Perry Thatcher looked completely flustered sitting there down on the ground. So much so that, Ning felt that this person was completely different from the one he had met 2 years ago.
However, that shouldn't be possible. Ning would check his Aether rank, but he didn't want a headache right now.
Besides, this was the same person, just… with disheveled clothes and hair. 'What has made him so agitated?' Ning wondered.
"Are-Are you Terran Forn?" he asked. His eyes looked all over Ning as if searching for something.
"Yes, I am," Ning said. He wasn't sure how to talk to this man. Should he be polite? Respectful? Should he keep standing or sit down next to him on the floor?
"You are the one that discovered the method to create Aether?" Perry's flustered look turned to excitement as he looked at Ning with wide, hopeful eyes.
"I discovered Aether liquid, sir. Not Aether itself," Ning clarified.
"Same thing, same thing," Perry said, not minding the semantics. "Can you teach me how?"
Ning was a little taken back. He had not even been here for a whole minute and the lord of the tower was already asking him to help teach him to make Aether?
"It's a little hard to teach exactly," Ning said.
"It's fine, it's fine," the man kept repeating his words. "Teach me still. I might be over 800 years old, but my mind still can remember stuff," he said.
"Have the people that you sent to deal with the liquid not explained to you how it works yet, sir?" Ning asked.
"They did, they did. But their explanation sounds stupid. I want to hea—" suddenly, the old man stopped and turned to the side, looking at the window behind the table and chair.
Ning turned to look at it too and saw a bird fly past it. That was all.
"Right, I want to hear it from you, directly," the man then got back to asking Ning.
'What the hell was that?' Ning thought, weirded out by the old man's mannerism. Still, he decided to explain how it worked. After all, just the explanation alone wouldn't help anyone.
People needed Alpurite to make the liquid, and as of now, only Ning had access to it.
So, he went on to explain how Alpurite and pure, distilled water mixed together at a certain ratio could be used to absorb Aether from the surrounding, and turn itself into the Aether liquid that everyone was familiar with.
The old man nodded the entire time during the explanation, but Ning wasn't sure if he got it or not. 'This should be the millionth explanation he heard about Aether liquid. He has to have got it right?' Ning thought.
The old man kept on nodding and said, "I need your help, young man."
'That came out of nowhere,' Ning thought.
"What is it, sir," he asked.
"You see, I have a dream. A one and only dream I have had for a long time and I want your help in fulfilling it," the old man said, with hope and excitement rising up in him.
"Oh, what is it?" Ning asked. He was quite curious as well.
"That is… to bring peace all over the world," he said.
Ning stopped. Peace? That was what he was striving for. How did the old man have the same dream as well?
"Peace, sir?" Ning asked.
"Yes," the old man said. "Long have the people suffered from war and violence. I want the world to go back to peace and equality."
The old man… was surprisingly trying to achieve the same thing he did. That was… unexpected. Did Alexis not see this? She should have seen this already.
'Maybe he never vocalized it. She cannot read the hearts of other humans, can she?' Ning thought.
"That is a good dream to have sir," Ning said with a smile. If he didn't have to fight the biggest, badest on the planet to achieve something, and instead could work along with him, then that was all the better.
"I know, I know," the old man said.
"Equality… was what the Apostle of Alexis was trying to achieve, wasn't he? Although he disturbed peace more than necessary," Ning said.
"That coward was no apostle. He was a fake apostle, and I killed him for it," the old man said.
Ning felt a tinge of anger brewing inside him. He couldn't help but want to beat the old man up over his words, but quickly contained himself.
"You're right. He did more harm than good. I understood that too. That was why I strived to bring back some semblance of normalcy."
"I wanted to find a way so that in major locations where the previously oppressed were fighting back, people didn't bring danger to everyone due to the newly awakened Aether skills of there," Ning said.
"I was sure that gaining the absorption techniques would make some people steer towards the wrong path, and to avoid that bringing any harm to the existing peace, I tried to find something."
"Fortunately, around that time I discovered how to create the Aether liquid, and managed to bring some semblance of order to the world after the disorder the ap— fake apostle, left behind," Ning said.
The old man was starting to get agitated more and more. He didn't stop Ning, but his talk had gone on for a little too long for him.
"So, I want to help you bring back peace and equality to the world," Ning said.
"Right, right. And for that, I will need a lot of Aether. How much can you prepare?" the old man asked.
Ning felt a little puzzled. "Sir, how will you bring back peace with Aether, no matter the amount?" he asked.
"Of course, I will take in all the Aether and get stronger. Once I'm strong enough, I will be able to rule the world like a god, and no one will dare do anything that I deem unlawful, bringing back peace to the world."
"Also, since everyone will be beneath me, they will all be equal no matter who," the old man said.
Ning stopped for a moment when he heard the old man. "Sorry, what?"
