Free Web NovelChapter 296: Dia's First Seed of Doubt
In the Virtual World, on the Continent of Time.
Three sorcerers sped away from the lair of the Minister Spider Dragons, leaving a burning mine pit in their wake.
It had been a textbook ambush. The cave entrance was just wide enough for a sports car, allowing them to charge straight in and crush five Baby dragons instantly. They followed up with poison fumes, suffocating the remaining twenty-four in the confined space.
Finally, they faced the dominant creature—the Consort Spider Dragon. The beast whose nest had been utterly destroyed was met with their highest level of tactical respect: a concentrated fire attack followed by a synchronized assault, granting it a swift and dignified burial.
They had become masters of the craft in terrain kills, fire traps, and group beatdowns. What were once desperate, hard-fought battles had devolved into a routine slaughter, a repetitive "farming" of monsters so efficient that it left Dia feeling slightly sentimental.
"If there is a god in the Virtual World who protects Knowledge Creatures, should we pray for forgiveness?" she asked.
"If there is, then that god should be the one praying to us," Sonya replied, affectionately pressing down Dia's stray tuft of hair. "Let's just hope we never cross paths with it."
Dia mused. "Speaking of which, I once read a fairy tale book. There was a story called Don't Let the Sorcerers Find You. The protagonist was a spirit trying everything to escape a sorcerer's grasp..."
"Did it succeed?"
"No. It was caught and dragged back."
"Now that is a realistic fairy tale."
Just as the two were deepening their bond through idle chatter, a man's voice abruptly cut in, completely ruining the mood. "Do you think your mothers are... proper mothers?"
Hearing Ashe's sudden question, Sonya showed no restraint. "What else would they be? Are you suggesting your mother was bought wholesale?"
Following their argument the previous night, the way they interacted had grown increasingly casual and blunt. Besides, Ashe's question hit a sensitive nerve for Sonya. Had the Witch not been present, her reply would have been far sharper.
Ashe responded, "No, I've just been thinking about everything that has happened recently. Different societies, regions, and cultures produce very different kinds of familial bonds."
Mother. Family ties. Recent events?
Dia's ears twitched. She watched Ashe intently through the rearview mirror.
Ashe went on, "If relationships were a dipping sauce, then the one I share with my mother would be three spoonfuls of sugar, five chili peppers, a small cup of bitter melon juice, a slice of lemon, and a handful of marshmallows. Whenever I'm about to swallow something bitter, I just dip it in and force it down."
Both Dia and Sonya looked at the Watcher with unreadable expressions.
Wait... so he actually has a mother?
Logically, everyone had a mother. But in Sonya and Dia's minds, the Watcher was an ancient relic sealed away for millennia, only recently emerging from its coffin. Given a life spanning centuries, it would seem more likely that his childhood was nothing more than insignificant dust.
Then again, they couldn't be sure. They were only in their twenties; how could they hope to understand the mindset of a being who had lived for a thousand years? Perhaps this nostalgic, "aged-flavor" outlook was common among the immortals.
Sonya thought for a moment. "My relationship with my mother is probably two spoonfuls of sugar, one of vinegar, one of soy sauce, and a finishing splash of hot oil."
"Why the hot oil?" Ashe asked.
"I'd like to know that, too," Sonya said flatly. "Fate is a chef that doesn't follow the recipes."
Both turned to the Witch. Dia hesitated, her voice softening. "I... I've never met my mother."
After a brief, heavy silence, Sonya checked the navigation. "Where to next?"
"Let me see. We're approaching the Star Hall region, where we have a detailed map. There's nothing valuable on the outskirts, so let's keep moving and see if we find anything worth looting."
Both teammates tactfully changed the subject, but Dia couldn't let it go.
"Watcher, why bring up family ties so suddenly? Did something happen in the real world?"
Ashe considered this. "Nothing major. I just witnessed a few things recently that made me realize that between children and adults, blood ties can sometimes be secondary to a naked alliance of interests."
Dia's eyes widened, and she leaned forward unconsciously. "Oh? That's... a strange kind of relationship."
"I've even seen a child use those interests as leverage to threaten an adult, forcing them to comply."
"Wow," Dia whispered, her heart racing. "Anything else?"
"There was no foundation of trust between them. Contracts were more reliable than emotions."
The similarities were becoming impossible to ignore. Dia began to tremble slightly as her suspicions solidified. Suppressing the surge of emotion in her chest, she said as casually as she could, "I've never heard of anything like that. By the way... this child you're talking about. How old is he or she?"
Ashe thought for a moment. "Hmm... about eight years old."
The Witch froze. "Eight?"
Ashe didn't sound very certain. "I didn't ask in detail, but it should be around eight?"
Dia immediately lost interest, deflating like a punctured balloon. She stopped pestering the driver and buried her head in Sonya's arms, sinking into deep thought.
Dia and her sisters had watched the earlier events unfold through the mirror. The bizarre mother-daughter dynamic between Quinna and Annan had left them reeling. They had spent quite some time dissecting it within the sanctuary of Lys's mind. Now that the Watcher had entered the Virtual World and brought up the topic of motherhood again, a peculiar association began to crystallize in Dia's mind. Could Ashe actually be the Watcher?
This wasn't a random whim. It was a suspicion that had been fermenting for days.
During the day, Lys stayed with Ashe. At night, Dia stayed with the Watcher. Even if she hadn't noticed at first, a persistent sense of déjà vu had taken shape over time. Their thought patterns were uncannily similar, almost like two sides of the same coin. She couldn't help but wonder if they both had a hole in the exact same part of their brains.
Then there was the matter of their attire. They even wore the same dark red coat, a visual anchor that tied them together in her mind. But the most damning evidence had come during the previous night's clash with the Good Moonlight Agency. Through the mirror, Dia and her sisters had caught a fleeting glimpse of Ashe casting a warm yellow barrier to protect Annan. It was a perfect match for the Watcher's signature Sword Barrier, right down to that specific, comforting shade.
While it was true that most defensive Earth Class Miracles utilized yellow hues, the sheer weight of these coincidences had reached a breaking point. With the topic of mothers acting as the final catalyst, Dia had subtly tried to probe the Watcher about his life in the real world, hoping to catch the man behind the mask.
At first, she assumed the Watcher was referring to Annan and Quinna, but the mention of an eight-year-old child shattered that theory; Annan was clearly much older. The realization hit her with a dull thud. She had guessed wrong. Dia shifted slightly in Sonya's embrace, her mind racing to re-evaluate her logic.
Why had she been so certain Ashe and the Watcher were the same person in the first place? It largely came down to that dark red coat. From behind, Ashe's silhouette was nearly indistinguishable from the Watcher's, a visual twin that had fueled her suspicion for days.
Yet, the explanation for the resemblance was frustratingly simple. Ashe's coat had been a gift from Lys, and Lys had explicitly chosen it because she admired the Watcher's style. She had wanted Ashe to mirror that specific aesthetic, inadvertently creating the very confusion Dia was now untangling. The truth was a closed circle. Lys had deliberately styled Ashe after the Watcher. Of course they looked similar.
When she looked closer, their personalities didn't actually align.
The Watcher spoke without restraint. He mocked her constantly and tossed out "dirty jokes" that Dia didn't understand until the White Queen and Black Butler explained them later.
Ashe, while occasionally unruly, possessed a gentle, upright core. He was considerate, always shielding Lys from Harvey or Iger's more frightening stories.
As for the yellow defensive Miracle? It was likely just a common coincidence. Once she decoupled the two identities, the logic settled. The Watcher could observe her at any time; he had no reason to masquerade as Ashe. Besides, Ashe was a contractor Lys had personally scouted. The Watcher couldn't possibly have orchestrated things to that degree.
Dia hadn't known the Watcher for long, but she knew he wasn't prone to lying. Since the "child" he mentioned was only eight, he wasn't talking about Annan. He was talking about a family she simply didn't know.
***
It was only after the Witch raised the question that Ashe realized he didn't actually know his "cheap daughter's" age. Lys's appearance was deceptively misleading. Her teeth were neater than his own, leaving it a mystery whether she had yet to lose her baby teeth or had already grown a permanent set. Standing roughly as tall as a fire hydrant, she certainly looked under ten, though he supposed malnutrition could have stunted her growth.
Ashe had only brought her up because witnessing the distorted, jagged relationship between Annan and Quinna had mirrored his own unusual situation with Lys. His focus remained inward; he wasn't interested in Annan's drama.
After all, Ashe knew his place. What did a mere worker like him have to do with the high-stakes friction between a capitalist boss and her feudal noble mother? When Quinna had been beating Annan, Ashe felt a flicker of sympathy, but he certainly hadn't expected the daughter to be the one who had schemed against the mother first. As a "bronze-tier" player, Ashe knew better than to stick his nose into a "king-tier" game.
Once the mother and daughter reached their uneasy truce, Quinna arranged for their stay, or more accurately, their confinement, on the second layer of Vamura. Only then did Ashe and the others realize that the division of the second-layered city into six regions was entirely intentional, designed so that each of the Six Emblems ' families could occupy a district of its own.
In the novels or anime Ashe remembered, even the most powerful families lived alongside a majority of commoners. But Vamura was different. It was composed entirely of the six Great Families, with no room for outsiders. Within each district, every inhabitant shared the same bloodline and a fierce, structural rejection of the world beyond their borders.
It wasn't so much a city as six nationalist states fused into a single continent of stone.
