Chapter Thirty-Eight
SAIL THE WINDS
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The ground abruptly began to rumble, and only seconds after, buildings began to collapse. With just this single move, dozens of people were already dead. Veritas' grimaced at what he knew was happening right outside of the castle, but he didn't care.
Where those buildings had collapsed, a large hole had been formed. Out of it, four watchtowers connected to the castle stuck out. After some more time, a castle fully emerged, and was floating at the center of this hole.
The only thing that Veritas, who was inside of the castle, heard, was this.
"Continue, mortal."
His facial expression was inconceivable, even without his ability. It was one of sadness, anger, and despair, but it also represented Veritas' bravery to finish the task in front of him.
'I'll just do . . . what I have to. That's all.'
He looked to the right of his wooden chair, where Ira was enshrouded in a smoke thick enough that he couldn't see her through it.
'She doesn't know I exist, but her mission is still there to be carried out."
Something that Veritas had learned early on was that the world was, almost disappointingly, easy to decept. While his awakened ability should have made it so that nobody can remember anything related to him or he himself, by putting the thought of doing something in someone's mind before he disappeared, they would somehow retain those trains of thought.
It was a bug in the system, one that he was actually glad existed.
It did bring up another point, though, which was something that Veritas had realized.
'All these abilities, granted, awakened, and those that lie beyond . . . there's some sort of coordination with one another.'
Veritas had nothing impressive when it came to putting out evidence for this theory of his, but it was one that he believed was reality.
Even the so-called 'God' from up above was just another person who had abilities and decided to rule. At this revelation, something struck Veritas as odd.
If he really was as all-powerful as the man stated, would he really be limited to only two abilities?
'The only thing that this suggests is that there's another being beyond all of that pulling the strings . . . but for what reason were abilities granted?'
Veritas stopped daydreaming to focus back on the situation at hand, but this was one of the mysteries that he believed would shake the world if unraveled, but would also never be unraveled to do such a thing.
Ira was still charging up her ability to its maximum potential, which was something that Veritas had no issues with.
SLAM
But, that didn't mean that there was nothing that Veritas didn't have any issues with.
'Intruders?'
Veritas had always been prepared for a quick getaway. This dungeon of his was capable of something beyond the limits of just flight, but he found it simpler to just describe it as the ability to soar.
The dungeon's true ability was to control where it was located. Coordinates existed in this world of theirs, and Veritas just had to imagine the coordinates he wished the dungeon to be at, and it would go there.
It wouldn't teleport, but would instead move in a straight path towards the coordinates that Veritas desired. While travelling, Veritas would flip on his switch. That way, nobody would be able to recognize the castle, as it was something related to him.
He had been assigned to the capital a year back, and had been watching it for a substantial amount of time. As time progressed, Veritas began to get bolder with the actions that he took, which was something that he was ordered to do from the start. Recently, he had gotten bold enough that he would directly squash those who stood out, such as his hunt for Dionysus. During the cat-and-mouse ordeal of before, Dionysus wasn't the only one being hunted, but actually one out of hundreds of people getting tracked down.
Unfortunately, it was all for nought. In the end, the heavens decided that this city was too risky, and should be exterminated. Veritas, who knew he would just die along with the rest of the city and its civilians if he resisted, decided to just play along with the whims from up above.
Because of all this information, Veritas was very shocked to see who the intruder was, and also shocked at seeing such a bold movement from this specific person.
"Y-you . . ."
"Yo."
--- SEQUENCE 2 ---
"Hey, Dionysus. You're the successor, right?"
The lich didn't even have to bring up who he was the successor to for Dionysus to understand what he was referencing. A scowl popped up on his face as he looked at the lich, who just stared back innocently.
"I've already told both you and that old man, I've got no interest in any of this business."
"Yeah, right. Anyway . . ."
'Oi, if I've got no interest, why���re you still talking?'
Dionysus lamented his incapability of just telling the lich to shut up, but at this point, he was forced to listen.
"You've been out in the original dimension, and you've been getting st- No, according to you, that isn't the word to be used. You've been gaining some new skills, right?"
"Yeah."
"That's all then, thanks for your attention."
'You're also an interesting one.'
Dionysus had fully deciphered the lich at this point, and while its backstory was a bit sad, he didn't have the time to care.
'Well, I've got all the time in the world right here, but it's more like I just don't care.'
Since the flow of time here was much faster than that of reality, so much more time had passed now. He was still deciphering the dimension, but he had finally acquired a fully accurate description of just how much faster time went in here.
'Ninety times faster, huh? A single year is ninety in here, but we only age a singular one . . . sounds awful.'
Dionysus, instinctively, looked over to where the Chained King would have once been chained. The giant red beating heart was still there, and was dripping blood onto where he once was.
'I was still a bit of a brat back then, but even now, I miss the old man.'
While he did drag Dionysus into a lot of the situations that he was in today, he still had a lot to thank him for. He taught him what having a role model was all about, although Dionysus never ended up looking up to him, and showed just how experience impacted your development.
'. . . Wait, huh?'
"Hey, Lich."
Dionysus called out to the other person who was stuck in this room.
"Yeah?"
Its chains shook when it yelled back, but Dionysus didn't care about that at the moment.
"The heart . . . it's bleeding blue blood."
It was exactly as he had uttered. The heart was dropping a blue liquid that looked to be about as thick as blood, so Dionysus ended up calling it exactly that, blue blood.
"Oh . . . well, I've got no comments on that."
The lich dejectedly lowered its head once more, its low self-esteem on view for all to see. Dionysus considered throwing a pity party for the thing, but he was more focused on what was at hand.
'The blue blood . . . those memories.'
Dionysus was, to say the least, a natural genius, but not in the normal sense. He wasn't very gifted academically, so much so that he didn't even know how to read, although one could argue that it was because he had nobody to teach him how.
But, that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that Dionysus was an excellent choice to pick when you needed someone to analyze patterns and get to the bottom of something.
Because of that, a lot of things began to click.
'The Chained King didn't even awaken until after he got out of the dimension, just like me. Usually, awakenings are dramatic and pronounced, but both of us just got our abilities out of nowhere . . .'
Dionysus was digging.
'After some time passed, around some months, the Chained King fully ascended to the third level of his awakened ability, skipping the second one.'
Dionysus was digging deep.
'These chains are meant to inflict the negative emotions of humanity upon the one who bears them, and the Chained King was full of them down to the very last ankle. Awakenings, or just stage ups in general, are things that occur after enough experience has been gained.'
His eyes lit up as Dionysus realized something.
"Lich, can you do me a favor?"
"I'm kind of in a bind here."
It shook its arms, but Dionysus waved its meager issues away.
"I'm gonna need your help to stab something."
"What?"
The lich was confused until it followed Dionysus' line of sight. Once it landed on the thing that Dionysus was most likely considering stabbing, its eyes went wide.
"Wait, don't tell me . . ."
Dionysus nodded his head while still looking at it.
"That's right, we're killing the heart of this dimension."