Chapter 167: Boredom

A day had passed since, and Evin was sitting on his bed, with the body of the woman lying next to him motionlessly. He had sat her onto the bed at some point and dressed her up with some clothing he found in his a Nasst's room. She now looked like some life-size doll, buti t wasn't like she decayed, so there really were no physical, or comfort-related problems, like the rotting smell of a normal body. Evin felt like there would some problems relating to morality, but it wasn't an issue for him. 

Evin looked at the woman next to him and a calming feeling arose in his heart. For some reason, he really didn't like the fact that she was lying on the cold, wooden floor. He had felt much more at peace when he saw the woman on the bed. There was still the giant gaping hole on her chest, but that wasn't something Evin could solve so it didn't bother him too much.

'Hmm... I wonder how am I going to absorb her into my own soul?' 

Frankly he was terrified with the prospect of learning what had happened when he was living as this woman. And to think that he was going to slay and absorb every other soul that was roaming outside made him feel extremely guilty. They were after all, spirits like he was... and from what he could understand, ones that came from before the age of the Empire.

Should he refuse to kill them? Or was he doing them good by releasing them from this torture? Is there really no other way?

There wouldn't have been any problems if the thing with the woman didn't happen. Evin was sure he would only think of them as neutral enemies and get it over with. Now that he labeled them as individuals who had their own thoughts and beliefs, suddenly things become more complicated.

'Such childish thoughts...' Evin laughed dryly after thinking a bit. Who knew who these souls were? At this point, there was no point in mulling over morality. It would be best for him to just pretend they were dead already and that he was just releasing their souls into the afterlife. Even if he knew it was a pretty little lie, he knew it was best to believe in it.

He then looked at Four, who had lied down onto the ground at some point. If not for the rhythmic breathing of her chest, Evin would think she was dead. 

The previous day, Evin mustered up the courage and tried to pull Four out of her daze after practicing his Authority Style for a bit. But he found that he wasn't able to wake her no matter how he tried. His strength wasn't enough to even pull out a single strand of hair from the girl, and no matter how loud he shouted in her ears, she would stay still like she had blocked out the whole world for the time being. 

At this point, he realized that all the pain of deliberating over whether to bother her or not was completely meaningless.

"But at least I don't have to agonize over the thing now," Evin murmured as he stared at Four. 

"Wake up!" he suddenly shouted.

'Like this, I can just shout at her without thinking about it,' Evin thought with satisfaction and screamed again.

Screaming felt good. Though not always. Evin used to scream randomly a lot when he was spirit and when he overdid it, it just felt forced and depressing.

He sighed and shook his head. His shoulders automatically went for a shrug, but Evin managed to stop it in time. This was a new habit that he realized he had developed. At first, he didn't notice it, but eventually, he realized he looked very weird when he was doing it. Maybe a bit too feminine. It was probably fine since he was a kid now, but when he became old enough, it would start looking weird. 

Also, it was unusually distinct. If he ever had to conceal his identity, it might be compromising in one of those rare unlucky cases. 

'I should probably practice my martial arts while waiting, but I'm just not feeling it today, so I won't even bother,' he decided. As he was rolling on the bed, being bored in general, a groaning sound came from Four. Evin's attention was instantly drawn, as he jumped from the bed and landed next to the girl.

"It would've been nice… if you didn't fucking scream randomly," the girl said with an annoyed glare and Evin blushed slightly. 

"I'm sorry," he could only apologize sincerely.

"Fucking whatever," Four said and handed Evin what seemed to a very high-quality scroll. 

Evin realized that Four had two, maybe three different moods. Shy, with a broken speech. Confident, with lots of swearing. And maybe yandere, considering what she did to Evin when he was in the World of Time. 

"All the bullshit you need should be in there waiting for you. I'll be waiting here for however long it fucking takes you to burn the tree. But do fucking hurry, I don't want to wait too long. I might get bored and start fucking this woman after reviving her," Four declared crossly and jumped onto the bed.

"?" Evin looked at her questioningly, and the other seemed to realize what she just said.

"Fuck you," Four cursed and lied down onto the bed.

'Alright, then,' Evin shook his head and delved into the scroll. 

But reading through the information on the scrolls, he was properly astonished. As far as he could tell there was probably about a books' worth of content inside the scroll, all explaining the various details of this failed World of Death, its inhabitants, its magic, and its rules. 

Four's writing style was very detailed and easy to read, patiently explaining every little new detail that popped out in the scroll. Most of the explanations were the impressions she had after observing it for a long time. But it also included some comments from the Empress as well.

Evin was pleasantly surprised that Four didn't write as terribly as she spoke. There were some 'fucks' and 'shits' here and there, but it was mostly tame.

[This scroll is mostly about Soul Magic and its origins. The nomenclature, Soul Magic, was first used by the Empress, before she forced everyone else to use it as well. There will be a lot of things that she named, so to make that clear, if you see this (EN – Empress' Nomenclature) after reading something, it means that it was named by the Empress, and that she will probably be angry at you if you use a any kind of different name for them] 

The book began a bit weirdly, but Evin just shrugged it off as the people from Alvox just being very defensive about the names of things.

[First, we will talk about the origins of this World, the World of Death(EN). Frankly, the best way I could describe the state of this World is that it's a mess. This is the best way. The Empress will tell you that it's a 'world filled with Soul energy in an otherwise dead environment, plus trial(failed)' (EN), but in the end it's a mess. Let me tell you why it's a mess:]

Evin's curiosity was piqued as he read through the lines and lines of information.

He learned that this was one of the first projects the Empress worked on before she developed the Worlds. It could almost be called a prototype World. Although it didn't really explain anything in greater detail (as Evin would expect), he learned that this World was supposed to be one of the Worlds available to the mages, but in the end, failed and ended up becoming a kind of test dummy for the Empress' ideas. He learned how she tried the idea of a making a trial for mages, about how the Instruments of Death(EN) came to be randomly, how the Soul Tree(EN) comes to be, and how this whole world was exclusive only to him.

Evin suddenly realized he was learning information that he probably wasn't supposed to. Probably not even most super-imposers knew about these things. But what he was most interested in was the Empress.

Evin really didn't know much about the Empress, but she sounded very different from how he imagined her. Perhaps because of her uninvolving approach to how she managed her Empire, Evin thought that she would have a more cold and detached persona?

Shaking his head, he continued to read.