“Please, use it. We need to search for Ava as soon as possible.”
“…?” Neo frowned. “Why are you in a hurry? It’s not like we can rescue her from the nightmares.”
“We need to do that.”
Zera noticed Neo and Elizabeth’s confused expressions.
“Kane would be entering the Abyss of Nightmares soon. We need to find Ava before that. Honestly, I would’ve preferred to send Ava back so that Kane doesn’t enter the Abyss, but I don’t think we can do that.”
“Why didn’t the Sword Saint enter with the Grand Expedition?” Elizabeth suddenly spoke. “He sounds strong. It should be good news for you if he comes to the Abyss of Nightmares.”
Zera alternated her gaze between Neo and Elizabeth.
“I guess he didn’t tell you why he is called the Great Disaster.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kane was part of the Eighth Grand Expedition. That expedition was guaranteed to succeed until Kane slaughtered everyone and came back with only a few survivors.”
“What…?” Neo frowned. “Kane wouldn’t kill people without reason.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Zera said. “His title of Great Disaster is given to him by the survivors of the Eighth Grand Expedition.”
“….why did he do that?”
“He refuses to answer. Our best guess is that he was under the influence of Darkness. It helps that after returning, he sealed his trait and ability to wield a sword.
“If not for it, the Dragon Clans would have no choice but to band together to subjugate him.”
Zera explained in more detail.
After Kane sealed his trait, he was still quite strong. Eliminating him would take a lot of resources.
Moreover, it wasn’t the first time someone went berserk under the influence of Darkness.
Thus, the Dragon Clans didn’t start a crusade against him for eliminating the Eighth Grand Expedition.
It did, however, ostracize him in Tartarus, which was the reason he lived near the edges of the land instead of living inland in settlements.
“Since we still don’t know what caused Kane to lose his reason last time, nobody wants him to enter the Abyss of Nightmares, not with the Grand Expedition.”
Neo’s frown didn’t ease.
Something didn’t add up.
If Kane lost his control to Darkness, why was he fine now? It was rare to recover from Darkness’ insanity.
Chances were Kane never lost control to Darkness and did everything by himself.
But why?
‘Is he trying to protect Tartarus?’
‘But then why did he let us enter the Abyss of Nightmares?’
Neo froze.
There could be only one reason if Kane was protecting Tartarus and still let them enter the Abyss of Nightmares.
‘He is confident we cannot defeat Tartarus.’
Neo erased such thoughts.
Kane wouldn’t let millions of people enter the Abyss of Nightmares and die for no reason.
The Kane he knew was not such a person.
“We should move,” Elizabeth said, snapping Neo out of his thoughts.
He nodded and used his blessing.
A silvery trail of light appeared.
“The blessing works here,” he said, causing Zera to sigh in relief again.
Neo noticed the trail was moving in the direction of the tree.
It was good news as they wouldn’t need to take detours.
The trio moved at high speed. Often, Zera would return to her true dragon form and carry them.
She wasn’t capable of remaining in her true form for long periods of time due to her injuries.
And although a smaller body was weaker, it consumed fewer resources, and currently, resources were their biggest worry as they had no idea how long they would remain in Tartarus.
Neo kept condensing his Essence.
He regularly gave his World Energy to Zera. She asked for that as a price in return for training Neo and Elizabeth in Void Element.
Honestly, Elizabeth made Neo question a lot of things.
The Everwitch Violet allowed her to gain Death, Darkness, Time, Holy, Life, and Void. She already had Light, so six new elements.
‘Bloody hell, what kind of treasure was that flower?’
‘The sphinx gave it to me like a lollipop. Did it not show the flower could give affinities?’
Neo knew no one was supposed to gain any more affinities than they already had.
But Witches clearly didn’t follow normal rules. They could revive after having their Seed of Existence destroyed, and compared to it, gaining affinities was more believable. After all, Neo could do the same with True Darkness.
Not that he had gained any Affinity with True Darkness yet—he might or might not be starting to hate luck-based events.
Elizabeth pushed the masteries of her new elements to Adept, with Darkness, Holy, and Life almost on the cusp of reaching Expert mastery.
Neo noticed quite a lot of interesting things on their way to Ava.
Elizabeth was competitive. She was hell-bent on raising her Void Affinity mastery, probably to surpass Zera.
She was surprisingly clumsy too.
Her clothes got torn quite a lot of times during training, and Neo had to create more for her.
Zera liked to tease her a lot.
The creator of the Goddess of Love had no qualms about getting touchy with Neo while training.
In her words, she did it to motivate Elizabeth. Whenever that happened, Neo would get a cold shoulder from Elizabeth for a week.
He really wanted to cry. How was that his fault? Zera would beat him so much that he couldn’t move before getting touchy. He couldn’t stop her even if he wanted to.
The trio took over a year to reach Ava’s location. The base of the giant tree was only a few days from their current location.
“Do we need to rescue her?” Elizabeth asked.
“We need to. It wouldn’t be good if Kane comes here and sees his daughter dangling in the sky with her head connected to a vine from the giant tree,” Zera answered.
“Why did she even come here?” Elizabeth questioned.
“You should hear that from Ava herself,” Zera answered and began transforming into her true form.
She grew thousands of miles big. Wings made of deformed flesh appeared over her back. Purple veins and mangled limbs made the surface of her dragon form’s skin.