Life didn't get easier, even in another world.

There were some measures to barely guess the time, but none of them were actually reliable as time itself was loose and not reliable in the place called The Void. It was said that time was not normal here. First of all, what was time measured by? By which world’s standards should it be calculated? There were countless worlds with countless time flows, there was no way that all of their times could be seen on The Void.

As a result of all of these, Kairen had no idea how long he had spent in this place. Sometimes, it felt like years has passed since he first stepped foot here, and sometimes it felt like nothing more than a few days.

He was initially really confused and did his best to calculate the approximate time he had spent in this place. Learning from his previous experiences, he knew that he might end up being away from the house for too long. This made him rather scared. What if too much time passed in his world? What is once he returns, he will find nothing left from his family but some graves?

Panicked, he searched all of the books he could find and asked anyone he saw. He spared no efforts and did his best in order to find out about the length of time he had spent in this land, but that was useless. Nothing he found could be relied on.

Instead of learning about the time, Kairen ended up finding out a lot of other things. Most of them were random stuff that didn’t seem important, and some of them were too complicated for him to fully understand.

There were a lot of theories about Irregularity, Chaos, The Chain, and the different powers and unique skills. Some of them explained their source, nation, and traits, while some talked about how one could wield these powers to the fullest and taught various techniques of different powers. Kairen learned some powerful magic spells from those books, some that even his teacher, Captain Neal, must not know about as they belong to ancient times and some are even from other worlds.

Unfortunately, he could no longer use mana and could cast no spells at all, so his newly gained knowledge was actually useless to him. He could only hope to find a way to perform them using his unique power, or maybe teach them to his friends and his teacher.

The thought of writing down all this knowledge and compiling a book crossed his mind while he was thinking of ways of using the things he had learned. If he did that, he could earn easy money for years! However, he was sure SMF wouldn’t allow such rich and valuable information to be leaked out to the public, so he dispersed the plan as soon as he thought of it.

.....

Apart from the knowledge he gained by reading books and various reports, he was also taught how to manage and use his special power, as well as how to get rid of the extra irregularity and chaos inside his soul, by none other than Stefan.

Stefan couldn’t wield the power that Kairen had, nor could he even get close to it as his soul could get damaged if he did. However, as someone who was friends with Reynold, he knew a lot about Irregularity, Chaos, and such matters. He was also given some instructions by that redhead dude before he left, so he knew what he was supposed to teach Kairen.

After a long while of, or maybe a short time of practicing, Kairen was told that his soul had stabilized to some extent.

He could clearly sense his purified soul. The heavy feeling he had whenever he woke up from sleep, tiredness, constant nausea, headaches, and other physical symptoms he experienced all reduced little by little until they vanished.

However, when asked about the way to leave this place, he was told that he had to wait until Reynold returned.

“Do you really want to leave this place that badly?”

Sitting on the two ends of a small table inside the kitchen, the two young men were busy eating food while conversing with each other.

“Well, I want to return to my world...”

Hearing his answer, Kain’s face darkened a little bit but he did his best not to show his sulled expression to Kairen. He swallowed his food and nodded his head silently, not saying anything anymore after that.

Silence descended in the small room and the only thing that could be heard was the clattering of the spoons and forks on the two people’s hands.

“What about you? Do you want to stay here forever?”

After glancing at Kain a few times and thinking to himself for a brief second, Kairen broke the awkward silence he had created.

For some reason, Kain would always have such an expression after each time Kairen nagged about leaving this place. Kain tried to conceal his sulled expression and sunken mood all the time, but Kairen could still notice it, and he knew why Kain reacted that way.

“...It’s not like I can leave this place. I’m dead so I have to stay here forever...”

When he reached the end of his sentence, Kain’s voice sank a little bit as it trembled slightly and he eventually closed his mouth, shifting his gaze back to his plate.

If it was a few days, weeks, or... it’s better to say if it was when Kairen had just arrived at this place, then he would slap the table, probably flip it over, jump up, leap towards Kain, grab his collar, and give him a beating while shouting curse words at him.

However, Kairen did none of them. Instead, he just gave the man sitting in front of him a sigh before chuckling.

“I’ve told you many times, you are not dead and I will find a way to bring you back.”

Kain gave him a silent glance and lowered his head again. None of them said anything until they were done eating their food.

Knock knock knock

Just when they were done sorting out things in the kitchen and each wanted to do rest a little bit, a knock on the door jolted them up. Kain was the first one to stand up and walk to the door, opening it and glancing at the visitor with a puzzled face. They usually had no visitors.

“Stefan sent me. He wanted that newbie to know that Reynold is back.”

As soon as those words were spoken, Kairen ran to the door with his eyes shining brightly with joy.

“He is back? That ketchup head is back?”

The messenger knitted his brows a little bit after hearing that remark, but he said nothing. The man just smiled at Kain and bade him goodbye, saying that he had done what he was assumed to do.

“Let’s go to the castle! Hurry! We’ve got to go before that bastard disappears again!”

Breaming with joy, Kairen ran inside the house to change his clothes while shouting at Kain to hurry and get ready. He wanted to ask Reynold to send him back as soon as possible. He also wanted to ask him about the ways to bring Kain’s soul back to his body, and also about a lot of questions that had risen in his mind after reading all those books. Of course, he wouldn’t forget to bomber the man with questions regarding the origin of his power and how it was related to him.

Kain was, however, still standing at the door, staring at the disappearing back of Kairen who was running inside a room to change his clothes. He watched until Kairen slammed the door of the room shut, before turning to the empty space in front of his house’s door. His eyes blank and his face numb, the edges of the greed-eyed brown-haired young man’s lips twitched.

“This place is suffocating when you are alone...”

His soft mutter was heard by no one and his expression also was seen by no one. Kain shook his head, closed the door, and walked to his room to change his clothes.