"Imogen! Destroy the sculpture's eyes!" shouts Kyrie.
Imogen meets Laurel's eyes as if she is waiting for Laurel's permission. Laurel, confused smiles and prepares herself to face the snakes again.
Imogen turns around and runs towards the sculpture. As she is heading towards the sculpture, the green ivy snakes also start to turn their heads towards Imogen. They slither away from their original target and rush towards her. The snakes spring at her to block her path to the sculpture. Unfazed, Imogen shakes the snakes off her body as they try to wrap themselves around her. With a burst of speed, she jumps, landing on the spine of the snake sculpture. She sprints towards the head on its back. A crowd of snakes quickly crawl towards her, chasing her up and around the sculpture. Afar, the densely packed snakes, moving towards Imogen, look like an entity themselves, swallowing the enormous gold snake sculpture from the tail up to the head. Once Imogen arrives at the head, she lifts her sword. Holding her breath to accumulate her momentum and force, the woman jumps and slashes the sculpture's eyes made out of red gemstones—the red gemstones cracks and breaks into pieces. The snakes, like their switch has suddenly been pressed off, become motionless at the very second the gemstone broke. They fall to the ground like heavy rain. Imogen lands on her feet and puts her sword back to the sleeve. She releases her breath slowly while using her sleeve to dry her dripping sweat.
[Wow! Such a protagonist move!]
Kyrie casually takes a look at Ian and sees him wowed by Imogen's strength. Kyrie pouts a little and wants to do some pushups right on the spot. He still needs to train really hard to reach Imogen's strength. Imogen smirks at Kyrie as she walks by and then towards Laurel.
[Damn you, Imogen! You damn showoff!!! I gave you the hint!]
Ian chuckles softly as he sees Kyrie getting competitive and salty over Imogen. He looks at Nate, who is now in the form of a child breathing softly loosely wrapped around dead snakes. He wants to pick him up, but Kyrie does it instead of Ian really quickly.
"You are tired, Kyrie. Let me do it!" says Ian.
"It's fine. I will do it," replies Kyrie looking at Nate, annoyed.
"But..."
"I don't like it when he gets to touch you," Kyrie pouts.
Before Ian can argue about it, Kyrie already moves away with Nate in his arms.
"hehe... So childish, I am just carrying an unconscious kid," thinks Ian.
Kyrie puts Nate on the floor where it is away from the pile of snake corpses. Then, he sits down to finally catch his breath and to rest his fatigue. The stone door blocking the way towards the second floor also opens up. The room does not turn back to how it was when they entered, so the exit towards the stairs is on the upper corner of the hall. However, everyone decides to rest before going to the second floor so that if there is another of these obstacles on the second floor, they would at least be a bit rested.
Laurel walks towards Kyrie and asks, "How did you know we had to break the snake's eyes?"
Ian says, "Is it one of the trials that goddess Phanes had to take so that she can become one of the successors for the king of gods?"
[My Ian is so smart~]
Kyrie smiles and nods, "Yes. This bell tower seems to be designed related somehow to the goddess Phanes. The reason why we had to break the eyes was because of the answer that the goddess gave during her first trial."
"Hmm... I don't know the story. I never even heard about her name. She does not even seem to have any temples either... Is it that I missed them this entire time?" Laurel wondered.
"Well, goddess Phanes, unfortunately, passed away," says Ian, "That is why there are no temples dedicated to her, so she is not that well known."
"Wait... A deity can die?" Laurel asks.
Kyrie and Ian look at each other to see if the other person knew, but they do not really have an answer.
"It is not the same way of how humans die. Deities are eternal beings unless someone causes their death," says Imogen.
[Hmmm... Interesting... Well, if an ex-demigod said so... That must be it.]
"I am curious about her story, though... Maybe it will help later, so can you tell me about goddess Phanes's story?" Laurel asks.
"Sure... Hmmm... Goddess Phanes was a beautiful goddess. She was very loved in the god realm, and she had a lot of supporters. According to the story that I read, the king of gods saw her potential and gave her the opportunity to be one of his successors. However, before she was deemed eligible, she had to pass some trials. Despite the fact that Phanes was greatly favoured, the gods were shocked to hear about the first trial. It was an ambiguous question asked by the king of gods: what is the most deceiving feature of the living?"
"The most deceiving feature of the living? That is an open-ended question!" exclaims Laurel.
"Yes, that is what shocked the gods. They thought that goddess Phanes must have offended somehow the king of gods to give her that kind of question for the first trial. The answer could be almost anything. If the king of gods wishes to, he could just brush off any answer if he wanted."
"Shouldn't the answer be the heart? I mean, this kind of question has a standard answer that is mostly accepted," says Laurel.
"That is also what goddess Phanes initially also thought. However, seeing that the king has given her time to think about the answer, she decided to use that time to travel around the mortal world. She observed every kind of living being possible that was created and studied the most deceiving animals and humans. In the first few months, Phanes never changed her answer until she met the then demigod Erebus."
Imogen looks at Kyrie with a frown when she hears the name of Erebus. It is not surprising since he is her greatest enemy. The fallen god that they are fighting against is Erebus. She has gone through thousands of rounds to save Laurel but failed because of the fallen god Erebus.
"Goddess Phanes actually met Erebus in pure coincidence. They fell in love as they travelled together around the mortal world. Their love story is very popular, even in the god realm," Kyrie meets eyes with Ian and smiles.
Kyrie takes Ian's hand and continues, "Since Erebus was in the mortal world for a longer time due to his own trials, he was able to show Phanes the side where she cannot see in public, mostly about human beings. Since Erebus, at that time, was bestowed to rule over darkness, they were able to encounter the most solitude and sad moment of a human being while they hid in the dark. A lot of them were about regrets. Phanes became very interested in what caused human regret and stayed behind to look for the answer despite being in the middle of her first trial."
"Human regrets... I guess no one really goes through life without having some sort of regret," says Laurel.
Imogen reacts to Laurel's words. She thinks of the many instances that happened in the rounds. All of the memories that poured into her mind are with Laurel's pained expression on her face while telling Imogen how much Laurel regrets ever meeting her. Some of those memories, even Imogen herself, felt regret as well. However, she can never imagine her life without Laurel. Despite the fact that Laurel has such a wretched fate, she can't bring herself to ever let Laurel just suffer it all by herself.
Imogen thinks, "I wonder... Will you in this round regret ever meeting me?"
"Who cares about that?" exclaims Nate, "It is like being afraid to eat an apple because you are scared that it will rot in the future! Why not live your life now than regret what does not exist yet? I live my life to the fullest! I don't care about what people think or do! I live life my way!"
Nate was awake through the story, he utters his words as he sits back up. His mature words do not match his childish voice at all.
"Well... Yeah! That's true! We really don't know the future... We choose what we think is important for us at this moment. Whether regret or not, that would be for later. We still need to live life to the fullest," Laurel replies cheerfully.
Imogen smiles at Laurel's words, which got caught by everyone. Kyrie and Ian smile back, while Nate is bewildered.
"Ice woman can smile too," Nate whispers. Nate shudders when Imogen gives him the stare.
Laurel blushes slightly and gets a bit embarrassed at her outburst of such words. However, she feels rather happy to see that Imogen smiled at them. She twirls her fingers nervously.
Kyrie continues, "After those experiences, Phanes spent her time watching humans and see for herself why they had so many regrets. What is causing them to suffer so much? What is it that is deceiving them from the truth? She found the whole thing very contradictory. She witnessed humans raising up and building civilizations while living life, always rushing to accomplish things. She thought that humans must be the race who would regret the least. However, that is the opposite of what she thought. Humans are the race that regrets the most. She looked at other living beings and saw some patterns of such regrets. Although the same thing happened to other living beings, they can get over them fast. That is contrary to humans. They blame others for their own mistakes like they were deceived, but in reality, they deceived themselves. When they discover the truth, they get swallowed by regret. However, by that time, it is already too late for them to change anything. They can only move forward at that point."