Chapter 345 - Maps

Eiro heard Lognir's words and looked back at him confused, "So, I have a 'Cl.u.s.ter' like that inside myself?" The Demon asked. It would explain a few things, at least. However, Lognir quickly shook his head.

"No, you don't. You have only a single 'Splinter' inside of you. One that is particularly powerful, but just a single one." Lognir explained, "And there is another difference between you and 'Cl.u.s.ter' holders... They are merely able to choose what sort of ability to improve as they level up. If they wish to become faster, their stat points will be distributed amongst Agility and Strength. If they wish to gain stronger Magic, their stat points will be distributed amongst Intelligence and Wisdom. They still have no choice how many stat points will be assigned to each stat, nor which exact stats will be effected by their wish."

Eiro looked back at Lognir and slowly shook his head, thinking that the Dragon misunderstood Eiro's explanation of how the stat point system worked. However, Lognir quickly showed that this was not the case, "This makes you different to them once more, Eiro. You are able to assign each individual point to whichever stat you wish, are you not? Your ability is clearly many times more... unique than those that hold a cl.u.s.ter."

Again, Eiro was disappointed as he realized that he still didn't have a clear explanation for what exactly it was that made him like this. Having a solution shown to him just to have it ripped away again... was more than just cruel to Eiro.

"...Do you have any idea of why I'm like this?" Eiro asked, but Lognir slowly shook his head, "All I can do is make a few assumptions. There is no way for me to know for sure. But... It is possible that you hold a unique piece of that primordial energy within you. Or the 'Splinter' simply interacts with the part that creates the system within you in a surprising manner. Maybe someone fiddled with your 'Splinter' and made it so that you would be like this. There are many different possibilities, you see?"

Eiro slowly nodded his head in response to the Dragon's explanation. At the end of the day... It did seem to have to do with the 'Splinter'. Right now, Eiro didn't have any idea of what was going on, but he was a step closer. Even if the goal seemed to be a thousand miles away, taking even a single step is infinitely better than standing at the start line.

And there was something else that Eiro knew now. Well, he didn't 'know' it, but he had a feeling. A feeling that remembering all of his memories would reveal something to Eiro that might help him clear more things up. He could swear that he heard the term 'Splinter' in such a context before. There was no way he didn't. Eiro was never so sure of something that he didn't even remember before, and he usually wasn't confident without reason.

Overconfident, sometimes, but he never felt confidence without any reason at all. Especially not confidence as strong as this. Eiro took a deep breath and let his mind run its course. Was there any memory that seemed like it would contain this information?

Somehow, there was none. But there was a gap. A gap that Eiro couldn't explain. A whole book was missing from his shelves in his mental library. Maybe this memory was the one that Eiro needed?

"...Let's keep talking about this later... There's something I need to-"

"No." Lognir said in a clear and loud voice, "You must do nothing but sleep for now. Your mind is too exhausted, even if you may not want to admit it to yourself. So now let us eat and then you will sleep, promise this to me."

"..." Eiro silently looked back at Lognir before nodding his head, "Sure. If you say so, then I should trust you." The Demon said in a clear, albeit quiet voice, and the Dragon was satisfied. He seemed to have to collect his thoughts about the information that was revealed to him for a while as well.

"I'll stay here and speak to these three for a little while longer, is that alright? I need to... collect my thoughts about this as well." Eiro said, and seeing Lognir's expression quickly added, "I really won't try to remember, don't worry."

Satisfied, Lognir slowly left as Eiro dropped onto the ground, first sitting there and soon letting his body pull to the ground to lay there, with Nelli, Gondos, and Sarius floating above the Demon's face, "Now, that's quite interesting... Right?" Nelli asked with a wry smile. She had known about this ability of Eiro's for a while now, but she knew even less about it than Eiro did. Of course she would be confused about such information.

Since neither Gondos nor Sarius truly understood the extent of Eiro's ability to assign his own stat points yet, nor did they truly know about the implications of Lognir's words, so they just looked at Eiro and tried to calm him down instead of freaking out like Eiro and Nelli themselves.

"Do not worry, Eiro. For the time that I have been with you, I have not seen you fail completely. There may be some times where things don't go the way you want them to, but at the end of the day, you always tend to pull through. If you want to figur this mystery out, then you will be able to, there is no doubt about that in my mind." Gondos said, with reassuring words entering Eiro's ears. 

And it did cheer him up. While both Nelli and Sarius were the kind that would sometimes lie or pretend something was alright for their own benefit, of course still in no serious way, but Gondos was one that Eiro never heard say anything but what he truly meant from the bottom of his heart.

It felt good to hear such honest words about something that he was genuinely worried about, "Thank you, Gondos."

Slowly, Sarius opened his mouth as well, wanting to say something about this as well, "Quite often, from the King and Queen, I heard about shit like this. Didn't know that it was something so important..."

"They told you about the truth of certain primordial forces that create numerous incredibly powerful beings and you didn't think it was important?"

"Oi, I didn't even know I was ever gonna leave the plane of fire, so f.u.c.k off." The Salamander grumbled, "But that wasn't my point. The King told me that the ones capable of manipulating this stuff, the only ones at that, are still alive. And that means that-"

"I can find them." Eiro muttered. Sarius quickly nodded, "Yup, that's it. They might not be on the central material plane, though..."

"That means we might have to figure out interplanar travel, is that it?" Nelli asked with a deep sigh, "Do you know how hard it is to even attempt stuff like that?"

Eiro looked up at the ceiling of the cave before pointing out something else, "But I already have a connection to another plane, don't I?" 

"That..." The Naiad whispered, "Is also true... Well, if we can get you to the Ethereal Plane, that should give you access to basically every other plane. Weren't there maps of certain parts of the Ethereal Plane?" 

Eiro raised his brows in thought. He never heard about this before. Of course, he knew of the Ethereal Plane, he read plenty of books about it, but none of them mentioned anything about 'maps'.

"Ah... Yeah, you might want to visit some of Jura's old friends as well, when you can. They're quite powerful, if you remember. One of them is a 'Keeper of Knowledge' of sorts. Knows nearly every language there is, owns a huge library... He might have one or two of those maps." 

Eiro immediately sat up and stared at Nelli intensely, "And why did I NEVER hear about this? Don't you think I would like to meet that guy?"

"Of course, but we have no idea where he is... Only that he's on this plane of existence. His position changes constantly, Jura didn't manage to see him in... decades. Neither did any of the others. You can ask Armodeus though, maybe he knows something about him? He was part of the same 'circle'."

Eiro slowly nodded his head. There was something new to try and figure out. If he even chose to figure it out at the end of the day. He could just choose to not care about it, and live in blissful ignorance for the rest of his life.

Slowly, Eiro pushed himself off the ground and made his way to the other part of the cave where the others were waiting, apparently having started to eat without him. Not that he cared.

He joined them, and soon finshed eating, before heading to sleep like Lognir told him to. Just that his mind was overwhelmingly full with thought that made it hard for him to fall asleep.

What was he? How did he get that special Splinter inside of his body? He was created by the Monster King, so was it an accident? Or did he use a base material that had the Splinter inside of it already? 

Eiro didn't know the answer to those questions right now. He wanted to know it, but he didn't. Maybe he would never figure it out. Maybe he would have to live without knowing it for the rest of his life, with no chance of ever truly finding out what he was.

Slowly, the Demon managed to drift off into sleep. He found himself back inside of a lucid dream that he could control however he wanted. There, Eiro created the library. He wasn't able to layer it onto itself like before, but at the very least he was able to still go through everything slowly and steadily.

Eiro recovered some more memories and finished up a few things that he wasn't able to finish up during the day, and just a few aspects were left for Eiro to try and figure out.

In the morning, the Demon went out to grab some new stuff for everyone to eat, and then made his way to another part of the cave system to once more dive into his library.

He managed to figure out the last aspect of memories that he had to make use of to remember the last bit that was still missing. 

Emotions. In some of his memories, he must have figured out things about his emotions that he now didn't know. If he could feel those emotions again, then he should be able to completely recover his lost memories.