Archive Of Potentialities.

IDENTITY [[SS X TENSURA]]: Chapter 3.

Life on the back of the turtle had grown tranquil, the insanity of that day hadn't repeated itself for a whole week. I was grateful for the peace, it granted me a lot of time to reflect on myself and familiarize myself with my abilities and companions.

Regarding my powers, I've begun to suspect that I used to be a fairly unreasonable individual. Uriel granted me the ability to completely enforce my will upon space and the laws within it. Teleportation, flight, heat quantity manipulation, spatial severance, spatial restriction and a whole host of others. I remember shuddering as I imagined a world in which such abilities were necessary.

While I don't fancy myself a narcissist, I couldn't stop myself from entertaining the thought that I had to be special somehow. Surely I didn't come from a place where all this things were normal, right?

Right.

Moving on from my ridiculous powers, I had learnt a fair bit about Sunny and Nephis.

Apparently, Sunny's real name was Sunless —- a bit on the nose for a shadow user, but Sunny seemed self aware about it so I let it rest —- and he was a very...strange...person.

As I had noticed before, he answered any and all questions, rhetorical or not, almost like he was compelled to. He also randomly had a conversation with thin air.

When I had asked about that, he had replied: "I'm talking to my sword, did I mention he looks exactly like me? Really annoying fellow, that one."

I didn't know what to make of that, but from that moment on I began to worry for his mental health.

Besides that, he would go to the edge of the island without fail every day and observe the serpent, who would glare at him in turn. I was apparently the only one who found all these things quite bizarre, as Nephis never batted an eye at his antics.

Speaking of Nephis, she remained as taciturn as ever. I could sense a sea of burning emotion beneath her gray eyes, but her poker face was all but perfect.

She also enjoyed fighting a lot. Over the past week she had asked for a spar with me a total of 20 times. And given the gap between us, she always went all out. In a show of good faith, I faced her without Absolute Defense or Thought Acceleration, the absence of the latter providing a sort of challenge for me.

Sunny though, had an odd reaction to her igniting her flames in all their glory for a "mere spar" as he had called it. Sunny had odd reactions to a lot of things regarding her, and she seemed to grow a little odd herself when it concerned him.

Wait...

Hmm.

Could it be, those two are in l-?

"Hey, Rimuru," Interrupting my thoughts with a tap on my shoulder —well, the barrier around it anyway — Sunny asked for my attention.

He had an odd expression as he realized he hadn't really touched me, but I ignored it.

"Yeah?" It was close to noon, at least what counted for noon on this river, and Sunny was apparently done with serpent-gazing for the day.

"I need a favor, can you follow me?" He looked a bit antsy, impatient.

What's gotten into him..?

"Uh, sure," I rose to my feet, stretching. I had found that I had an instinctive habit of doing so, even if I could tell it wasn't needed. "Where to?"

"The edge of the shell," He said, turning.

I tilted my head, confused. Was it finally time to leave this place? Didn't seem likely, he would've called Nephis if that was the case.