By the time the sun had risen once more, Valyr was the first one to get up yet again. Making breakfast for the entire group, the young man stared at Faulus' tent for quite some time before returning his attention to the food he was cooking.
Around half an hour after Valyr had woken up, the others began to wake up as well, being allured by the scent of fresh breakfast lingering in the air.
During this time, the group seemed to have forgotten the incident that had transpired the previous night, talking about mundane things as they dug into their respective plates of food.
Nevertheless, the tension between Valyr and Faulus was still palpable at this time, prompting everyone else to ignore it for the meantime as everyone geared themselves up for another day of fighting the primitive humanoids.
…
'I guess he isn't going to apologize, huh.' With him and Hal not taking too long to prepare for combat, the two of them kept the words they promised from the previous night, scouting out the entire city ruins for the locations of the quadrant leaders.
Unsurprisingly, with the two being closer to the beings they wanted to find, it only took a few minutes for the two to obtain the exact locations of where the quadrant leaders where.
In fact, thanks to Hal's reconnaissance skill, the information they had regarding the quadrant leader's strength had become more detailed as well thanks to the proximity.
Then again, the new pieces of information he gained did not change the fact that fighting against the quadrant leaders alone would still be a difficult thing to achieve.
"Say, Valyr." While Hal and Valyr were compiling the information they've obtained, Loreina, who was in the midst of her combat preparations, called for the young man's attention.
"Now that I think about it, did the quest specifically say that we have to kill the quadrant leaders on our own?" Looking at her in response, Valyr went silent for a bit after listening to her question.
After that, he brought up the description of the specific quest in his mind, reading through it a couple of times to make sure he had not missed even the smallest detail.
Once he was done reading, he looked at Loreina and shook his head as the gears in his mind began to turn. "It doesn't say anything about having to kill them solo. What about it?"
"Well, since the quest doesn't say that we have to kill the quadrant leader solo, then doesn't that we could just kill a single quadrant leader as a whole group?" said Loreina in response, looking at the young man with a faint smile.
"Or perhaps we could still have one person face up against one quadrant leader, but have the last quadrant leader be shared between two people," she continued.
At those words, Valyr had confirmed the suspicions he had after hearing Loreina's first question. Though the quest said nothing about having to kill the quadrant leader solo, with how his trial to enter the Gates of Enlightenment went, Valyr had eventually realized one thing.
The Triad Gates favored those that had superb strength.
That was already evident in how he and Hal only had to clear one trial, yet received the same amount of rewards when compared to the other three, more in Valyr's case.
With this thought in mind, and how all of them were given a chance to enter the Gates of Awakening by killing a quadrant leader, the young man had a feeling that they would indeed be able to enter the higher gates if they were to kill a quadrant leader together.
However, he was quite certain that if they were to fight against the quadrant leaders solo, greater rewards would await them.
And if one among them showed that they had to capability to surmount not just three class ranks of power, but also two realms of concept…
Who knew what the Triad Gates would do?
"Let's talk about the quadrant leaders some other time." After mulling over Loreina's words for a bit, Valyr eventually responded to her with a slight smile. "After all, we still haven't met the other objectives yet."
"Plus, with how quests are ambiguous in their objectives sometimes, we're not sure if the system would even count the kill if two or more people were to fight against a quadrant leader," continued the young man.
At this point, Loreina felt a bit discouraged after hearing her suggestion being dismissed. After all, this thought occupied a great portion of her mind the previous night.
But of course, Valyr did not dismiss the thought at all. "But, if the system does confirm that fighting a single quadrant leader together counted as a kill, then who are we to stop ourselves from working together?"
'It's definitely many times better than forcing someone who knows they're not a match for a Myth level being to fight a being of that caliber,' thought the young man to himself as Loreina smiled in response to his previous words.
'He really isn't going to apologize, huh.' Seeing that Faulus wasn't approaching him or making any sort of move to make amends with him after all this time, the young man inwardly let out a faint sigh as he decided to be the bigger man in this situation.
Though, just as he thought that the five of them would go their separate ways without having a chance to smoothen things out, Faulus finally made a move, sending a private message to Valyr through the chat function.
"Valyr, I am seriously seriously sorry for what I've said last night," wrote Faulus in his message. "I really did not mean to say something like that, and I wouldn't be surprised if you were to still hold a grudge against me."
Reading the message Faulus sent to him, Valyr slightly frowned. "Why apologize to me through the chat function if we can just talk face to face?"
It only took a few seconds for the alchemist to respond back with his own message. "That's because there are some things that would be better off unknown to the others."
"I admit that I suggested you to take the lead out of fear when we were up against the aberrations," said Faulus in his next message. "However, believe me that the words I said to you the previous night appeared out of nowhere. I really didn't mean to say that."
"To me, it just sounds like you're making excuses up since you accidentally let your intrusive thoughts take the lead," wrote Valyr in his response, only to realize that he had written something he was certain Faulus wouldn't understand.
"What are intrusive thoughts?" Unsurprisingly, the alchemist had sent a message regarding the specific phrase, prompting Valyr to tell the man that they would save the discussion for a later time.
Deciding to follow Valyr's words for the meantime, Faulus decided to return the topic of their conversation to his apology. "In any case, I really hope we could make amends. I really don't want you think I'm a two-faced person or something like that, especially with what I've discovered last night."
"Does this thing have something to do with us talking through the chat function at the moment?" Though he couldn't be any gladder to make amends with a talented alchemist like Faulus, Valyr's curiosity had been greatly piqued by the end of Faulus' last statement.
"Yes, it does." But as Faulus began to explain what he had discovered to the young man…
Valyr could only look at Faulus with an expression of horror.
"To sum up my discoveries in a few words…"
"I figured out that there's another person controlling my body."
