Within the fifth layer of the Spirit Realm, phantasmal stars twinkled faintly.
"Busy with such trivial matters again... Spending hundreds of years here, how much strength can you actually enhance?"
Taking steps into the Spirit Realm, the chaotic tendrils of space and time could not influence the graceful figure beneath the black dress. Nyx looked at the interface prototype fluctuating up and down before Laine, easily deducing his intent.
However, Mother Night did not quite grasp such behavior. She could understand Erebus's actions – he was attempting to free himself from the shackles of the current world's laws to become a more liberated supreme being, but Laine had already achieved this point.
To him, there were no longer any threats in this world, even the world's laws themselves could not govern Laine, who resided within the Spirit Realm.
If Nyx also possessed a Spirit Realm as fascinating as this, she would probably have shut herself in to play breeding games, instead of spending time and energy on further enhancing her strength—after all, she had no enemies, so what use was such great power.
"Little by little adds up, Nyx. Everything is accumulated step by step. Moreover, compared to what I wish to do, my current strength is actually far from enough."
Shaking his head gently, Laine also understood the conceptual gap between them.
After all, he was not a naturally immortal being, so in many ways, he was different from the gods of this world.
"There is so much unknown in the world, like how everything originally emerged from 'nothing', and what lies beyond the world. In the past, you could believe Chaos was the only one in the world, but the existence of the Nine Realms has already negated this point."
"Remember the Flesh Mother Tree?" As if recalling something, Laine spoke of the remnant from the world's destruction: "With your power, you must have noticed Its presence when It entered the world."
"The destruction of a world... I think, it's enough for me to take as a warning."
"Perhaps, as long as it pleases you."
Noncommittal, Nyx obviously did not find much interest in this.
"If the world will eventually decay, then whatever you do now, the end result will be the same."
"Compared to Chaos himself, the present world is but one aspect of Him. Even if you could develop the Spirit Realm to its peak, or even become another face opposite to the present world, what significance would it have?"
"Heh, we'll see when the time comes."
Shaking his head again, Laine had no desire for a needless argument.
"So, Nyx, what made you think of looking for me today?"
He thought she had come on a whim, perhaps out of boredom to pay a social visit, or to ask for some souls to take back and 'model'—before they parted last time, Laine had shared quite a bit of his experience in creating life, as well as souls with Nyx.
The Land of Eternal Night was probably livelier now, and there might be other changes in the future. However, what Nyx said next took Laine by surprise.
A snow-white cow, transformed from a human, crossed mountains and seas, fell into the vortex where Prometheus resided, and then was sent back out by the merciful god of foresight. She finally reached the end of the sea and then disappeared before Nyx's eyes.
Mother Night, with her supreme power, penetrated time and space to find some scenes of the unfortunate human traveling toward the edge by the East Sea. But everything before the disappearance was normal, and nothing seemed amiss until she vanished before Nyx's eyes.
His expression growing serious, Laine realized, perhaps as he had just mentioned, he truly did not understand the world as well as he thought.
"I roughly investigated the traces of her arrival... It seems her name is Io, and she has some connection with the new Divine King on Mount Olympus."
Calm in demeanor, although Nyx could not find any trace of where Io had gone after disappearing, the traces she left before disappearing were quite evident.
"If I can't find the answers here, I might just have to go to Olympus and have a look, hoping the new Divine King doesn't answer me with 'I don't know.'"
His lips twitched slightly, but Laine quite agreed with this.
"I have a guess about this... but you can still go and confirm with Zeus. In fact, just a short while ago, something indeed seemed to have happened at his place."
What Laine was referring to was the mysterious transfer of the scepter of wisdom. Once he finished the task at hand, he planned to personally go and see what had happened, but if Nyx was willing to do it for him, that was also fine.
However, Mother Night was clearly not interested in this. Compared to a Divine King, it was Io, who disappeared before her eyes, that concerned her more. Since Laine already had a notion, it naturally wasn't necessary to go to Olympus anymore.
"Let's hear your guess," tilting her head, underneath the shifting veil, Nyx seemed somewhat excited.
"Well, if things go as expected..."
Hesitating for a moment, in the end, looking toward the edge of the great sea indicated by Nyx, Laine slowly said:
"The human princess who vanished without a trace is very likely on the banks of the Nile River... Perhaps the Nine Realms were just an accident, it is there, that might be 'food' already captured by Chaos long ago."
Because of Laine's presence, destiny's path had already been interfered with, the smaller the matter, the more likely it was to deviate from the original story.
Before, he actually hadn't anticipated that the mortal princess Io from mythology would still come into existence as scheduled, because compared to Zeus's later lovers, she neither bore any famous heroes nor was she the mother of a True God.
As a mere mortal princess, her existence in itself shouldn't be so crucial in the threads of fate.