“You good?” Ark asked, giving him a curious look. “You haven’t said anything in a minute.”

  Melmarc shook his head. It was less of a response and more about dispelling his thoughts. He had fought a Demi-god before, it had been all he’d needed to know that there were gods. The problem now existed in the possibility of his new knowledge. Gods were real, but were the gods that people knew on earth also real?

  Was there an actual god named Amadioha somewhere out there? If yes, were they somehow connected to the skill he had just copied? How?

  “I think I might be fine,” he said to Ark. Turning to Pelumi, he asked, “What do you know about the god Amadioha?”

  Pelumi shrugged. “Once upon a time, the igbo people of Nigeria worshiped him as the god of thunder. Until that line of worship kind of just… faded out.”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt your lessons,” Ark said very slowly, “but how did the skill work?”

  Once again, Melmarc shook his head, threw his current thoughts away. “Sorry, yes. The skill picked one of hers. One of her skills.”

  “[Wrath of Amadioha]?” Pelumi asked.

  Melmarc nodded and Pelumi paled.

  “How?” she asked. “I haven’t used that skill in… forever.”

  Ark looked between them. “So that’s how it works,” he mused, stroking his jaw. “It just picks a skill at random from those around you. It doesn’t matter if they’ve used it recently or not. That’s amazing.”

  “That’s scary,” Pelumi said, disagreeing.

  Melmarc’s attention remained on her. “Why haven’t you used the skill in so long?”

  “Because…” Pelumi pressed her lips into a thin line as her words faded away. “I just haven’t.”

  Dissonant.

  “Alright, then what’s the mastery?” he asked. He’d never had a skill with a mastery so high. It was worrying. Was it because it was a skill attributing to a god? What was happening?

  Pelumi hesitated but answered in the end. “Six percent. Why?”

  Melmarc rubbed his forehead with thumb and forefinger. Six percent.

  That was low, very low. His was high, very high. A percentage in the eighties. He would do dangerous things with a percentage that high. He practically had the skill at its most powerful. The way skills worked, at the first ten percent you unlocked more. At a hundred percent mastery, you unlocked the final group of things the skill could do, that’s if you choose to specialize. Right now, he could do nine out of eleven things that the skill could do while she could only do one.

  It brought a new question to his mind.

  What if I’m a rank higher than her?

  If he copied the skill of a lower rank would he use the skill at their rank with the mastery scaling for their rank or would he use it at his own rank. If he was an A-rank would he have [Wrath of Amadioha] at A-rank or B-rank?

  His hand moved into his pocket. He was about to bring out his phone when he paused.

  “Mel,” Ark said, walking up to him. “You’re beginning to look kind of worrying.”

  Melmarc approached him, met him halfway across the mat. Melmarc’s hand twitched slightly, reaching forward. Ark’s responded as if he had read Melmarc’s brain. His arm moved just in place for Melmarc to grab it as they pulled each other in.

  “I have her skill mastery at eighty percent,” he whispered into Ark’s ear.

  Ark shrugged, keeping his voice low. “So what? Are you afraid to tell her or something?”

  “I’ve never had a skill that high before,” he whispered back. “And the interface said that those with the skill are blessed by the god. What if gods are real?”

  “Dude, you fought a demi-god. Of course gods are real.”

  Melmarc shook his head. “I’m not talking about gods in general, Ark. I’m talking about gods in specific. Odin, Thor, Zeus, Hades. What if all the gods we think are made up all the pantheons and myths, what if they are real?”

  Ark paused. He seemed to mull it over. “Personally, I think it would be cool. Wouldn’t mind knocking Poseidon upside the head. Dude’s had it coming for years.”

  “I’m serious, Ark.”

  “Alright, alright.” Ark sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “One moment.” He looked at Pelumi. “What do you know about gods?”

  She shrugged. “Everyone knows about gods.”

  “Specifically,” Ark clarified. “What do you know about gods?”

  Pelumi opened her mouth to answer quickly once more but paused. Melmarc watched realization dawn on her. He watched her understand what was happening.

  “You read the description,” she muttered to herself. “Why am I even surprised, of course you did.”

  Ark and Melmarc exchanged a look before walking over to her. They stood close, towering over her. Melmarc didn’t realize how uncomfortable it could be until Pelumi gave them a pointed look.

  Ark didn’t move. Melmarc wasn’t sure what the look was about.

  Pelumi sighed. “I’m a short girl standing so close to two monsters. I’m used to being short but it doesn’t mean that I love being reminded of it. Give me some space please.”

  “Oh,” Ark stiffened. “Sorry.”

  Both of them took a very short step back. They gave her the space she wanted but not too much of it.

  “So?” Melmarc pressed. “What do you know about them?”

  “When I got the skill, my mom asked one of the babalawos back home that she knows with the class,” she answered. “Apparently, [Invoker]s who get skills from gods have always wondered if the gods were real.”

  “And?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Ark deflated in disappointment. “Kinda anti-climactic, don’t you think?”

  “What did you expect?” she told him. “Just because the interface mentions gods doesn’t mean we should just believe emphatically. Even to my class deities are just that, deities. We are no more certain of them than a Christian is certain of God. It’s just the way it is.”

  Once more, Ark and Melmarc exchanged a look.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ark said.

  Melmarc nodded. “I think so.” His hand was still in his pocket, wrapped around his phone.

  Ark pulled his phone out, dialed a number and put it to his ear. Melmarc placed his ears on the other side of it.

  “What are you doing?” Pelumi asked as the call rang.

  “Asking the powers that be,” Ark answered.

  Uncle Dorthna picked up. The first sound they heard was a sigh, as if he didn’t want to have to deal with them.

  “What do you kids want?”

  “You used to be nicer to us,” Ark said.

  “And you used to be younger,” Uncle Dorthna retorted. “What do you want?”

  “Is Amadioha real?”

  Pelumi’s eyes widened at the question but she couldn’t hear Uncle Dorthna’s answer.

  Uncle Dorthna sighed once more. “Here’s a rule of thumb to work with, kids. If enough people believe or once believed in it, it is safe to assume that it exists.”

  “So…” Melmarc said, leaving the word hanging so that their Uncle would pick up from there.

  “So yes, he’s real. Shongo, too.”

  “Odin?” Ark asked.

  Uncle Dorthna groaned. “Did you kids call me just to ask if the gods on your world are real?”

  “Yep,” Ark said unbothered. “Pretty much.”

  “Then, yes,” he muttered, sounding annoyed. “At least ninety percent of your gods are real. They are just not here. And please don’t go looking for them. You guys weren’t supposed to show this much interest for at least another ten years.”

  “Thanks, Uncle,” Ark answered, then hung up the call.

  Pelumi gave them worried looks. “So?” she asked. She was on the edge of her seat, metaphorically. “Are they real?”

  Ark shrugged. “No idea.”

  Dissonant.

  Melmarc shot him a quick look only to find Ark giving him a look of his own. It told him that it was not everything they learnt that they had to share. Melmarc knew that. What he didn’t understand was why he had to lie about it. They could simply tell her that they weren’t going to tell her.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Then she’ll be in a bad mood.

  “How about you try the skill?” Ark said. “It sounds like a cool skill.”

  “No,” Pelumi said very quickly, too quickly.

  They looked at her, speaking in unison. “Why not?”

  “It’s powerful.”

  Melmarc frowned. “At six percent. You told Mr. Hitchcock that it’s not that powerful.”

  “There are people around, Mel,” she said. “It’s not that powerful, but it’s dangerous. How many percent is your mastery of it?”

  “Eighty?”

  “Eighty?” Pelumi said, stunned. “How do you have it at eighty? What’s happening?”

  “We have no idea too,” Ark said very quickly. “But we want to try it.”

  “No,” she repeated harshly. “I have no doubt that the gym can withstand it but not the other students. You can’t use it, Marc.”

  Melmarc had already made the decision not to use it. Pelumi sounded worried enough, and she had only used the skill at less than ten percent mastery. He could only imagine what it would do at eighty percent mastery.

  Ark took one look at Melmarc’s face and sighed. “I’m not going to be able to talk you into this specific recklessness, am I?”

  “I don’t want to accidentally hurt someone,” Melmarc said, apologetic.

  Ark waved his tone aside. “It’s cool. I’ll just look for a way to make you burn down the apartments, instead. That said, we’re at the gym so we might as well do something.”

  Pelumi studied them for a moment before pointing off in a direction.

  “Weights,” she said energetically. “You guys can lift.”

  “And what will you do?” Melmarc asked her.

  “Watch?”

  “Kinda boring, don’t you think?” Ark said.

  “It’s not that boring.”

  “It is very boring.”

  …

  The weights had been extremely boring. At least that was Melmarc’s conclusion as they left the gym in the evening and made their way to their rooms. Pelumi said her goodbyes at Melmarc’s door and headed for her room.

  Once she took a turn and disappeared from sight, Melmarc opened his door and he and Ark walked in. He locked his door while Ark gave Spitfire a flat look.

  “You know,” Ark said to the demon, “most people come back home to love and affection. Why do I have to come back home to this?”

  Melmarc looked at the demon. Spitfire was giving Ark a flat look as well.

  “Maybe it’s because he’s not a pet,” he said as he walked around Ark. “Come on, come help me pack. We’re moving out to the student housing soon.”

  Ark paused as Melmarc headed for the wardrobe. “You’ve already applied for an apartment? I thought we were sharing. They have an option for shared housing. I checked.”

  “I know.” Melmarc opened the wardrobe and started pulling out clothes. “I applied for a two bedroom.”

  “We could have shared one.”

  “Definitely not sharing a bed with you, Ark.” Melmarc started folding. “You and I both know you’ll bring girls back and I certainly won’t stay in the living room while you get your freak on. Separate rooms.”

  Ark chuckled but headed to the bathroom.

  “I don’t know why you decided to unpack when you knew we won’t be staying here for long,” he called from inside. “I mean, I even said that you shouldn’t.”

  Melmarc looked at the clothes he was folding. They weren’t that much. It wasn’t like he had unpacked his entire bag. Just the clothes he had thought he would need and a few more for the sake of alternatives. They were so few that he couldn’t see himself spending more than five minutes folding.

  Ark walked out of the bathroom holding up their toothbrushes and sponges. “I’ll need something to put the soap in.”

  Melmarc paused halfway through folding one of his pants. He turned and looked at Ark.

  “What?” Ark said.

  Melmarc sighed. “We need to talk, Ark.”

  “Do we have to?” Ark groaned.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Have you killed an Oath?”

  Ark paused, frowned. “That’s just unfair. You’re trying to use your lie detector on me.”

  “You shouldn’t have a problem with that since you don’t lie to me,” Melmarc pointed out. “And it’s not like I can control it. Have you killed an Oath before?”

  Ark sighed in resignation. He lowered his hands, then moved to place the toiletries on the table that held Melmarc’s laptop.

  “Yes,” he said when his hands were free. “But not alone. I’m not that strong yet.”

  Melmarc remembered the Demi-god Caldath. The portal had designated it as an A-rank but it had taken him, an entire Delving team, and a very strong portal assistant to beat it. If Ark hadn’t pointed out that he hadn’t done it alone, his next question would’ve been how.

  “Which Oath?” he asked instead.

  Ark shrugged. “I didn’t take the time to check. I think the interface just told me that I had killed an Oath, the end.”

  “Was it one of ours?” he asked.

  “Not one of yours,” Ark answered. “I was off-world for that one.”

  Melmarc’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Off world? You entered a portal?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Melmarc sat down on the bed, next to his folded clothes and not yet folded clothes. “Explain.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “At this point, yes,” he answered. “If it’ll make you feel better, I won’t tell anyone.”

  Ark rolled his eyes as if to say that he had not been bothered about that. He worked his lips around a little, seeming to think about how to go about explaining. In the end, he pulled out the chair at the reading table and sat on it. He sat forward, hands clasped with elbows resting on his knees.

  “Alright,” he said finally. Spitfire walked over to stand by his feet. “You have to promise not to make a big deal about anything that I tell you. Also, you’ll keep it away from mom and dad. Agreed? Ninra, too.”

  “You’re not worried about Uncle Dorthna?”

  Ark chuckled. “Please, at this point Uncle D can tell me that he created the sun and I’ll believe him. I don’t think there’s anything he isn’t aware of. It’s kind of a bummer that he isn’t a god.”

  “I don’t think so,” Melmarc said, shaking his head. “I think he might be stronger. Have you noticed how he talks about everything as if he’s talking about children?”

  “I have,” Ark agreed. “It’s trippy, really. Remember that time that—”

  “No,” Melmarc cut him off. “You’re telling me about how you enter portals and kill Oaths. What’s happening?”

  “Oath,” Ark corrected, emphasizing on the singularity. “I killed just the one, and I wasn’t alone.”

  Melmarc nodded. “Agreed. How?”

  Ark looked down at Spitfire. The demon did not look back up at him, instead, it had its eyes on Melmarc’s clothes.

  “Spitfire wants a shirt,” Ark said.

  “Does it relate to telling me what you’re supposed to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  Melmarc snatched a shirt and tossed it at the demon. “Alright then, continue.”

  “My class has a way it works with the rest of the world,” Ark started, voice calm, words cautious.

  That’s interesting, Melmarc noted. He’s not one to pick his words carefully around me.

  “Just the way you can lock portals out of the world,” Ark continued, “I can access portals outside the world. But I can’t access all the different portals.”

  “Intentionally?” Melmarc asked. “Because mine isn’t an intentional thing. I don’t know how to do it.”

  “Intentionally,” Ark answered. “But I can’t do it without Spitfire. So what happens is he reaches beyond the world and looks for summonings happening.”

  Melmarc’s brows furrowed. “You go around being summoned?”

  “Something like that, I guess. Out there, people, usually the weak and powerless are always making wishes and praying and begging and sacrificing.” Ark worried his lower lip between his teeth as if unsure. “Spitfire can only connect to the deepest of emotions attached to summonings.”

  “Are you about to tell me that the deepest emotions are hate?” Melmarc asked.

  Ark smiled sheepishly. “Cliché, right? But yes. The strongest emotions so far have been from those crying out for vengeance, those oppressed and powerless.”

  “So you’ve been avenging the weak?”

  Ark’s look turned shifty. “I wouldn’t say the weak. More of the losing side.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not always the weak that feel wronged,” he said. “The thing about emotions is that sometimes they are not always valid. Hell, they tend to mostly be wrong. That you feel offended does not mean that you have been offended. That you feel wronged does not mean that you have been wronged. In fact, half the people capable of crying out to a [Demon King] can probably solve their own problems if they channel that focus in the right direction.”

  Melmarc would’ve liked to say he understood but he knew that he was missing something.

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because from what I’ve learnt, you need to offer at least two thousand [EP]s before you can summon a [Demon King]. You also need to sacrifice like a thousand [EP]s before you can even begin the summoning.”

  “Just to clarify, you actually have access to [EP]s,” Melmarc said. “Like, you knew and said nothing.”

  Ark shrugged. “In my defense, you knew I had [Optimum Existence]. I figured you would’ve pieced a few things together and realized that I had [EP], too.”

  There was no dissonance in Ark’s words. It seemed Ark really held him to a high deductive standard.

  “So, they’ve been making sacrifices to you?” Melmarc asked, not sure if he should be appalled or not. “To you.”

  “Not to me.” Ark shook his head. “They make sacrifices to demons. Most of them don’t even know what they are getting. With enough offered [EP]s and deep enough emotions, their wishes become quests that demons can reach out and accept.”

  “And how do you reach out?”

  Ark pointed down at his feet. “With this guy. He feels the requests and informs me of them.”

  Melmarc looked down at Spitfire. The demon didn’t answer any of them as it sucked on Melmarc’s shirt.

  “When he finds the requests that are… within my ability,” Ark continued, “he lets me know. Then I pick.”

  Spitfire sounded like a better version of Veebee. In Veebee’s case it had picked at its own discretion and sent a B-rank [Faker] to go kill a demi-god.

  You killed Caldath, didn’t you. Stop whining.

  “And you pick the oppressed?” he asked.

  “I pick the most humane,” Ark clarified. “Quests that feel like there is an actual evil to deal with. I actually balance morality with benefits.”

  “How do you do that?” Melmarc asked.

  Ark scratched the back of his neck. “This is the part where you refrain from making a big deal about it. Remember you agreed not to.”

  “And I won’t.”

  Ark scratched above his right eyebrow. He frowned. Melmarc recognized the movements, Ark was motivating himself to say something that he didn’t want to say.

  “Alright,” Ark groaned, as if tired of himself. “Every quest has its reward stated out. It’s usually in [EP]s—there is always [EP]—but sometimes people sweeten the deal with things like items and the likes. Sometimes you get a buck load of [EP]. Way more than other quests can offer.”

  “You pick the highest paying sad story?”

  Ark nodded. “I’ve seen quests that are about vengeance but unreasonably high rewards, some of them are even easy with very high rewards.”

  “And the truly oppressed aren’t really rich,” Melmarc mused. “So you need to find an equilibrium. Justified but high payer.”

  Ark nodded. “The one I went for was actually a community. They worked together to make the sacrifice.”

  The vocal faces in Caldath’s halls came to mind. The [Damned] had willingly sacrificed themselves to make Caldath great, to make him strong enough to ascend to godhood even though the plan had ultimately failed.

  “Please tell me it wasn’t human sacrifices.”

  “It wasn’t,” Ark confirmed. “Besides, the people who summoned me weren’t even human. They’d bound together to subdue a very powerful monster in their winter world. That was what they sacrificed.”

  “Then how does getting the [EP] work?”

  “Spitfire kills the creature when we arrive,” he said easily, “then we go and fulfill the quest. I only get my share once the quest is over.”

  Melmarc paused. “Your share?”

  “Yep. Spitfire gets half of the [EP] to grow.”

  Realization came to Melmarc slowly. “That’s where you got the scar, isn’t it? The one on your stomach.”

  Ark nodded. “The Oath was a little stronger than anticipated. I couldn’t kill it alone. Then again, it was an S-rank big ass spider thingy.” He held his hands wide apart. “Big as this room. I kinda needed help to beat it in the end.” His expression grew solemn suddenly. “Lost a lot of lives to put it down.”

  Melmarc looked at him. “Friends?”

  “No.” Ark shook his head. “Soldiers. They died because I wasn’t strong enough to do the job I said I would do on my own.”

  Melmarc wasn’t sure of what to say. “Soldiers die, Ark. It is not nice, but they knew what they signed up for.”

  Ark smiled sadly. “I called them soldiers, Mel. But that’s not entirely correct. They lived as farmers and peasants, people with normal everyday lives. But they died as soldiers.” He met Melmarc’s gaze. “They made the sacrifice because I was cocky and picked a quest that I thought I could handle. A quest that I couldn’t handle on my own. If I wasn’t cocky, they would’ve lived.”

  “You did what you could, Ark.”

  Ark’s jaw tightened. “Did I?” His words came out harsh. “Because if I did what I could, then my best wasn’t good enough. I could’ve picked a quest more suitable for myself, something I could’ve handled easily. Instead, I went for greed. I picked a quest I told myself would be a walk in the park. It was one enemy after all. And I was Unranked. A [Demon King].” He snorted in self-derision. “I was a fool.”

  “You were human.”

  “Human.” The word came out of Ark’s mouth with a touch of disgust. “The word doesn’t apply to us anymore, Mel. You’re an [August Intruder], and I’m a [Demon King].”

  “So what?”

  “We aren’t just human, Mel. We’re supposed to be better. We are supposed to be more.”

  Then Ark fell into silence. Whatever he had truly experienced, it weighed down on him heavily. Melmarc could see it. Melmarc could feel it.

  Ark’s pain flowed into him. There was regret, so much regret.

  What had started out as a normal packing session had evolved into something solemn and heavy. Why?

  Because I wanted to know.

  And he hadn’t even learnt how much [EP] an Oath gives.

  He had been selfish. So very selfish.

  Melmarc sighed, a decision coming to mind.

  “Ark,” he said, deciding to power through.

  Ark raised his head to look at Melmarc. His eyes were red, glistening with tears that would not fall.

  How have I not felt any of this pain? How has he been keeping it hidden?

  “I’m listening, Mel,” Ark said, assuring him that he had his attention.

  Melmarc steadied himself before speaking. “I met him.”

  Ark’s brows furrowed. “Who?”

  Melmarc took a deep breath before he answered.

  “The man that broke into our house.”