This entire planet makes me nervous. It feels like my skin is itchy and like I am not getting enough air as I breathe. But as I release the seal on the Ignition Heart and more mana floods into me, it gets better.
I wonder if it is the effect of this place being cut off from the system and what it actually means. If I level up a skill, will it not show here? For some reason, I doubt that. Just as I can use the mana I currently hold even here, I think my system will continue. I have a Mana Heart, and I, like everyone else possessing one, am marked by the system. And as someone like that walking on this planet, among wolves that reject it, I feel like I am dirtying something sacred. It is like a spy walking into the heart of their home, carrying the system with me.
I would also dislike me.
Biscuit wakes up a few times, but only very shortly, always scrambling to look around, and when he notices me, he calms down to doze off again. Though I am sure the little beast is not just sleeping and is trying to gather himself.
It is not a good feeling to see him this way, and from the few looks he gave me, I suspect he is at least a bit annoyed that I went looking for him so early. He can be stubborn and likely wanted to solve it all on his own and for us to meet sometime after the tutorial.
Well, too bad for him that I am so impatient.
Still, as he dozes off, I cut the tip of my finger, press it against my left pinkie, draw a straight line through it, and then connect this line to his missing paw. That activates the healing mark Lily specially prepared and modified for him, and all that warm mana floods into his body.
This mark is, according to Lily, a bit special. Instead of trying to use fast healing, it is more gentle in case his body is weak. The healing takes longer, but there is a much, much lower chance of it going wrong.
That also makes me wonder how big a chance there is for something to go wrong with her usual healing marks and why she had not told me about it before I used hundreds of them.
Still walking, I continue to look at Biscuit and think of what to do. There are risks to bringing him back into the tutorial. I do not know if the system will react to what he did. I do not know if the tutorial accepts him back. I do not even know if Dili will take him away and make him a mount for Zant.
It is something I thought of previously, and I think I spoke about it with Liss. Back then, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if he stayed, and she mirrored my thoughts. Just enough time for him to regain what he lost and maybe more of it.
Of course, that was before I found him trapped inside that barrier. I was wrong, thinking the little wolfy, as some wolf clan princeling, would take care of it all on his own. The clan just seems to be either split or a bit similar to the demons, where you can do whatever you want if you are powerful enough.
Or maybe it will snap back into place once we meet the Great Elder the wolfy leads us towards. The Great Elder being his grandfather and also a distant descendant of the currently sleeping Ancient Wolf that used to devour planets. I suspect that the Ancient Wolf is somewhere on this planet too.
Aware of the time limit and the wyvern waiting and prodding me, the wolfy hurries. A few times, we use tunnels made of trees that bend and weave together, creating a dark pathway you cannot even see into.
Each time you pass a certain distance into that tunnel, we get moved to a distant part of the planet, as if it were some sort of warp effect.
Soon we enter what seems like less rural feeling zones, as other than trees, huge mountains begin to appear as well, many of them with visible cave holes from which wolves lazily observe us.
There are wide lakes, huge rivers, I notice griffins flying in the sky, leviathans on the distant shores, and hydras too. As the places become less rural, the monsters become much more dangerous as well. I notice a few orbital strikes hitting monsters that try to get too close to us, but most of them seem to be scared of the wyvern’s presence surrounding us.
We reach a flatland that has, on each side, huge, gray, sharp, narrow mountains growing, reminiscent of fangs piercing through the ground. In the middle, between them, a path leads through the flatland, passing between many gigantic statues of wolves, monsters, wyverns, elves, and others that each seem to have been carved from a mountain because of their size.
At the end of that, there is a flat-topped pyramid with steps too big for any normal being to walk.
I continue up by boosting myself up with kinetic energy, and the wolfy grows in size as much as he can, yet even to the gigantic wolf, they are too big, and it takes an effort as he jumps and climbs onto them.
As we make our way, more curious wolves appear behind our backs on the flatland, they jump on the fang-like mountains and watch or observe from a distance from their caves in the mountains.
There at the top, a wolf waits. Pitch black, golden eyes. The three of them, actually, the third one being on his forehead. On his head rests a crown made of beautiful silver metal with three enormous crystals imbued into it. The middle one is red, the right one is orange, and the left one is yellow.
Resting his head on his paws, which alone is bigger than wolfy, he watches us make our way towards him.
He does not even say anything, even as wolfy begins to excitedly explain what happened and jump around him. He returns the gesture, gently rubbing his nose against his grandson's after the wolf pup initiates it. Otherwise, he listens, and no other wolf moves closer.
Once in a while, his eyes move as he looks up towards the sky and somewhere beyond it. In other cases, I can see my and Biscuit’s reflection in them as he looks at us.
The ridiculously enormous wolf does not even fit into my entire field of view from this distance.
“Very well,” he rumbles. “You shall have your chance. When the moon turns, you shall face Big Fang.”
“Thank you, Great Elder! As for my master-” the wolfy stops talking there under the gaze of that middle eye and steps back. He almost whimpers as he lowers his head.
With almost unfitting gentleness for something so giant, the Great Elder moves and pokes him with his nose. “Do not forget, even we are bound by the rules.”
He then switches his attention onto me, continuing, “Human... you carry the system’s brand. You aren’t welcome in this place. Nor is that shadow of yours, watching from the sky.”
The giant wolf yawns in a lazy gesture and gives his enormous body a stretch, for the first time lifting his head high up, covering me in shadow and blocking out the sky.
"Though the Gray Sun has awoken and the Starless Sky is with us once again, the hour for our Patriarch to stir has not yet arrived. Our clan continues to honor the promise to hold him in slumber. Human-"
(Food?)
The giant wolf halts his words, and at the same moment, his, wolfy’s, and my heads turn to look at the corgi pup in my arms.
(Food! Food!) That voice of a young boy says excitedly. Biscuit’s.
I do not think I was ever happier to hear it.
(Food. Food. Food. Food. Food. Food…) Biscuit begins to shout in quick succession, like someone who just learned to talk or discovered a new word.
As he does so, mana rises up around him through telepathic communication. He pushes through whatever was stopping him before, he bridges any hole that his pantophagic energy made, and he reroutes his mana to work once again, something I am sure he kept trying while dozing off, annoyed by his inability to speak.
Wolfy lifts his head towards the sky and howls long and victoriously, and damn, if I don't almost join him.
“Food!” I say.
(Food!) Biscuit confirms, his tongue lolling out as I shake him in the air.
“You are in so much trouble, you asshole. You know how much I worried?”
(Food Food!) he says.
“I did worry so much to bring an entire deer with me.”
(Food?)
“How dare you.” I shake him.
(Friends?)
“They are safe, so don’t you worry.”
(Sustenance?)
“I am eating well, and I am not losing weight, but do not worry about useless stuff. Let us wait with it for a moment, okay? We are guests here to this nice Great Elder, he is your disciple’s grandfather.”
(Friend?) Biscuit twists his head and then looks up. And up. And up and up until his head is vertical as he looks at the giant elder. He twists his head a few times as he tries to comprehend that enormous size and even shakes off the confusion a bit, even looking dizzy.
Then Biscuit turns and looks at his disciple, who, though he is also enormous, is incomparable to that.
"M-master, please, I will also grow to be that big. Do not look so disappointed..." wolfy almost begs.
“Compassion for your pack is no sin, human. Ignore the affair with Big Fang, his failure was his own, born of an ambition that far outstripped his ability,” the Great Elder says.
I grab and hold Biscuit so he does not try to fly towards the wolf and ask, "But?"
“You and your shadow are unwelcome here. Yet, because your pack member shares a bond with my grandson, I grant you this grace: he may seek to reclaim his lost Pantophagic Energy. If he is meant to reclaim it, so be it. If it consumes him in the process, then that, too, is simply his fate.”
Looking at him, I can think that in a way he reminds me of Diligence, in other words, he is reasonable. Maybe too reasonable. I am not used to beings around me being reasonable.
"You said your grandson has a bond to Biscuit, but that bond was created by the system, is it not?"
The Great Elder bares his teeth in what looks like a smile, "You and your kind possess little understanding of how the system functions, human, yet you so eagerly embrace your servitude to it. I am thankful that… Biscuit saved my grandson, who was foolishly wandering outside our solar system and nearly lost his life. But understand this: the system does not truly create. It merely takes, copies, evolves, and adapts. The bond it forged between my grandson and your friend is nothing more than an imitation of ancient, primal connections that existed long before the system ever emerged."
I know when someone is in the mood to talk, and I know when to stay quiet so they talk as much as possible, so I do.
And as expected, he continues talking, “Even subclasses are merely pale imitations of the power held by true gods. The system attempts to mimic the mightiest beings it has encountered to create its own pantheon of Rulers. Your passives and traits are simply the stolen mutations and bloodline gifts of native races, adapted and distorted. It suppresses primordial energies and distributes only lesser versions to its slaves. The system is nothing but an invader in this universe. Whatever its true purpose and final goal may be, it must be stopped."
"And even you do not know what that purpose might be?"
"I have no answer for that, human. The Fae once knew, but they have long since vanished from this universe. Beyond them, only Pride and Kindness might hold such knowledge, perhaps along with the forgotten Rulers or the remnants of the Empyrean bloodline. Seek your answers from them, not from me."