Monque P.O.V.

  The damned human had the gall to look confused. At least he looked panicked about it too.

  I was looking down at the screen he was being projected on in the observation room, the cool breeze on my neck from the open window of my house inside Nemunues and my realm. I have started calling it my house for the last few hours, because it seems Nemunue isn't going to be staying here very much if she spends this amount of time out in the forest regularly. It's been a while. I have been meaning to send her a ‘text.’ But ‘texting’ was a new thing so I haven't really figured it out and so I was putting it off.

  But back to the point, a god's damned Artifact just said that it was given and made specifically to Killiad in particular. And it told him her name. Adel Lupricada, goddess of wolves. I didn't know the name, but that didn't mean anything really. Goddess of Wolves was a very specific domain, and specific meant powerful. If limited by adaptability and practicality. What wolves as a divine domain would encompass I had no idea though.

  And what in the Eternal Hells did this random human from some corner of the Omniverse, with nothing really particular or impressive to his name, actually do to make a goddess GIFT HIM an Artifact!? WITHOUT him even knowing!? A PIECE OF HER VERY BEING!? Either this goddess was stupid beyond belief, which I doubted, this guy was some insanely devoted believer and worshiper, which would have been very easy to see while he was a soul, or the final and most likely option. This human had something in him that we missed. Some kind of power or potential to be powerful.

  But the fact that he doesn't have any kind of attachment, spiritually, to this goddess could potentially mean that he hasn't been claimed by them. Which means, we cannot be faulted for buying his soul if they ever find out. …unless he was stolen from someone or even randomly picked up on his souls way to someone by the black market dealer we bought him from… Fuck. The chances of that were astronomical. We knew that going in, but who expects this?!

  All of this and more have been going through my mind for the last day. So I knew exactly what I needed to do now.

  “Never mind. I apologize for the outburst.” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing them hard. “I don't know why you have a, very likely very powerful, goddess… gifting you… that Divine Artifact, and there's nothing that can be done about that. SO, both of us are going to deal with this right here and now.” I said slowly and carefully. I was trying very hard to watch my words as I watched the system transcribe them onto the communication screen in front of Killiad.

  He looked uncomfortable and I could see a hand go to the pocket with the Artifact, though he didn't say anything. That almost made me scowl and laugh at the same time. As if he could do anything to stop me from destroying that thing. But no.

  “You will say exactly the following. I swear upon my soul that I will never reveal the fact that I was aware of the nature and origin of my Pendant to any affiliated with a divine power other than Monque, god of Trials and Challenge.” I demand.

  “What? You want me to-” He started to ask, but I felt a flair of anger rise up and interrupted him. “SAY IT.” I screamed at the screen and at Killiad. Even though he only saw my words, he still flinched a bit. That made me smile. Then frown at myself at how low I must have fallen to be happy about making a mortal flinch.

  He did say it after that, and I gave a sigh of relief. If he told anyone even slightly knowledgeable about the divine about this, they would know instantly what this whole thing could mean.

  Then I sat up and tapped the screen a few times to replace the communication screen with the quest analisis and reward screen. I have had enough of this for a day.

  Killiad P.O.V.

  That was probably the most confusing and also inexplicably terrifying moment of my life. My divine patron just glitched reality, yelled at me through a chat window, demanded I swear on my soul with a divine NDA to him, and then vanished. At least that's the fevered impression I got.

  The screen that was covered up by the angry red glitching chat window was revealed and had a bunch of stuff written on it, but I took a second to think to myself before I looked at anything.

  ‘There is something going on with some gods and involving me specifically for some reason, involving the Pendant, which is some kind of divine gift from a goddess that my patron doesn't want me to tell anyone about. Ever. So…. most likely he is not on good terms with them?’ I thought to myself confused. ‘But… I do not know nearly enough to know anything for sure. All I know is that Monque doesn't want me to tell anyone remotely related to gods besides him that I have a Divine Pendant that was given to me by another divine being.’ I summed up everything in my head with a bit of confusion.

  ‘Why? Wait- Is this an ownership thing? He wants others to see me as his and Nemunue’s, and possessing something divine that wasn't from him or her has some kind of political implications?’ I thought to myself with some disgust and uncertainty and decided it was as good a theory as I would probably get. I hate politics.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Well, let's go with that. Plus, despite the whole near death quests and the monster filled world I spend my time doing, this was probably the coolest and most exciting thing that has ever happened to me. Who knows if that will change, but getting involved in some divine political maneuvering and warfare would definitely suck. Getting deleted from reality and my soul getting eaten or something was not something I wanted to happen.

  Let's just keep my head down. That will work. Definitely. Probably. Possibly. I can hope anyway.

  I took a glance at the system screen in front of me and then turned my full attention to it as I started reading curiously.

  “I am sorry, but what?” I asked out loud, blinking as I looked at the screen.

  I got my bag of tools I scavenged, which was obvious as it was in my hand still along with my spear, but I was focused on the optional goal rewards. Or reward really.

  “Why did it combine the rewards…?” I asked hesitantly, looking at it strange. It was probably normal though, as nothing answered though so I shrugged it off in favour to stare at what it said my reward was. Auton handgun. I think there is a pun in there, but… “Did I just get an alien laser gun as a reward?!” (Plasma technically, but everyone knows that thanks to Hollywood, laser guns are just terms for anything that shoots bright beams of stuff!)

  I didn't actually expect much for rewards, considering my previous best reward was a stack of wood. Though said wood was going to be very useful considering my situation on Fera.

  Were quest rewards always this good? Though actually… I wouldn't have had a single chance to actually do both quests and survive naturally so if anything, this should be the lowest possible reward I could be getting for quests of this difficulty. But, despite the system rewards possibly being a bit stingy, I was honestly pretty stoked.

  I felt that strange feeling of some things going into my inventory space in my mind again, and I took a step back as my spear and the bag of tools stopped weighing me down as they vanished. Now that I have had my inventory for this long, it has started to feel rather normal as opposed to the constant sense of wrongness where my inventory was located in my mind. Like a sense of weight, steadying it somehow. I took a second to take a look inside, opening its neck as I observed everything inside.

  My remaining six logs, firewood, that extra stool sized log, my new bag of tools, my spear… and a weirdly shaped hunk of plastic floating suspended in space nearby. I took a closer look at that in particular and I directed it to come out in my hand.

  I laughed out loud as I looked at it. “It's a handgun! Hand gun!” I laughed as I looked down at the plastic gun in my hands. It was close to a black, upgraded Autons gun in design, but with a trigger and handle built into the palm shape, a addition of a small transparent screen on the top inside the hollowed out thumb that looked like a sight and a gauge of some sort on the left side, and the part of the hand that would normally click up was made into one whole piece with the barrel out of the pointer finger. It looked hilarious. Especially so because the hand in question was also in the finger gun shape.

  I did hold it carefully, but I couldn't bring myself to look at it seriously.

  Then I underwent a huge amount of vertigo in a split second, nearly making me fall to the now muddy ground I was standing on. “HEY! You need to start warning me when you teleport me!” I shouted to the air, annoyed as I stood up straight on Fera, back by the stretch of lake I had been nearly killed on before the quest. I sighed, turned around to look for camp and then marched back to it as soon as I spotted it on the hill to my left.

  Monque P.O.V.

  Now that our human has been taken care of, I can finally relax… Ah, nevermind. I need to contact Nemunue. She has been gone for a concerning amount of time.

  “Though she did say that she would be gone for a while, something about wolves-” I commented to myself, trying to find an excuse to not have to struggle through the weird system that she insisted on making after she looked at Killiad’s life. Then I stopped dead as I realized what I was saying.

  “Wait a second. Wolves, acting up in our realm. Goddess of WOLVES who possibly had Killiad’s soul stolen from her. FUCK! NO!” I realized, a chill was spreading through me as I suddenly looked up towards the window in horror before I turned around to run for my room and the phone Nemunue had given me inside it. Was it possible for a goddess to get into our realm without us feeling the disturbance? Maybe… if they already had a connection to the realm, or something under a shared dominion. Like a wolf, in the realm of a goddess of the wild, and a goddess of wolves... Oh dear.

  “Please… Please let this not be what I think-” I started feverishly saying in a panic, but then I froze once again as I turned around. I wasn't alone.