Free Web NovelChapter 31: Our First Meeting... Again.
A beautiful blonde woman with crimson eyes walked toward me but despite the eerily familiar face...
...I wasn’t surprised.
Because this wasn’t Lily.
Or rather...
This wasn’t the Lily who should have existed at this point in time. The woman before me looked like the Lily I remembered from the end of my previous life, the one I had failed to save.
She stopped a few steps away and smiled with quiet amusement.
"You don’t seem surprised."
Her voice was calm and deep like the sea itself.
"Most people become quite emotional when they see the person who occupies the largest place within their memories."
A laugh escaped my lips.
"And most ancient beasts don’t usually rummage through the memories of random youngsters asking them to do their job."
For the first time, genuine surprise crossed her face.
"...Interesting. You know far more than you should."
"I do."
I stretched lazily as my smile widened.
"So how about you stop pretending to be someone you are not? And while you are at it, why don’t you also undo the mind dulling spell you casted on me?"
With a soft chuckle, the woman before me dissolved into countless streams of pale blue light as the endless darkness around us rippled like water and only then did a new figure emerge.
She looked nothing like Lily.
Long azure hair flowed behind her like the ocean waves, her pale blue eyes like stars as she wore a dress which seemed to be made out of water itself and every step she took carried the weight of countless centuries.
Nyxara Arcanum.
The Leviathan who carried the Arcanum upon her back and...
The only entrance to the Forbidden Ruins.
As soon as she appeared, she snapped her fingers with an amused smile as the strange heaviness clouding my mind vanished instantly and my memories flooded back.
The Air Carrier, arriving at the Arcanum, meeting Nyxara, asking her to let me enter the forbidden ruins and then... darkness.
This was her innate talent.
I didn’t know its name but I knew exactly what it did.
It sealed away the most recent memories of its victim before trapping them inside an illusion woven from those very memories, allowing her to observe their reactions and slowly extract whatever she wished to know by influencing their environment slightly.
That was also why I had prepared beforehand.
While aboard the Air Carrier, I had deliberately written those words across a mist-covered window in the language of my previous world, Earth.
Nyxara’s illusion was frighteningly complete but it wasn’t perfect. She could manipulate the people within my memories and she could guide the flow of events.
But she couldn’t alter my own actions, nor could she change the landscape that already existed within my memories.
The message I had left behind was part of that landscape.
So naturally...
It appeared inside the illusion as well.
Though even without that message, I would have escaped the illusion eventually.
My soul had already surpassed the normal Transcendent Ranks and well above that. So, even if it would have taken some more time, an illusion of this level could not have imprisoned me for long.
As for Lily’s appearance...
That hadn’t been Nyxara’s choice either. She merely nudged my subconscious into filling the gaps into the face my heart wished to see the most at this moment.
"...How?" Her voice pulled me out of my thoughts and for the first time since we met, genuine confusion appeared on her face. "How did you know about the promise?"
She took another step forward. free𝑤ebnovel.com
"And how did you know how my power works?"
A smile spread across my face as I looked at her utterly confused expression.
"That’s a secret."
I doubted she had learned anything particularly useful from peering into my recent memories.
As for how I knew so much about her...
Well.
She was the one who had told me.
After all...
... She had been my fourth wife in my previous life.
A terrifying aura far beyond the Transcendent Rank erupted out of her.
"You seem to have forgotten your place, human." Her pale blue eyes narrowed. "I wasn’t asking you to answer, I was ordering you to answer and don’t forget I could crush you into paste with a single sneeze."
I simply smiled and walked toward her.
"Go ahead." Spreading my arms, I said. "Kill me."
The pressure doubled and then tripled but even so, I didn’t move an inch as a frown slowly appeared on her face.
"...You’re not afraid."
"Should I be?"
I chuckled.
"Did you really think someone who knows about your promise with the ancient King would also be ignorant of your restrictions?"
Her pupils contracted and for the first time the ancient Leviathan looked genuinely shaken as I continued.
"This little act might have worked on those oblivious fools from the three continents but not on me." I took another step forward. "You are nothing more than a criminal exiled to this damned First Ring of the Great Sea by the Ancient Sun Kingdom."
My smile widened.
"And you cannot attack anyone unless they first attack you with genuine malice. Especially not a challenger who came to ask for his right to challenge the forbidden ruins."
I leaned in slightly and looked straight into her crimson eyes.
"You can’t kill me. So stop pretending you can, Nyx."
She tried to compose her expression, but even for a being who had survived for thousands of years, she had never been good at hiding her emotions.
It was the same flaw that made us fight all the time after our marriage in my previous life, inevitably leading her to try stabbing me through the heart multiple times.
She really had a weird way of expressing her love though, I did find it rather cute back then.
"Who... are you?"
She asked, her voice now laced with caution as she withdrew her pressure.
"And how exactly do you know so much about me... and the world beyond the First Ring of the Great Sea?"
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Check Below Paragraph Comments For Images.
[MAP OF WORLD]
[NYXARA ARCANUM]
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[A/N: We Got Contracted. You can support the book by Gifts and Golden Tickets. Also I will be increasing the update speed from next week onwards to 2 or 3 Per day.]
