Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Inside a dome-shaped room, Endra struggled to resist the urge to let the fucking boy just burn under the light's effects. How divine would it be if this hopeless idiot just burned out of existence?

"No… no. Argh!"

<Tell Phel to use the Talisman as soon as possible! Hurry,> he conveyed. <I'll try to buy some time!>

Reluctantly, he used whatever energy was left inside Evin's mana core, to create a makeshift shield. Of course, he could've done more, but he decided against it. The boy needed to suffer. Endra couldn't just solve all his problems for him like that. Look where that got him.

Evin opened his mouth to speak, but only a horrid screech came from his throat. Endra smiled at the sound, but it soon disappeared due to the wall of shadow he created.. 

"Ah… Should've waited a bit," he murmured with disappointment.

"The Talisman!" Evin was screaming through one of the screens on the dome. 

Phel heard Evin's voice and finally started to dig through the variety of Talismans he possessed. At this moment, the shadow wall Endra created was evaporated under the light-ray's effects, threatening to burn Evin and Phel once again. 

"Maybe next time you'll be able to kill Evin… But too bad it's too late," Endra murmured, as he saw the normal stones in the corridor being peeled off to reveal the ketricite hidden underneath. 

This didn't stop the light-ray to become less glaring, but at least it stopped burning Evin and Phel under its touch. This allowed Phel to pull out the right Talisman from his pocket and create a boulder big enough to block the whole corridor, similar to the one Evin had to break through to escape. 

Finally, darkness returned to the corridors, letting Evin and Phel breathe out a sigh of relief. Endra also let his brain rest for a bit, and looked around the dome-shaped room that was becoming more and more messy. 

Various books were sprawled all across the room, half eaten foods were scattered all over the floor, and dust seemed to have accumulated over time. 

'I should clean up…'

But the moment of respite wasn't long. Immediately, Evin's disbelief to came out again in the form of curses at the Endra.

<Y-you killed him!> Evin's voice reverberated through the space. <Don't you have countless other ways to deal with him?!>

'Why won't this idiot shut up about it?' Endra thought spitefully, hating Evin for interrupting his calm moment he was enjoying a send ago. Ever since Endra filled Byron's body with bullets Evin has been bitching non-stop about it. 

'I've spoilt the fucker too much,' Endra felt pissed at Evin and wanted to lash out at him, but managed to stop himself. 

<Will you please shut up?> but he still couldn't keep the anger out of his words. <I told you I'm not perfect, right? You know that I don't always make the best choices. Isn't that why you're always so desperate to make your own choices in life?>

<But…>

<If you don't want me meddling with your life, then you should just tell me. I'll obediently sit in one corner of your mind and keep silent. With this, you'll make all the decisions yourself, but obviously, don't expect me to help you out with spell-casting. At least I have the self-respect to deny you that.>

<No, I still need your help, please,> Evin replied. <I'm sorry for saying these things… I was just shocked by what happened.>

'No… you just find myself a convenient spell-casting bot, so you're finding it hard to let go of me,' Endra wanted to say, but couldn't. 

<Whatever. Get to the Infirmary as soon as possible and get Arza fixed. Get your skin checked as well and afterwards, we can celebrate the fact that we were able to run away from that situation.>

Saying so, Endra ended the conversation and got up to clean his room. He could've using whatever magic that was applicable here to tidy up, but since he was maintaining a variety of spells ever since morning, he was starting to feel a headache brewing in his skull. And besides, it was nice to clean up manually sometimes, because it gave his day a semblance of normalcy. 

In a way, Endra was thankful to this place that dirtied up and got messy despite the magical nature of the place. After all, who would imagine that there would be a habitable space inside a boy's head, that got dirty over time, not to mention allowed the residents to 'imagine' their necessities into existence. And over time, the things they could imagine would become more and more complicated. 

Ever since Evin got access to the World of Thoughts, Endra became able to create a many different objects inside Evin's mind-space. Compared to the room five months ago, which only had a bed, a desk and a chair, the new one was much more complete.

The dome itself was enlarged and its inside space was divided into various rooms, like a bedroom, a study, the control center, a workshop, a kitchen and a bathroom. There wasn't anything special about these rooms, except for the study and the control center. The first contained various books and papers on subjects Endra became knowledgeable about during his 300 or so years of living as a ghost… though he knew each of the books were severely lacking in more detailed content.

But Endra was satisfied with categorizing them into different pockets of knowledge. It made it easy to remember whatever he forgot later on, and it also allowed him to add more detailed knowledge to these subjects very easily. 

He was always learning new things about these old subjects through various ruminations and coincidences; and more often than not, he would randomly remember new details about them and write down the relevant knowledge into the topic's respective book. 

But sadly, Endra could never be satisfied with the contents of the books – they were all surface level knowledges that he learned through conversations or random sparks of interest (which very quickly disappeared). This meant that he knew a great deal of things, but he could never say he knew a great deal of things about one particular subject. 

Some might think that if one could live for three hundred years, they would become smart and educated, highly knowledgeable in various fields and professions… Perhaps it would go like that if said person could interact with others. 

'After all, if you properly lived for 300 years and was still uneducated and unsuccessful at that point, then it was just embarrassing.' 

But if no one else was there to judge or acknowledge a person's efforts, then these immortal people just fell into an endless pit of lethargy. They'd start searching for quick fixes for their boredom, and when they got bored of that, they'd move on. 

When Endra wasn't spending his time in hospitals trying to chance upon a lingering spirit like himself, his productive pastime was to spend entire days in various entertainment establishments like cinemas or lectures, either getting up to the trends, or learning whatever new thing that was happening in the world. 

When the 21st century began, he even forced himself to attend middle-school and high-school so he didn't feel so out of touch anymore. 

But still, his favorite thing was to just accompany whoever he felt love for. Sometimes, he would stalk a person he found interesting, but most of the time, he spent his time with his beloved. Three hundred years sounded like a long time, but during that long time, Endra only met nine people who he could truly call his dearest, with Irina being the latest.

If he was allowed to, he wouldn't have hesitated to spent an eternity with any one of them… but unlike Endra, who was undying, everyone else was mortal. And to his knowledge, he was the only spirit who was allowed to exist among the living. 

'Up till the point that woman came and threw me into a portal and I ended up stuck here…' Endra thought with a sigh as he finished cleaning up the place. 

'Well, she did kind of promise to put me in a body and nothing else, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.'

A smile formed on his face, and Endra realized that the time spent cleaning and the time spent rumination about different subjects allowed him to finally calm down. He wasn't sure, but he suspected that the things made my Lochra's energy littering inside Evin's mind-space also had a calming effect.

Before Evin became a mage, if Endra fell into a bad mood, it wasn't unusual for him to stay in it for whole days or even weeks. Sometimes he even went briefly mad.

But whenever Endra interacted with the objects he was able to create using the World of Thoughts, his mind would very quickly stabilize itself. Like he suspected earlier, perhaps it had something to do with them giving him a sense of normalcy, but it really didn't feel like that to Endra. 

'In the first place, shouldn't eating imaginary food be detrimental for my mind? Maybe not, but it just sounds incredibly sad.'

But when given the choice between being able to eat imaginary food and not, Endra would always choose the former. He didn't even care about how such a thing was possible, and how it was possible for him to leave leftovers and they would actually stay where he left them, instead of dissipating out of existence. 

"Argh, now I'm getting way off topic," he said as he rubbed his messy hair. "I still need to solve the problem with Evin."

Faced with the boy's reluctance to study the soul-swapping techniques written on the papers they found underground, Endra was finally forced to meet reality: Evin was reluctant to separate with Endra. 

This was the biggest reason he felt pissed a few moments ago. But it was easy to realize why if Endra just thought about it. In fact, it would be weirder if Evin wanted to get rid of Endra after experiencing all the benefits that Endra could offer during these five months.

Before then, Endra was just a voice in Evin's head with no purpose other than ridiculing the boy's situation. But after Evin got access to mana, Endra turned into an overpowered spell-casting bot, who was also knowledgeable about various other subjects. Any well-educated person wouldn't feel impressed with this level of knowledge, but for a 10-year-old boy like Evin, Endra must look like a treasure trove of information. 

"Fucking shit, I really did spoil this idiot too much," Endra whispered as he slouched into his couch. "I should've done it the way I planned to in the first place."

Originally, Endra planned to be much stingier with his magic performance. He planned to make Evin chant his spells, so Endra would cast it for him… and he to put daily limits to the spells he would cast. This way, Evin would be forced to respect him, making it easier for Endra to stay in control.

But in the end, Endra felt it was too much trouble to do such a thing, and since he was feeling bad for Evin, he decided to not be stingy with the knowledge he offered. 

Of course, he kept the more dangerous knowledge to himself, but no one could say that Evin received a lacking education. 

'And look where that got me… I knew that the best path forward was to become the dominant one in the relationship and relentlessly push towards our most important goal. But conscience had to kick in and ruin everything.'

'…'

"Well, there's no point regretting my decisions now. I just need to work on getting Evin more motivated to be rid of me," Endra decided after thinking briefly.

"And I can't do it half-heartedly like last time, I need to do a proper job and stick to it… Evin's disposition is one that doesn't learn things through words and persuasion. He's also someone who doesn't feel pressured if he doesn't see the threat coming. The type who likes to ignore or run away from problems."

"So if I suddenly try to have a heart-to-heart with him, threatening to stop casting magic for him if he doesn't try to separate himself from me… he'll definitely try to stall the problem as much as possible."

"I need something more shocking and urgent to get him moving… Honestly, Decatur's probably going to exert much more pressure on Evin from now on. Even if Evin becomes Helm somehow, it's impossible for Decatur to just silently sit back as Evin basks in glory. That's not how Decatur thinks… But his pressure's useless for me. It would actually do the opposite of that. Evin would start to cling even more desperately to me."

"What should I do to push away Evin from me?" Endra pondered out loud.

He couldn't stop casting magic for him, because showing weakness from now on would be akin to suicide. It was better to act unfathomable in the eyes of others, so they were less likely to mess with Evin. 

"I'll search for opportunities later… Now I need to focus on the Island."

…

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