“…They’re a bit suspicious,” Claud murmured, gazing out at the illuminated streets below.

  “Hard not to be.” Lily leaned against him. “But your mind sure moved fast, and all your actions made sense from a logical and emotional standpoint. The Red God going insane…”

  Claud made a face. “It hurts to lie to them like that, though.”

  “Your words were the truth, though?” Lily sighed. “But against, half the truth is no different from lying…but I’m sure whatever skill Schwarz used couldn’t pick up on incomplete truths.”

  “You noticed?” Claud asked.

  “Yeah.” Lily flopped around for a while. “Still, the timing of that quest was a bit odd, don’t you think? From how Dia put it, she only received that weird quest after we joined up with Lesser Half. It’s a weird trigger, if we look at it from that point of view. After all, the quest introduction said something about you growing stronger, right?”

  “Which is totally inaccurate, because I am as weak as I was one year ago…and even weaker, to be honest.” Claud folded his arms. “What is going on here? I don’t get it...”

  Dia, however, had told them the things she had seen in those dreams of hers. Two hundred years of ice and snow, brought about by a grieving Frozen Emperor. The madness of the divinities, as they gathered humanity under their own banners and brainwashed them. The solitary Rimestar, standing as the last bastion of free humans. The Frozen Emperor, who shattered the world and obtained the Cosmic Egg, only to spare all existence at the last moment to…presumably affect his past and the Second Tutorial.

  “I do get that you’ve done a lot of things, though,” Lily replied. “The various yous, doing their own things to make sure that there will be an iteration of us that will survive this Last Godsfall…thank you.”

  “I didn’t do any of that, though,” Claud replied, abruptly feeling a little peeved. “It feels like strangers are stealing my thunder…”

  “Even though they’re all you.”

  “Doesn’t make much sense, I know, but there we are.” Claud rubbed his head. “I’m weird, I know. Getting jealous of myself has to be a first, right?”

  Lily sniggered, and then sat up. “Right, what’s taking Lesser Half so long? I thought he ran off to, uh, sample delicacies.”

  “Who knows?” Claud flipped over and buried his face in the pillow. “Well, it’s good that he’s busy right now. He probably wants to give us some privacy…”

  The two of them glanced at each other, and then cleared their throats awkwardly.

  “A-anyway,” Lily said, her tone somewhat stilted, “what should we do? Dia, the Salvation Star, and you. It seems like a huge mess. Will you really end up stabbing each other at this rate?”

  “I hope not, but I don’t know either.” Claud shook his head. “In the first place, the Salvation Star didn’t seem to exist in the futures I know off. In the Second Tutorial, Dia died while holding off pursuers from presumably the Moons, and in the Third, the Hollow God had destroyed the world in a single year.”

  Just how did “he” do that? Claud really wanted to know, since gaining strength at such a pace would put him at ease. As it was, Lily was their insurance against attacks by the divinities, but Claud had a feeling that this would just tempt destiny and get her killed or something.

  His body trembled once, and Claud hugged Lily again.

  Lily’s hands touched his back in reply.

  There was no need for words or anything; he knew that she could tell his current emotional state. It sucked to be this human, to have this many feelings, but…it was great that he had a soulmate that would support him.

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  “Thanks.” Claud straightened his back.

  “I feel like I should be thanking you, though…” Lily yawned once, and then flopped back down onto the bed. “Wait, I can’t sleep now. It’s almost morning.”

  “Hard to tell, though, in Grandia.” Claud got up. “We should get some breakfast before the tavern below gets crowded, though. Should we wait the others up too?”

  “Let’s just leave them be,” Lily replied…

  After washing up and picking up the little meeplings, who promptly sleep-climbed into their hair, the two of them left their room and went down to the first floor, where a few customers were already present. They were having an early breakfast, like the two of them, since time wasn’t really on their side for now. Sure, the divinities had ceased battle to once again look for someone…although Claud was happy that their actual target wasn’t him anymore.

  That said, it didn’t make that much of a difference, since all the divinities were convinced that it was the Omen who had a Shard of Creation.

  “What’s wrong now?” Lily asked, looking at his face intently. “You look like you swallowed a bunch of lifestones at once.”

  “I think the expression I would make if such a thing happened to me was enjoyment, though,” Claud replied.

  “Meep.” Crown jumped off his head and onto his arm, before strutting around for a while to express that with it around, Claud wouldn’t even need to eat lifestones.

  “Exactly,” Claud replied. “Besides, my lifespan is incredible. I don’t think I’ll even need any more lifestones from now on…”

  “Lucky ass.” Lily punched him gently, like a small cotton ball, and Claud grinned.

  “Yeah. Lucky, I suppose. Now I need to figure out what their next move is,” Claud muttered.

  “The Moons?” Lily led him to a chair. “Isn’t it obvious? They’ll start searching the capitals next, naturally. The capitals of the three nations. After all, they should be the last bastion of humanity right now. They’ll search them for Tot and the Shard of Creation.”

  “…Huh. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Why?” Lily asked.

  Claud paused. “Well, I was thinking of hiding in Dark territory, to be honest. It’s not like we can’t hide there anyway.”

  “True, but they don’t know we can do that, right?” Lily replied. “The only place that makes sense is unoccupied territory.”

  “So we kinda just screwed ourselves.” Claud paused. “Well, we did need to look for the others, though. I won’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to them either.”

  “Yeah…”

  The two of them sighed for a while, and then ordered a nice platter of sausages and eggs.

  Lesser Half floated back as Claud speared his sixth sausage, and then made a beeline towards the two of them, clearly uncaring about the stares that everyone else was sending his way.

  “Morning, you two.”

  The stares intensified.

  “Yeah, morning.” Claud looked at the black cube, who was now giving off a happy air. “Seems like you enjoyed yourself.”

  “The people of Grandia are very hospitable. Chatting to them is a joy, although I did spend the money you gave me,” Lesser Half replied.

  “Well, you are a customer. Why wouldn’t they chat with you when you’re paying them money to buy things?” Claud asked. “What did you buy, though?”

  “Lots of food,” Lesser Half answered.

  The stares that everyone else was sending Claud’s way — this conversation was not a hushed one by any means — intensified even further.

  “How much food have you taken in already?” Claud asked, curious. “I gave you a bag of gold, you know. That’s a crap ton of food alone, even if prices are shooting up wildly right now.”

  “Hmm. A lot of food, I suppose…” Lesser Half didn’t seem too concerned with this. “Well, I’m sleepy. Is there a bed open for me?”

  “The door’s locked, though.” Claud patted his pocket. “You can rest there instead. There’s a nice bed of down that the others usually sleep in when they’re tired.”

  “We’re drawing a lot of attention,” Lily whispered.

  “Can’t be helped,” Claud replied, before popping a divinity in his pocket. It was probably an unparalleled, irreplicable achievement, a deed that only he could ever do, and the people watching hadn’t had a clue about it at all. “Oh, he’s already asleep…”

  He made a small gesture with his fingers anyway, ending any discussions about Dia, the Shard of Creation and anything that would cause the divinities to kill them or something. This signal would also have them take the initiative in conversation, to warn the others that Lesser Half was in his pocket right now, just so they wouldn’t give themselves away.

  “What are we going to do next, then?” Lily asked.

  “Hmm. I feel like being a good person,” Claud replied. “Maybe patrol the city or something.”

  “You mean, explore it and look for food?”

  Claud smiled at her. The light in her eyes indicated one last thing, which was to find more exits out of this Celestia-esque city. Grandia was a block of sorts, and there was only one visible exit and entrance.

  It would not do for them to not know any other exit.

  No, definitely not.

  “Yeah,” Claud replied, winking at her. “Indeed.”