"Are you alright, Einar? Evrin? What happened?" Sam asked worriedly seconds after Damian walked out of the waygate.
Amy and Sariel took Kamisen inside one of the tents they had set up. His condition was dire—both physically and psychologically.
"They're exhausted.. Just let them rest for a day or two," Damian said, eyeing Sam. He understood and dropped the questions. The others also took the hint and refrained from asking any more.
Silverspell and Worldscribe had built wooden-walled tents. He had barely been gone for a few minutes. Damian handed the three over to them before stepping back inside the same waugate he had just exited. That place seemed interesting.
Taking to flight, Damian soared into the air. From a distance, he finally confirmed what he had suspected upon first arriving here.
The same massive sword.
What time had they been thrown into compared to the dungeon's timeline?
Seeing the enormous weapon, an idea popped into Damian's mind, and he smiled.
After a while, Damian opened another waygate, this time targeting Lucian.
His liquid mana containers floated beside him as he flew inside, emerging into yet another unfamiliar environment. It wasn't as hot as the previous place, but the temperature was still significantly higher than in their world. The land stretched in a dark, solid expanse, covered in a reddish hue.
But that wasn't the first thing Damian noticed.
A giant, dark brown lizard lay motionless nearby on the ground, glowing blue crystals protruding from its back. Blood dripped from its many wounds, staining the ground even redder.
The area was mountainous, but the mountains were composed of the same dark, reddish land. A gust of wind swept through, creating an eerie, empty sound. The giant lizard's corpse wasn't the only one here. The entire area was littered with bodies and shards of ice—monsters of all shapes and sizes, mostly lizards, lay dead. Ice blades pierced their bodies, and deep, razor-sharp cuts marred their flesh.
It looked had been a nest for the lizard creatures.
Damian looked around, momentarily stunned by the carnage, before finally spotting the person he had come for.
Lucian sat atop the largest dead lizard. It had to be at least an emperor-ranked monster.
Her sword was buried in the beast's flesh, the wound freezing over. She was breathing heavily, her clothes, hair, and face covered in blood. As soon as she sensed him, she looked back.
Damian flew over and landed beside her, sitting down on the massive corpse.
"Been busy, huh?" he asked.
"It's been over a month.. Hahh.. Where were you?" she replied slowly, wiping her face with a piece of cloth.
"Land Breaker," Damian said, offering only those two words.
She nodded as if that was all she needed to hear.
"Something went wrong?"
"His body was taken over by the demon lord from the legends.. Most likely he realized the truth and why he disappeared from our world on his own. We barely survived. Only the last seven Highsword third-rankers are still alive."
"You saved them," she said, not as a question, but as a statement.
"We saved each other.. but yeah, without the waygate spell, all of us would be dead."
"You look different. Even after becoming a second-ranker—yours can't be normal," she said, her tone uncertain.
"Yeah.. I thought the trial wouldn't have any real-life effects, but turns out I was wrong."
"It doesn't.. does it?" she asked, confused.
Damian just smiled, choosing not to answer. He didn't want anyone to know he was now a seventy-year-old grandpa at heart. Guess this is how elves feel when someone asks their age, he could sympathise.
"Let's go. The others are waiting," Damian said after a moment of comfortable silence.
"Even Reize?" she asked, eyeing him from the side.
Damian's face hardened.
He was doing his best not to dwell on the feelings he had severed. Keeping himself busy. He wasn't going to get depressed over something . It had been nice.. and now it was gone. Nothing life-changing.
They had bigger issues to deal with.
Still, the realization that no one would be there when he opened his eyes every morning from now on.. left an empty hole in his chest.
"She had her reasons, but I was right. She was part of it," he said.
"Did you..?" Lucian started to ask, but Damian shook his head before she could finish.
"She still means a lot to Lumi and Elias. She even risked her life to save theirs."
"The feelings in her eyes seemed too real to be fake," she said—perhaps an awkward attempt to comfort him.
Damian just smiled and nodded.
Standing up, he stretched out a hand toward her. She took one last look at the field of corpses surrounding them, her thoughts unreadable, before grasping his arm and letting him pull her up.
Before heading back, Damian conjured a large sphere of water for her to wash herself. He turned away while she cleaned up and changed into fresher clothes.Once done, she stepped beside him.
Damian, however, had a few more stops.
"Mind if we get Maelor and the others before going back?"
Damian nodded and opened a waygate, targeting Maelor next.
[Desert Region, Unknown Planet – Shadecaster's POV]
Shadecaster still couldn't believe the events that had transpired in just a few days.
He was flying at a lightning speed above the endless desert, traveling alongside the demon lord. In the Land Breaker's body.
The person they had hated the most, the one they had never wanted to bring back in a hundred years, was actually the very god they had worshipped their entire lives.
Shadecaster had always believed the crazed chaos followers were nothing more than a group of deranged old men—powerful, yes, but useful only as a means to an end when subtler methods failed. The organization's influence stretched across five kingdoms, their wealth and power unmatched even by royalty.
Never in his life had Shadecaster imagined that the demon lord of the ancient stories would actually return.
The power he had witnessed was mesmerizing.
If he stayed by his side.. could he, too, become such a dominant figure?
That was what all the organization's Black-ranked leaders believed.
"What abominable region is this..? This can't be the Lightbringer's land," the demon lord's deep, commanding voice broke Shadecaster's thoughts.
Shadecaster looked down. They had stopped flying, now hovering over a vast city with strange buildings built upon the dark red land. It was bigger than any city in the five kingdoms. The number of mana signatures alone was overwhelming, even interfering with his third-ranker mana senses.
But few presences stood out. One of them,
An emperor-ranked beast somewhere within the largest circular stone structure in the city.