บท 32: The Answer
Compared to the Crookedteeth ritual which the strongest point was its high offensive capability, this ritual undoubtedly surpassed them by far, especially considering that the aforementioned was not the goal of the ritual, but the consequences of performing it.
The objective was, as the woman of roses had said, something that was valuable even for her.
As a product of his own and others' suffering, the ritual gave as a product an object that granted a chance of change and rebirth to a mortal, contained in a single drop of blood.
However, even if it was just a single drop of blood, imbued with pain of body and soul, which had been born after tearing away a whole life, was able to give a mortal the chance to live another life again.
Swoosh!
Quickly, the woman of roses commanded the wind to move, coiling around Noah's arm.
"Don't let the blood touch you, or the chaos will take over your body!" Warned the woman with a serious tone.
The young man, with an expression of using all his strength, replied, "I'm trying!!"
Although most of his body was still responding to him, his left arm was an exception, an exception that wanted to move so desperately that it was quite difficult for the young man to keep it at bay.
Luckily, the wind was helping him greatly, for if it were on his own, he doubted he would be able to resist.
But even with that, one could see that in the struggle, Noah's left arm, full of chaos, was slowly gaining the upper hand, overwhelming both the wind and the young man.
Seeing that this did not look good, the woman of roses quickly thought of another solution, thinking that she had no choice but to use her technique.
Slowly, the wind began to split into dozens of small streams that simulated threads.
BAM!
"!"
However, before she could finish activating her technique completely, she was surprised by the young man's action.
While she had been thinking about how to stop the chaos in Noah's body, he had moved to the nearby wall and whipped his left arm against the wall.
"Drop that, dammit!" He yelled, preparing to repeat the same move.
BAM!
Unexpectedly, this action, which to the woman seemed like it would have no result, had succeeded, if only a little, in decreasing the size of the chaos-filled veins in Noah's left arm.
Therefore, seeing that this was having results, she could think of nothing else but to support him.
"Keep it up, show it who's in charge!!"
"That's what I'm doing!!"
Just like that, in between blows and words of encouragement, less than a minute had passed before Noah's left arm barely showed any signs of chaos.
With most of the chaos having worn off, the resistance Noah felt had also greatly diminished, now only feeling the arm numb instead of not feeling it at all.
And while that could also be from the pounding, the young man was happy with that result.
BAM!
With a final blow, the remaining traces of the chaos on his arm withdrew, finally leaving Noah's left arm free.
The price of this had been that Noah's arm ended up numb and sore to a great extent, as well as leaving the part of the wall he hit sunken in.
"..."
"..."
After the situation passed, a silence filled the room, with neither of them exactly understanding what had happened.
---
Some time had passed, and now Noah found himself on the first floor of the house, specifically in the kitchen, going through cabinets and such.
With luck, he had managed to find a couple of packets of cookies and bottles of apple juice.
As for what happened upstairs, after a brief explanation from the woman of roses, Noah dropped the subject.
After all, while there had been a hiccup with the chaos in his body, the biggest doubts he had had already been resolved, plus he also received benefits.
The doubts resolved involved why the monster had done all that, plus the name of the ritual along with its functions and characteristics.
As for the benefits, it was nothing more than the woman of roses telling him how to properly secure the rope so that it would not burn his hands, how to use the candles and furthermore, how to take advantage of the broken pieces of the chair.
All this being in exchange for him giving the drop of blood to her.
And although Noah was interested in it as well, when considering the deal, he accepted without saying much more, happy with what he had received.
Of course, there was also one big question left for him to answer, which was why there were pictures of humans, but no matter how much he asked, the woman only answered him with that it would be better if he found the answer by himself.
He was confused by this, but thanks to another detail that the womanof roses had with him, which was to heal both of his arms, he left the subject quickly.
"Hm, if this repeats a couple more times, I'll get to the new base loaded." Noah said, half talking to himself and half talking to the woman of roses.
Since he didn't know if the latter would respond, he wanted to leave the doubt so as not to create an awkward silence.
"Forget those ideas, that was more of a fluke than anything else.... And even if it happens again, ignore it, I don't think we can handle something like that again, much less today." Replied the woman.
"I didn't say I was going to do it, my head and arm are a mess, plus I don't have any more monster blood to spend on dealing with anything else."
After saying that, they both fell into a silence, with the young man stuffing his supplies into his backpack and the woman analyzing him from an angle unfamiliar to the young man.
'How did he do that?' The woman thought, remembering in her head the moment when the human in front of her stopped the chaos in his body.
For a being like her, for whom the answers showed themselves, and if not, it was highly likely that she had heard or seen them on her own thanks to her age, there weren't many things she was curious about.
However, the sight of Noah opposing the chaos without a doubt was something that broke this rule. For a moment, the woman pondered what could have caused this.
Because she had had to consider Noah's characteristics before, it was not difficult to sum this up again.
A human child with great curiosity and willpower, plus a destiny that could not be read.
While these were potent aspects of the young man, they were not really related to the physical, which was where the Chaos was supposed to have the most presence.
Without going so far as to go through her library of memories, the woman could use Noah as an example of chaos' capabilities over the physical, being able to both sicken and improve depending on its type.
It was undoubtedly a major force of the other world, something that normally, not just a human being, but a mortal could do little against.
So how was it that someone like Noah, whose physical condition, even among his peers was not particularly remarkable, had been able to resist the grip of a chaos that was practically part of him?
He had been carried away by the moment before, but the blows had not been responsible, or at least not entirely. Otherwise, if it could only be beaten away, chaos would not be something so feared in the other world.
The answer, the woman with the roses believed, lay in two important points, and perhaps something else she really didn't want to think about.
First in how attached the chaos was to Noah's body, having gone from just infecting him to directly becoming part of him, fulfilling its functions as another part of his body every minute.
Perhaps this was why the human had had influence over the chaos, because it was now part of his body.
The second point, which the woman thought was the main one and had considered before, was about what kind of chaos it was.
Not to dismiss the human, but she really found it hard to believe that chaos, being a major force, would obey a mortal. Unless of course it was designed that way.
In the event that the second point was confirmed as true, then it would all make a lot more sense.
It would explain why the chaos was slow to take effect, why Noah was still alive and sane, and also why the chaos was behaving strangely, like when it interrupted her technique and when it tried to snatch the drop of blood from her.
'Is that the answer?" The woman thought, increasingly convinced that it was the type of chaos that was unusual, 'This chaos doesn't destroy, doesn't burn, doesn't madden, doesn't erase... it just changes.'
Finally, there remained the last option, which had to do directly with that which was related to the young man and with which she had brief contact.
The entity that dwelled inside the mirror and that despite having withdrawn as soon as she was about to defend herself, had left her scarred.
The reason for this was because even though they had not even made contact, the entity had had such an effect on her that it had completely erased all the preparations she had made.
Regardless of whether it was a technique, ritual, circle of protection, each and every one of them could do nothing but give in to the presence of such a being, causing the entire Hollow Garden to be in absolute darkness.
To her luck, the entity didn't seem interested in finishing her off, or rather, it didn't even seem to notice that she existed at all, so other than leaving her in a cold sweat and worried in the middle of the darkness, she received no damage of any kind.
Still, what this had done was to make her completely discard the previous assessment she had given the young man, going from valuable to dangerous.
Dangerous because that entity was clearly related to him and to the mirror in some way or another, and from what she had seen, it didn't really seem to be for anything good for Noah.
Following that logic, being under the gaze of an entity such as the one in the mirror, then it made sense that Noah could defend himself from the chaos by his own strength, as he really wasn't normal
Letting out a sigh inaudible to all but herself, the woman was intrigued.
Watching the human child running through the mirror world, the woman simply wondered what fate had in store for them, since she had chosen him.
Be that as it may, even for all her abilities, she would not be able to find out any time soon.
---
After the incident at his neighbor's house, it didn't take Noah long to grab everything he needed from the house and move on to the next one.
This time, his route was different, with him just checking the kitchens of the houses as he sought to fill up on supplies before arriving at his new base.
As for finding more rituals or sources of forbidden knowledge, it didn't happen.
As the woman of roses had said, it seemed that the ritual encounter at his neighbor's house was a stroke of luck.
What he did find, however, was the trail of several monsters.
Whether it was bones, claw marks, sounds or even the sight of them in the distance, Noah was reminded again and again of who the true inhabitants of the mirror world were.
Although in quantity they were not nearly as many as seeing people in his own world, there were still several.
Most monsters consisted mainly of Crookedteeth and an occasional Boneclaws, but surprisingly, he hadn't seen any Putridbrute.
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