Dema sat on an old couch in a cosy living room, slowly turning through the pages of a book entirely filled with pressed herbs and flowers.

“Damn, that’s a cute one! Theora gave it to me once.”

“It’s a Morning Glory,” the old man said, smiling. He had gathered and put together his collection of plants over decades, and the moment Dema had shown the slightest interest in it, he’d not stopped for a second from showing it all off.

Dema and Theora had finally arrived in Callarand — the side quest’s final destination. Now, they had to find where the Devil of Truth was currently located, and as always, Theora had decided to settle down in one of the larger cities for a while and ask the locals.

The old man had been kind enough to offer them a place to stay. His husband had died and all adopted children were out of the house, so now there was enough space to let adventurers stay every now and then. Unfortunately, despite his age, he didn’t know anything about the Devil of Truth, because he’d only arrived in this region some decades ago.

Almost 100 years in the past — around the time Dema and Theora met — the Devil of Truth had attacked Callarand. That, people remembered. But the details of the attack were now the fabric of myths and legends, as about every person who lived to see it had died of old age.

It was no densely populated area, and if any archivists or librarians had recorded these events, they’d still need to find them.

“Still, Morning Glory…” he mused after having fallen into thought for a bit. “What a peculiar choice of a flower to gift someone. You two must have a close relationship.”

Dema started grinning wide. “Why, of course! We’ve been travelling together for so long. No way we wouldn’t get, like, super tight!” She interlocked both of her index fingers to empathise her words, and winked. “We know all about each other! By heart.”

The old man wasn’t impressed, and raised a single eyebrow somewhat higher than one would expect to be possible on his weathered and kind face. He’d known the two of them for a while now, and seemed to have gathered some idea about them. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?”

Dema’s expression fell apart and was replaced with a show of exaggerated pained sadness. “Big, total lie, yeah! All she ever does is sleep! I feel like she doesn’t love me at all.”

She pursed her lips to one side and then shrugged. “Well, that’s a lie too. She’s just feeling down a lot, working through some issues, you know? I just wish she’d talk about them more with me. I feel like she needs a big, strong sis who can give her one hell of a hug and wring all her troubles out, but too bad, she’s already the strongest. And she’s taller than I am! Big bummer.”

She acted like she was looking into the distance wistfully, then caught herself. “Oh, but it’s not all bad. The few moments she does spend awake, she can’t help but shower me with affection, and doesn’t even realise!”

At that moment, Theora entered the room from the adjacent kitchen, having overheard the entire conversation from just a few steps away. “You are talking nonsense again. I don’t do any showering with affection,” she said, placing Dema’s morning tea down on the table in front of her. “Here. I tried making fruit tea this time. Oranges and cherries. Let me know if you like it.”

Dema stared at the old man, shaking her head and suppressing a smile, her hands raised to point at Theora. “See!? Such a cutie.” The old man laughed as he watched Dema give him knowing looks while she put down the book to try and taste the tea she had so generously received.

“We need to get out early today,” Theora murmured in thought. “We still haven’t made any progress towards finding the Devil, and we are running out of time.”

“Why, sleepyhead, for that, you’ve only got yourself to blame,” Dema sing-songed.

Theora perked up to stare at her, brows raised in ever so slight shock. “Oh, there I go again. I apologise.” Theora sighed, trying hard to contain her disappointment with herself. “I am making you suffer for my own shortcomings and mistakes. Please, feel free to stay home and rest.”

“Wait, what!” Dema yelped. “Hell no! I wanna join. Let me join! I was just teasing!”

“Of course, you can join.” Theora shook her head in confusion. “I was just saying that you don’t need to feel like you have to. You are still welcome.”

“Alright!” Dema replied with more force in her voice than would be necessary. “Alright, I’ll join, then!”

“Alright. Yes, then please do.”

“I so will!”

Theora frowned, feeling lost. “Why are you so stirred up about this?”

The old man came to the rescue. “I think she might not like to be separated from you.”

The moment she heard that suggestion, Theora’s brain stopped working. The phrase did not parse. “What?” was all she managed to stammer out.

“That’s right!” Dema confirmed. “Don’t wanna be lonely! I need you doting on me.” Demonstratively, she took the first sip from her tea, and her eyes widened. “Damn, little rabbit! This one’s actually good!”

Theora’s mouth stood open for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘this one’? The others haven’t been?”

“Yeah, the others sucked! Bitter messes.” She pulled a grimace as she remembered them. “But this one’s amazing.”

“I’ve been making you tea all week. Why haven’t you told me?”

Dema shrugged sheepishly. “Because I thought you were gonna stop making me tea if I said anything?”

“Of course I would have stopped making you tea if it was bad.” After all, her goal wasn’t to make Dema suffer.

“Yeah, but this one ain’t bad! So sweet and running down my throat like… Well, like blood. I do love drinking blood. Maybe it’s the cherries, they always make me think of blood.” Dema pulled her gaze back down from the ceiling to end her nostalgic thoughts. “What I’m tryna say is, it was worth the effort! Now you can brew tea.”

In emphasis, she downed the rest of the cup in one go, even though it must have still been way too hot. And, as if to add insult to injury, a System notification popped up the moment she finished.

You have learned the Skill [Tea Brewing].

[Tea Brewing] advanced to Level 2!

Theora was overwhelmed by this to the point of feeling dizzy. She slumped down, right on the ground where she was standing. This was too much. Why was her chest feeling so warm and big and fuzzy?

Dema felt lonely without her? That had to be a lie, right? After all, the old man was very nice company.

Dema liked her tea? Had barely even teased her over it. Just a full-on, direct and honest compliment.

Was this some kind of attack? She felt like she was going to burst.

And then, that Skill. Sitting there at the bottom of her ugly and glitched-out stat sheet. Oh, how pretty it was, especially right next to the equally beautiful [Flower Language]. Almost enough to drown out the dark pressure exerted by [Obliterate] above them.

“Damn, you good?” Dema’s voice echoed in her mind and tore her out of her thoughts.

“Oh, yes. I just received a new Skill. So I got distracted.”

“Huh? Another Skill? That sucks! Sorry for you!”

“What?” Theora looked up, and at that exact moment, Dema seemed to realise she’d said something wrong.

“No, I mean, it’s great if you like the Skill!” she backpedalled. “Just, you know? The UI issue. Only gonna get worse the more Skills you receive.”

What was she talking about? Was she referring to her glitched stat sheet? How would more Skills make that worse?

“I have no idea what you mean?”

“Well,” Dema started, looking a little lost. “You know, the thing? With the terrible UI design? Whoever made the System seriously messed up. If you learn tons of Skills, it will list them all on your stat sheet, right?”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Dema continued. “But the sheet has the big, big problem that when you pull it up, it always defaults to show the bottom of the Skill page. I guess maybe whoever made it thought you’d wanna see the newest Skills first. But I open my sheet to see my stats! It’s a big pain, whenever I just wanna check my HP or something, I gotta scroll all the way up to the top just to see them, through all those different Skills. I imagine it must be even worse for you.”

Theora’s gaze darted back to her stat sheet. It was amazingly short and messy, and a true horror to look at. A reflection of self-inflicted scars that would never heal. The result of becoming the strongest person in the world, and then continuing to push. The answer to the question of what happened when one used [Obliterate] on one’s own stats, out of pure morbid curiosity — and, in a further desperate attempt to avoid one’s fate by destroying reality.

₦₳me: Theꝋɍⱥ    Cl