The path of a reader and riddler

Amon and Krampus returned to the other three; they arrived right after Leon finished his questions. Thessia seemed to be out of power, and Amon understood why.

If Leon asked questions, it sometimes resembled an interogation. Krampus noticed how outpowered she was, helped her get up, and walked away with her.

"After we are done here, we will all go to sleep, take care of her, and make sure she has fun." Amon said to Krampus a sentence Thessia couldn't even understand. She was too done to even care about what Amon said. She only wanted to sleep.

"Let's get this over with fast. I need to sleep." Amon said as he sat on the ground to the opposite of Leon and to Brunas left.

Bruna nodded. She was tired and needed sleep. She had not a glimmer of an idea how Amon and Leon could still show no signs of fatigue. But if this would be the last conversation for today, then she could still hold out, and so they exchanged all the information.

The only thing Leon could tell was information about the tunnels and that Thessia didn't know why they ended up here. The destination she couldn't tell because of a soul contract was actually a different one.

Amon's information about the portals and their approximate time of origin was much more interesting for Leon.

"Well, that's all. Amon, you go to sleep. I'll keep watch and plan a few things; let the other two know."

Amon agreed and went on his way to Krampus and Thessia, but turned around when he saw Thessia sleeping softly and comfortably in Krampus' lap.

Amon took care not to wake Thessia and quietly told Krampus that he would sleep now and Leon would maintain watch, adding that Krampus should relieve Leon in two hours.

Amon wanted to sleep this night; he wasn't interested in keeping watch, so without asking Krampus, he gave him this task.

Amon used a skill to heat up the cold ground underneath him, laid down, and did not move a single meter the moment he lay there. The floor was hard, but he could not care less; he wanted to sleep and do nothing else.

He heard voices in the far distance as he closed his eyes. They whispered something Amon could not understand as his consciousness faded away and he fell asleep.

A few hours went by as anyone except Krampus slept.

Badum, badum.

"What? This is, how?"

"Huh, huh, this."

Krampus looked at Amon, who was bathed in sweat while trembling. His entire physique gave the impression that he was terrified; nevertheless, his face conveyed an entirely different tale.

He smiled.

Amon sprang to his feet and dashed into the tunnels. He examined everything, and the more he scanned, the wider his smile.

He took a few swift steps and dashed into the tunnel to get to his destination. The signal grew stronger, Krampus and Leon rushed with as much speed as they could in order to following him.

Nobody knew what the other was thinking. Amon moved too fast for them to reach him; the only way they could find him was to use the light source he provided as he sprinted through the tunnels.

'But how is this possible? I never felt them in this world.' Amon's thoughts ran wild, and he searched for all of his wisdom in order to understand what he felt.

The time flowed by, and since three minutes Leon and Krampus could not see Amon, they felt as if they were hunting a light ball; the ball of light shot threw the tunnels as if it had been an arrow shot by the most proficiant archer that existed.

As the light ball stopped and disappeared.

Amon stopped and looked at the walls of the tunnel. What he saw made him happy and confused at the same time.

"This is QiScript, but how is it possible?" On the walls of the tunnel, he found symbols and signs he himself called QiScript.

Two years ago, Amon started to get interested in all the symbols and signs that he saw on his gate, as he then realized that all these symbols stood everywhere on the paths in the Qi realm, on the stone plate, and in the rooms where the guardians taught him their skills. So he asked one of the guardians and found out that these signs and symbols were a language.

A language that held the secrets of Qi in it; this language exists also for Mana, but in a different version. After finding out that this language was called ManaScript, he decided to call it QiScript.

With the QiScript, he could read how Qi behaves and, based on this, learn new skills—skills that were not guarded by a guardian but a secret.

The guardian called it the path of the reader and the riddler, and now, for the first time, he found these signs and symbols outside of the Qi realm and not on his gate.

The problem was, how would you learn to read a language from which you don't even know a single vocabulary? So he studied, and one day he found something out: if Qi moves, it makes a sound; if Qi gets shaped, it makes sounds; and if it circulates, it makes sounds too. As he repeated these sounds with his mouth, the signs and symbols reacted to them and let Qi flow out of them. Sometimes they described how he had to move and how he had to change it each time they met a Qi point, and as he was done, he learned new skills. This was truly the path of a reader and riddler.

'Qi forms itself naturally through communication, which means that I have to communicate with them too and will learn new things from which I never knew they would exist.'

What stood on the walls was a detailed explanation of how to let your Qi flow and how to shape and change it.

In the signs and symbols, it was written about a type of Qi he had never felt before. No, it was a path he had never used before. Amon opened the gate wide and tried to do something that stood out in the text as well.

In the text, it said that he could react from this world with the Qi realm; he learned that he could explore it without being there; he learned that the Qi in his body would take on properties of his soul.

But why did this happen? It was because the moment Qi circulated in his body for a period of one week, it already connected with his soul. The ability to store Qi in his Qi points came through meditation called cultivation, and the Qi stored in the Qi points interacted with his soul and adapted to it.

When he sent this Qi with the properties of his soul into the Qi realm, it was as if he himself was there; he himself had become Qi and could thus walk the paths of Qi without being there.

He had never noticed this fact, but when he tried it, it really worked. But now he had more questions on his mind. The questions were: who wrote it? If the QiScripts were as usually written from Qi, then the shape of the signs and symbols would look different; they would look as if they were added naturally to the walls, but these signs were made by hand. Which means.

"I was not the only one."

'Wait, now I know, a baby dies when it gets born because their bodies are too weak for the Qi that circulates in them. For a god, this is no problem, but for a human, this is a death sentence. But elves have naturally stronger bodies than humans.'

But these writings were not the source of the power he felt; the source was far deeper inside the tunnels. He did not think any further and dashed forward again, right in the moment where Leon and Krampus arrived.

"Why did he stop to look at these symbols?" Krampus asked as he saw how the ball of light moved away from them.

Amon was running again; he was running to the destination that would lead him a little bit further to the secret of what Qi truly is.