“I was just asking.”
Percieval stared at him.
He seemed to doubt whether Neo would truly work with them.
Silence settled between them for a few moments.
“What is your mission, Neo?” Olivia questioned, and continued the conversation naturally.
“Blood Sea War is going to happen within a few years. Our continent will be invaded by monsters of Tartarus.
“My mission is to delay the war and to stop it from happening if possible,” Neo said.
For a moment, he wondered if the others would catch his lie.
Sphinx was no selfless being who would want to protect Luminera after all.
Thankfully, it seemed they were used to Sphinx assigning them strange missions.
They did not question the authenticity of Neo’s words.
“Blood Sea War…”
Olivia’s gaze clouded with emotion.
She clenched her fists as if struggling to hold back words.
In the end, she remained silent.
“How many monsters will invade?” Nicolas asked.
“Thousands of them will come in the first wave. The weakest among them would be Paragon,” Neo revealed.
His words were like a bucket of cold water poured over the group.
They couldn’t help but glance at each other.
“That means some of them will be Exalted,” Percieval said, his usual smirk disappearing.
“Not some of them,” Neo shook his head. “A lot of them will be Exalted.”
All Senators—or Senior Templars if you would call them—were Exalted Demigods.
Including them, Luminera had around one hundred Exalted Demigods.
And yet, against the monsters of Tartarus, their numbers were nothing.
“This answers our question about the First Executioner,” Percieval muttered. “If Tartarus is so strong, no wonder he hasn’t completed his mission yet.”
The others nodded.
“The First Executioner? Who is he?” Neo questioned, his interest piqued.
By the way they spoke of him, this ‘First Executioner’ seemed to be a formidable figure.
“Sword Saint, Kane Williams,” Olivia answered. “He left the continent centuries ago. We only discovered a few hundred years back that he was in Tartarus. However, we don’t know what he’s doing there right now.”
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“…What did you say was the name of the Sword Saint?”
“Sword Saint, Kane Williams. Why are you so curious?”
“Nothing,” Neo replied. “I just wanted to know our senior.”
Neo leaned back in his chair.
‘Kane is alive? How?’
‘He had the Fate of the Fallen Star.’
‘No matter what we—Daniel and I—did, Kane could never survive.’
‘He would always perish after fighting a strong monster.’
His fingers drummed lightly against the armrest.
Although he had been disappeared from the past, Kane always managed to survive his first few encounters with Anomaly #79.
It was thanks to him awakening his Trait.
But he would die later.
Neo had given Daniel multiple quests to save Kane.
They had never borne any fruit.
It was as if the Fate was determined to kill him.
‘The best ending for Kane was trapping him in the Eternal Dream, like what happened to him in my timeline.’
‘In Daniel’s last timeline, he made sure it happened to Kane, and that Kane didn’t die.’
‘Kane should be trapped in that dream.’
‘How did he wake up?’
Perhaps another Demigod or Awakener had awakened a Trait capable of destroying Eternal Dreams.
Even a powerful Demigod, at Peak Paragon or Exalted, could shatter those dreams—even if they did not have a Trait that worked specifically against them.
Eternal Dreams were created using a device found inside a Window.
In the past, no one could wake up from them.
But maybe that changed in the future.
‘Kane is alive.’
A surge of excitement pulsed through Neo’s veins.
His grip on the chair’s armrest tightened slightly before he exhaled and let go.
After the meeting ended, Neo stepped towards the ship’s upper deck to breathe some fresh air.
The planks groaned softly beneath him as he climbed the steps.
A sharp, salty wind greeted him as he emerged under the vast, starless sky.
Dark clouds loomed overhead, stretching endlessly across the horizon.
As much as he wanted to reach Tartarus quickly, he had to be patient.
According to Olivia, they would arrive as soon as they encountered a ‘Shift Point’.
Blood Sea was a ginormous water body, present in several worlds and dimensions.
It was possible due to the bending of space.
The points where space twisted and linked the Blood Sea across different worlds or dimensions were named ‘Shift Points’.
These Shift Points were unstable.
New ones were created and destroyed every second.
“If a lost traveler—with high negative karma—travels on the Blood Sea, a Shift Point leading to Tartarus will open before them and swallow them.” Neo recalled Olivia’s words.
He could see the Blood Sea bubbling ominously below.
The thick mass of dark-type Elementals churned over its surface.
Their high toxicity forced the Executioners to remain inside.
They didn’t want to get a stomachache, as Percieval had put it.
Of course, stomachache was a mild way of saying death by internal corrosion.
Breathing the air above the Blood Sea for too long could erode one’s lungs from the inside.
Touching the water?
Out of the question.
If anyone took a dip, it wouldn’t take more than a second for the Blood Sea to consume them alive.
Neo took a deep breath as he stood on the deck.
The ‘fresh’ air entered his lungs.
For him, someone who was attuned to Underworld, the air of Blood Sea was no different from the breeze of a spring garden.
The dark-element-infused surroundings—except for the grudge-filled wails of the Blood Sea—calmed Neo.
As for the wails, Neo was used to the Voices of Darkness.
They did not affect him much.
Neo ignored the wails and focused.
He closed his eyes, and he tried to activate his Empathic Transcendence trait.
The Elementals remained quiet.
They did not respond to his call.
Neo furrowed his brows and increased his focus.
His senses stretched beyond the ship and into the surrounding energies.
The results did not change.
Just when he thought he had failed, a calm, old voice called out to him.
‘Your skill is weak.’
‘At your current level, you need to concentrate hard, be present in a high Elemental concentration environment, and the Elementals must be willing to talk to you.’
‘Only then can you talk to us, given your skill activates successfully.’
Silvery motes of light floated around Neo.
“Space?” he muttered.
‘You are nearing the Shift Point. That’s why we can talk.’
The Shift Point was where space bent, linking worlds and dimensions together.
Naturally, it had a high concentration of Space Elementals.
Neo wanted to speak with them, to understand more, but suddenly, his Empathic Transcendence skill’s output started to fluctuate.
The connection flickered like a dying candle.
The skill’s effect was weakening.
‘Remember our promise, child.’
The voice of the Space Elemental began to fade.
The silvery motes trembled before dissolving into the night.
‘Help our Loved One.’
‘If you do that, we will give you another favor.’
‘The Elementals for your flower—we will help you talk with them.’
Their voices disappeared, leaving behind only the howling winds and the bubbling sea.
Neo tried to use his skill again, only to be met with silence.
A notification appeared before his eyes.