Once the Deal was sealed, Dilan retrieved his remaining Essence crystals. He emptied his spatial rings and he formed a small mountain of Essence crystals in front of the Queen's Image without the slightest feeling of sadness.
"Take everything. Consider it a small gift as thanks for accepting the deal!" Dilan said, just to see that Siegfried stared at him in confusion.
"But that is your stock to attack…" He mumbled, not understanding what his Uncle was thinking.
"Don't worry about that. If it's necessary, I can just use my life force again," Dilan shrugged his shoulders, not minding using his life force.
However, he ended up getting glared at by three pairs of eyes.
"It doesn't matter either way…rather than focusing on this little thing, I'm more interested in your story about the last 27 years. What exactly did you guys go through?"
Dilan knew that he hadn't been there for the others, for quite a while at that, but everyone important to him seemed to have survived. He had gotten a glimpse of Old Jeff and a few other familiar faces, though he couldn't find the time to speak to them.
There was a lot to do in the present and to prepare for the future, but Dilan's biggest interest was the past, the last 27 years on Milarn, at least.
He looked at his sisters, whose heads turned to each other before they sighed in unison.
"It's a pretty long story…we should sit down somewhere comfortable," Lara said before a loud rumbling noise rang through their ears.
Everyone looked over to Dilan, who forced himself to continue smiling.
"And we should eat something," Marie added before she burst into laughter.
Lara and Siegfried joined Marie and the three started to laugh for quite a while.
The Queen's Image grinned lightly and she was about to giggle when she noticed Dilan's glare.
"Let me have fun as well…"
…
Dilan sighed heavily and he motioned to the Image, allowing it to laugh out loud as well. With the Image joining the laughters Dilan was all by himself, feeling slightly embarrassed but also much lighter than ever before.
'Maye things will get better…I like this feeling…as if everything will go out way…'
However, Dilan knew that this feeling was only temporary, and that reality would pull them down to the ground sooner or later.
They had yet to solve numerous problems, or theorize ways to solve a bunch of problems, to begin with.
Happiness and Sorrow were closely tied together in their life, in the current Era they lived in. One second, they could be happy, and another second the entire flying island might be torn apart by a sudden attack of a True God, and everyone would die, except for Dilan, of course.
This was not only something that could happen in one's mind but it was actually a pretty valid thing that might occur in the future.
"When you guys are done, I would like to eat something…" Dilan complained, causing a second burst of laughter to ring in his ears.
He sighed heavily and decided to accept that his family was happy due to his embarrassment. As long as they were happy it was fine…probably.
Dilan was not sure how much time passed but when the others were finally done laughing they made their way to the cafeteria where he finally got something to eat.
He gobbled down plate after plate, devouring everything as if he had the expanding stomach of a Titan Pig. In the end, two hours passed until Dilan was finally done eating. He was frowned upon, even by his family, but he didn't care.
It was his first meal after more than 10,000 years…why was he supposed to hold back eating his fill after impatiently awaiting to eat something as delicious as Bianne's high-quality food?!
When they finished eating, the four of them separate from the Image, who had been shown a few places and people. It was important to introduce the Image to a few people and tell her who was responsible for which department and so on.
Following their separation, they went to a rather small but comfortable complex where several rooms were connected to each other.
"You guys live here together?" Dilan asked, wondering if Clark would jump out from somewhere. That would cause his skin to crawl up, and he was happy that it didn't happen.
"We never know when a catastrophe happens, so we chose to stay together…to flee together in the worst-case scenario," Marie nodded her head.
Dilan didn't say anything but he could conclude that there had been a few instances, where the family had to flee all by themselves.
Sitting down on the couch, the family stayed quite for a while until Lara sighed deeply.
She didn't like the awkwardness in the room. Thus, she cleared her throat and started from the very beginning, from the time when the Fourth Awakening occurred, and the day Siegfried was born.
"As you might remember yourself, you left several weeks before the Fourth Awakening occurred. I was highly pregnant and I could have given birth at any moment. However, unexpectedly, my little boy chose to stay a little bit longer and meet the world on the day of the Fourth Awakening.
I went into labor when the Fourth Awakening started and I was unable to feel many differences from before. The only thing I was able to tell was that the mana in the surrounding area became denser and that the abilities of the priests were enhanced. Siegfried's birth happened without much of an issue if one were to ignore that he awoke the Primordial Ascension's system the moment he was born.
Just like all newborns in the apocalypse, he awoke the system, with a higher chance to have an Origin ability, and the possibility to have less passive abilities than we had.
All humans have the same amount of active and passive abilities, usually, except the Apocalypse babies, who are considered…different…and stronger than the first generation of human Ascenders!"