The Forgotten Monolith

Many days later, Gilgamesh, Ishtar, Sylvia and Marshall were within a few hundred feet of that large man-made structure. The closer they got to it, the clearer it became that it was much larger than they had thought initially.

"What do you think it is?" Marshall stood atop a grassy hill, though they were still on the flatland, so he was not that high up. The rest of them were already descending the hill.

"Well we're going to find out, aren't we?" Sylvia remarked with a shake of her head.

Gilgamesh and Ishtar were at the front, watching as the clear water of the stream bisected the land in front of them. Gilgamesh looked at the stream's path, and deduced that it would be much quicker to just go through it.

"Well duhhh..."

Marshall smirked, and was the first to hop in. While he was in the air, he sent his clothes into his inventory, leaving only his briefs on. Sylvia giggled, then rushed in after him. They both took a dip in the shallow water before refocusing and swimming across.

As the siblings chatted and splashed each other, Ishtar looked at Gilgamesh with an excited, almost expectant gaze. Gilgamesh did not notice, and instead took a deep breath and ran forward. He leapt at the last second, and Ishtar's eyes brightened.

For a short moment, it looked like he was going to replicate what the siblings had done, but as he went further and further, it was clear what was happening.

Ishtar's expression darkened, and she pouted. Gilgamesh had leapt over the stream, not bothering to take some time to swim around. She sighed and teleported across, much to the shock of Sylvia and Marshall.

"Was that a 'Step of Space?' Do you have the spatial manipulation skill?"

Ishtar saw that Gilgamesh was already walking away and sighed.

"No, it was not, and no I don't. I don't have a system like you guys."

"Say wha-" Marshall was about to get loud, but a side punch to the gut from Sylvia brought him back to his senses. When he glared over at his sister, she was shaking her head at him, a fierce look in her eyes that told him now was not the time.

Ishtar dejectedly sauntered behind Gilgamesh while Sylvia and Marshall redressed and followed. At some point, the average height of the grass had decreased, until it was akin to them walking across a freshly cut lawn.

As for the area around the structure, which they could clearly see now, there was almost no grass at all. Instead, thousands of rough, pointy stone edges arose from the earth, littering the landscape.

The structure itself was like a roughly shaped pillar, with numerous symbols etched onto the bottom. It was carved from a deep blue gemstone, appearing to house a number of similarly colored layers.

The further your eyes went into those layers, the darker the shade of blue would get, until you could no longer look any further; there was only darkness, where sunlight did not reach.

Sylvia and Marshall ran out from the group and went over to the structure to get a closer look, while Gilgamesh and Ishtar both tried to grasp something with their spirits. Ishtar had some luck, and Gilgamesh just barely got a faint feeling.

"There's a lot of faith lingering here. It must have been a site of mass worship." Ishtar opened her eyes and saw Gilgamesh looking around.

"You sensed faith, while I got hit with the smell of a death. They must have sacrificed a lot of people here."

Ishtar frowned, and nodded slowly. "But I'm certain that this continent has never seen settlers; I scoured its history many times."

Gilgamesh cast his gaze over the area once again, and also used his meagre spirit to see if he could sense anything else. "It could be that you overlooked it... Or that you didn't see it at all."

Ishtar's eyes widened. "You think the planet did something?"

"It's entirely possible. Maybe there were some things it didn't want you to see."

"Or it showed me what it knew I wanted to."

Gilgamesh gave her a pressing gaze, and she continued.

"What if this planet manipulated what I could see, knowing that I would bring you here once I thought it was uninhabited. It wouldn't be hard for it to do; even Anu couldn't overpower this world's laws."

Gilgamesh nodded, "It would be possible, but why would it do that in the first place? What could this planet want with me?"

"If our theories were even a tiny bit right, it might want your help. Think about. This planet is likely a remnant from the time of our oldest ancestors. It knows something that none of us do, and I think that's why it refused to let Anu set foot on it, but let you and I come here without any problems."

Gilgamesh's eyes fell on the monument, and he started walking over to it. Sylvia and Marshall were observing the symbols on the pillar, trying to decipher their meaning to avail.

Gilgamesh came forward and took a close look at the symbols as well, noting how peculiar he felt once his eyes fell on them. It was almost like his mind was being sucked in by them, and he was entering a total trance.

As he knelt there on the ground, his eyes started to look glazy and out of focus, and his breathing almost completely stopped. Marshall and Sylvia blinked at him, for a moment unsure of what to think.

'Failure to comprehend. At least 8 base skills are required to decipher the message.'

Gilgamesh heard the system's voice as he was brought out of his trance, only then realizing that he had been in one. He caught his breath as Sylvia questioned him to make sure he was okay, and Ishtar walked over once she realized that something had happened.

"I'm fine, I just overused my spirit a bit-- nothing to worry about." He told this to Sylvia and Marshall, and once Ishtar came and carried him over to where they were initially, he told her what had really happened.

"Those are the only two skills I have, so those must be the base skills that the system was referring to."

Ishtar sighed, "Another goal for you to focus on; that's just great."

Gilgamesh chuckled, still taking deep breaths. "It doesn't seem as though the system is going to give me quest to find these other 'base skills,' so I'll have to figure out what they are as I go along."

"Mmm-hmm," Ishtar folded her arms and shook her head slowly.

"I'll see if I can at least drudge up some kind of history about this place. I already know that the planet most likely manipulated my search before, so I don't think it should have any reason to do it again."

Ishtar walked over to the structure and started to inspect it closely with her spirit. After a while though, it was clear that she wouldn't be getting anywhere with her inspection.

Gilgamesh gave her a pat on the shoulder, but then Marshall and Sylvia finally spoke up after having inspected the structure for all that time.

"According to my findings," Marshall struck a pose and put on a know-it-all smile, "this structure was once a place of intense, fanatical- I dare say, sacrificial- worship, built by a mysterious, shamanistic cult of old."

Sylvia palmed her face, "Is it that you were just very selective about what you paid attention to in class?"

"There are records of structures like these existing all around the world, but only one record exists of someone having seen those cultists. According to what was written in that journal, those people are the worst of the worst. Entirely incapable of feeling typical human emotion-"

"Now you're just bullshitting." Sylvia cut her brother off with a punch to the gut, and sent him reeling with a loud groan.

"There are records of structures exactly like this one, but most of them were destroyed due to the horrors they represented. As for the entries in 'Kettael's Journal,' they state that the tribe's people were the strangest he had ever seen. Despite not a single one of them being deaf, they did not speak, instead choosing to communicate with their hands."

"They sacrificed their own ritualistically, but no one knows why. Not even Kettael could figure it out after spending months amongst them."

"Beyond that, the only other thing we know for sure is that they built these structures from scratch. No one knows how; Kettael was too late, and arrived at their current encampment after they had erected a new one. All he saw was the ritual sacrifice, and spoke about it in detail."

Gilgamesh nodded, and his eyes wandered off in the direction of the symbols once again, even without him wanting them to. It was like he yearned, deeply, to understand them.

Marshall had broken into a cold sweat, and was also quite pale in the face, but he hobbled over and forced himself to say, "The journal entries were so descriptive, you could almost smell the gore- Oohf!"

Sylvia hit him again, and he fell to the floor, motionless.

"Anyway, people nowadays just call them monoliths. Most of them were torn down due to religious or political reasons, but a few still stand in remote areas around the world. I don't think anyone knew there was one here though."

Gilgamesh weighed all the information in his head and massaged his temples. "At the end of the day, its importance is indecipherable right now. We should just keep moving toward the coast; hopefully we can run into the forces of those seeking to settle this land.."

"Oh right," Sylvia looked over to Marshall, who was still flat on the floor, "didn't Harry say that the Seven Wyrm Lords had waged war over an unnamed land? You think this is the land they were fighting for?"

Marshall seemed to be trying to speak, but all he manage was some drool and foam. Sylvia sucked her teeth and disregarded him, walking away.

"All I want to do is experience more of what this world has to offer. I think I just need to take it easy from now on." When Gilgamesh said that, he gave Ishtar a smirk and she returned a smile of her own.

"What do you guys think about going hunting. I'd love to test Samael out."

Sylvia's eyes lit up, and Marshall pretty much rose from the dead and wiped his face with his clothes. "Samael!?"

Gilgamesh looked at them with intrigue, "Do you recognize that name?"

Ishtar was as lost as he was; he had told her everything, but even she did not recognize the name 'Samael.'

"I can't be sure, but it sounds just like an angel's name..."

"It has to be, right? All the angels have names like that: Gavriel, Uriel, Raphael, Aziel, Bezaliel, Hamaliel, Yofiel-"

"Okay, I think they get it, Marshall."

Marshall noted that he had gotten carried away and subconsciously guarded his stomach and side from his sister. This time, he shut up and walked away from her, not daring to let her hit him again.

"Who is Samael anyway?"

Gilgamesh pointed to the sword on his back and said, "This is Samael. I think the spirit inside of it belongs to a girl, but I can't be sure. All I know is that the sword's name is Samael, that's all the spirit can remember."

"Interesting," Sylvia remarked as she walked a semicircle around Gilgamesh, all the while tapping her lips with her index finger.

Marshall wanted to follow her lead and get a closer look, but he was also weary of her.

"These angels you keep referring to... are they not just people who are stuck within the aperture between mortality and immortality?" For what seemed like the first time, Ishtar spoke up and directed a question toward the siblings.

This stunned them for a bit, and they both had to gather themselves.

"Well no... not really. We call them angels 'cause- well-"

"Cause they're angels! Duh- GAH!"

This time, Marshall was hit right in the groin, and he went down slowly before falling over onto his face.

"Well, yes, they are indeed angels, but we don't call them that 'cause of how powerful they are or the kinds of powers they possess."

Gilgamesh and Ishtar were now thoroughly intrigued. To their knowledge, an angel was just a title given to someone who was approaching the final transformation of their mortal spirit. It was a step anyone seeking to become a god had to take.

During that process, they would be referred to as 'angels,' simply because it was a fitting term for them at the time.

"Then why do you call them angels?"

"Because, in the system, their race is displayed as 'Angel.' Marshall was right-- even if entirely out of line. They just are... angels." Sylvia blinked.

Ishtar was in the midst of trying to understand when her eyes shifted to the side before she could process why they were moving. Her spirit reacted all on its own, altering her of a new presence within the vicinity.

"It is more than just our race, sweetheart." A woman's smoky voice rained down on them all from above, attracting the gazes of all those who had not noticed her arrival.