The Knight looked around, searching for clues about its hosts.
A voice all too quiet to hear but commanding so much attention that the Knight immediately stopped everything it was doing to listen as the voice spoke.
"welcome… I bet you think all of it boring."
She didn't know the Knight as the knights did, so she expected a polite decline, affirming her that all of this was beautiful. Instead, the Knight starred at her, almost ignoring her, waiting for a voice it had grown accustomed to.
You have encountered a level 409 memory, Laurel Ingris. Type-Keeper. Class-Passive.
"You must be a Laurel."
"Yes, I'm Laurel Ingris. You didn't say, what do you think of all this?"
"Nothing at all."
She then laughed a little. Her hair was purely white, or a dusty silver grey in dim lighting. Her smile blinding and even whiter. Her skin created a contrast, a dark brown that blended with her dusty pink dress.
"Nothing? Really?"
The knight did not answer.
"Oh well, follow me. You can go back Juval – sorry for the trouble. I'll open the doors for him on his way back."
'So, only a Grand Master and them can open the doors. Good to know that if he leaves, I'm stranded up here. Is that a hint irony in that sentence? Have I really gotten that used to Mugaw and his commentary?'
Juval bowed politely, smiled at the Knight and left. On his face, the Knight could see he had reservations about having to leave, but something else too. That something was a desire to go back down and back to where he was – and that alone cleared his mind. He smiled at the Knight and left.
'I guess he really had something to do. The fact they called him here means that they never leave this place. But wait, how am I going to open the door at the bottom. Is that what he had a reservation about?'
The Knight looked at the doors as they closed behind him, he was gone. 'I just hope he leaves the door open; it's not like anyone not invited can enter the room anyway.'
The Knight also looked towards the house, all the way in the centre of the island, the Knight could teleport there, but because of her pace, it meant they were going to walk there, and that would take all day, this island was pretty huge.
The Knights own reservations never came to pass, and not because they didn't take all day to get there, for which they did. It was that after Juval left, she became like Helim, keeping quiet until they got to the door.
The house was unique when compared to all those the Knight had seen before now. It was nothing special at all. It was a large metal box. Two stories high and wide enough to cover a quarter of the entire island.
Before they got in the Knight noticed a flat and round metallic object. Almost confused it for dark sand. It was light brown, spheric and out of place to the grass. The Knight only paid attention to it because she looked at it for a while before they went in.
'It's nothing like the grass. The metallic object does have a power placed on it, and this power is stopping it from aging into dust, but by the looks of it, they were a little too late.'
Then they entered the house. Inside the Knight met an entire community, about fifty to a hundred big. It started counting as the whisper made all of its introductions.
'I guess this explains why this place is so big – it's a whole community.'
The Knight then looked at all of them. Something about all this seemed intriguing.
'They look completely human, but whisper keeps calling them Memories. More importantly, why is it that all of them are stronger than the Grand Master?'
The Knight could tell that this place was made for living out an entire life. Each of these rooms contained a set of things the Knight did not recognise, and that was just from the peak through the door. They walked passed the Knight, going about their day, not even having the pause to greet.
'I expected some sort of royalty atmosphere like in a palace.'
All of them wore strange sloppy clothes, had messy hair, and even stank a little, as if they hadn't bathed in months, not that the Knight ever did. But it had heard that normal people needed to bath at least once a month, that is if they weren't exposed to something contaminating, like the researchers at Abio – it had learned this from Guilos.
'All this is strange, but thinking about it, it's not like they have to look presentable to anyone, no-one ever gets invited. And If they did, Ingris here is supposed to take them.'
The Knight then reached the centre. The minimalistic box shaped building was more like a hallow box. In the centre was a grass patch – a whole part, this one artificially made through a power. Some of them were playing in there, others on chairs reading books. One just laying his back on a tree, taking a nap. The roof on this part of the building was made of glass, flooding the area with light, it extended past the second floor.
It shone the brilliance of the sun straight into the room. There were three trees, one empty, except the one lying her back on it. The second, adorned with a few hammocks. The third one had swings, and two of the Laurels were bickering for one. By the looks of it, one had been sitting on it like a lonely girl deep in thought, and the other wanted a turn.
The Knight had never expected anything like this. They were just living up here. Not living lavishly like the royals, and patrons of the knights that they were, but still living.
The Knight was led to one of the Laurels in this park. Sitting on a chair under the shade of the hammock tree. She was deeply invested in her book.
'It's almost as if none of them knew I was coming.'
You have encountered a level 411 memory. Laurel Roon. Type-Keeper. Class-Passive.
"Hello there. Give me a second, I really want to close this chapter."
The Knight looked around, it stood out from the light ambience of this place. It was like a gloomy spec, or just an ironic twist on an artist's painting on what a happy day looks like.
Thub, as she closed her book. "Done. Sorry about that. You must be the hero."
The Knight looked at her, waiting for something.
"Give me another second."
She stood up and looked around. "Hey everyone! The Hero is here!"
Everyone in the park stopped playing.
"wait! He's he hero‼!"
They all hurdled and ran towards the Knight. Some coming from upstairs, and others coming from their rooms of the higher floors. The Knight watched the two on the swing as one waited for the other to leave first. Eventually the one on the swing left, the other one sat on it then got up and went to join the crowd around the Knight.
The Knight was surrounded like the new attraction at the petting zoo.
'Fifty-six, fifty-seven, and that makes fifty-eight... I'm sure the others aren't here not as interested. Some of the rooms I passed, some that the whisper introduced aren't here.'
After all the gawking concluded, a few left. Ingris looked at Roon and swayed her head. By the looks of the silent 'No', Roon had asked her to do something earlier, to which her answer was no. Roon's face became less excited about the whole thing after that.
The Knight chose to put it aside. Roon spoke.
"welcome to the house of mother, we are the Laurels. We hear that you are quite the hero. Do you mind regaling us of the tales of yours, we got some reports, but we want to hear some of your tales from you."
The Knight looked around at all the expectant gazes. It had actually been slightly thrown for a loop when it entered this place, but it had already made multiple new plans and scenarios, each as seemingly hopeless as the other. Not only was there no escape route, but it also happens that every single last one of the Laurels were above level 400, the weakest so far being level 403.
These were the first beings the Knight had met that were above level 400 and weren't of the void. The Knight thought about the multitudes of ways that all this could unfold. It was even still at it. Eventually it arrived at the conclusion, that abandoning all of its plans in Ouran including its army and the dragons – by immediately going to the void – would be a last resort move.
Each were varied in looks, but something was strange about all of them. Even if they were at different ages, all looked the same. Not the similarity in kin, the kind of similarity found in twins but even more uncanny. Each of them looked like the spitting image of the other just at a different point in time.
Then it realised something else. 'Avarice was right – the human might possess knowledge on how to surpass level 450, they already passed 400, the memories did. Humans sure are something else. Not only can they evolve into every known manifestation and learn every known power with time and effort, but they also have accomplished so much more than that.' – thus the Knight began its tales.
"It all began after I got strong enough to take the rite to challenge, and had learned enough to follow all protocols while on duty from a friend…"
And just like that the Knight spent a couple of hours, detailing the half a century it had spent as a knight in the Order of Knights, Arulli base. Each listened attentively. The Knight had surmised that despite their looks they were old, and probably had things to do, but hearing the occasional tales personally must be a treat – and before now, they probably gotten used to all the tales, thus the scarcity of invitations.
"…Then she punched a gaping hole straight through me – I have friends so greedy they wouldn't let me die, so they fixed me right up."
"wow, even after we gave you an invite, you went and fought another one!?"
"It wouldn't be a hunt if I never faced their pinnacles."
"He's almost as crazy as Juval guys."
'Almost!?'
They all talked amongst themselves. Eventually most left. The Knight had chosen to become talkative, as this way it would have an easier time getting them to talk, also it was one the reason it was invited up here.
"Tell me hero, or is it dark hunter?... why is it that your actual title is Vile Knight?"
The Knight then answered as easily as it had to Vice. "I have long forgotten my name, and this is the one that was provided to me."
"Oh, forgotten, I can help with that, I'm a memory you see. I can manipulate memories with simple ease, I'm sure I can find your name, vile is no title for a hero."
She then touched the gauntlet of the dark and cold armour of the Knight.
…
…
"what do we have here? … I can't find anything?"
The others looked at her first then intently at it, with looks of intense confusion written on their eyes. Ingris was the first to speak.
"what do you mean you can't see them?"
"I just can't… I can't see any of them…"
She was visibly spooked.
'I surmise from their surprise, Avarice hasn't been up here. Either she replaced the Marshal or has been pretending to be weak from the start, rising from knight all the way to knight Marshal, or something else I'm not considering. Regardless, this means that she never got an invitation, meaning she has been laying low – I wonder what the other void beings think of a void lord doing such.'
Another crowd began to form around the Knight. The looks it was getting now were looks of expectancy. Some even expressing a bit of worry. Approaching the Knight slowly, each's gaze even more alert then their earlier gazes of excitement.