler what his method was...

    And so it was that Momo''s head was severed from her neck, and she lay in a pool of her own blood. That''s what you get for messing with the true heroes of the story. Hmmm, right, I skipped a bit ahead. Sorry, I don''t know what came over me.

    It''s like this. The air in Hotaru was filled with a thick green gas, and I was fairly sure that long ago something had happened to kill everyone off. We explored abandoned hospitals, patching up wounds we had from earlier battles with the Grey Wolves and treating previous poisons with the medicine that was in our packs. We discovered an old library with some sort of disc player and loads of discs, and I pulled out one called Ice Castles, and watched a scene where a blind girl did figure skating and did well until finally they threw flowers on the skating rink; her boyfriend screamed but it was too late and she tripped, so there was this scene were everyone gasped, then they all started clapping louder before they played the credits music. We even bought things from the vendor grocery shops, talking to long-dead merchants and haggling prices. It was almost like a real shop. We decided to move along. We had to find out how things got this bad.

    I''m gonna skip ahead to when we were in Momiji. I''ll probably skip back too. Confusing, yes, I know. But I''m explaining my story after all, and trying to relate how the physical state of Hotaru matched to pollution and the unrest inside my heart. We had to find out how things got this bad, I had said after all.

    The island of Momiji to the east was ummmm different from the other two. It was a mountain town were we were asked for papers immediately when we entered. “Papers please,” repeated the guards. I handed out the Passports we had for wandering the New Earth. They shook their heads, “Not valid!” I gasped, “But this is what I have!” He shook his head, “Proof of Residence, Void Pass, Ghoul Token, Janitor''s License, or Disease Card.” I protested, “But I don''t have any of those! Just let me in town.” They shook their heads like obstructive jerks everywhere and then explained, “All new entrants to this town must be citizens. Anyone not having proof of that... Will have to be arrested.”

    I squinted my eyes in confusion, and was about to laugh when I realized they weren''t joking. I protested, “That''s crazy! How does one even become a citizen if they''re stopped at the gate? Forget this, I''m heading in!” I punched one of the police, knocking them over, and then stepped through. At this, one of the others blew a loud whistle, and informed me, “Assaulting a police officer! That''s punishable by death!” They chased after me, and I could hear them coordinating with each other using something similar to my cellphone. It was bigger and clunkier though, and it seemed to not use runes.

    There was a temple just ahead, but we didn''t want to crash into it, so I made a sharp right turn. Some of the others scattered. The men and women in blue outfits were a threat to us as our magic was very weak within the Realm of Void, so despite Zoe and Elias having powerful magic, they had to run like I did. Only Nevras and the others with weapon training dared to fight them, slashing them with swords. The police had no armor and slumped to the ground. It looked like Nevras had only wounded them, but that one wasn''t getting up any time soon. The nearby copper brandished her weapon and said, “Freeze or I''ll shoot!” Nevras had heard about guns, and since they had already said they''d kill us if they caught us, decided the only thing to do was run. He ran past the nearest building, heels clicking as he ran in the dress and stockings. Nevras had decided to be more honest about what he wanted recently, so he no longer wore his distinctive blue armor. Well, not as much anyway. But it might have helped here. The second didn''t miss, because after all we weren''t superhuman, and can''t dodge bullets. Nevras wobbled, then fell over. “Nevras!” I screamed. As I breathed, my lungs filled with tension.

    I was about to rush back to him, when I noticed the long arm of the law (so to speak) had caught up to me. They tried to shoot at me, but the same ability that I had to go with the flow and sidestep gave me a sort of dumb luck as I tried to move away from them. I seemed to step just as they tried to fire, or I''d trip, or move a leg or arm just at the right time. Finally, they shrugged and tossed away their weapons and came after me with batons. Michael gave Nevras a healing touch, and grasped his stomach. Unlike all the humans our group, Michael was able to heal normally and his aura warded off shots.

    The local constabulary had no idea what to do with an actual angel, so some of them kneeled. “Stop that,” he said. In the next few minutes, they had gone from kneeling to running however, as Lilith popped out of nowhere. Like Michael, they had no idea how to hurt her, but her glowing eyes and fearsome appearance freaked them out. “Demon!” they shouted. Even though Lilith was an attractive woman, her wings and horns and tail gave her away. She kinda ripped them all to shreds, or breathed Hellfire on them, or stabbed them with her tail or horns. Lilith could be kinda intense.

    Meanwhile, I still dealing with two or three of them swinging their batons at me, and I kept ducking or dodging them until finally, I called out, “Look behind you, there''s a giant Ghobli hare!” All of them turned around to look. “Where?!?” they asked, before asking, “Wait, what is a Ghobli hare?” I had gained quite a bit of speed. I saw the rest of my group follow after me, passing by the police who had noticed the carnage from before. We were relatively unmolested from then on, but some of the cops tried to band together to form blockades or herd us into traps. I know it seems like I hate cops from all of the police that I attacked here, but I knew they were just doing their job. It was the town that was insane. We tried not to seriously hurt any of them, but we needed to escape.

    The entire town was a lot of small houses on the side of a mountain with a massive network of rope bridges. We climbed up one section, crossed bridge east, climbed another, crossed north, then climbed and crossed south. We were about 100 ft off the ground now. We stepped off the planks of the rope bridge and on to the solid rock of a nearby ledge. To the right of us was a building with a sign that said, ?Momiji Town Police.? It was well barricaded, but Lilith and Michael working together managed to slice the door off its hinges. The police officers stood in shock. It was time to complain to the police chief about how things were in this town. “Stop in the name of the law!” said several police as they tried to tackle me, but I remembered that I had a Crest from Michael to absorb damage and use it as a weapon. I was fine, but the police collapsed from their wounds. They hadn’t even any last words before dying.

    I approached the police chief, hoping to find some answers on the town''s screwy immigration policies, but the chief turned out to be a Breath of Fire villain, and transformed into a horrible creature. Its mouth was roughly the size of my entire body, its body was long and curved like a serpent with segments that resembled vague skeletal bits and pieces. Oh yeah, and it had claws too. Lilith blasted it with Hellfire and Zoe hit it with Druidfire, which together should have easily obliterated anything in its path. The strange and scary creature was still standing though, and the room was untouched by all that energy. Azrael stared, “Nine Dragons Flesh Refinement! I never dreamed it was possible!” Elias too, had apparently heard of it, “Really, that technique? I''d always assumed that was a myth of some sort. It really is a true cultivation method?” Exasperated, I finally told those two, “Quit being vague and tell us what it is!” They explained, filling in each other''s sentences, “Legends tell of an ancient fighting style, I guess you''d call it, where the practitioner was able to absorb the actual damage of attacks into their body, becoming stronger and stronger.” I wondered how that was any different from Michael’s Oracle ability, but they explained that this assumption was wrong. They continued, “But because of the completely frightening power of this technique and because those who used it tended to become horrible fiends, the method to this was destroyed everywhere that it could be read about. And no, the counter to this form isn''t known.” Thinking for a second, I said, “What if we tried to overfill it?” In many instances, this sort of thing would probably work, but it just kept absorbing damage without healing its wounds. Well, it didn''t really wear away either, instead the damage mangled its body, and it covered the wounds over with blackened and cancerous looking skin and distorted bones. Azrael and Elias tried holy prayers and symbols against it, Zoe and Nevras hit it with magic and physical force, Lilith and Michael tore at it with their weapons, and so on, but it kept eating up the damage and distorting its body while it gained strength. Yeah, I know earlier I said that magic was ineffective here, but unbelief can waver, and these people had just seen an angel and a demon, as well as a door getting knocked off its hinges, and someone turn into a freakish creature. Little by little, this area was granting us access to magic. Yet it was quickly proving ineffective.

    Most of the wonder-workers were running out of mystic power, and those like Nevras were exhausted. And yet here it stood, stronger than ever. I could think of only one attack powerful enough to fight him, and the last time I had lost control of myself using it. I was going to try to use the Resonance of the Tao to turn his own power against him, but I knew that the slightest mistake might be devastating. It felt vaguely like that scene from TheLast Airbender (the good one), where that bald kid tried to take away the guy’s energy and some voiceover told him, “To bend another''s energy, your own spirit must be unbendable.” Only I wasn’t trying to take his power away, so much as pull what he had collected, and use it against him. Such was the swirling rhythm of the Tao.

    I spun the Tao, watching the great demonic critter try to suck away the energy that touched its body. Yet the Tao spun back from it, depriving it of its prize, and pulling what it had drained over the years with it. Like a violent storm, my power ripped through him, stripping him over and over again of what he''d stolen, while the other end of the attack ripped at his body. I had tried to control the Tao in times before, but here I was simply letting it do its own thing. In the end, a simple man sat on the ground, begging us to attack him, to put him out of his misery. Elias and Azrael shook their heads. Not only would it be bad mercy, but it might make him strong again. With any source of aggression directed towards him, this guy simply crumbled to ash.

    With his death, a weird circle appeared on the ground before shattering apart. “A Tether?” asked Azrael. When I asked her what she meant, she explained that one of the methods of immortality was to store one''s essence in a body, or an object, or another living thing. I thought of how difficult Belial was to kill, and I decided that you never could be too careful. Contrary to popular belief, the way to split your soul was not through murder. That was completely stupid, and anyone who believed that is stupid too. Murder taints the soul, it doesn''t split it. You split your soul by creating artwork or music, by cooking, and by making a strong impression on another person. The act of splitting the soul is not an evil one, but rather something that happens naturally as we find people and things we love. A Tether is simply the logical extension of that idea, where such things become a safeguard against death, such as writing a book to try to immortalize your thoughts. It is a bit sketchy, but still not exactly evil.

    I might have possibly also become a bit paranoid and unhinged for constantly being chased and persecuted for just trying to have a normal life inside a town, because now I saw enemies everywhere. So when I saw a cult set up in one of the temples of Momiji filled with those who worshiped a Heavenly Immortal Maple Tree that they claimed could heal wounds, I became so paranoid that I decided to cut it down and burn it. The cultists tried to stop me, but I fought back and defeated all of them. The others of my group were shocked at my resolve, but eventually decided that they believed in my cause, so I must know what I''m doing. Tired from basically everyone attacking me in this town, deeply disturbed at what I had wound up doing, and stressed in general, I decided to head to the local pub to calm down and get some perspective. No sooner did I do so, however, than our group wound up being approached by another one. A white haired young man with spiky hair and an enormous sword looked our group up and down, and shook his head, “What? You also are questing to fight against the dread demon Belial? Take a look at my party of heroes. All of them are so capable on their own, but together, we can fight off any foe. You have no chance!” He pointed to a petite woman with a white blouse and blue pleated skirt named Momo (the party healer), an elf with blue hair named Aster, a wizard named Gumi, and an impossibly big man called Na''ud. More like party of assholes. Without exception, all of his subordinates pestered us until we fought back, picking what we were most sensitive about. Gumi scoffed at our magic users, saying, “You should be afraid of my powers. I mean, aren''t you?” But a simple demonstration of our thaumaturgy made him run off. Aster provoked Aqorm next, “Bah. Your party doesn''t stand a chance. You don''t even have a proper elf with you, like me.” He continued, “See how young my face looks? I''m already over 10000. By the time you beat someone like Belial you''ll be old.” Aqorm was now a proper elf, but her mixed breed created the impression that she was mortal. It didn''t matter soon, as she soon proved she was the better one, when she jabbed the other elf with swift punches in the stomach until he went down. Na''ud saw Lilith, who to all appearances was a grown women but didn''t look especially muscular and offered, “Na''ud like to smash. Give me something to smash, little girl?” Lilith said, “Bah, you''re not so tough,” and punched the wall in several places, removing a small boulder of rock, lifted in one hand, and them whacked Na''ud repeatedly with it until it broke. “Na''ud hurting inside,” he said.

    Lastly, Momo hadn''t learned a thing from all of these other defeated, or maybe she just had a death wish, because she came to mess with me, even though I was a head taller, outweighed her by about thirty pounds between cup size, hips, and ummm posterior. Besides which, I was generally prettier than that ugly hag. Okay, that last one''s a lie. She gave me grief about our band of misfits, she called Nevras a tomgirl, and told us that we were doomed. Looking at this woman who seemed to have been eye candy for this white-haired Akira Toriyama reject, and watching how she behaved so aggressively, I called her out. I said, “You''re a disgrace to women everywhere. Far from being competent, you''re just decoration.” She gave back some fresh language of her own, “The one who is a disgrace is you. You''ve lost your feminine ways, and become a man. No wonder your party is so odd, with you as leader.” Be right back, guys. I have a murder to perform.

    Back in Hotaru, we ascended what looked to be the biggest of these towers, and found ourselves dealing with security systems. Lasers that blinked in sequence hit us with photons hard enough to push us back and give us slight burns, so Elias carefully studied the pattern, and made it to a power switch to turn the thing off. Other rooms were guarded by whirring saws, robots, and spikes from the walls or ceiling were all things were had to get past and disarm while reaching the top. At the peak, there was a large computer console, which Elias typed in, ?[Search:] History of Hotaru''s Decline.? Another hologram appeared, and said to us, “Come no closer, for this area is dangerous. The particle inducers will disintegrate your physical form. We will speak here.” I asked, “Maybe you can tell me... Everyone here seems to be either dead or a hologram.” But the hologram seemed to be totally deaf to me. Elias typed my question. The hologram was of an older woman, with clothing vaguely like a toga, some goggles, and pants held up by far more belts than was necessary. I suppose in the future, people are supposed to wear tasteless and impractical clothes but now that the future was technically the past, I could mock it as much as I wanted. She explained, “Ah yes. Well, you came to the right place. I am called the Keeper, for I keep this history. Long ago, our land was like yours, full of plants and animals. We loved these, but we wanted an easy life, so we built various machines to help things get done for us. But... technology has a way of creeping up on you. We began to need greater resources, and the plants and animals started to die off. But, of course, at the time we were so busy crafting a life of leisure for ourselves that we couldn''t be bothered with lesser beings. In our pursuit of free time, mechanical energy wasn''t enough, so we turned to coal and various gases. In time, the air became filled with a dark smoke, and breathing was restrained. Even the sun was blotted out. Desperate to clean this mess up, we turned to another source of energy, that of uranium. One accident was all it took. I left this record behind for future generations. Don''t repeat my mistake.” She led us to two storage chests, one of which contained a medicine to treat the radiation poisoning we would pick up walking through town. The other one has a type of seed. She explained that this was a Cleansing Tree, and she wanted this to be planted in town near the water. We stuck around just long enough to plant the tree and watched the murky air become slightly thinner and less green before we left. Things were looking up.

    Back in Momiji, I had just killed a girl for nothing more than insulting me. I could claim that it was because I had been persecuted or made to feel unwelcome, but this is what terrorists in the 20th century said. This is probably what Belial told himself. I knew the real reason. This town, and especially Momo, reminded me that I felt worthless. Like with Hotaru, there was a constant sense of pollution in my heart. Feelings like “I''m too worthless” or “I''m an evil person because I have this dark side.” These feelings were there since before Thanatos exposed that I do have a dark side, but merging with it was like being forced to look in the mirror at myself while I had just kicked a puppy or something. My evil half was cruel, but I could see that she had not made me do this. I did this, because I lived in guilt, for all those poor creatures I''d killed. For all the hardships of this journey, but mostly because I still felt like a poor beggar who had to fight and even kill to survive. It had mostly been rats back then, but now I''d learned how to kill people... And yet, I saw Nevras''s eyes. They were not a look of fear or of disgust, they were a look of love and sadness. It was like he was looking at a girl at a party with tattoos covering scars from all the times she cut her wrists, and wanting to hug her. He saw the whole of me, the good and the bad. And he loved me, flaws and all. Things were looking up.

    NEVRAS

    I couldn''t help it. Maybe it''s like the girlfriend of the guy who beats up the dog and child, and who occasionally beats up the girl herself. You know, the girl who keeps telling herself “deep down he''s a decent guy” and attacks or shouts at anyone who tells her the truth. But when I saw her, I saw the same Ambrosia that had traveled with us all this time. Ambrosia hadn''t suddenly become a random psycho, she had inherited what she believed was her evil side. Honestly, I''m not so sure of that, more like her emotional side. And she probably kept telling herself something along the lines of how she was a horrible person so she might as well keep doing this stuff. She was probably acting out. I''m not sure she could even get at the real root of her suffering, it was probably just a pervasive feeling of worthlessness. No worries, it happens to all of us.

    But when I saw her, all I saw was a damaged person. Someone who had believed in their quest and was looking at all the creatures they''d killed, and not looking hard enough of the towns they''d helped defend. Or the town that got a bamboo water-purification system thanks to her random whim. Or the time we helped Phoenix invent new technology that would prevent food from going bad, fending off hunger for places that had drought or famine otherwise. It''s easy to dwell on failures, but not as much to look back at one''s life from the other side, and keep trying. Ambrosia was in a bad spot. But she could get better, she could get through this, as long as I believed in her.

    AMBROSIA

    I went outside, I looked at all the cut up bodies from our fights to get through this city. And those poor cultists. When I felt worthless again, I remembered how much he cared for me. I knew then that if I could love myself as he loved me, and if I could love others with that same intensity, then I could certainly master the power of the Tao. I felt I could do anything. Probably?

    I was filled with remorse for my actions. I didn''t want to kill any of these people. Not the officers who were only following orders, not the cultists that were deceived, none of the people I killed in this town deserved to die! Well, except for that bitch Momo, but she totally brought that on herself by calling me manly. Out of the depths of my soul, I called out the words, “Reset!” To my utter shock, everyone except the demonic police chief, the giant Maple Tree, and of course Momo got restored to their original place intact. Even the door to the police station was repaired. Michael stared, “How is it that you did that? That was Script!” I shrugged, “God had always been doing it, so I guess I picked it up?” He shook this head as if to say that wasn''t possible. I had no idea then.

    In any case, our business in these towns was done. Michael said in no uncertain terms that we had to finish up our quest soon because he had business to take care of. Anyway, we had freed up the Tethers that were probably keeping Belial immortal, and totally didn''t just beat up a random maple tree. So we headed our boat over to the island where Belial waited in his castle to once again try to challenge him.