“Uh uh, so let me recap. You went to fight a Lv.170 vampire, lost your eye, pulled a bionic eye from your OP Item Box, transformed into a living breathing heap of Eion nanobots. Then your Kzanaria, whatever that is, gave you the power of crystal, whatever that means, and you became docile and blue afterward,” Allan summarized whilst sitting on a restaurant couch as meat grilled on the table grid before him.

And on the opposite side, Rakna nodded as he picked up a piece of beef with chopsticks. He put it on his plate first and then took a bite off, “Except the ‘docile and blue’ part, the rest is accurate.”

“Oh, fuck off. What about you is not docile and blue right now, eh? Tell me.”

“…my skin’s not blue.”

“Point in case but that is merely you being facetious,” Nyx commented from Rakna’s right, sitting next to the window as she ate.

The therian snorted and made a small smile.

“See? That,” Allan pointed his chopsticks at him. “Docile face and smile. Damn, I wish I could show this to the old master. He would be so proud of you,” he jested.

“Sure. He would say something like ‘You’ve finally grown up, kid?’. I wouldn’t really care about his opinion about this,” Rakna deadpanned and swallowed a mouthful of rice.

“So? Mind telling us about… that?” Marie, similarly sitting at the window, next to Allan, pointed at the other end of the table where a certain woman with noble attire and nine tails feasted with her eyes closed as she was being stared at by Flavia and Evelyn.

“Dude, is she like… your girlfriend or something?” Allan whispered but hiccupped when he heard his former teacher break her chopsticks.

Rakna stopped moving his hands for a moment and seriously looked up, the attention was on him and Kaelith opened one eye.

“Who knows. Ask her,” he uttered and the vixen choked on her food and started coughing.

Everyone turned toward her as she reached for the water and the werewolf snickered.

“Come on! Devourer, I was supposed to be the first in the line to mat-” Rakna wordlessly clasped the idiot mouth of a certain black cat sitting on his head as if it was her throne. She was certainly bigger than when she got raised as an Undead. In fact, her level had reached 50 already. She said herself that she could probably turn human at level 100.

“First in the line of what?” Kaelith raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t listen to the horny cat,” Rakna retorted and Higure hit his head with her tail in retaliation.

“So… my question?” The blonde reiterated with a smirk and Kaelith looked back at him.

“Who knows. Ask him,” she blankly said.

Allan sweatdropped. “Yeah, ok… I can see the chemistry between you two at least…”

“Shouldn’t we introduce ourselves at the very least?” Flavia said after a deep sigh. She smiled quite brightly and Kaelith blinked at her in surprise. “My name is Flavia Jeina.”

“Oh, um… I’m Kaelith Yahkshasa, Heiress of the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan,” she replied uneasily then leaned in to speak in an inaudible voice that she knew only Rakna her could hear. “Your friend was obviously a bit miffed at me… isn’t she a bit too nice?”

“That’s just how she is,” Rakna responded with a small smile. “Get used to it.”

“Hm…” The vixen hummed as she glanced at him. “I see… This competition might be harder than I thought,” she remarked and he rolled his eyes.

“Hi, the name’s Allan River,” the brawler followed up and she nodded in greetings.

“I’m Marie Gorgona,” the lamia was next.

“Nyx Nocta Regysnite,” the former goddess said with an even tone and Kaelith squinted her eyes.

“I have heard of you. The rumor of a supposedly weak but fallen goddess accepted as a Host spread across the Celestial Plateau like wildfire,” the vixen said and Nyx scoffed.

“Weak, is it? Very few people would have been able to say that to me in the past, much less some half-assed gods trapped in this joke of a place.”

Kaelith smiled a bit. “Interesting…” She said and turned to the last person who hadn’t introduced herself and the succubus shyly opened her mouth when she was looked at.

“My name is… Evelyn Malcanthet,” she spoke and bowed her head slightly.

Kaelith had an expression of recognition. “Excuse me, Malcanthet?”

“Um, yes?”

“Are you perhaps related to the family of alchemists of the same name?”

Evelyn’s eyes widened. “Yes, I’m, arguably, the last living member. How… do you know about us?”

“Well, we worked with the Jill folks several times in the past,” Kaelith said matter-of-factly. “And even if I wasn’t around a hundred years ago, my mom was. She told me many times about a family under the Jill that produced the best Rejuvenating Potions on the market. We still have some of them and the Clan Heads, especially the women, sing praises about them.”

“Rejuvenating Potions?” Rakna inquired.

“High-class concoctions with the purpose of reversing the aging process of the consumer,” Evelyn answered. “It’s a potion that applies to magic circuits as well. When people get to a certain age, the soul gets stronger, but the mana physical pathways get weaker. My family was the best at making them, we essentially owned the market. But...” she paused and clenched her hands. “We were dependent on the support of the Jill Family…”

Kaelith scowled. “They cut you off?” She asked with a dark tone. “We always wondered why and how the Malcanthet had suddenly been murdered… The Jill claimed they didn’t know about it.”

“They are lying!” Evelyn shouted in an outburst and strands of black force swirled around her and Rakna scowled at it. He looked around but it seemed only he, Higure, Nyx, and Kaelith had noticed since they were far more attuned to energies.

They looked at each other and Rakna nodded at Kaelith. “Calm down,” the vixen said and Evelyn gasped. She lowered her head flustered.

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s all right. I understand your anger,” Kaelith said delicately. “I will report this to the Clan when I return. Do you have any clue about the perpetrator? That would give us a place to start.”

“I was told… that the main perpetrator was named Makis Jill Nalcanth.”

The fox woman frowned. “If I may ask, who gave you that information?”

“The hat,” Rakna answered for her.

“Someone called little old me?” A voice sounded and a hat popped into existence on top of Flavia’s head and she groaned in mortification. “Oh, please, Young Lady. Why do you sound so aggravated whenever I appear?”

“Because it is aggravatingly embarrassing…” Flavia said whilst covering her face.

The hat blinked. “Well, that’s rude,” he muttered then looked at the gob-smacked fox. “Oh! If it isn’t the Fox Heiress! Nice to meet you! My humble name is Wis.”

“Right… it was this week,” Allan commented. “Talk about timing. Did you do it on purpose?”

Wis gasped in faux-hurt. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing?! It is fate that requires me to come forth in the most needed of times!”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You are… the Wisdom of Ariv,” Kaelith said. “One of top ten most sought and rarest Utility Items.”

“Very much so!” The hat said proudly. “Today, I have come to answer a question. Come on, ladies and gentlemen! Ask away!”

“I see, if it’s him… this simple statement could be used against the perpetrator. No one would ever reject a declaration from the Wisdom of Ariv.”

“Well, that makes things easier, doesn’t it?” Rakna mused.

“Certainly. But we’ll have to conduct some investigations regardless.”

“Hey, don’t ignore me,” the hat snapped.

“Shut it, hat. We have nothing to ask you right now,” Allan retorted with a hand on his chin.

“Nonsense! Usually, my contractors would be kowtowing to me, begging to have a second question answered instead of one! I am sure you have some. Think a bit!”

“The only desperate one here is you…” Marie mumbled and Wis took a metaphorical arrow to his metaphorical heart.

“You wound me… Lady Snake…”

“Stop calling me that already!”

“Wis,” Rakna raised his voice and the hat perked up. “I have one for you.”

“Oh? You haven’t asked me anything since the day I awakened. What is it, Crazy Boy? Though you seem to be much better now so maybe I shouldn’t call you that anymore. The Sage is doing marvels to you, I see.”

“If you want to call it that,” Rakna uttered and sipped on his wine to fuel the Sloth. “My question is simple. What does the System hide behind its end line?”

The table fell silent and Wis hummed gravely while the others looked enlightened by the question and Kaelith stirred on her seat. She was by far the most interested since she had spent the past six to seven years climbing Plateaus.

“Riveting. But have you forgotten our talk about pertinence, Harvester?”

Rakna’s mouth twitched at the title. “Yes, and I don’t care. The end goal of the System doesn’t mean anything to me and you know it. If not to ask something worthless, why can’t I ask you something worth something but which I don’t give a shit about?”

“Hm… fair enough. You are planning to leave the Plateau on your own before reaching the top I assume,” Wis said as if it was evident but everyone snapped toward Rakna who shrugged. “At the rate you’re going, you might have the necessary aptitude to be the strongest Host in the system by level 500. It is not farfetched. All right, I will grant you the answer you seek.”

Wis jumped off Flavia’s head, much to her relief, and landed on the table edge. Rakna raised a hand to have him wait and swiftly drew a magic formation on the table with Star Energy. He tapped the center when he was done and the surroundings become sound and vision-proof. There were quite a lot of people around the restaurant that were watching them.

“Good thinking,” Wis nodded. “I have five minutes left so let’s get it going. I don’t think this will be much of a surprise to you, but there are indeed a thousand Plateaus. The very last Plateau is called the Birth of Eden. It is where the Core of Systema lies.”

“Systema?”

“Oh, right. I’ll treat is a freebie. Systemakva Etr Zotan. This is the actual name of what you call the System. The latter is simply a conveniently made-up one to make sense to your mortal languages.”

“What language is that?” Nyx frowned. “Even I don’t recognize it.”

“Again, freebie. At this rate, I might use too much power and take two weeks to recover,” Wis said with a non-committal wave. “That is because the Tongue of Gods you rightfully possess does not include the Original Language. You want someone capable of understanding it? Go look for the last living Creator, Slanderer, or the Oldest and Wisest Dragons alive, Kur and Asgorath, or the Will of Existence, Krynox, or the All-Knowing Serpent of Ragnarök, Jörmungandr, or the Personification of the Dreaming Realm, Breksta, or the World Devourer, Horsey, and of course, the one who unites them all, Eternal Night.”

“Horsey?” Allan raised his voice in confusion while everyone else collectively decided to ignore it.

The night goddess frowned. “For it to be something only known by the most erudite of all…”

“Systema is just a nifty abbreviation I use. It was made at the birth of the world. Its first name, the one given to mortals, was the one and only Eden; the source of life. That’s what lies at the end; the Life of all that brave Systema.”

“Eden…” Rakna muttered as everyone was trying to process the information. “So, I was right,” he added and Wis raised an inexistent eyebrow at him. “This place is a factory. We loan and lend the resources to Eden and in return, we level up, and they siphon part of our Life Force as Nyx pointed out before. That’s what you mean by Life, right? It was just you being vague on purpose.”

Wis grunted. “You might not be suitable as my contractor but you are sharp enough…”

“If that’s true… there is a core full of raw Life Force waiting to be claimed,” Kaelith said. “But what can be done with it? You would get vaporized by just getting close to it.”

“Oh, you have no idea. There is more than just three-thousand-years-worth of Hosts’ Life Force in it,” Wis revealed with a grin. “The Phantasms… the Broken Depths, have been working on this for billions of years altogether. Forget ‘someone’. There is enough energy to kill Eternal Night and the rest of Existence in there. Systema was just the best way to purify it and give it finishing touches.”

“Wha-” Kaelith couldn’t form coherent thoughts. “Phantasms? Broken Depths? All right… without asking that, what is the point of doing it? What do they gain from it?”

Wis looked at her. “Who knows,” he uttered and her expression twitched. He laughed at her and started disintegrating. “I’ve stayed for too long and answered too much already. You’re lucky that I like you all. Or else I would have just answered ‘Eden’ and be done with it.”

“Before you go, answer me this too. Consider it banter. You’re recharging for two weeks anyway, right?” Rakna said and the hat sighed.

“You… this is risky for me, you know? Systema is ruthless.”

“I don’t care.”

“…little piece of shit. Ask it. You have twenty seconds.”

“I’ve always been curious. How do you know all of this? What raises you to the same height as all those world-shattering beings you listed?”

“Hahaha! First time I am asked,” he answered laughingly. “You can take it this way; Krynox is my cousin,” he stated and disappeared completely.