23 Problems Arise

After they parted ways, Elgin inspected the blessing he got.

To his knowledge, the Yale lake itself, without the direct blessing being given to anyone was already useful enough to make people fight over it.

He got the direct blessing. From the guardian spirit. The power that used to reside inside the lake, was now inside him, right?

With this revelation, he was even more sure that the previous resets' Players didn't activate the lake in the same way he did. If they did, the lake wouldn't have the powers anymore.

He felt it. The lake went back to normal, there was no longer magical energy unfurling inside it. That energy was with him.

"Let's see..." Elgin pulled up his status to check what changes it brought.

Elgin | Level. 15

Race: [Human]

Title:

- [Player]

- [Angel's Proxy]

Job: -

EXP: 2032/ 71000

HP: 3805/3805

MP: 165/165

System Points(SP) : -

Strength: 35

Vitality: 27

Agility: 28

Intelligence: 15

Dexterity: 15

Remaining stat points: 0

Skills:

- [Soul Link Lv. MAX]

- [Dominion Lv. MAX]

- [Limit Break Lv. MAX]

- [Limiter Lv. MAX]

Elgin creased his brows.

Strangely, there wasn't a change in the status.

He thought that the blessing would at least be enough to give him a skill, but there was nothing. His stat points were still the same, no other rewards- nothing.

Elgin took it upon himself to delve deeper into his condition.

He closed his eyes, went into a meditative state in search for the blessing's effects.

After a few minutes of investigating himself, he found something strange.

There was indeed a new feature inside himself. A weird one.

"..This is more like a dry spring. Waiting to be filled." Elgin didn't know what to say.

He felt a hunger for energy from that dryness.

The 'blessing' he found within himself was strange, to say the least.

It didn't seem to be reacting to him. Like it needed something else to open the lock to it. A closed container with a tight lock placed on it, sitting nice and snug right beside his core.

'That position is a little bit dangerous.'

Anything close to the core was awfully dangerous. It could cause the magical circuits inside him to go awry if he didn't watch it carefully. The influences it could give.

Luckily, it didn't seem to be doing anything at all. It was dormant.

Using his energy, Elgin tried to pry into it, but it was to no avail. The lock stayed intact, refusing to budge.

The blessing was perfectly merged with him, which was lucky. He felt comfortable messing around with it, and was confident that nothing bad would happen.

It was his first time facing such a sensitive situation.

'Do you have any idea on why this is happening, Cecily?' Elgin decided to turn to Cecily for help.

[..Well, I sort of expected this kind of thing. I didn't think that it would be this bad, but it's not surprising.] Cecily sounded disappointed. There was a hint of regret in her voice.

It made Elgin speculate.

With how Cecily has been acting, she must've known about Daphne. They were fellow faeries, perhaps she realized it from there? She wanted him to take the 'treasure', but from her reaction..

She made a miscalculation.

'Explanation, please.' Elgin was starting to become irritated.

His emotion didn't come out of nowhere, he had been putting up with Cecily since he desired her continuous help, but he was getting tired with how cheeky she acted.

He knew that she was of a higher status than him, but he was also a very important figure, right?

With how things were going, it's like he's nothing but Cecily's plaything.

He wanted to change their dynamics once and for all, drill into her that he's not someone to be treated like this.

Cecily sighed once more before spilling her thoughts.

[I made a mistake. I.. did know Daphne was going to come out, but I forgot one pivotal point.]

Elgin beckoned for the faerie to continue.

[You know how the lake got transformed in the past? It was endowed with that power after being 'activated'. The Players 'activated' it but didn't make Daphne appear. And all they were left with is that jumbled mess- the lake. And you never heard about Daphne's existence no matter how many times the scenario got repeated. Why do you think that happened?]

"..Wait, are you saying that-"

[The lake's condition had already deteriorated to such a point where the blessing was cut off from the source of life.]

Blessings, legacies, all living things, the world's foundations- they were all connected to one. The source of life. The Origin Tree Yggdrasil.

With the outrageous reset, the blessing must've been impacted wrongly. The connection with the source of life, where the blessing's power was supposed to come from, got cut off.

All that's left is the empty container Elgin had within himself right now. It was a remnant from the past, truly.

Cecily doubted that Daphne knew about this thing.

She was out of touch with reality from the very beginning.

The reason she was freed from her status as a guardian spirit was precisely this.

The blessing was dead. Only the shell was left.

[I should've thought it over. The original blessing.. The lake's benefits you talked about is a joke compared to it.]

To unlock such a power and release it into the lake in such a puny way was a red flag they didn't catch on to.

[Daphne most likely became the 'key' to unlocking the blessing's benefits in the past... The Players wouldn't know how to activate the lake like you did. As you said, the ones to unlock it were lackluster candidates who fell behind the others' trail. They were able to mess with the circuits to a certain level, but..]

They failed to do it properly.

And in exchange for their failure, and the lake getting distorted even further on top of already being a hot mess, Daphne's little life was consumed.

Elgin's expressions scrunched up. He didn't know what to do now.

The blessing was indeed inside him. It would most likely be very useful in the future.

He got excited for nothing.

Or should he say, he was excited for a gift that he was going to receive in the near future.

It was a shame, but it wasn't the end of the world.