Chapter 156 - "... What Else Can We Be? ..."

"…Igsitu da…" Red switches languages.

"…" The Ahdem and Havvah are not sure if they heard it right, and it takes them a second or two to process that the language only them in the world, speak, or even remember, is spoken to them by Red.

"… bwun…" Havvah nods, just to clarify.

"… ymbhat…" Red smiles.

"D-dyisutna?..." Ahdem and Havvah are wide-eyed.

"Fumio. Please, deactivate the thingy in your cave and give it to me." Red switches back to Japanese and asks Fumio.

"Y-yes boss." Fumio immediately follows orders, knowing that he cannot understand the language that Red and the couple are using anyway.

"Well, just like Rezonad…" Red switches languages again to continue the conversation.

"… I have another demon knight serving under me who spent over a century in the old days. It just so happens that he knew that the spell used alongside the wood chips, were not just some random gibberish, but is the oldest human language he has ever known and the first he learned to speak. His fluency was a bit rusty, but I'm a linguist, I tried reverse engineering it." He explains.

"That's… impressive." Ahdem cannot help but admire the achievement.

"Did we summon that demon?" Havvah asks.

Even though there are gaps in her memories, she and Ahdem know that they tried their hardest to avoid teaching any demon or angel the 'first language'.

"I'm not sure. Where were you nine thousand years ago?" Red asks.

"Do you remember where you were at this same day twenty years ago?" Ahdem asks.

"Fair enough." Red shrugs.

"Were you anywhere near the fertile crescent when the Greeks first learned how to farm?" He asks.

"Uhhh…" Ahdem cannot remember.

"If you're basing it on estimations by anthropologists and archaeologists, then that was 9000 years ago?" Havvah asks.

"That's right." Red nods.

"Ah… We were in Australia after the ice age totally ended 10,000 years ago. Spent more time there for a few more centuries because of we miss being solitary. After that, we strolled Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

"When we reached the Bengal Sea, we got the idea to learn more about the oceans. We fell in love with the ocean proceeded to sail around Indian ocean for a few more centuries." Havvah pauses her rambling.

"So that means that we didn't summon your demon who learned our language." She finally gets to what Red is getting to.

"But that begs the question. How did our language survive that recently? We've left stopped spreading it to others when the ice age started 30,000 years ago." She ponders in confusion.

"You've lived so long, and is still surprised by that? Now, that surprises me." Red shakes his head.

"What do you mean?" Havvah is a bit offended.

"It doesn't matter." Red waves his hand.

"Although. I'm interested in your 'Father'." He prefaces.

"…" The couple this time, visibly recoil from the subject.

"The pyramid of Giza. Gobekli Tepe of Turkey. Gunung Padang of Australia. And those structures you've littered throughout Mesoamerica. Were those your efforts of contacting him?" Red asks.

"T-that…" The couple's eyes widen.

"How did you know?" Ahdem almost stands up in surprise.

"Meh. No matter how different they are, it is easy to spot a pattern here and there." Red shrugs.

"Aside from stargazing and counting your years on this planet, they were quite useless, were they?" He asks.

"…" He then sees the bitterness appear in Ahdem and Havvah's eyes.

" 'If only we had enough people to build large enough structures that Father can see from beyond the stars above…' Must have been your dream for at least a hundred millenia?

"And when the humanity had enough population, you went ahead and built, and built, and built, only to find out in the end that they were useless. Must have been frustrating, no, devastating?" He mockingly laments.

"Who are you?" Havvah's looks at Red with a burning, inquiring gaze.

"Does it matter?" Red asks rhetorically.

"What matters is, your father is not as attached in this world as you two might think." He proceeds.

"How dare you assume." Ahdem clenches his fists.

"I'm not assuming. I'm empathizing with him." Red shakes his head.

"A few hundred millenia is but a blink of an eye to a god like him." His words calming down the couple.

"The universe is vast. It is possible that your father has barely started in his journey." Red presents a speculation.

"Or maybe, he was already in his journey when he decided to rest for a few billion years and gave birth to this world out of boredom. And after having had enough rest, he went on his way." He adds another speculation.

Havvah and Ahdem are stunned. They do not know why, but they feel that Red's words make sense.

"Or maybe… This might offend you… He just doesn't care about you or this planet at all." Red concludes.

"…" Ahdem and Havvah are stunned.

"N-no." Havvah denies, but in her heart, she is reminded of the thought she and Ahdem always suspected.

"Maybe I'm wrong. But if he is as powerful as you two seem to think he is, then do you think this is the first world he made? That the things living in this world are the first ones he gave life to?" Red asks.

Ahdem and Havvah's worlds are starting to spin, and they cannot even find the strength to argue against Red's questions.

They cannot even be bothered to be amazed at how Red is taking a large peach out of the wooden chest beside the sink, slices it up into pieces, puts them on a plate, and lays it on the living room table, all while he sitting down and just using his elixir control to do it all.

"Why are you telling us this?" Ahdem asks with an exhausted voice.

"Because this is not the right way of going about finding him." Red says he takes one slice of the golden-colored peach and chucks it to his mouth.

"Oh? And how should we do it then?" Havvah asks in disdain.

"You two should become gods yourselves." Red says with a smirk.

"You… are crazy." Ahdem scoffs.

"Insane…" Havvah adds.

"I misspoke. You should AT THE LEAST just become strong enough to travel the universe." Red says.

"As if that does not sound any less crazy." Ahdem scratches his brows.

"Even if I travel as fast as the International Space Station, it'll take me 20 years to reach Neptune. NEPTUNE. And that's IF Neptune is just suspended in its place, and not traveling its orbit, while I travel to it. And you're talking about traveling the universe?" He rambles.

"Oh well… Just a thought… You can take it as a joke if you want." Red simply shrugs.

"Peach?" He offers the plate to the two.

As the couple enjoy the fruit, Red pulls out three talismans out from his storage ring and lays it down on the table.

"Oh. Pretty." Havvah immediately notices how well drawn the talismans are.

"Meh. Your 'rune systems' are too easy for me." Red shrugs.

"…" The Havvah freezes, realizing something.

"Fumio's sword… You made that?" She cannot help but ask.

"…" Ahdem, interested in Fumio's rune sword snaps his face towards Red.

"Yes." Red nods.

"But that's for later." He then compels the two with his spirit sense, to stop them from asking him about his rune system.

"Tell me. How do they look?" He asks the two.

"Perfect. I almost didn't recognize it as our runes. You drew them very artfully. Like calligraphy pieces." Ahdem cannot help but appreciate Red's handiwork.

"Yeah, thank you. But functionally. How are they?" Red asks.

"Angel detection rune, Demon detection rune, and a Superioris diagnosis rune... Even if you drew them uglier, the lines are correct and so are the ingredients, therefore would work perfectly." Havvah shrugs, done examining the talismans.

"I see." Red then opens up a wound on his thumb and smears his blood across the talismans.

The couple freeze at Red's actions before instinctively looking at the talismans to wait for any reaction.

A few seconds later, to their surprise, none of the three talismans are activated.

"Unless your blood belongs to an animal… How are you doing this?" Ahdem asks.

"Are you two animals too?" Red asks.

"What…" Havvah is initially confused before something clicks in her head.

"How do you know?" She asks in disbelief.

"That may be true..." Ahdem reaches the same realization as Havvah.

"… that the Superioris Rune does not react to our blood. But aside from being Superiori, what else can we be?" He asks.

"Simple. You two, and me, are not superiori." Red shrugs.

"…" The couple look at Red as if he is crazy.

"Fumio, buddy. You can come in now." Red calls out to Fumio in Japanese.

Fumio who has returned long ago from getting his treasure fragment from his cave, rejoins the group.

"Oh…" He then sees the talismans spread out on the table as he takes a seat.

"How can I help?" Fumio asks.

Red pulls out three new talismans and puts away the dirty ones.

"Please." He gestures to Fumio after laying the talismans down neatly.

Fumio bites his thumb, drawing blood, and swipes it across the three talismans, just like the way Red smeared his.

"…" The couple once again wait for the reactions, but just like what happened with Red, the talismans are not activated.

"And him, too. He's also a non-superioris." Red reveals to the couple.

While he is calm on the outside, he has been suppressing his excitement.

He has actually been observing Havvah and Ahdem for two days now. As soon as he received Nishiki's report about the couple and the details of it, he quickly rushed to Fumio's hill. During his observation, he was beyond pleased to detect the couple's unmutated, spiritual roots.

The couple's spiritual roots are even almost as good as the spiritual root that he woke up possessing in this world.

"And when I told you that you are special earlier, I wasn't lying. Unlike me and my student's bodies here, your bodies are touched by god himself. Maybe that's why you were, say, infected with longevity." He adds.

"No. This is… This is insane…" Havvah is skeptical, but meeting two people, who obviously have powers, possessing blood that are not reacting to Superioris Diagnosing Rune, just like her and her husband, she cannot help but entertain the validity of Red's words.

She even hopes that Red and Fumio belong to the same kind as them. 

"No." Ahdem too, is still skeptical, but he so desperately wants Red's words to be true, wanting to establish kinship with the cultivators.

"I'll draw talismans ourselves, and let's repeat the test." He suggests.

"Please, by all means.. I have all the materials."