New Lands

After a while, Gwen finally filled her bottomless stomach and felt satisfied. She was just mindlessly leaning back on her chair as she slowly digested all the food she consumed. All the meanwhile, Felix was just watching her enjoy her time.

"Felix, you've been staring at me for an awfully long time now. Do you have something to say?" Gwen's voice had a tinge of curiosity in it as this wasn't how Felix usually acted.

"I've just been thinking about my previous offer," Felix rested his arm on the table and laid his head atop it. He gazed at the ceiling, trying to reminisce about the past as he fiddled with the spoon in his other hand.

"Which one? There's like… a lot of offers." Gwen showed a tired expression as she tried to remember how many times she rejected Felix.

"You must've already forgotten about it. It was about you and me going to my home kingdom."

"Oh… that, uh, offer." Now Gwen immediately felt bad, she was far too hasty and inexperienced back then, after figuring out even more about this world, beyond the novel's descriptions, she finally understood that she should broaden her horizons.

It's been around five years since Felix told Gwen this. They were basically infants yet due to being subjected to extreme amounts of mana for an extremely long period of time, they mentally matured faster than they should.

"It's nothing. So, what do you want to do tomorrow?" Felix slowly closed his eyes as if he was trying to remember something that meant a lot to him.

"I have to limit test my new spell, Eye of Darkness, try to find even more spells in that grimoire, find more volunteers, ask for- Actually, do you want to go to your home kingdom?" As Gwen spewed out her plans for the following day, she saw a tinge of loneliness appear in Felix's shadow. For some reason, she felt that this was an inherently wrong scenario so she decided to change her plans.

"Hmm? If you're going to tease-"

Gwen waved her hands in front of Felix, "No, no, no, nothing like that. I mean it, we could go sightseeing there. Might be a breath of fresh air for once."

No. 12 immediately snapped out of her euphoric mood and came down on Gwen, "Lady Gwendolyn, Lord Nio won't let that happen. If he so much as hears you wanting to leave, then it's my head for letting you think that way!"

Felix's downfallen expression immediately shifted as it changed to one of subconscious happiness, he was truly joyful that he was finally going to go home after being in the Aria Estate for five years. He had always been thinking about his home but due to many complicated factors, he couldn't. Now that Gwen agreed to his wish, he was going to try and convince Nio to let her be.

"Lady Gwendolyn don't do this to me. I'm still a young 22-year-old maiden! I have so much to live for! I still haven't gotten a boyfriend either! The world hasn't yet seen what I could do! My singing career just started too!"

Gwen initially thought that No. 12 was being completely serious but when she started listing off random nonsense, Gwen decided to firmly ignore her.

"So, Felix, what do you say?"

"Yeah! Yes! I mean… I'd gladly show you around the Jiana Kingdom, Lady Gwendolyn."

Gwen rolled her eyes, "What did I say about calling me 'Lady'?"

"Oh, right. Hahaha, sorry about that Gwen. I'll start planning everything ahead, Miss No.12, I'll need your help to set everything up. Get a good night's rest, we'll immediately leave at morning's dawn," Felix immediately disappeared, dragging No. 12 alongside him. Although No.12 was stronger than Felix in every sense of the word, she didn't dare exert any force that could even slightly hurt him, causing her to be dragged along.

"Huh…" Gwen crossed her arms as she thought about her decision.

"I guess that went… well? We'll see if this was a mistake. According to the novel, the demon army's still enjoying their spoils and won't be active for a few more years. There shouldn't be anything dangerous in the meanwhile and I can try my hand at getting a Holy Artifact since I can't even sense Death Artifacts."

Gwen's immunity to The Corruption was just as it was advertised, an extremely powerful trait. Gwen couldn't feel, couldn't touch, couldn't be affected by The Corruption. As the rules of the world changed since they lost the War of Rights, they were forced to live under the tyranny of such rules, resulting in people succumbing to their desires the stronger they become.

As The Corruption started to spread, it slowly condensed itself in a few specific places, letting the objects and items around it slowly gather up this evil energy and slowly turn into Death Artifacts, the complete opposite of Holy Artifacts.

Holy Artifacts are formed due to a high-density mana environment, causing an object to slowly condense the mana surrounding it and fundamentally change its very core, gaining obscenely powerful effects and abilities.

Now given this case, both a Holy Artifact and a Death Artifact, are fundamentally the same at its core, empowering the user to great degrees. Items imbued with otherworldly power that could be abused if it fell to the wrong hands. The reason why people tend to prefer Holy Artifacts instead of Death Artifacts was due to the nature of their abilities, when a person uses a Holy Artifact, The Corruption nearly does not affect the user in any sense of the word. When a person uses a Death Artifact, however, they are filled with The Corruption, granting them immense power for as long as they could rein in their desires from controlling them.

Now, if a Death Artifact, say a blood ruby, were to have an immensely dense aura, it could directly kill those around it. This was what Nio planned before, to give Gwen such an artifact so that only those with real power like himself could even get close to her without suffering immense backlash.

Directly handling a Death Artifact was essentially suicide, as showcased by No. 52 bravely touching the blood ruby with both his hands, siphoning most of his youth away, turning his wrinkled and aged. The previous 26-year-old man now looked around 70.

"Anyways, I should go get some rest. I've got a big day ahead of me tomorrow. Now… where were those special ruins around Jiana Kingdom, again?"