[Just pay attention to what's happening right now! Your Thoughts are deafeningly loud in here. If you keep this up, your carelessness will kill us very soon.]
That remark stings like a blow delivered right to his heart… or hearts. The pain quickly turned into annoyance, and that annoyance turned into anger.
“Oh, just shut the fuck up, Gabriel. Dying might just be the correct decision, pulling you into death along myself, liberating this whole world from Tyrants like you.
So if you don't want me to consider that option once more, you better shut up and let me think.”
Silence. Civitas now only hears his breathing and his slow steps echoing through the cave. He Almost expects another comment by Gabriel or someone else, but they continue to keep quiet.
Civitas' mind wanders back to Miles and Stirling. His entire world, which wasn't the prettiest or best, but still a constant of stability, crumbled to bits a few days ago. Then he came to terms with dying right then and there, executed by Stirling. But he got rescued by the strongest three beings known to exist. Can you really call that them rescuing him? Didn't they rather rescue themselves?
Moreover, apparently there's something inside of him, strong enough to suppress those three. How long has that been there? Was he born with it?
It's just too much for Civitas to handle. The longer he thinks about everything, the more confused he gets and the more confused he gets, the more he tries to think of explanations.
His head starts to ache. His vision starts to blur, from tears welling in his eyes. He can't remember when he cried the last time, but right now, he feels just as lost and overwhelmed as when he was a little child.
{Civitas, dear, there's a space behind that crack to your left. Do you want to take a break there?}
“Taking a break? What is that supposed to fix? I won't find any answers from sitting around in there”.
{That is true, but you also won't find any answers by getting yourself killed right now. And maybe we could answer at least some of your questions.}
Civitas stops and turns his head to look at the crack he just walked past. Perhaps she's right. Taking a small break could help to calm down.
“Alright, but just a few minutes until I think more clearly.”
Civitas squeezes himself through the crack to get into the space behind it. The space he finds there is small, about the size of his old home. Many small water streams seep through one wall, and gather on the floor in a narrow stream which flows out through the Crack Civitas just came in through. This room feels peaceful with the stream flowing through, and the knowledge that the only entrance is the crack which was just wide enough for Civitas to squeeze through. He sits down on the floor, with his back against the wall, facing the crack he came from. He then pulls his legs close and places his head on his knees. Sitting there and arranging his thoughts takes longer than he expected. After a while, Civitas' thoughts are arranged enough for him to have questions to ask.
He opens up his Window to the world.
As expected, it stays unchanged. One thing Civitas does not know anything about is the coloring of the text, but he didn't hear Zabula mention this as one of the abnormalities before, so he might as well ask her.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“You said you would answer some questions, Zabula, then let's start with the coloring of the text. Why is some text gray?”
{Oh? Now I wonder, isn't this common knowledge among the humans?}
“As I mentioned previously, I am not the average human. You already know about me not being able to open the Window to the world before, and I have never heard anyone talk about this before.”
{Yes, of course, how mindless of me. The colors represent a kind of ranking. We only know this ranking system from our ability values and the species tiers. Grey is the lowest ranking color. Once you have 100 gray points in an ability value, it will turn into 1 white point. 100 White points will turn into one blue point and so on. The many races that observed this phenomenon came up with names for these tiers. From lowest to highest they are: Grey-Inferior, White-Common, Blue-Uncommon, Yellow-rare, Red-Epic, Orange-Legendary and Green-Mythic. Seeing how your gray Swordsmanship is labeled inferior, it seems your special Window adheres to the naming convention we came up with.}
Civitas listens closely.
“That raises two more questions for me. One: Does that mean there are beings with, as you called it, 'Mythic' Ability Values, of which one point equals one TRILLION points of my color? And two: So you have never seen that Magenta color from my other skills before?”
{Indeed, both your assumptions are correct. Us three, the Dragon and Angel and I truly had mythic ability values. My highest Ability value was intelligence with 40134 Mythic points. I was level 84205.}
Civitas knew they were Strong, but this strong? With power like that, couldn't they just destroy the whole planet with ease?
“If you're this strong, why didn't you just take over the world already?”
[Because I am even Stronger.]
“Then let me ask you instead, Dorminil, why haven't you taken over the world yet?”
There's a short pause, and Civitas can feel them talking about something in the back of his mind, but he can't quite understand what they are saying. This proves Civitas' presumption that they are hiding things from him.
After just a few seconds, Gabriel is the one to answer.
[Well, you see, our species are in a delicate state of balance. We three tend not to participate in fights directly, since we are too strong and this world is too fragile. An all-out clash between us three would make this planet uninhabitable. Our little fight before we got to you and got stuck here also left deep craters and other traces on the surface. And I can't tell you the details, but we can't afford to abandon this planet.]
This answers a few questions for Civitas, but leaves others open.
“Then, what role do humans play in this war?”
“Who do you mean with 'that bastard'”?
“So he's almost as strong as one of you?”
[Ha! Don't make me laugh. He is barely as strong as an angel knight. Which is impressive for a human, but we have thousands of warriors on that level. Their location is strategically bad and has no remarkable resources. It simply isn't worth the trouble for us.]
“Alright, I get it, you are oh so mighty. Even mighty enough to get stuck in some random 18-year-old human.”
Civitas says sarcastically. They don't say anything, their pride is hurt, but they can't say anything because it's true.
He uses this silence to finish organizing his thoughts. And with that, he forms his determination. He wants answers, and he wants to survive.
To achieve that, he'll need to get stronger, a lot stronger, and his peculiar Window to the World of his will be his tool.
He picks up the sword he killed the wolf with, takes a few sips of water from the stream flowing through the room, and heads out into the wider cave system.