"I want to know everything."
Eren said with anticipation in his eyes. Baran nodded and opened his mouth to speak.
"My liege, I don't know how we can have blood memories. In addition, I am not aware of why the original denizens of the monster continent keep on coming here through the back door. But my blood memories tell me that this continent was not always like this.
Something happened to this continent and it was shut off from the rest of the worlds that are out there. When we gain clarity, we not only gain information related to the monster continent and various professions but we also receive these emotions that we can't describe with words."
Eren looked at Baran with a blank expression when he heard the guy speak. The latter knew that he was asking for more explanation. So he continued after taking a short breath.
"The thing I told you right now was conveyed to me through those emotions. These emotions can sometimes influence us to do certain things. Like our calling.
Sometimes that calling affects us in a certain way. Like, pestering us to attack human settlements. So this is the downside of having clarity. So you can say that if the monster horde attack is initiated by monsters, it would be related to the monster in charge receiving clarity."
Eren didn't care about monsters attacking human settlements. Or humans attacking creatures living in the Badlands. He was on either side. He was on his own side.
So he just nodded at Baran– encouraging him to speak further.
"For the most part, gaining clarity is beneficial for all the monsters. Even monsters that have lost themselves to savagery have a primal instinct to gain that clarity.
That's why all monsters are desperate to go through their evolution process. It is ingrained in our genes."
Baran took a long pause and looked at Eren intently. He had a feeling he shouldn't say anything about the monster continent to him any further than he already has because he was an outsider. This feeling was part of that calling.
However, he decided it wouldn't hurt to go all the way since he had already decided to rest his future in Eren's hands.
"As for my memories related to the monster continent, I only have them in bits and pieces. But they tell me that the continent there is ruled by…"
Suddenly, he felt a strange mana pulse around him. It was as if the ground itself was causing this phenomenon.
In the next moment, he felt like puking as his mana circuits became overburdened with the inflow of mana that he had not initiated. As if he were on hyperdrive without casting any spells. Baran felt like gravity had turned upside down for him and crashed onto the ground unable to shout or ask for help.
Raadooo immediately grabbed Baran. He dragged him to the side and proceeded to give him a healing potion concocted by the tribe. The messenger for chieftains sighed when he saw Baran's situation. As if he knew this was bound to happen. The Orcinas present at the scene acted in the same way.
Eren looked at Baran confusedly. But then he also felt that something was happening inside his body. Due to the sudden inflow of mana and his blocked mana points, he felt like the mana points would be burnt off due to overload. The same symptoms as Baran.
And yet, the butcher's slime half-blood constitution allowed him to not be in a similar situation as Baran even when he had received the same kind of backlash. Instead, he just had a killer headache.
"This…"
Eren felt a subtle dread when the backlash of something which he couldn't explain hit him. It was as if this backlash was only a warning. Things would get a lot uglier if he kept on pushing his luck.
He was shocked to discover that he was only an Ace rank ant. It was as if he was made aware that he was nothing compared to higher existences that he wasn't even aware of yet.
Eren grabbed his head with both hands and stepped outside the hall to take fresh air. He sat down on the ground with his legs folded before taking out Sativa Stick. The butcher wanted to get high to forget about his backlash-induced migraine.
Alephee sighed in Eren's head before continuing.
'That's why I was being vague about a few things, Eren. Let's just say that this entire continent is covered by one colossal array. It would not be in your favor to know about these things at this point.
It autonomously works toward causing backlash whenever someone talks about something that should not be discussed within the continent. So in a way, not only do the establishments on the continent not want to let you know of these things but the continent itself is set against it.
To have this conversation or to say it to someone else or to ask for their opinion, you'd need to take special countermeasures. Asking these things to a monster while inside Badlands was a wise move.
Frankly, I'm surprised that you could learn this much from Baran without the backlash hitting you much sooner. It could only mean that…'
Alephee said and pondered for a bit before speaking further.
'For now, you are not ready to hear or know about these things. You are far too weak to make use of any of those opportunities that you could gain from leaving the continent of Anfang.
Focus on increasing your rank to at least that of a B-Rank. Only then can I tell you about these things.'
Alephee didn't continue and stopped talking. Eren, who was fighting off migraine at that point, listened to Alephee's statement in his head and clenched his fists in helplessness.
Alephee understood what he was struggling through in his head and spoke to him in a consoling voice.
'Eren, when I said you need to stop comparing yourself to the rest of the rankers in the pool, I only wanted you to expedite your ranking journey. I didn't mean for you to change the pool itself.
Therefore, don't get discouraged when you see that the peak is too far. Concentrate on stepping one foot in front of the other.
Hehe. And even these five planes are nothing in the grand scheme of things. I'd say that there's always a wider sky.'
