"How?" Aito asked, seemingly impatient to know the answer.

"Hey, hey, calm down, blacky, it is actually fairly simple," Belmand replied.

Aito found that ironic. After all, what was simple to a divine being could certainly be difficult for a mere mortal.

"The Tutorial points you've gained can only be used in the Tutorial you're currently taking part in. You will understand what I'm saying once you get to the Tower, but in short, it is a currency. But to grant freedom to your friend, it requires Glory points and maybe something else." Belmand said, in between two yawns.

'Is that bastard taking his time on purpose?' Aito thought, starting to lose patience. After everything he had gone through because of the gods, he came to despise them. Between all of their divine asses, he loathed the god of sloth the most because of what happened with Jack. And something told him that this meeting would end exactly the same way as the other, so he wasn't about to be courteous with someone who's probably trying to manipulate him.

"Stop wasting time." Aito said.

At those words, Belmand released a bit of his powers. That human has been disrespectful for some time now. He needed to be taught a lesson, which is that divine beings should be feared.

An aura Aito never experienced before pressed his body downward. His muscles, joints, and bones sent him pleading signals to yield, to bend. But he did not.

Aito gathered every iota of strength he had and fought the god's power. In doing so, he also tried to hide the obvious pain he was in. "So… what… about the Glory… points?"

The god smirked at the human's petty attempt to resist, but gave him credit for trying. Belmand increased the power of his aura by barely one percent, flattening the mortal against the ground.

"Let me teach you something, blacky. I don't mind your lack of finesse, but my siblings will. I hope that this tiny display of power will be enough to avoid any future unfortunate incident." Belmand said, insisting on the word tiny. "I will keep you like that until I'm done with the explanation just so that we are not interrupted by your… gruffness. Nod if you understand."

'Fuck you.' Aito said, using his thought to communicate since he couldn't talk.

"Hum, I forgot about your thoughts. Whatever, just don't interrupt me too often." Belmand said, slightly withdrawing his aura to avoid injuring the human who was about to hurt himself by resisting.

"Now, where was I?" Belmand asked, without hiding his amusement. "Ah, yes, Glory points. Those points are a currency managed by the System usable on Iris. They can be earned in various ways. But basically, it's when you contribute to this world in one way or another. Killing a Fearmonger is one of them. Annnnd, you can exchange them for favors with us, the gods. Pretty simple, right?"

'Damn you!' Aito thought, trying to force his way out of the invisible prison in vain. But the god stayed oblivious to his commentary. So he showed him a middle finger in response. Or at least he tried. The pressure was so great that he only managed to move it a bit. However, he soon abandoned the idea because the next sentence caught his attention.

"So, how's that related to your friend? Again, very simple. Evol monkeys were created by us. As you've thoroughly experienced it, they are beings gifted with incredible adaptative capabilities. They aren't perfect of course, still, they could offer the Fearmongers a run for their money, even a god. If they were to populate Iris, there could be a shift in the power balance. Fortunately, we've devised two… let's call them safety caps. First, the floating island you've lived on for three months."

'Floating island?' Aito thought. By now, he already had guessed they were created by the gods. But the floating island part sounded like bullshit. He had climbed the island's lonely mountain more than once.

The horizon had stretched far enough for him to be sure that he was in the middle of an ocean. And he was certain that the water was real since he had experienced it firsthand upon his arrival.

Belmand sighed. "The ocean you dropped in was more or less real, at least everything in a radius of 1km within the shore is artificially real. The rest is just an illusion, not really my domain, so I can't elaborate. Zalon created it after all. For him, it was just a party trick."

'A party trick!?' Aito thought. As unbelievable as it seemed, he could only accept the fact that beings with power far beyond his imagination existed. After three months of hard work on that island, he thought that he had acquired a bit of power. But after Belmand's previous display of strength and Zalon's illusion… he felt bitter about it.

To define it as a "Party trick" was, in fact, exaggerated. It had required Zalon a bit of effort to do such a huge scale illusion, but Belmand didn't feel like telling Aito.

The god of sloth got on one knee and patted Aito's back as if he was calming a puppy. Although he was clearly just messing around with a new interesting toy.

"Don't be like that. Maybe you'll get to this point someday. Who knows?" The god said, lessening a bit more of his aura that was suppressing Aito. "Well, if it's of any consolation, that floating island wasn't our design but the Minerians."

Minerians? Yet another new thing or strange power to discover. Or maybe some kind of divine being of crafting.

"Nothing that silly," Belmand said. Feeling that Aito was on the verge of going mad because of his patting, he stood up and resumed his explanation. "*yawn*, Minerians are a native species of Iris you'll come to know soon enough. They are… more or less the equivalent of dwarves in your weird Earthling folklores. Now, I'll let you in on a little secret, for free, of course. Do you remember the river?"

Was that god pulling his leg again? Of course, he did, he had almost died there. In fact, he had almost died in half the places on that damn island.

"Well, it leads to a room at the center of the island, controlling the floating mechanism stuffed with a giant soul core, or… hum giant energy storage device, and that Paineater could be said to be… have been its guardian, in a way. It's a bit too complex for me to explain but, let's say that the water you saw was mixed with really tiny particles of mana. It's one of the reasons there weren't any lifeforms in the river, because there was a lot of mana but no souls. Without souls, there cannot be life."

Aito's mind got dizzy from all those details that made no sense since he was missing pieces of the puzzle. Although, he made extra effort to listen because it seemed important.

"The creatures on that island were artificially created out of fragments of souls. And, turns out, that if they left that island, those fragments would be automatically absorbed by the System. That's the second safety cap."

Somehow, Aito felt something bad coming his way. Maybe it was his "Intuition" signaling him of a potential danger, or his past experiences with divine beings.

"But it seems like your little friend realized it after killing one of its kind and rebelled against our commands despite its lack of a genuine soul. Maybe some kind of weird fragment got mixed in that monkey, I don't know. But what is certain, is that you gave him a soul. Or, to be more precise, the candle did when… 'Jack' was granted a class. This leads me to my last point and offer."

'Shit…' Aito cursed internally. That "offer" stunk as much as Jack's feces. Even more, since it came from the god who forced him into a deadly situation, not too long ago.

"Come on, I'm only trying to help," Belmand said with a cheerful smile.

'Fuck you.'

"Just when I thought you had toned down your rudeness. You really need to stop using that dirty word." The god admonished him, repeatedly pointing at Aito with his index finger like he was a naughty kid. "I seriously hope you find yourself a woman to teach good manners. Mine did miracles. I mean, look at me! I should call myself the god of virtue instead of the god of sloth!"

'…'

"…"

An awkward silence followed Belmand's boasting until he broke it with one of his customary yawns.

"Anyway, your furry friend is currently the sole being with an intact, pristine soul on that island. Since it isn't a challenger, he couldn't leave with you. And it turns out that the evol monkeys there were ordered to attack any 'true' living being on sight. Since you left… well, let's say that Jack is going to be in one hell of a pickle."

'Can't you just stop summoning them?'

"No can do. The System was programmed that way. Once a challenger leaves the island, the evol monkeys disintegrate. Problem is, your fascinating taming of an evol monkey led to a bug in the System. Well, I actually could stop their summoning for two months at best. But you see, I'm known to be slothful, so I would need a little… motivation."

Aito greeted his teeth. Even if that divine asshole could only stop evol monkey's summoning for a while, it could at least buy him some time to figure out another solution to save Jack.

Back on that island, before he left, he had sworn to himself to find any way possible to bring Jack out, and he wasn't about to break that promise.

Even if the god was clearly leading him by the leash. Taking Jack hostage, again, for Aito to fulfill some kind of quest, AGAIN.

'What do you want?'

"I like the sound of that. There is no free meal in this world, after all."

________________________________________

Unusually Long Author Note:

(I'm not using the "author's thoughts" so that you guys can use the paragraph comments.)

The Winner of the previous little game is Vorez. Therefore, his username will be used for a character that will appear around the end of volume 2 and the start of volume 3. To give you an idea, we just started volume 2.

Anyway, what was the complete answer to that quizz/game? Vorez gave a perfect answer by replying that "Return of the Woodcutter" and my new story "Ragnarök: The Fimbulwinter Saga" might take place in the same fantasy universe. CORRECT! However, don't misunderstand, it wasn't made on the spur of the moment.

That had been planned even before I started to write ROW. In fact, the idea came with my very first novel, "Death Before the Beginning" which is currently on Hiatus. The chapters that have already been posted will also be rewritten at some point. Still, you can check them out if you want to have an idea of what kind of guy the MC is.

In that story, the MC explores different worlds, realms. So eventually, all the next three books I'll be writing will be linked at some point. How? Hehehehehe... you'll have to wait until then to find out lol. There will be small clues peppered throughout the stories.

So to summarize, the three stories are what I came to call "The Yggdrasil Chronicles." So, of course you will find similarities in the System used in them. They won't exactly be the same tho. Just similar.

Honestly, I only have a rough idea of how it'll end, but how it's going to turn out is different because this is a freaking huge project and there is bound to be some things I haven't thought of along the way, due to the sheer size of it.

To top it off, I'm thinking right now about adding a fourth book with a FEMALE MC this time, just because I wanna write one. However, it will be hard to insert her in the Chronicles but I'm sure that I'll find a way somehow.

I've never really tried my hand at FMC before and it sounds fun. Plus, we do need a feminine presence in the Chronicles, right?

Anyway, I plan on uploading this book after ROW and SAGA (Ragnarök: The Fimbulwinter Saga) are finished. In order of publication it's gonna the following:

1) Return of the Woodcutter

2) Ragnarök: The Fimbulwinter Saga

3) FMC lead novel (idk about the title yet)

4 Death before the Beginning.

I hope you guys got your seat belts fastened because this is a huge project that's gonna take... what? Two or three years at least, maybe more actually.

But I promise you, this is gonna be a wild ride.

I'll read you guys later ;)

PS: As for the Roan= Yoan Roturier. Bravo Vorez. I wasn't expecting someone to spot that now lol.

But who is that character, really?

*Author smirk*