I wiped the counter as I gave them space, but tried to stay close. Orla set her empty fork down. Her hands were steadier now, yet her knuckles still were white. She took a deep breath, looking not at me, but at the Goddess, Arum, beside Aella.
"Oh, Divine One," Orla asked while her voice was respectful. "May… may I ask a question?"
"The soil is open to all seeds, Commander," Arum replied gently, turning her eyes to Orla. "Speak thy heart. "Speak thy heart."
"First, you call this place a garden," Orla said, glancing at me. "And him… a 'Herald' you said. Yet I looked at him, and I was something that defies the laws of life. I saw a man without a soul's fire. A vessel without the 'innate heat' that defines us, human."
Arum tilted her head with her ancient curiosity. "Innate heat?" she repeated softly. "What dost thou mean by that, Commander? Dost thou speak merely of his mana?"
"It is more than mana, Divine One," Orla explained as her hands were trembling. "It is the furnace in the heart. The spark that burns to keep the blood warm and the spirit tethered to the flesh. Every human in our realm burns. Even a baby in her mother's womb has a flicker of this heat."
"The furnace in the heart…" she whispered. "A fire that burneth from the womb to the grave."
She looked from Orla to me.
"Tell me then, Commander," Arum said, her voice soft yet piercing. "If this fire defines thy kind… and he hath it not… dost thou say he is not human? Or dost thou say he is a human from a realm where the fire is not needed?"
She leaned forward. "Is he a broken vessel in thine eyes, or a vessel built for a different wine?"
"If he were a broken vessel," Orla whispered, "he would have shattered when the Demon Lord arrived. I… I felt that pressure. It crushed the breath from my lungs. It sought to extinguish my fire."
She lifted her hand. "But he stood. He stood when I fell. He spoke when I could not breathe. A broken vessel cannot hold water against a storm, Divine One."
She looked back at Arum. "He is not broken. He is… built of a material I do not recognise."
"'Tis precisely wherefore I am come, Commander," Arum said. "Aella, my High Priestess, possesseth eyes that see the weave of the world better than any of her kin. Yet when she looked upon him… she saw what thou seest. An impossibility."
"She came unto me in confusion," She said, her voice thoughtful." She spoke of a creature with no attributes to define his existence. A mortal who looked upon the Demon Lord without fear and stood unbowed within an aura that should have crushed him to dust."
She gestured to Aella. "She asked me how such a thing could be. How a man could stand when he ought to fall."
She leaned forward, the scent of deep earth intensifying. "I came to behold this 'void' for mine own self. I came to see whether he were truly empty… or if he were simply full of something we possess not the eyes to see."
She smiled. "And now I know. He is not empty, Commander. He is simply… bringeth his own soil, and his own sun."
She turned her eyes to Orla. "Commander, thou didst speak of 'void'. Thou saidst he lacked the 'innate heat' that defineth thy kind."
Orla nodded slowly. "Yes, Divine One. When… when I heard his conversation with the Demon Lord, he said about his lack of attributes, making him not have this 'innate heat'."
"How about I just show my own status to all of you…" I interjected. As I focused on deactivating the cafe spell…
Suddenly, "Hold!" Arum exclaimed. Her eyes darted around the room as if scanning the invisible fabric of the shop. "Thou… thou commandest the very breath of this room?"
Breath, does she mean about the skill?
I paused. "Well, yes. It's my shop."
She looked at me. "When I sought to expand my roots here, the earth itself rejected me. It was a wall of absolute law, immovable and unyielding. Even a Goddess could not breach it."
She stared at me with a new level of awe. "And yet… thou sayest thou canst dismiss it as easily? Thou holdest the leash of a force that defieth the divine?"
"Well, I don't know how to respond to that, but yeah, I can activate and deactivate the skill of the shop. I need to deactivate it, so the status spell can work. I said with a smile.
She let out a breath. "Show me."
I showed my own status screen to them. As my status screen appeared in front of them, Arum leaned forward, her eyes scanning the floating text. However, she seemed to be looking through the letters.
"…It is silence," she whispered. "It is not that the numbers are low, or hidden. It is that the question itself hath no answer. No my sister's law…"
She reached out, her finger hovering over the word 'HUMAN'.
"Human," she read. Then she turned to Orla. "And thou, Commander. Show me thy scroll. Let us see the difference between it."
Orla hesitated. "Status", she said.
Her screen appeared next to mine. As I saw it, the status was more impressive than the paragon from the Saintess' party.
Arum looked between the two screens.
"Behold," Arum said softly. She gestured to Orla's screen. "Here is the child of the Realm. Bound by mana. Every number, every letter… it is a thread connecting her to the heartbeat of this world."
She turned her gaze to my screen. Her eyes narrowed…
"And here…" She faltered.
For a moment, Arum looked genuinely lost.
"For five thousand years, I have watched the acorns fall, and the mountains rise," she whispered, her hand trembling slightly. "I have known every creature that walketh, crawleth, or flieth under the sun. Yet… I have never beheld a scroll such as this."
She looked at me, her face etched with confusion that bordered on disturbance.
"It is not merely empty, Gardener. It is… unwritten."
"Unwritten?" I asked.
"The Lattice of Attributes… the logic of the Satus that weigheth the sould and assigneth it a value…" Arum shook her head slowly. "This was not my creation. I tend the life that groweth, but the law that measureth it… that was the work of my sister, Ira."
Ira? Is that the goddess of demons? Lilith's goddess?
She looked up past the ceiling of the shop.
"It was Ira who spun the Wheel of Attributes. It was She who decided that strength should be numbered and magic should be tiered. It is Her language."
Arum lowered her gaze back to me. "I cannot answer why thy scroll is silent, Darya. My roots go deep, but they do not touch this. To understand a law that is broken… one must speak to the lawmaker."
She immediately turned her gaze to Orla. "Dost thou fear him of the scroll? Or dost thou fear the possibility he represents?"
Orla stared at the two screens. Her own, like a cage of numbers, defining her limits, her rank, her very worth. And mine, a void. A silence – it just told Race and Job. Human and Barista.
"I…" Orla started while her voice was shaking. She looked at her own status, then at me. "I have spent my life climbing this ladder, Divine One. Levelling up. Increasing these numbers. Believing that if I just reached the next tier, I could protect my people."
Arum said. "Benevolent."
She clenched her hand. "But when the Demon Lord stepped into this shop…No, when the Demon Lord was miles away… My numbers meant nothing…"
She looked me in the eye. "He has no numbers. He has no ladder to climb. And because of that… he has no ceiling to hit."
She turned back to Arum. "I do not fear the possibility, Divine One. I fear… that he is right. That we may be trapped in a system that measures us only to limit us. And he is the only one who is free."
Arum smiled, a slow, radiant expression. Somehow made her hair bloom with tiny white flowers. As I saw that, Arum's emotion must have been exceedingly happy or grateful for her powers to manifest in such a way. It was like Arum was waiting for someone or a creature to say what Orla said. 'We may be trapped in a system that measures us only to limit us.'
Her words actually hit deeper. In a world with status, attributes, and creatures are being measured by numbers. Seeing me without numbers, but able to withstand the most powerful creatures. It must make her question it, 'Is the attribute the one at fault in this case?"
"Well spoken, Commander," she whispered. "Thou beginnest to see with the eyes of the root, not just the branch."
She waved her hand and somehow made our status screen disappear. "The soil is prepared. The host is worthy. The witness is awake."
She turned to Aella, glancing out the window where the sky had turned a deep, starless indigo.
"Come, daughter. The moon hath climbed high, and the night bloom opens. We must return to the heart of the wood."
Aella bowed deeply. "As you command, Mother."
Arum turned to leave, her wooden staff tapping against the floor. But just as she reached the counter's edge, she froze.
She turned back slowly. She didn't look at my face. She looked at my pocket.
"…Gardener," she said. "Ira's law is silent upon thy soul… yet I smell Ira's chaotic scene upon thy person."
She pointed with her finger. "And I smell the stench of old blood. A heartbeat that is not a heartbeat."
"It's… a gift," I said. "From the previous customer."
"From my sister's child," Arum corrected. "I know her scent. And I know the scent of her… pets."
I pulled out the silver ring with the five emeralds and placed it on the counter. Immediately, Aella was terrified to see the ring again…
"It's a vessel," suddenly I remembered, as the first time Lilith visited and left without pay. She called this ring a name. "Vrach Diavo…It contains Chistera."
"Devil's Eyes…" Arum whispered. "Thou hast a Vampire Lord..."
Well, it isn't my first time to have her…
Orla choked on her breath. "A…a what? You have a Vampire Lord… in your pocket?"
"Well, she acts as a conduit. A direct link to contact her if I need to…It is given because Orla is in here. As Orla is a direct link to The Lord of Realm and the Saintess, so Lilith gave me the ring."
"A balance of eyes…" Arum mused. "How like my sister's child. She placeth a wolf to watch the sheepdog."
She looked from the ring to me.
"We shall return… Rest well, Darya. Have a care for the Commander, Gardener. For she understandeth thee not, nor the strange sense that guideth thee."
She tapped her staff on the floor.
The air shimmered with the scent of rain, mist curling around their forms. In the blink of an eyes, Arum and Aella dissolved into a swirl of leaves and vanished into the night.
I was left alone in the quiet shop with disbelief, Orla…
"You…" she whispered. "You have the Vampire Lord… in your pocket."