134 Anticipation (2/2)

We ran through the city for several hours like that. Each time I ate a dungeon core, I invested all my points into endurance, as always. Each time the blue squares appeared, Yawm left before the overseer appeared. I ignored the overseer when he appeared. I let the guy do his job. Unlike him, I didn’t need snide remarks for satisfaction.

Well, telling him off would be pretty satisfying, but I didn’t need them, yenno?

Instead, I honed in on the task at hand. After the day ended, we cleared two dozen rifts. While walking back, we an intersection in the dead city. Around us, the wind howled loud, like some banshee. A dozen cars littered the streets around us, their windows bashed in.

The door of a nearby building slapped open and closed with the wind. Yawm bent over, lifting a rock nearby and lobbed it at the noisy distraction. The rock exploded on the side of the building, like someone fired a rocket at it. With no hinges holding it up, the door fell down, flopping against the porch.

Yawm sighed, “That series of events between the Overseer and I...It was a rather nasty series of events, wasn’t it?”

I shrugged, “On both ends, yeah. It got ugly.”

Yawm nodded, “And there is your blunt manner of being.” Yawm stood up tall, looking up at the sky, “He and I have history, as you may imagine. It makes holding a civil conversation with him impossible. At least for me that is.”

I laughed, “Man, I can relate. I thought he was going to kill you before you responded. Talk about terrifying.”

Yawm frowned, “Next time, do avoid deflecting his attack like that. I want to see him die.”

I rolled my eyes, “You wouldn’t see anything. He’d have obliterated you, just like you’d obliterated him. I just tried defusing the situation so that I wasn’t annihilated in the process.”

Yawm chuckled, “Your sense of self preservation hasn’t ever led you astray, has it?”

I gestured to all of me, “Obviously not.”

Yawm nodded. We stood there for a minute, then he looked back at me from the sky,

“I do hope your thinking of me hasn’t changed.”

I waved his words away with my hand,

“What? Hell no. I already knew you had beef with Schema, sentinels, and the overseers. That overseer in particular was a total asshole.”

Yawm nodded, opening turning a palm towards me, “I couldn’t agree more. I despise my coarse manner of speaking with him as well. It degrades my own opinion of myself.”

I shook my head, “You sound like me when I’m talking to, well, when I talked to my dad. For some reason, I couldn’t be remotely cognizant of anything when he was around.”

Yawm shrugged, “A checkered past between people muddies the mind. It distorts our perception of others, making us rash and unlike ourselves. I’m glad you forgive me for that.”

Yawm sighed, “I’m glad we discussed the matter at the very least.”

I walked forward, “Eh, just be ready to let my bullshit go when I fuck up something next time.”

Yawm jogged back up to me, “Allow me to assure you. I will voice not one word of dissent.”

I spread out my hands, “Good, because it could come at any moment. I mean, I fuck up all the time.”

The mood changed, turning almost jovial. After running around with something weighing us down for a while, resolving the issue let us both breath. From my experience, those situations either broke friendships down or built them up. Considering how things ended up, I considered it the latter.

With the day ended, we walked through the city like that. Yawm’s questions about human civilization sprang back up. I answered with jokes thrown in. We reached a mile from his rift, the gray cloud looming overhead. We ran through the gray cloud, entering the different world.

Once we dived through his lake, we returned, once more in Yawm’s underwater castle. I walked towards my room, looking forward to a bit of down time. As I did, a message appeared in front of me,

Amara, the Lost One(Time: Undefined) - I’ve been searching through forums and message boards. While hard to find, I hunted down several threads regarding Yawm and the system. Within the den of these hunters, I discovered quite a few delicious details regarding both Yawm and Schema.

Using the knowledge, I can repair our identification systems. They work like this. Schema’s operating system identifies the monster using your own senses as the lens. Once he’s gathered data on it through your sensory systems, the system sends a personalized query towards your region’s AI.

This little Schema interprets the data and gives you an answer based on what you see, smell, etc.

If done with the improper channels, this little Schema can boot us from the system. It also exposes our location, something we’d both rather avoid. I found a way of avoiding their hunting eyes.

We upload the most common forms of eldritch and their overall rarities. As we see an eldritch or object, our obelisks will sift through these files. After probing for the item most similar to what we sense, our obelisk gives us information.

The teeth of our new identification systems won’t be as sharp as Schema’s own. Having teeth is better than being toothless, however.

I celebrated the good news before reading her next message.

Amara, the Lost One(Time: Undefined) - Know that this is the best of what I have to tell you. The other half involves Yawm. He rarely stays in one place for long. The monster prefers to hop from planet to planet, tossing them aside like used rags.

No matter how much I researched, I never discovered how he hunted worlds. Whenever Yawm stole the sentinel’s spear, Schema neutralized its power. To fix such a convoluted tool should have been outside of Yawm’s abilities. Yawm can hardly write even a basic incantation. How did he fix something of unmeasurable complexity?

Even more so, I fail at understanding his motives. He is a battle junkie. Why is he trying to create eternal peace? I doubt that’s his true inclination. If anything, he might be trying to destabilize everything we know for war. My opinion of that monster may be biased.

I also discovered discrete forums hidden in the depths of the monolith’s network. Within these forums, I discovered a site dedicated to active Breakers. Breakers act as Schema’s best bounty hunters with a heightened level cap. They hunt for monsters like Yawm or even people like you.

Information has spread. One of the levelers you killed from before uploaded a video of you fighting. The video showed an instant quest of A- rank. The quest detailed how you are following Yawm. Considering that Earth has been on the list of quarantined worlds, and the Breakers have put two and two together.

They are coming.