(Chloe POV)

 

When I was at the store with the hero’s party, I suddenly met up with Amelia again there.

 

Walking away from the hero so he couldn’t overhear our conversation.

 

“Hey, who are you buying clothes for? We made a deal about Nones clothes.”

 

“They aren’t for him. There for Uriel. She doesn’t have any right now. And we kind of can’t let her just walk around naked all the time now can we.” Amelia said.

 

This made sense to me. I had already gotten made at None because of her being naked so this is probably the best plan.

 

“So, have you seen her yet?” I ask, wondering about what an archangel could look like.

 

“I’m, yeah. But you have to see her yourself to really understand.” She told me.

 

I didn’t really understand this, but I followed her to see what she meant. When I got to the dressing room area, I saw Abby waiting outside of them.

 

“Oh, Chloe and Amelia. What are you doing back here?” She asked us.

 

“Oh, I have a friend who is trying something on and Chloe knows them as well. I just wanted her to see the outfit.” Amelia responded to her.

 

After that exchange Amelia knocked on one of the doors to tell Uriel to come out. When she did, I understood why Amelia said I would need to see her to understand. She was unbelievably beautiful. She had long semi curly blond hair. The clothes she was wearing was a black sleeveless and backless dress. The dress part was short in the front and long in the back. She looked absolutely amazing in it.

 

“Oh, hi Chloe. I didn’t know you were going to be here. And who might you be?” She said to me and asked Abby.

 

After that we went through some introductions and talked for a little before Olivia came back out. With all of her shopping done and Abby also saying she was finished, we went our separate ways. Olivia tried very hard to have Amelia and Uriel go a different way for some reason.

 

With all of this done I took them to go pay for their stuff. I don’t see everything they were buying but the total was quite high. After paying, we decided to go back to the castle. Arthur offered to hold their stuff, but for some reason he was confused for a second when Olivia took him up on it.

 

Heading back to the castle Arthur started talking to Abby, “Hey, why didn’t you show anyone the stuff you bought?”

 

“Because I don't care what anyone else thinks about it?” She says in response.

 

After spending some time with them I started to get the idea that Abby did not like the rest of the group that much. She cared about Olivia as a sister, but she only really tolerated Arthur. She was constantly short with him, like everything he talked about was just annoying to her.

 

When we got to the castle, it was just about dinner time. The plane was to have dinner together with the rest of my family. I hadn’t seen my sister and brother in law in a while, so I was looking forward to it. When we entered the building, a group of maids from the church told the hero’s party that they had prepared clothes for them for dinner.

 

Shortly afterwards some of the staff from the castle told me the same. For more formal dinners like this I had to wear nicer clothes. I was happy that this wasn’t the ball yet. For that i had to get a bunch of make-up and my hair done, it was a lot of work.

 

When I finally got to the dining room, my parents were already there, as well as all of my siblings, and my brother in law. The only people left were the members of the hero party.

 

After a few more minutes they got there. The strange thing was that the hero sat between my second sister, Lily, and Olivia. Abby sat next to me, which was nice. Over today I started to like Abby a lot. The other half of the table was my oldest sister, Eleanor, and her husband, Noah, talking with my parents. Because of how politics works out, Eleanor and Noah are going to inherit the throne as king and queen when my parents retire. Noah himself was the second prince of another nation, and was born around the same time as Eleanor. They basically got engaged right after they were born. This worked out very well, because they became great friends during their childhood.

 

For the most part, allied countries try to marry princes and princesses to each other. If they are born around the same time, the engagement talks start even before they are born sometimes. The only time this doesn’t happen is if both are the first born children because they have to inherit the crown for their country.

 

Due to random circumstances, both Lily and I were born after all of the other princes and princesses so we didn’t have an arranged marriage. This meant that for the most part that we could choose our partner ourselves at school. This was the plan when we were born, but due to various circumstances, it didn’t really work out. Neither of us really ended up going to school.

 

Lily is about 25 right now, the same age as the hero. When I saw her insist that he sit next to her, I also noticed that my father looked quite happy about it as well. It wasn’t really directly told to both of us, but I know he held out hope that one of us would fall in love with him and form a permanent relationship with him.

 

The dinner went on and was quite normal. I was able to talk to Abby a little and had a few words with Elenor and Noah. After dinner I went back to my room and changed out of the clothes I was wearing. I didn’t really dislike the more formal clothes I had to wear, but the more casual clothes I own were more comfortable.

 

I had some work I could do tonight that I had kind of been ignoring, so I headed to the study I had in the castle. All court mages had a lab in a different building in the capital. That is where the other mages that work for me do their things. But since I am also a princess in Cardon, I also have a private study in the castle. Last time I was at my lab, I brought some of my translations and rubbings of the draconic tablets back with me.

 

I work for a few hours, but don’t really make that much progress. The draconic language is very hard to understand and translate. Due to their rarity not that many many people have ever heard it spoken or been able to learn it. And due to the complexity, the reading comprehension skill requires a large amount of points in the intelligence stat, more than any I have ever seen. Skills like translation and reading comprehension rely on the intelligence stat to work, so if you don’t have a high enough stat, it won’t work.

 

When I leave my study and head back to my room to sleep, I come across a very bizarre scene. I come across a door that is slightly ajar. When I get close, I hear Olivia saying something.

 

“I bought these for you earlier,” she says.

 

When I get close enough to look through, I see one of the bedrooms given to the hero’s party. There, I saw three people. In what was very attractive underwear, both Olivia and my older sister Lily, and with them, the hero, Arthur. While Olivia was talking, Lily was kissing Arthur.

 

(None POV)

 

Today was quite interesting. The meeting with the church, the tournament, and this god forsaken puzzle cube. I have been working on it for hours and have made no progress. The instructions I wrote for it make no sense, and I believe this is where I stop on undoing the seals.

 

After they get back from the store, Uriel and Amleia tell us that they saw Chloe at the store with the hero’s party. Turns out that Amelia met the two other members of the party today during the tournament. Uriel also showed off her new dress. It looked quite good, and turns out that because of her power as an angel, it's basically indestructible. Turns out that angels have a barrier around them that stops almost all attacks. She also explains that angels don’t normally wear clothes, so that is why she didn’t have any. She told me that when she first met a version of me, he spent a long time explaining that in the normal world, she needs to wear clothes.

 

That night, while taking a break from the puzzle, I looked at my status again. There is where I see Heresy magic. Heresy magic is the magic that controls things like status effects that aren’t really physical. When i ask wisdom for the detailed explanation, it tells me,

 

Heresy magic is the magic that directly affects the soul. It is used to place status effects on a person, like fear, or sleep. At high levels it can be used to hypnotize people or even put them to sleep for real, rather than just make them think they are asleep.

 

With this explanation I remember that the magic that Tess uses to help me sleep is Heresy magic.

 

“Hey, Tess. Do you know the magic formula for the spell that you use to help me sleep?” I ask her.

 

While I was looking at my status, Tess was reading a book. When she heard me she looked up and said, “Yeah, I do. What's up?”

 

“I was looking at my new skills from the seal that was undone when I summoned Uriel, and one of them is heresy magic at level 10, so I just want to learn the spell so I can use it without you.”

 

When I say this, she looks at me for a few seconds with a completely blank face.“I don’t think you need to.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Well, I can always cast it for you. So you don’t need to learn it yourself.”

 

“What if you have to go on another trip? I know I don't need sleep but I still like doing it and currently I can't without you.”

 

After a few more seconds of her blankly looking at me, she says “Fine, i'll teach it to you”

 

When she said this, we went to a table and she drew out the magic formula on a piece of paper for me. This was just like when Chloe had taught me magic before. When I placed my hand on the paper i heard something unusually from wisdom,

 

Sorry. Forcibly activating magic formula, lv.10 Heresy Magic True Sleep.

 

When I heard this, my magic power grew and instead of just learning the spell, I also cast it on automatically, targeting myself.

 

When this happened, I started to fall asleep. I heard Tess call out to me as I fell to the ground. The last thing I saw was Uriel and Amelia rushing over and all three of them looking down on me.

 

Then I fell into a deep sleep.

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When I next opened my eyes, I was in a bizarre garden. It was a clear blue sky, but looking at it was very bizarre. The sky had a number of other planets in it. There was also a clear lack of sun in the sky. It seemed to just be light for no reason.

 

When I stood up, I was wearing my normal adventure clothes. Looking around I saw just the garden going in every direction. There were a lot of flowers and bushes. If it wasn’t immaculately groomed, it would look just like a field, but it was clearly being worked on.

 

Suddenly I heard a voice call out to me, “So you’ve woken up then, current incarnation. Please come with me.” The person who called out to me was a woman wearing a maid uniform. In all honesty it looked like the one that Amelia had me wear once, not very functional, but quite cute instead.

 

The woman in the maid uniform brought me to a gazebo in the garden. Sitting at the table was a woman wearing a black dress. It seemed quite nice. But the weird part was the women wearing it. When I looked at her, she seemed very familiar, but also like no one else alive. Familiar yet unknown, somehow at the same time.

 

“Hello, dear current incarnation. Or should I say None. Welcome to my garden.” She says to me.

 

“What is going on?” I decide to ask, very confused by everything.

 

“Please, sit and have some tea, I will explain everything you need to know for today.”

 

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to sit with the woman. By her appearance she seems younger than me, but only by a few years. When I sit, the maid that showed me the way over her poured tea into both of our cups.

 

“Well, then. Hello None. This is the first time you're meeting me, but much like your new friend Uriel, I knew some of the previous you’s. But that's not important right now. I brought you here because of something new that's happening to you.”

 

“What do you mean?” I ask, confused by what she was saying.

 

“Well, you have found yourself interacting with people you probably shouldn’t. By that I mean the hero you met today.”

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

“I mean two things actually. The first one is quite easy to explain. The second not so much.”

 

“Ok, so i think if you continue like this, I'm just going to keep asking what you mean. But nothing you say makes complete sense to me.”

 

“Fine, fine. I'll start with the easy part. To completely understand you need to know a little about how fate works. So everyone has what can be considered a destiny. Most people have a wide range of them that lead to different outcomes, others have a few, and then there are some people who only have one destiny. For example, your friend Amelia has a lot of different paths her life can go down, while Tess and Chloe only have a few. And then there are people like the hero of ages you met today, he only has one destiny. Now things like choice and randomness come into play here, but in a more grand sense, he only has one. But you are an abnormality in this system. Other versions of you have known this before, and you instinctively know it about yourself, but you have no destiny. The reason for this is part of the other part of the story, so I'll explain it later. The fact that you don’t have one is kind of complicated, but it allows you to do some interesting things, like interrupt the fate of other people, like change or effect the path that others are supposed to go down. For example, currently your friend Chloe is studying the draconic language from cardinal. If you were to help her, she would have information she shouldn’t have yet and that would affect the outcome of her study. This happens more easily when they have fewer places they can end up. For example there is very little you can do that can have that big of an impact on Amelia’s life. All of these leads to my initial point, you can really mess up what Arthur is supposed to do.”

 

She told me a lot of information, but it all made sense to me. I knew I had an odd reaction whenever someone mentioned fate. What stood out to me is the idea that I can mess up someone else’s fate. “If what you're telling me is true, how can I avoid messing everything up so badly?”

 

“For the most part, you can do whatever you want. The only thing you really need to avoid is people like Arthur. To make sure, wisdom will start to tell you if you run into someone like that again, but chances are you won’t. In all honesty, in all of your lives, this is the first time this has happened.”

 

“Wait, how do you know what wisdom will do?”

 

“Oh, that one is easier, I made both the wisdom skill and your ruler of wisdom title. They were a gift to the first you.”

 

What she just told me was a huge shock. “You created a skill? You also knew the first me?”

 

“Yes to both. Skills are an interesting thing, but something like wisdom does have a creator. Doing so is the realm of the gods, but it does happen. Wisdom is not the only one you have, but it is the only one made for you specifically.” This was an interesting thing but I didn't really understand. “And to your other point, yes I knew the original you. That is part of the other point, but we are running out of time for today. I'll tell you a bit though. The first you was an interesting person. You are quite like him, in some ways. Due to some circumstances he was thrown into the void and was forced to survive there. Due to my position I learned of this and started to watch him fight for his survival, eventually giving him wisdom to help out. Over the years he spent there, I watched as he lost every memory of the life he lived before, eventually becoming the person who Uriel would one day meet. Everything about him was lost in that void, even his name. The new one he picked up was the thing that the monsters in the void would yell whenever he showed up, a word that can’t really be understood by a human, but it loosely translates to Void Slayer. That was the you that met Uriel and left the void.”

 

“So, my original self didn’t really die like the other versions of me. Instead he fought to the end. That's kind of good to know.”

 

“Well our time is up for today, and I'm not sure the next time I can talk to you about this. It's up to you though. If you want, join Arthur, or don’t. This was just so you can make a decision on your own, knowing everything”

 

With her finishing that last sentence, I started to feel really drowsy. As I fell over like I did when I fell asleep, the two of them disappeared into a gateway of light, and I fell asleep.