Chapter 1307 Ten Countries [2]

Lily knew her new friend possessed an unreasonable amount of caution, so before he could ask why or refuse, she made sure to reassure him.

It had been about a month in Origin Battlefield time since they last met.

If they were to separate now without Timi registering her location as a safe point, there was no telling whether they'd meet again anytime soon, or ever.

"What's this?"

Contrary to Lily's expectation, Timi didn't raise his guard and instead asked with curiosity.

Hearing no objection, Lily quickly introduced him to the Universal Cornerstone.

After a few rounds of questions and answers, Timi had a rough picture of everything related to it.

With visible emotion, he turned to look at the territory surrounding the Cornerstone, and the many Awakeners moving around it.

As expected, this naive friend of his was like a book of new information.

He'd been in the Origin Battlefield for so many days, and while he'd noticed the changes around him and plenty of other things, isolating himself from others meant he hadn't quite grasped any of it, and could only move with the flow.

"You're saying all these people came from the Land of Origin?" Timi asked, a tint of excitement entering his tone.

Come to think of it, even the term Land of Origin had come from Lily.

Before she told him about Awakeners and the Land of Origin, Timi and most people on Earth had simply called it the Game World, while people connected to it were commonly called Players.

Chosen Ones was another name occasionally used, although that term was more commonly associated with an entirely different group of supernaturals on Earth.

"Yes."

Lily confirmed it without hesitation, adding a few more insights to her answers as the questions kept coming.

Michael had never instructed her to keep this particular matter secret.

In fact, from the few conversations she'd overheard between Michael and Arianne, along with several things Michael had personally explained to her, Lily understood that the existence of people from the Land of Origin entering the Origin Battlefield wasn't something they intended to keep hidden forever.

It couldn't really be hidden in the first place.

Of course, understanding that something wasn't meant to remain a permanent secret didn't mean Lily would casually explain everything to anyone who asked.

Timi was simply a little different.

Truthfully, there was a lot Lily didn't know herself.

Compared to older Awakeners like Michael, newer ones like her and Timi felt a certain disorganization about it all, though subconsciously, it also felt like this was simply how things related to Awakeners had always been.

At her confirmation, the excitement Timi had been trying to suppress broke through.

For a brief moment, his normally cold expression shifted considerably.

Then the excitement vanished, replaced by a solemn look that Lily didn't miss.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Timi shook his head.

There was, in fact, something.

The moment Lily explained the miraculous functions of the Universal Cornerstone and confirmed that the people surrounding them had actually been transported from the Land of Origin, the first thought that entered Timi's mind was his sisters.

For more than a year, keeping them alive had been the most important thing in his life.

And for the first time, Timi had seemingly discovered a way to take them away from Earth.

The thought alone had nearly overwhelmed his usual caution, but reality quickly followed.

The Origin Battlefield was extremely dangerous.

Even Timi had nearly died, or suffered greatly, more than once since arriving here.

He was strong for his level and possessed an exceptional Talent, but that didn't mean he could guarantee his own safety.

His twin sisters were barely older than ten.

Bringing them into the Origin Battlefield simply to escape Earth might only mean exchanging one dangerous world for another.

Perhaps it would even be worse.

Still, another possibility quickly emerged from what Lily had explained.

These people had come from the Land of Origin.

That meant the connection wasn't limited to bringing people from the Land of Origin into the Origin Battlefield.

The Universal Cornerstone connected different places.

If that was the case, then perhaps he could use the Cornerstone to send them somewhere else.

He had only been confused earlier because he'd been thinking only of doing this himself.

According to Lily, only the owner or a registered resident with sufficient permission could set teleportation points in different locations.

While he could set one on Earth and one in the Origin Battlefield, Lily told him he'd first need to register his other body to gain access there.

Though the two bodies shared the same mind, the Origin Will seemed very insistent on the distinction between the real body and the clone, since only the main body was unrestricted in many ways within the Origin Battlefield.

"The Land of Origin."

Timi knew very little about that world beyond what Lily had told him, but even those fragments made it sound considerably better than present-day Earth.

He had actually been there briefly himself before his deployment, but his unwillingness to interact with people had kept him hidden away from civilization, so he hadn't seen much.

Still, he knew one thing.

It certainly wasn't completely safe.

There were monsters, supernatural forces, kingdoms, wars, powerful individuals, and dangers of its own.

But Timi wasn't looking for a perfect world.

He was looking for somewhere safer than Earth.

A place where his sisters could sleep without him wondering whether a monster would break through their shelter before morning.

A place where finding food didn't occasionally require killing for it.

One would think that with access to the Land of Origin, stronger Awakeners would look out for ordinary people, but it was the opposite.

Most only focused on themselves.

While Timi wasn't a villain, he had too much to care about and didn't want attention drawn to him.

To others on Earth, he was just a powerful Esper.

As for trying to find refuge in another realm if the Land of Origin proved out of reach, aside from finding someone willing to take him in, the thought of such an unfamiliar place filled Timi with real unease.

Timi's gaze slowly returned to the towering black pillar.

"By the way, these are the pieces you're talking about, right?"