In the gray nothingness I found myself now, I remembered where I'd heard Di'at's name before.

The Shevirat were pure Energy separated into ten and united into one; Di'at was where the Energy of all ten Shevirat united back into one Energy, into the Divine Light or Nix Fin Lux. From what little I knew, I'd thought Di'at was a location, not another Shevirat.

And if Di'at was a location, that was roughly where I seemed to be.

All around me was gray nothingness. Like an endless fog. I couldn't see my feet in it. I couldn't see more than an arm span in front of me. When I'd died before, I'd opened my eyes and I always found myself back in bed at the Viscoti estate. I hadn't needed to open my eyes this time because I hadn't closed them.

"You're not dead, you idiot."

Although I didn't recognize the voice, I knew it was Di'at speaking to me through the fog. His voice was more ethereal here, as if I was listening to the aurora borealis or space--some distant, beautiful phenomenon I wasn't meant to hear. My hearing reached for more of the sound but I had to grit my teeth against the echoing of it in my ears all the same.

"Great," I said, not even knowing which direction to look or where I should be directing my response.

"Is it though?"

Out of the fog in the distance, Di'at emerged even though I shouldn't be able to see him. He didn't even look like he was walking, just floating. He still looked human, but here, he had an opalescent dot under each of his eyes. His white hair and skin and clothes all made sense now; he could've blended into the fog here if he wanted.

He lifted a brow at me as he continued coming closer, a smirk pulling at his lips. "I thought you'd like this form?"

"You're a god," I said. "There's no way you made your form based on my tastes. Can we get to the point? Why did you want to connect with my System?"

"So I could bring you here, you fucking idiot, and get it through your thick skull that you're going to keep dying again and again and I'm going to have to keep looping you back to the same point in your life until you do what I need you to do."

When Di'at finally stopped in front of me, he was practically standing over me. He was more than a full head taller than me, but again, I was only 17 in this body so a lot of people were taller than me. His features this close up looked too perfect to be real, and his eyes swirled with a power that was too great to even fathom. I clenched my fists.

"What you need me to do?" I quoted him. "You should've left me dead. I don't want to do whatever it is that you want me to do. And you have to know that. You're a god."

Di'at stabbed me in the head with is finger, and I stumbled back from the force of it. He also then caught me by the shoulders from behind and steadied me, now transformed into a boy around my age and height. How annoying.

"Yes, I know that," he said, then started pacing around me in a circle. This was its own form of torture, wasn't it? "That's the Detached attitude of your Soul, and it's why I need you. You're predictable You're always the same in every life, in every world, in every situation. I can count on you. Almost too much."

"Count on me for what?" I growled, not bothering to follow him with my eyes when he could move quicker than I could see and it'd make me dizzy with him circling me. "If you're the one who brought me to this world, don't you have a responsibility to tell me for what?"

"I would've told you before now if you'd tried communicating with me before now." He threw his hands up in the air before disappearing behind me again. "I knew you'd be wary of the World System, which is part of why I chose you, but I didn't think that'd mean you'd also be wary of your own fucking System."

He made a frustrated noise and glared at me as he came back around to face me. "You want to know what I'm counting on your for? This is the beginning of the end of everything. You saw that demon. That was Solgraroth, one of the sixty-six Knights in the Order of the Rational of the 3rd Dominion of the Underworld. There are thousands of demons like Solgraroth who have already crossed over into this world over millennia, and their influence over the World System has become a threat to the balance of the Universe itself."

"You want me to stop the fucking apocalypse?" I asked. What a ridiculous idea. He said he knew me, but how well could he possibly know me if he thought I'd be interested in saving a world that was not my own or lifting a single finger to help him?

He blinked at me in his 17-year-old form, then burst out laughing. Fucking annoying asshole.

"Once again, you're a god," I said. "You stop it. Now take me back."

He stopped laughing now, turning to his older form, and came to stand over me again. "One world matters, you imbecile, because all of the worlds are linked. You're not stopping just the end of this world, but the end of everything. You've failed six times now."

"I can't fail at something I never tried to do in the first place."

"The results are the same though."

I sighed. "I don't care. If I die, then I die. If everyone dies, then everyone dies. Wouldn't that mean your problem is solved?"

"It's not really death." He smiled, suddenly smug about something. He chuckled and folded his arms over his chest. "Let me spell this out for you, you fucking fool. The Universe System connects all of the World Systems. The World System of your world connects all of the Soul Systems on it. Through that connection, each and every Soul System has a certain amount of influence on the World System depending on the quality of their Soul. If enough Souls want there to be a new Dungeon near Brugge, the World System will likely create one sooner or later. You're following?"

"I'm following," I said. Now I started to pace, but he moved opposite me.

"What do you think would happen to be in that Dungeon?" he asked.

"Probably the treasure that the people wanted to be in there," I said.

"You are following." He clapped. This asshole. "So I'll go back to my earlier point. The Demeot have been devouring the Souls of the Forms in this world and replacing them with their own for millions of years. Their Soul Systems exert the same influence on the World System as the Soul they devoured. They aim to possess particular Souls for this reason."

"So they're devouring the Souls with the highest quality." It made sense now why Professor Zell had been so interested in the quality of Souls rather than their Class or Stage. "Including Avatars?"

Di'at nodded. "The World System has been favoring the Demeot who have crossed over for hundreds of years now. Not to mention, the Demeot mindlessly follow the orders of the Rashirat. So every Demeot who possesses a Form in this world is doing the bidding of the Rashirat. What do you think that means, Jerome?"

"That the World System has been favoring the Rashirat." And that I'd been right not to trust the whole damn thing.

"Not just that. The other issue is that as much as the Soul Systems influence the World System," Di'at continued, "the World System also influences the Soul System. There are very few people on this world who have not now been influenced by the World System. That's where you come in."

"The Detached attitude of my Soul?" I guessed.

"Your Soul can't be devoured," Di'at said. He held up a finger for each new point he brought up. "Your Soul also forms no bonds to any World, so the World System here has little influence on you, but I knew you'd be wary of it in any case. You also happen to have died in your last form at just the time when the Gerard of this world died, which means I was able to transmigrate your Soul. That makes me your Patron rather than Ket'ha."

"So I'm convenient." I had to laugh this time.

Di'at laughed, and in the process, he changed into a woman. The tunic he'd been wearing didn't fit her very well. "Convenient? You?" She laughed harder. "You're not convenient at all, you stubborn moron. You're completely inconvenient. You're entirely uncooperative. You're such a little shit. I've been nudging your System all this time trying to get you to communicate with me. Or at least do what I needed you to do."

This was frustrating. She had to know as well as I did that I wasn't presented with a lot of opportunity to learn about my System enough to trust it. Father had been against me learning it early, so I hadn't inherited any valuable knowledge about it from the original Gerard. My suspicions were also justified, it seemed, but there was no way for me to know that I was the special snowflake who wouldn't be corrupted by it.

All that said, I was frustrated with myself as well, because my priorities had been wrong all this time.

"And what is it that you need me to do so badly that you can't do yourself?" I asked.

Di'at returned to the form of a 17-year-old boy. "Kill King Enosh XXI."