Life in the monastery proved to be much more interesting than I ever thought living with old, indifferent people could ever be. The food wasn’t great but it served its purpose of nourishing us and we ate it gladly to avoid raising any suspicions over our magical chest. Even though the monk-priests would have probably seen, or even crafted, magical artifacts greater than our chest, it was the only place I was sure we could be alone and it belonged just to us.

Our activities were pretty much the same every day, always starting with breakfast when the monastery bells rang twice. At first, I found it hard to get used to the constant sunlight indoors, but pretty soon I was able to connect the ringing of the bells with the passing of time.

The first ring was the start of the day, the second—a double ring—was for breakfast. Ringing the bell three times a few hours later meant lunch was being served, while ringing it five times was a call for dinner. I wondered what ringing the bell four times would mean, but it never felt right to ask any of the monk-priests.

Between meals, we spent our time in the vast library, reading books and asking questions to the white-haired wise people of the monastery. Many times, we returned to the library after dinner in order to continue studying, wanting to show how dedicated we were. However, most of the time, even Galad would not return to the library after he’d dined which meant there was absolutely nobody there to witness our dedication. Regardless, we tried our best to show that we were genuinely interested in gathering knowledge and worthy of their trust.

I wasn’t sure whether the monk-priests enjoyed having us there and answering our questions, but we were definitely enjoying the knowledge they were sharing with us. Even though they did not initiate conversations, they always gave extremely accurate answers to our queries. I soon realized I could use this to my advantage and started asking more open-ended questions, such as what they thought was the most interesting fact about The Divine, their opinion about the end of the Apocosmos, and so much more.

This way, I learned of the pantheon of our world and was amazed by how many deities had lived and died, and how many were still alive. I was even more impressed to hear of thousands of more deities living in other realms of the Apocosmos.

I also learned how The Divine grows stronger by lending mana to Its disciples. Apparently, lending Its power to mortals is a contract under which the mana will return to Its source when they die, magnified by their life experiences.

This circle of life made The Divine more powerful over time as a passive way of It gaining XP, which of course had me wondering where the mana went when people died now that The Divine was out of the picture. I knew better than to pose such a question though.

In asking one of the female monk-priests why they decided to build the monastery in a place like this, she responded that the Order wanted to have access to the Mana Tree. This conversation took a lot of well-thought questions but was eventually worth it. Apparently, the basement of the monastery was used as a crypt for when monk-priests died. However, the crypt also led to a staircase which eventually emerged at the true End of the World, where the Mana Tree resided.

Asking what the Mana Tree was didn’t get me more information other than it was used as a medium for gods to descend and mortals to ascend. This answer however, created more questions than it solved. My subsequent queries on what this meant were met with absolute silence, which I interpreted as this being a subject not to be discussed with outsiders. I didn’t dig any deeper, since the amount of obscure and interesting things we learned every day simply didn’t leave much time to ponder over unanswered topics.

***

Almost four tendays passed in this way and we both felt ready to ask Galad to let us enter the glass chamber and study the book we’d been after for so long. Kai was especially looking forward to it, and he was the one who’d urged me to speak to Galad on that day.

Early in the morning, we emerged from our chest into the room we never actually used but was appointed to us. Not more than a minute later, we heard the double ring of the monastery’s giant bell and we climbed down the stairs toward the dining hall for our breakfast.

The hall was already brimming with people in white, the monk-priests who were as punctual as ever in starting their day early and making the most out of the time they had. As we came close to one of the large tables holding everything we needed for our breakfast, I scanned the room trying to find Galad. He rarely had breakfast in the communal dining area, but I thought it would be easier if we carried out the conversation here.

Unfortunately, as per usual, Galad was probably having his breakfast at the desk in the library where he spent most of his day, and since he used his teleportation doors to go anywhere, we hadn’t stumbled upon him on our way. Thus, we took our usual seats and usual breakfast, starting yet another morning in the monastery.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Kai, as he gulped down a glass of yellow fruit juice.

“Good. Ready,” he replied, as soon as he emptied his glass and used the back of his hand to wipe his lips. “You?”

“As ready as I’m ever going to be,” I replied.

“What if he says no?” Kai asked, almost too quiet for me to hear.

“He won’t,” I replied, trying to exude confidence. “We’ve been nothing but perfect during our stay here and we’ve never asked anything of him before.”

“You’re right,” Kai said, and stood up.

“And even if he says no,” I said as I also stood up, our food trays in hand, “we’ll just have to work on changing his mind.”

We left the trays with the plates we’d been eating from on the usual table, where Galad would magically pick them up, clean them and prepare them for the next meal.

During our first week in the monastery, I began to wonder who cleaned up after us since I saw no servants or workers, until one day I saw Galad casually walking through the dining area, chanting a few words while holding a crystal, and a series of spells triggering. The spells were not overly complicated, however by the end of their procession, the dining area looked perfectly clean and ready to be used again.

We walked to the library, among a river of mumbling monk-priests who rushed into the large hall and filled most of the corridors between the large bookcases. In the middle of the hall, right next to one of the glass walls of the room we were yearning to enter, was a thick wooden desk with Galad sitting behind it, directly facing the glass.

I tried to see whether he was in a good mood but that was never the issue with him or any of the other monk-priests. They were never in a good mood. Neither were they ever in a bad mood. They always appeared emotionless, simply going through their days, thinking of their research, reading, and taking notes.

The only time I glimpsed them being excited over something was whenever I asked them about the topic of their research. I couldn’t blame them for being enthusiastic about what they were researching, but most of what they did was far beyond my knowledge: the lands of the gods, manipulating and storing Dark Enegy, regenerating and creating mana from alternative energy sources. All were wondrous topics, but still irrelevant and worthless, considering our current predicament.

Galad, however, was much harder to read and much harder to make smile. He wasn’t conducting any research and even though he answered all of our questions and even engaged in conversation pro-actively, we knew much less about him than some of the monks. The conversation always seemed to return to him asking us about our studies, what we had learned during the day, and what we were planning to read next.

We approached him from behind and saw him sitting in his comfortable armchair, a juicy half-eaten red fruit in hand, looking at the ceiling of the library. I wanted to announce our presence even though he had most probably seen us coming. But it was important to start on a positive note.

“Does it need painting?” I asked with a smile.

“Does it… what?” he said, puzzled, and turned his head to face us. “What needs painting?”

“You were staring at the ceiling,” I said, and took a small wooden stool with a pillow on top, and sat next to him. “Are you considering painting it?”

“Ah,” he snorted, a hint of a smile drawing the left side of his mouth upward. “No, I was just thinking of something.”

“What were you thinking, Monk-priest Galad?” asked Kai.

“What I would like to research,” he replied, “when the time comes. But of course, that is years away yet, so it doesn’t matter now. Do you need help finding a book?”

“Actually,” I started, and leaned forward while still sitting on the stool. “We wanted to renew our request.”

“You want to enter the glass chamber and study there?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, as hope began to grow in me. “We don’t need to study all the books in there. Just the one particular book we told you about. Would you let us in, please?”

“You have to prove yourself worthy first,” he said, in the exact same manner he had done more than a month ago when we first visited the library. “You have just arrived and we need to know if we can trust you.”