GUARDIAN OF THE END

"Yup, weird dreams." Jason muttered as he saw a goat dancing to the 'baby' song. The lyrics of the song were stuck in his head as forced himself to turn his gaze away from the goat and look around.

Jason had never had such a dream before and the goat just added extra weirdness to it.

'This is a weird world.' He thought while looking up at the sky to see it being completely without any other object. The ground and everything else were normal but the sky stuck out for some reason.

It didn't look like night and was more of a pure black. No matter what Jason did, he kept on looking at the sky while trying to figure out why it was empty.

"There is no use in doing that. It would forever remain empty under my presence." A voice suddenly spoke behind Jason as the goat suddenly vanished.

Jason turned around to see his patron god staring him in the face.

"What are you doing here, Ere?" He asked in a confused tone.

"Don't call me by that name," Erebus replied while rubbing his forehead. He then looked at Jason before replying to his question. "I am here to explain why you can't remember anything from that moment."

"A plot hole resolved so soon? Blasphemy!" Jason gasped.

"Have your brain cells also reduced to the level of a child? Actually, scratch that. Your brain will also be of a child if you are stuck in one's body."

"What were you explaining again?" Jason asked while faking a cough as Erebus shook his head.

? "The reason you can't remember it was because I had to remove your memories as well as the system's memories so that neither of you would know what happened," His tone suddenly went serious. "The event has shaken a few gods in the divine temple as well."

Jason looked surprised when he heard Ere's words as he caught on to what the god trying to imply.

"So they are likely to pay attention to this world more due to the events."

"You are indeed right."

Both of them then nodded before Erebus looked up at the sky and smiled.

"We will meet again sometime in the future. Keep on trying to upgrade your job classes while making the progression move up. I am going to simplify things a bit for you so that your brain doesn't get overloaded with complicated things."

After saying that, Erebus vanished from the spot and the sky slowly started getting filled with stars. Jason sat down and saw this happen until he was woken up by the sound of his alarm.

[ Host, did your patron god visit you? ] The system asked curiously as Jason nodded.

'You weren't able to hear it?' He asked while sitting up and stretching his upper body.

[ Generally, I can see your dreams but can't hear what is going on but this time, I couldn't even look at it. ]

'I see. Anyways, Erebus coded his words and told me that a few gods are putting their attention on me and him since we are a very unlikely pair. This means that we will be facing many problems in the future.'

[ But then why did he remove our memories? ]

'He said that it had to do something with other gods and the incident that happened yesterday. I am just interpreting that he said that but there is a chance that he meant something else.'

[ I see… ]

Jason then got on with his daily routine and visited the shelter. He tried asking Feta what had happened yesterday but the entire conversation included a lot of "MEHs" and head shaking.

In the end, Jason gave up and continued on with his daily routine. Wake up, go to the shelter, practice, get back home, eat, play with Nora, again eat, nap, go and practice again, come back, eat and sleep.

That was the routine he followed every day and time passed by in such a manner. Soon, Nora's birthday was only a day away and Issac, Ray, and Zara were nowhere to be seen.

Risa wasn't too worried as she was still in touch with them and knew that they would appear before his birthday. That turned out to be true as Issac burst inside the house when only an hour was left until Nora's birthday.

"How are you all?" He asked in a cheerful tone as Jason and Risa both rolled their eyes.

Nora on the other hand started running towards Issac who grinned and bent down with his arms wide open.

"Mother! Father!" Nora ran right beside him and hugged the arms of his parents who had just entered the house.

On the other hand, Issac looked as though he would be blown by the wind. Jason felt bad for his grandpa as he walked forward and patted Issac's shoulder.

"Don't worry grandpa. Emotional damage is a very common thing inside a family." Jason said while patting his grandfather's shoulder which seemed very odd coming from a five and a half years old.

Issac sighed dramatically as he lifted Jason off the floor and grinned. He then put him down and looked at Risa.

"We found the bow Karna wanted but it took us too much time to find it. We had to travel through a maze for two months and then had to find it in a pyramid." He complained as Risa rolled her eyes again.

"Should have thought of that before promising Karna that."

"How was I supposed to know that the braindead of a demon king would send out such weak demons?!"

"Then there is no point in complaining then." Risa finished as she walked up to Nora and his parents to check up on them.

"Grandpa, there is no use trying. Grandpa is too powerful for us." Jason said while looking at his grandpa who nodded.

"You are right Jason. Anyways, Karna is back so you can resume your training now. You should be able to use the first form perfectly in about two to three years."

"That much time?!" Jason was surprised to know that such a simple-looking thing took so many years to reach the perfection.

"A prodigy with perfect Z rank talent would have also taken a year and three months minimum to master it. You would have taken more time as well if not for Karna." Issac replied as Jason slowly nodded.

The entire family then gathered above the same spot in the house again where the door to the basement was.

"I guess all of us are gonna bet that Nora will have both fire and wind element so there is no point in holding a bet," Issac muttered while opening the entrance to the basement.

The entire family then climbed down and waited in the room for a few minutes. Time went by before only a few minutes were left until midnight.

"Grandma, will Nora also cause some kind of thing like I did?" Jason curiously asked while remembering how his birthday had caused an entire army of demons to show up on their doorstep.

"Guess we will find that out now," Risa replied with a smile and Jason could tell that she didn't know about it.

"Nora," Issac suddenly called after five minutes. "Stand in the center of the room now. You will be five years old in a matter of seconds though I hope that we don't have to fight someone again."

"Issac…" Risa muttered as the entire Syrward family facepalmed. After all, Issac had just jinxed them.