“That’s really gross,” Isabelle muttered darkly. “Yuck!”

“Well, at least you aren’t puking,” Gaius replied, his hands stained with blood. “And I’m the one doing the digging too.”

An icky squelching sound filled the air as he pulled out yet another ether core. A small pile was sitting on the ground beside him, and Gaius couldn’t help but note that he had grown more and more squeamish as the years went by. Back when he first started out as a tiny Harvester in Heritage Basestation, he had gone through tens of them in a day without flinching.

Now, however…

After finishing off just one corpse, Gaius found himself too squeamish to continue on. Given that Nexus was expecting a nice load, however, Gaius had no choice but to continue his grim work.

“Can’t you do something about it with your Domain?” Isabelle asked.

“Me?” Gaius asked.

“Within that area, you can do anything, right? Just pluck them out with your imagination or something! You can use that special energy vision of yours to spot it.”

“I thought you didn’t like me using it,” said Gaius.

“I don’t like it when you look at me with it,” Isabelle replied. “It doesn’t feel like you. But corpses aren’t going to complain, right?”

“Hmm, true. Incidentally, what do I feel like when I have those…eyes on?” Gaius asked.

“Piercing. Dispassionate. Cold.” Isabelle thought about her words for a moment. “At the same time, there were…all kinds of emotions. It was as if you were a covered pot full of boiling water. On the verge of exploding, but the pot and the cover were steady, unmoving.”

“A cooking analogy, nice.” Gaius tilted his head. “Still, I don’t really feel those emotions you’re talking about, though. Maybe I’ll examine it in greater detail when I have time.”

Condensing some grey water out of thin air, he washed his hands.

“See?” Isabelle asked. “If you can do that, I don’t see why you can’t pluck out ether cores without butchering those poor snowpyres. In fact, you don’t even need to fight them at all, do you?”

Gaius glanced at the huge, gaping hole in the snowpyre’s chest and smiled. “Are you…by chance, feeling pity for those guys?”

“Well, this fellow did die a horrible death, you know. And besides, this guy is…probably innocent.”

“Innocent? But they are bloodthirsty killers,” Gaius replied.

“I know, but is it of their own choice? Or were they born that way?” Isabelle asked. “If it’s the latter, we’re essentially punishing them for being born. A neat and quick death would be far better than…”

“Born that way?” Gaius repeated. Something seemed to click in his mind as Isabelle rattled on. What were snowpyres? No one knew, but from the lectures, Gaius knew that they were supposedly created from the bodies of the fallen. How did that work?

“Something wrong?” Isabelle asked.

“Bloodthirsty killers…born that way…” Gaius mumbled. A piece fell into the jigsaw puzzle in his mind, and he looked up at Isabelle. “Say…is it possible that those snowpyres…they’re monsters created by the Crying Abyss?”

As she froze up, Gaius willed his vision to change. His mood lowered as he stared down at those ether cores, and then at a nearby gemstone. The grey lines that were gathering around those items were like the 3D model of the energy-gathering structure within his body.

He glanced at Isabelle, who was pondering over his words. Strands of grey energy were also gathering around her, in the same way they did for himself, those ether cores and gemstones.

“You’re using those eyes on me again!”

“Wait, wait!” Gaius returned his vision to normal and closed his eyes, bracing for the incoming bop. To his surprise, nothing happened after a few seconds, and he gingerly opened his eyes to look at Isabelle properly.

“Speak,” said Isabelle.

For some reason, she felt like an emperor or something, and Gaius found himself spilling whatever he’d discovered when he looked at the ether core and her. Her expression was…a rather interesting one, which afforded him some satisfaction.

As she continued to mull on those words, Gaius took a deep breath, pondering on the significance of what he had seen. He was capable of creating objects, but these objects weren’t permanent. They would eventually break apart into their constituent strands of grey energy, especially if they left his Domain. However, those little ether cores were made of the same thing, but they were capable of retaining a solid shape.

No matter how Gaius looked at it, it was that whirlpool-like structure that was affecting it.

“If I were to create something with such a structure, would it last longer? Or even forever?” Gaius mused out loud.

Isabelle looked up. “What structure?”

“An experiment. Let’s try it out.” His vision changed as Gaius imagined the form of an ether core. A lookalike appeared in his hands, but he didn’t just stop there. With another thought, the wispy mists around the small ball tightened up into little strands, and the mist around began to surge inside it.

Returning his vision to normal, Gaius looked at the ether core in his hands.

“Is that…”

“I think so,” said Gaius. “I just created an ether core with the ambient energy around me. And…well, it seems I might be able to create other items too. Items that won’t vanish after some time.”

“Something only the gods should be able to do,” Isabelle observed, an amused tone in her words.

“Well, it seems that you also qualify to wield such power,” said Gaius.

“Stop giving me false hope, and it’ll be fine,” Isabelle replied. “Was that what Weiwu actually did back then?”

“Probably. To think that this is a requirement for something like creating items, though.” Gaius narrowed his eyes. “In that case…what does the energy-gathering structure within a regular Knight look like? I think that’s an important topic.”

“Gaius?”

“What?” He rubbed his nose. “It’s a new toy! Shouldn’t I test it out? Besides, you were the one who was all excited.”

“I know, and I am, but wouldn’t you cause some trouble if you look at them with those eyes?”

“Maybe I’ll wear some sunglasses, then.”

“Sunglasses?”

“Don’t think too hard about it.” Gaius generated another ether core. “I’ll go make a bunch of them, and then see if Nexus can use it.”

“Just make it in the Library!”