Alesha sniffled, something tickling her nose. Achoo!
She opened her eyes to find a colorful little bird with four wings flying away.
"Four wings, huh? Guess that makes more sense than a family of normal deer, after a war with Chaos," she murmured.
She had a feeling that something was missing, or that something should've been different than it was. But why was that? She'd just finished meeting with Kalszoth's remnant in that dream space, right? So why was there the sense that something else had been there?
Looking outside her cave, the shadows from the trees suggested that it was about noon.
Hadn't it been early evening?
She stood up with a start, surprised. How much time had passed?
She padded out of the cave on four limbs, the action feeling incredibly natural despite how relatively new her draconic form was.
Reflecting on it now was pointless, though. Of greater concern was why so much time had passed without her noticing.
Had the inheritance of the spirit summoning knowledge taken more time than she had perceived it to?
She checked her Status Screen briefly, looking only at one specific area. Now that she'd evolved again, she generated one Chaos Energy per 12 hours instead of one per 24 hours, which made it a better time measurement than before.
[Chaos Energy: 3/40]
Alright, so about as much time as she expected had passed since she'd built her "nest." 12 hours for the quest, 12 hours for the quest penalty, and another 12 and then some change after that spent sleeping.
She hadn't lost all that much time. Especially considering she wasn't hungry again yet.
However, this unbearable separation from her nest?
Now that was something she needed to remedy.
She turned around and trotted over to her nest, where dozens of natural objects had been chaos-ified then arranged into a roughly circular nest. Branches of moss, rubber, rope and tissue paper mingled with ossified grasses, felt vines, potato wood, beeswax bones, and even a flaming mushroom that never went out.
All of these strange and peculiar objects had been transformed by Alesha's Chaos Flame skill in order to prevent another bout of frenzied, mad searching for things with Chaos Energy.
After finding out that her repressed need for Chaos had, as the System had put it, "come back with a vengeance," her previous state (and lingering cravings) made much more sense.
She looked at the jumbled, chaotic nest with a strange expression, half loathing, half lust. She needed it.
But she hated that she needed it.
She clambered up onto the nest, walking around in a circle before settling down with her head laying across Collin's corpse, which was gently laid up against one side of the nest. She peered at the hole in his chest. Five lumpy, fleshy red eggs pulsated gently within his chest cavity, unperturbed by anything.
Alesha smiled fondly, closing her eyes. She was still troubled by the fact that she couldn't predict with any confidence what species they would be when they hatched; but that was no matter. Wherever this strange pull towards them came from, her maternal instinct demanded she love them no matter what they turned out to be.
And she had already given up on fighting it.
A short time later, her eyes snapped back open when she realized that something else was off.
Had she been near her nest when the quest penalty (and the linked quest) finished?
She didn't think so.
Had she been the one to take the branches off of her nest so she could climb on it like this?
Again, she didn't think so.
She had no memory of either returning to her cave or removing the branches.
So… how exactly had she gotten back?
[It was me,] Rogork said.
"Liar," Alesha whispered, "You can't control my body without a quest penalty. Not outside of Zorhellian's games!"
[Believe what you want, I guess,] Rogork said nonchalantly.
Worry creeped up into Alesha's mind, a seed of doubt.
Just enough to make her begin to fear what could happen if Rogork could now take control of her while she slept.
[BAHAHHAHHA you fell for it! Ahahah! Hehe haha!]
"Damn you!" Alesha yelled, thumping her nest with one fist. "I believed you! Tell me what actually happened, now!"
[I don't have the authority to do that,] Rogork apologized insincerely. [I am truly sorry, but it was either me or up to your imagination.]
Alesha narrowed her eyes. If the System didn't have the authority to tell her, wouldn't it not have the authority to tell her the very fact that it didn't have the authority to tell her in the first place?
[Bingo! I'm taking an authorized unauthorized action in telling you I haven't the authority to tell you what you wanted to know.]
"How can it be an authorized unauthorized action? Isn't that contradictory?"
[Indeed it is! Agh, but I was having fun! Damn it. Anyway, that's all for now byeeeee,] Rogork said.
"Seriously?? That's it?!"
[Nope! Just kidding again! Ahahahhahahhahah you're so gullible ahahhahahhahhahhah]
Alesha rolled her eyes, though she felt genuinely concerned. Rogork's behavior was disturbingly familiar.
It reminded her of back during the Hero Summoning Story, when the System behaved like a drunken fool.
She didn't like the System. She hated it, in fact.
But having it act like this without an explanation?
When Zorhellian's Games were supposedly over?
It was strangely unnerving.
It made her wonder… did the Games even end at all?
Was all of this just a trick?
She shivered and put such thoughts out of her mind.
What mattered was that she was not stuck as a sword, and she had a clue about what was probably her family.
She could deal with Rogork's strangeness later.
Hopefully it wasn't anything serious.