484: Freelands

Freelands

"Yes, I know where the Origin is. And if you help me, I will take you there myself," she said.1

"You should have told me earlier," Ning said. "Alright, I will beat that guy without any problem."

Ning had found a reason to work for the goddess. With the location of the Origin as an incentive, something that even his system wouldn't tell him about, he was going to be able to gather a lot of energy in such little time. 

He simply hoped that the Origin had the same sort of time dilation that Kumia had.

Alexis looked at him with a gentle smile on her face, and Ning blushed a little when he saw her.

She was too damn beautiful. Ning wondered if she had some sort of skill that was making her so attractive, and used his Aether analysis to check on her.

However, just as he did, he heard a notification coming from the system.

<Host is close to overexerting his Mental Capacity

<Please take care

'Damn, I nearly lost consciousness,' Ning thought. That just went to show how powerful Alexis was in the ways of Aether. Simply looking at her first layer of Aether information, which simply gave her rank gave him a head-splitting ache that far surpassed the likes of even the lord of the tower.

"Are you sure you need my help? You seem like you can do what you wanted to yourself," Ning asked while rubbing his head. He couldn't believe it would hurt him this much so that he nearly went into a comatose again.

"I have enough strength to defeat anyone I want on this planet, but I am not able to hurt anyone. For some reason, my moral instincts tell me to not interfere with humans. Me teaching the humans was already me going against my own instincts, but I could force myself because I thought that was helping the people," she said.

"However, hurting someone is something I can't even force myself to do anymore. This is why I decided to go with helping someone again. You," she said.

Ning looked a little confused. There were things happening here that gave him quite a lot of confusion.

Besides all that, there was one thing he desperately wanted to learn. 

'System, does she have a system?' he asked. That was the only thing he could think of that would allow her to be as powerful as he was, and do things that weren't normally possible with Aether.

<No

'No?' Ning felt surprised. He was plenty sure that he had come across another system user. However, that didn't seem to be the case.

"What's a system?" Alexis asked confusedly.

"Uh, you don't have to know," Ning said quickly. He decided to change the topic quickly and asked, "So, um… are you really a goddess or just a human that has lived a really long time?" 

"I do not know," Alexis said. "The more I think of the past, the more clouded by memories get. I remember a time when there were normal animals roaming the forest. I remember when they weren't Aether beasts yet."

"I remember when humans were barely coming to be in evolution. I remember these all, yet when I try to think back to it, I can't. It's a very weird sensation," she said.

"So you don't even know if you are a god or not?" Ning asked.

Alexis shook her head. "I am just… a being, I think. I might even just look like a human because I like how they look," she said.

Ning felt like he could in some sense understand what she was. An archaic being, that never died, has a fascination with a human body, so you make yourself one. 

Was she perhaps an Energy at some point that got sentience? He wished the system would stop hiding information about energy. What was it so scared of them finding out. 

What could it be hiding even?

Ning looked to the front of the carriage, which by now he had come to understand was nothing more than a normal cart being pulled by the horses. 

He then put his arms forward and tried to create fire in his hands. He couldn't.

"I currently have no Aether. What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Become an Aether Starter," she said. 

"Okay," Ning said. He let the automatic Aether absorption activate for a few seconds before closing it. 

"Alright, done," he said.

Alexis looked at him and nodded. "Good, stay that way for now. I will start teaching you after we reach our destination," she said.

"Oh right," Ning said and he looked outside. "Where exactly are we going?" 

The surrounding around him now looked like it was a small pathway in the middle of a canyon. He had seen a few carriages pass next to them and looked at them, wondering what such a old-looking cart was doing in such a place.

That reminded him.

"Wait, where exactly are we even at?" he asked. He had been so preoccupied with finding out that she was Alexis that he didn't even bother to learn where he was. 

"We're in the Jesnal Canyon in the Kingdom of Shalor," she said.

"And where are we going?" he asked. The Kingdom of Shalor was an average place to stay at, but the Jesnal Canyon was not an ordinary place.

It landed right on the border of the Kingdom of Shalor, Principality of Losmana, and The Freeland. Since he was seeming to leave the Kingdom, he could only be going to one of the other two places. If he had to guess, it would be the Princi—

"The Freelands," Alexis said.

"The Freelands? Not Losmana? That is closer to the Aether headquarters," Ning said.

"We need to train you in a place where the Aether Tower has the most influence on the land. There you can show your skills and get pulled into the tower," she said.

"Since the Freelands has no monarch looking over them, the Tower gets the most authority in that place, and is thus the only place we can go to."

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