The Harvester-Chapter 452: Remembrance & World Laws

The way Rakna woke up wasn’t as peaceful as he had anticipated. The very second he opened his eyes, he had to dodge a punch aimed squarely at his nose.

"Wha...?" He blinked in stupor at the fist that smashed into his pillow. He traced the arm back to its owner. "Oh."

Astraea smiled brightly at him from above. "Good morning, Lord Monarch," she greeted. "I was hoping to be able to wake you up."

"...that’s a weird hope."

"Ah, you must still be sleepy. Don’t dodge this time, okay?" She said cheerfully whilst cocking up her fist again. "It needs to be effective."

"...I think I’m pretty awake right now though."

"Common misunderstanding."

"..."

"..."

And then she swung.

* * *

"I feel refreshed!" Astraea exclaimed happily as she walked into the living room, with the therian following behind as he rubbed his nose with a blank face.

"Hahaha, I’m happy for you!" Higure was the first to respond. The lioness leaned on the table, her tail wagging from left to right. "Hey, devourer of mine," she smirked. "Feeling well?"

"...fine," he huffed. "I deserved that," he grumbled as he sat down as well. "You can stop now."

"Nah. I don’t think I will," she snickered.

"More importantly, since I know at least one is completely fine," Rakna changed topics, glancing at Astraea who skipped into the kitchen, talking to a smiling Flavia. "How are Lilith and Ramsa?"

"Better. Your ’mom’ woke up an hour ago, by the way," Higure squinted her eyes. "She’s upstairs with your two foxies, which you probably know already. They’re explaining stuff... and possibly buttering her up."

"What are they even doing? Asking for my hand in marriage?" Rakna huffed.

"Eh, well, I wouldn’t put it past them," the lioness shrugged. "Oh, your new fanatic is outside with her fellow spirit; exploring, I think."

"Translation, please," Rakna deadpanned.

"Lilith is hanging out with Fiora," the simple answer came in the form of Allan who approached from behind, a certain white bat tagging along. The blond smiled. "What a great pair, right?"

The therian’s lips twitched.

"Still, imagine my shock when I returned yesterday and found Kaelith practically begging some girl about information on your ’mom’," Allan barely held himself from laughing at the expression he saw on his friend’s face. "Man, I wish I could have been there early."

"..."

"But, hey, Rak..." The blond’s expression became more serious. "We all know you’re not the type to call someone your mother as a joke," he said and rubbed the back of his head. "So, like, it’s not that I have a problem with it, but... did something happen?"

Rakna raised an eyebrow before smiling. "Thanks for worrying, but there’s nothing wrong. In a way, you could say she earned the title."

Allan blinked. "Damn, your family is a meritocracy?" He instantly joked back.

"Very funny," the therian deadpanned.

At the same time, someone knocked on the entrance and opened the door. Svanya stepped in and lowered her head as if to bow. She looked at Rakna, "I hope I’m not intruding."

"You’re back again," the therian tilted his head and turned toward the sofa where Hans groaned and got up from his seat.

"As you have guessed, I am here for..." Svanya trailed.

"How impatient," the azure-haired boy clicked his tongue and grabbed a book embroidered with gold letters from a coffee table. He haphazardly threw it and Svanya caught it in a panic.

"This is...?" She tried to read the words on the book’s cover but failed to understand it.

Rakna caught a glimpse of it. "Uri Etr Vatilas’ka Acrofta," he tested the words aloud and earned a brief glance from Hans before he sat back down.

"What is this language?" Svanya inquired with a frown. "The System does not translate it."

"Long story. If you’re curious, those words roughly mean ’Herein Dwells The Remembrance."

The regal woman squinted her eyes at Rakna and then finally stared at the maker of the object in her hands. "How am I supposed to use this?"

"Write," Hans coldly replied. "As our mulish wolf said, this book is now a remembrance. Yours, to be precise, shall you accept it."

Rakna’s expression twitched at the ’stray bullet’ shot at him.

"Simply take a pen and inscribe what you consider a reflection of yourself. Whether that is your appearance, memories, relationships, or powers. Pen the first line, and the Remembrance will be tied to your soul. Preferably, you should make it meaningful."

"...I don’t understand. What is that going to do?"

Hans sighed as if he was tired of explaining already. "The ’story’ is yours. Do you not understand that much? Others will not forget you, for the Remembrance will convey it for you. Whatever you may record on it, its existence shall not be forgotten."

Svanya’s eyes widened and she gazed at the book with a completely different perspective.

"You can also draw if that pleases you," Hans added as an afterthought. "If you find it hard to turn your appearance into words, this method promises the greatest correctness."

With pursed lips, she gingerly opened the book, faced with blank and smooth pages. Hesitantly, she pulled a pen out of her storage and lowered her head in thought.

"What... should I write as the first line?" She asked hesitantly.

Hans blankly looked at her, not answering.

"Come on, Hans," Rakna interjected and the author frowned at him. "It’s just a matter of reading the ’cover’ for you. You did it for all of us already, so why not her? It’s perfect for this."

The boy rolled his eyes and sighed. "You and your... Fine," he sighed and observed Svanya with a gaze that made her shiver with a sense of vulnerability.

"A flicker of royal light dancing on the chasm of the empirical road, shining for naught, slaying a solitary fate, burning the ember of sages sworn to the world. The forgotten princess of golden splendor soars toward a brilliant horizon."

Once Hans was done, Svanya was overtaken by a daze. She involuntarily gripped the book tighter, her mind reeling from the resonance those words had with her.

"Hah," on the other hand, Rakna chortled. "No wonder you were so kind to her. You couldn’t bear to ignore someone with a ’story’ so magnificent. It’s so grand it makes ours feel miserable."

"Xiorra," the azure eyes glared. "Would you like a taste of eternal winter again?" He threatened, a string of letters dancing around his hand.

The therian innocently raised his hands in defeat. ’Definitely a tsundere,’ he thought.

Meanwhile, Svanya wrote Hans’ statement word for word in a trance. Each stroke was digging into her body and soul, and she didn’t dare to stop. Before she knew it, she was not writing on an item anymore, but a full-fledged part of herself.

When she traced the last letter, the book had already become one with her. She could sense that something was fundamentally different now.

"Want me to try?" Allan raised his voice with a grin. She didn’t even have time to reply before he turned around, cutting off his line of sight. Her shoulders squared up and an unusual amount of nervousness settled into her.

"Uh... this is super strange," the blond muttered. "I don’t remember the conversation we’ve just had, and I can’t recall your face or name," he said and she clenched her fists. "But... I know Hans made something for you and... I also know you are there."

Svanya froze.

"Like, your presence is a certainty?" Allan tilted his head, still looking away. "Before now, I would always forget you existed and get jump-scared on sight, remembering everything. But this time, I still have just enough to know you exist and are standing in the house right now."

As he said that, he turned back around and winced. "Wow, this is freaky," he mumbled to himself and closed one eye to rearrange his thoughts. "It’s as if my memories are being extracted and imported in repetition."

Svanya couldn’t even utter a sound as she gawked at the book in her hand.

"Close that mouth. Of course, it works," Hans scoffed. "I have wasted ten hours of my precious time crafting it."

Those words didn’t help her at all. Her expression was bitter as she recalled all the distress this condition had given her in life. All for one child-looking man to solve it in less than half a day.

Without a word, she swiftly drew her sword and kneeled to him, planting her weapon to her left, not hearing the small gripe of ’...my floor...’ coming from Rakna.

Hans’s eyes widened slightly, a rare feeling of surprise hitting him.

"I am forever in your debt," she stated with all the seriousness she could muster.

"...I do not—"

"Your opinion does not matter," Svanya retorted before he could finish and Hans’ eyes twitched in annoyance. "Whether you did this out of boredom, as a favor for Rakna, or a twisted disregard of my being, it does not matter."

"..."

"Perhaps you do not understand despite your intelligence," she snorted to herself. "I have been forthright, haven’t I? I have been like this since the day I was born. In fact, it was worse then."

"How does it..." Hans closed his mouth in the middle of his sentence. There was no obvious sign on his expression, but he realized something he should have already known.

She smiled. "Exactly. Did you truly think I had always been this comfortable with my trait? With it... would you even expect my family to remember me?" She sighed. "I once lived in too great a castle if you ask me, and the longest I spent unattended as an infant was a month, regardless of how many maids we had."

"My mother would collapse every time she laid eyes on me," she added sadly. "Guilt and grief did naught but break her heart in my presence. While the man who conceived me... a voyager from yonder, crashed into our world on his deathbed. He died before I was born."

Everyone listening was silent until Hans decided to speak up. "Woman, let me clarify something right now," he declared calmly. "I did not help you out of boredom. I did so because I could. What you have is called Empirical Dissociation Syndrome."

Svanya looked up in surprise.

"It is exceedingly rare and I have never heard of an inborn case. In fact, you are the first victim of this condition that I have ever encountered," he admitted. "Typically, you develop this ’ail’ in the wake of an ethereal disaster. It is a wound, so to speak."

The azure-haired boy adjusted his glasses and looked down at his book. His palm sparked light as he brushed the page. "It is a consequence of two non-identifiable physical states forsaken by the World Laws rejecting each other. In words a fool would understand; it is a freak accident."

"..."

"To be born with it... yes, I suppose that would make sense," he mused. "Your father was a World Sage, was he not? You must be a hybrid."

Svanya slowly stood up with a small smile. "Nothing goes past you, it seems..."

"...what are World Sages?" Allan finally broke his silence.

"A blessed race," Rakna answered. "Supposedly immortal, powerful, beautiful..."

"You are halfway there, Xiorra," Hans grunted. "Yes, all those constitute a World Sage. But what they truly are is loved. Loved by the World. What does it mean, you ask? Well... let’s just say their luck outclasses yours by a factor of ten at the very least."

"...that’s hard to imagine."

"That said, it does not mean they will never run into adversities," Hans continued. "Their luck is a resource of sorts, overflowing and granting them gifts such as flawless beauty, enormous mana capacity, eternity, and an extreme level of regeneration rendering them immortal."

"That didn’t seem to help my father though," Svanya smiled bitterly.

"Flawless Immortality is a fallacy," the author rebutted. "That aside, you were quite the opposite of lucky, alas. You are half-human, half-sage. While that is not inherently precarious, for something to break down, only one cog needs to jam. The World loves one part of you and somehow fails to recognize the other. Leading you to a bilateral state of being ’real’. You are the embodiment of an Anti-World Law, so to speak."

"Anti-World Law...?" Svanya repeated in confusion.

"Hm... right, what is a World Law exactly? Or the ’World’ in general?" Rakna hummed. "Since you are already on the topic, you can tell us, no?"

Hans’ expression twitched and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You treat me far too much like a tutor lately... Go be a nuisance to the ’hat’ instead of me."

"You are far more convenient than Wis," the therian shamelessly retorted. "Also, Svanya, please get your sword out of my floor..." He followed up helplessly.

"Oh," the half-sage blushed slightly and awkwardly complied. "My apologies. I lost myself in the moment," she said timidly whilst sheathing her weapon. Thankfully, the hole she had made had already begun to repair itself thanks to the network of Eion.

Hans sighed, setting his book down on the coffee table. "Do not get too comfortable, Xiorra. It is undeniably true that I am erudite in matters dating back to the Lost Era, but do not fool yourself into thinking I know it all. I can already feel you have many more unrelated questions."

"Wow. How’d you know?" Rakna feigned shock. "I wanted to ask a bit about something called the Chintamani, as well as Gaia."

"..." The azure-haired boy’s face was really starting to break down at this point. Those two topics were not something to be mentioned so casually, even for him. "...Original World Laws are not a form of power, nor a manifestation of phenomena, but a set of principles."

Rakna smiled impishly at how Hans gave up and simply went on with the explanation.

"OWLs, for short, can be dubbed the applied rules of quantic observation. That is to say, once observed, its existence becomes anchored into reality," he said. "They are like equations intrinsic to the universe. We did not make them; we reverse-engineered the answers."

"Prominent World Laws include Causality, Balance, Physics, Continuity, Equity, Life, Time... one of which your uncle happens to have used to grant you ’gifts’. Anyhow, this should be enough to grasp the core idea. For instance, time is a force given form by observation; and its World Law is a calculation born from it. By harnessing a Law, one can alter its observation in return."

Hans pointed at Rakna. "For example... G̸e̷r̶’̵t̴r̴ ̷N̵a̴r̷a̸c̶h̴," he uttered and everyone other than Rakna winced, the words burrowing into their mind before scattering altogether.

The therian’s eyes widened slightly.

"The first spoken language known to Existence contains the power of the Law of Speech. While it is not a greatly potent Law, once learned and understood, it is possible to alter speech itself to do plenty of things, such as breaking down the limits of communication. The Almighty One is said to have reached a level where he could converse with inanimate objects."

"..."

"Once that is established, learning about the ’World’ is easy," Hans continued. "It is quite simply a product of agglomeration. The Laws do not make one body, per se, but picture this; a multitude of entities confined in one area, if observed from afar, would they not constitute a rough shape?"

"...I suppose, yes," Rakna raised an eyebrow.

"And you now understand what the World is," the boy shrugged. "A swarm of Laws loosely held together by hopes and dreams," he jested. "In the Lost Era, it used to be a steady framework. But in this day and age? Only the Kind Demon’s actions have somewhat salvaged it."

"The Téra?"

"Yes," Hans nodded. "The creation of a race of beings of pure, neutral evil gave birth to one of the most stable conflicts that has ever existed. One would ask, how is that a good thing? The answer is artless. The World needs consistency for its Laws not to stray. In Realities where Laws become too passive, degeneracy can occur... or a completely new Law can emerge instead."

"A new Law?" Allan exclaimed in surprise. "When you say that..."

"It is as it sounds," Hans scoffed. "You should realize, no? Physics is a Law. It is such a major rule of the World it does not even qualify as comical. Could you imagine the chaos a wholly untamed and indefinite ’observation’ of the same level could induce?"

"..."

"In fact, I still remember a few of those wild Laws," he added. "Some have either fallen alongside their own Reality, were suppressed by man, or were swallowed by the meager self-preservation the World enjoys. The most notable example was the ’Orphan’s Law’."

"Well, that certainly doesn’t sound disturbing..." Allan muttered sarcastically.

Hans snorted. He did not humor the interjection but certainly answered it, "The ’observation’ at the origin of that Law was the death of a newborn’s parents during the moment of birth. Thus, a morbid rule that states ’a child’s parents shall die when they are born’ was given a Law. Is that clear enough as to why untamed Laws are dangerous?"

"..." Nobody responded.

"Then, is it enough tutelage for you?" He huffed and leveled his sight on Svanya. "And to conclude this impromptu chatter, girl, half of you is positively an Anti-World Law. Due to the World’s over-fixation on your Sage lineage, the other half was deprived of ’observation’."

"And do not misunderstand, you are not some ’cat inside a box’," Hans added dryly, referencing one of the most popular quantic speculations to ever exist. "If anything... think yourself a mouse that got inside the box by mistake. Nobody knows it is there, so therefore it is inexistent."

"..."

"But most importantly... whether quantum observation qualifies the creature as dead or alive, it is not without ignoring one detail; the mouse’s predator that lies therein. If you were to look inside the box and observe the cat alone, did the mouse disappear... or was it eaten?" free𝑤ebnovel.com

Hans stood up with a hum. "Yes... it is quite fitting. Do not get eaten, little mouse," he uttered and walked upstairs with a wave of his hand. "Or I suppose... let it happen and kill it from the inside instead."

With those words, the author left and Svanya stood there with mixed emotions. "Your friend... is truly outlandish," she could only state as she looked down at her Remembrance.

Rakna snorted. "You don’t say."

"Um... Rak," Allan interjected nervously, tapping his friend’s shoulder.

"Hm? What are you...?"

The blond pointed his finger at the top of the stairs and the therian followed it to the first floor, where something immediately made him freeze.

There, Ramsa glared at him with the full power of an admonishing parent, flanked by Kaelith and Kara; the two vixens respectively radiating embarrassment and mirth respectfully.

Rakna pursed his lips. "...good morning?"

The goddess’ eyes narrowed more.

’All right. It was worth a try,’ the therian thought.

"{Now, that is a proper scolding atmosphere,}" Fray tittered. "{What do you think it is about? I’m betting on the harem, personally.}"

’Well...’ Rakna tried to retort, but almost immediately, he realized... he had no retort.

And so, as his ’mother’s glare intensified, he cursed.

’Damn.’

Updat𝓮d from freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.co(m)