Chapter 6: Where Are You Hiding, Master?

A dream.

How beautiful.

In here, so many things that could never happen in the real world could come true… for instance, meeting the people you could never see again in reality.

…

****

“Daddy! You’re here!! I got a perfect hundred on my exam today!”

“You old devil, did you bring the cake our daughter asked for?”

“Sorry, I… I wasn’t ready. Sorry.”

Looking at the familiar wife and daughter in front of him, Mochen’s eyes turned red against his will. Even as he kept saying “sorry,” it did not seem to be for the missing cake. It was a “sorry” for something else entirely.

After that, he stretched out both hands, almost trembling, and hugged his wife and daughter tight to his chest. His old body would not stop shaking. Cloudy tears poured out without restraint, falling onto the tops of their heads.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… it’s my fault I couldn’t protect you…”

“Daddy, why are you saying all that?”

His daughter’s voice was soft and sticky.

“You old fool, we finally meet, and you can’t say something nice?!”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

“Honestly.”

The woman let out a helpless sigh, but she hugged Mochen back all the same.

Their cute little daughter leapt up, wrapped her arms around Mochen’s neck, and pressed a loving kiss onto her father’s cheek.

For a moment, warmth wrapped the three of them together.

This should have been a touching reunion.

And yet.

Here in this blood-red darkness, under the silent watch of billions of cold, chilling blood-colored eyes, all that warmth was twisted out of shape, becoming absurd, bizarre, hair-raising.

…

But that strange warmth did not last long either.

“Urgh…!!”

It seemed he could no longer bear the sharp pain in his chest. Mochen let out a muffled groan, and the blood-red space in front of him shattered.

The warmth vanished. His wife and daughter dissolved like smoke.

In that instant, the old butler’s consciousness was yanked back to reality.

A dim bedroom. A weak night light. A cold bed.

Everything was fake.

Only the searing pain still burning in his chest, and the cold sweat on his back, were real.

Mochen gasped for air, braced himself against the headboard, and slowly sat up. He wiped the sweat from his face with one hand, his expression tangled to an extreme. Excitement, joy, relief, woven together with unease and a thick, dark wariness.

Still panting, Mochen slowly raised his head and looked toward the bedside.

On the chair sat the pure-white bear doll, resting there silently, at some point.

Mochen knew that doll far too well.

It was the one thing that was always held in the arms of “that thing.”

It sat there quietly, without moving. Its black button eyes were pointed straight at the head of the bed, as if it had been watching him sleep the whole night.

There was no fluctuation of energy. No sound, no movement.

No telling when it had even climbed onto the chair.

Mochen’s body began to tremble, no matter how he tried to stop it.

“I’m not afraid.”

He murmured to himself, voice dry and hoarse. It sounded more like he was trying to comfort himself.

“I’m not afraid of you… you’re just a doll, aren’t you. Heh.”

He took a deep breath, forced himself to lie back down, and clutched the blanket with all his strength, trying very hard to ignore that silent stare coming at him from the chair.

He had to sleep.

He had to keep dreaming.

Only by keeping on dreaming could he see them again.

Staring at the old, worn photo frame on the headboard, at the beautiful wife and the sweet, innocent daughter in the photograph, Mochen bit his lip hard, kept his eyes fixed on that unsettling gaze around him, and shut his eyes once more.

What he never knew was that on the chair, the little bear doll’s button eyes had slowly turned toward the photo frame at the head of the bed…

…

****

While Mochen’s consciousness sank back into that “beautiful” dream, ten thousand li away, in the Imperial Spirit Desert…

Late at night.

This foreign realm, connected to the deserts of the Middle East, had once been an A-rank realm of endless yellow sand and abundant energy. Now all that remained was a stretch of charred, silent ruin.

The earth was split by enormous ravines. The yellow sands were stained dark red with blood. Half-collapsed palaces and towers leaned and crumbled. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and smoke.

It looked exactly like the aftermath of a brutal war.

The main hall of the realm’s capital city was already in tatters.

Dozens of survivors of the scale-armor race huddled trembling in the corners. Men and women, old and young. Like Veteba, they were covered in fine, dense scales. Their eyes held terror and despair, and their bodies shook uncontrollably, like lambs waiting for the slaughter.

Surrounding them were rows of Divine Prison soldiers, half spirit, half machine, radiating a cold breath of metal.

They stood straight, faces empty. A faint blue soul-light flickered in their eye sockets. Facing these frail old men, women, and children who had no strength to fight, there was not a trace of mercy in their cold, killing stares.

In the center of those soldiers stood a golden-haired man.

He wore a long white-and-platinum coat, and his bearing was gentle, refined. In his hand he held a thick, black-covered tome. His fingertip traced lightly across the pages, as if carefully recording the data and the spoils of this battle.

This man was the Divine Prison’s chief archivist, Ivan.

The trusted right hand of the realm master.

Just as Ivan was about to close the tome, the space around him twisted, with no warning at all.

An aura of terror that could not be described, one that stood above everything else, came crashing down like the sky itself collapsing.

“Boom!!”

“Ugh!!”

Apart from Ivan, every Divine Prison soldier and every surviving member of the scale-armor race was instantly pinned to the ground. Their bones groaned. They could not even raise their heads.

This was absolute suppression, born of rank and position.

The Saint Ruins stage.

And not just any level of it, but one of its absolute apex existences.

Ivan’s expression changed as well. He immediately suppressed every trace of his own aura, bowed his head in reverence, and did not dare to breathe too loudly.

Space split open. A crack of pitch black slowly yawned wide.

Then a figure walked out of the void, unhurriedly, a tall, straight frame with a striking, icy beauty.

She was a woman with brilliant, waist-length golden hair, woven here and there with a few locks of eye-catching silver. Her close-fitting battle robe and skirt, dark purple trimmed with silver and white, outlined her long, strong figure.

What made the heart shrink most were her clear, transparent emerald eyes. They were as sharp as blades.

Her presence alone, just the act of standing there, seemed to make the wrecked hall tremble faintly.

“Lady Lianor.”

Before the realm master of the Divine Prison, Ivan bowed in greeting, his voice tainted with fear, his head lower than before.

“A realm of this rank is a small matter. Your subordinate can handle it. You need not come in person~”

Lianor did not look at him. She gave no reply at all.

Her emerald eyes swept coldly over the ruins of the hall, over the survivors, over the soldiers, and finally came to rest on Ivan.

“Found it?”

Just four words, yet they carried a pressure that allowed no refusal.

And beneath it, a faint thread of hope.

A pity.

That hidden thread of hope met with no answer.

“My apologies, Lady Lianor… during the entire process of destroying the Imperial Spirit Desert, we… never ran into Veteba.”

“So that means…”

Ivan’s voice trembled slightly.

“We can’t confirm whether the system that instructed… ah no… whether that ‘guide’ who taught Veteba is the one you have been looking for all this time.”

The words died away.

Silence fell over the great hall.

As if they could sense Lianor’s disappointment, the Divine Prison soldiers held their breath and did not dare move so much as a muscle.

Lianor said nothing. She slowly turned and looked out past the ruined hall, toward that stretch of scorched earth, toward the wreck of the city that had barely kept the shape of what it used to be.

Wind rolled up the yellow sand and brushed through her hair of gold and silver.

After a long moment, the woman spoke. Her voice was calm, but it carried the certainty of one who had seen through everything.

“It’s not her.”

Ivan froze, then could not help lifting his head and scratching it in confusion.

“Eh?? Lady Lianor… how… how do you know? We haven’t even come into contact with Veteba. As you said, the guide should be inside Veteba’s soul, shouldn’t she…”

A faint flicker of disappointment passed through Lianor’s emerald eyes.

She did not turn back. She leaned against the window frame, propped her chin on one hand, and quietly watched the view outside.

“If it was she who raised Veteba,” Lianor said softly, as if recalling something, “things would not have gone so easily for you.

“She would have turned every person here, every palace, and even this whole desert…

“into monsters.

“To fight you.”

A touch of longing seemed to surface in her tone.

Those few soft words made Ivan go stiff all over. The expression on his face turned odder and odder.

“Haha, Lady Lianor, don’t joke. Turning a city, or even the whole desert, into monsters… that, that is already past the limit of any ordinary power. Giving life and consciousness to things is the authority of the Goddess of Creation… how could a guide possibly…”

Hearing Ivan go on dismissing it, Lianor angled her head slightly.

Her emerald eyes rested on him, indifferent.

One glance was enough. Ivan, sensing trouble, lowered his head immediately and did not dare say another word.

“And so.”

The woman’s voice was calm.

“That is how I know she is not here.”

…

‘But… where exactly are you hiding… Master?’

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