Damian was half full when the others joined him. They all came together using a waygate to avoid wasting mana. Everyone began taking seats while chatting, when suddenly Mindseer and Lucian froze—staring at Damian. Noticing their gaze, the others also, one by one, stopped and stared at Damian with their mouths wide open.
“This pressure.. It is even greater than Mindseer’s.” Sam mumbled, and most of them nodded, still staring at him.
“Enough already,” Damian said finally, putting the glass of wine down. “Yes, I ascended.”
“Why do you have horns?” Lucian asked. Damian noticed Reize staring intently at him—she knew the reason.
Damian closed his eyes and then reopened them. “There are some things I have not told you all. It is time I tell you what happened, and why I need some of you to help us.”
Everyone took their seats, still stealing glances his way.
“I knew it was just a matter of time..” Sam said, smiling at him. The others also began to congratulate him.
Damian sealed the doors and windows so no one could hear from outside, and then he told them what was necessary about what he had discovered. He told them he had killed the Sun God, and how a Fifth Ranker could help one ascend. He did not give any specifics on how to break faith or that their blessings were a curse—without any solutions, it felt unnecessary to burden them with such a truth.
He did say that there were certain ways a person could evolve, just like magical beasts, and that was what had happened to him.
Reize’s eyes widened when he said it—the meaning was clear. The demon kin were probably not another species but just descendants of these demonic-evolved humans. Everyone’s faces grew deep in thought. Damian continued and told them that the other Highswords were also undergoing this process.
“That is.. How did you even kill a God?” Alex asked, baffled by the revelations.
“He was already weak. The Hero of the Pigmen had chained him in a prison—we just had to deal with all the monsters and his followers. Killing the Sun God was easier. But I get the feeling that the guy himself wanted it that way and just accepted it..”
“Bound and imprisoned for thousands of years..” Mindseer said.
“I would wish the same thing.” Sam, Grace, Maelor, and others nodded.
He let them talk for a while. Damian had not yet said the thing he had gathered them to say. This was just an explanation for his sudden change.
When he mentioned the possibility of going back into the dungeon, it was as if the entire room stopped breathing. After seconds of pin-drop silence came the flood of questions—How? Why now? Can we really?
Damian explained in short, though it was doubtful whether everyone followed.
“We could have done this all this time? Why did you not think of this before?” Maelor asked.
Damian replied, “Connecting waygates to monsters of our world—especially of the dungeon—was not something I or we cared much about. It was the people we tried to connect to..”
“Yes, he was constantly busy all the time and we did not think of it this way either.” Lucian added.
“So, what do we do now?” Sariel asked.
“Go back, what else?” Elias said, not understanding Sariel’s question.
“It is not that simple,” Damian replied. “The monster should be in level twenty-five of the dungeon, assuming that is why the waygate works. The rules of the dungeon still apply to us, and we cannot reach anyone outside the dungeon or even on any other level. It was the dungeon itself that banned me—or all of us—because I used the waygate to get Land Breaker from higher levels. How it will react if we go back is something we have to be wary of. Also, the time difference is a factor.”
“We have to test it,” Lucian said. Sam nodded.
Damian also nodded and said, “I think for now, only one person should go and check if it works as it should. I would go myself but—”
“No. If you leave, we are all done for,” Mindseer interrupted before he could even finish.
“Yeah, you should not go,” Sam agreed with her, and everyone around the room shook their heads in agreement.
“Anyone who goes,” Damian continued, “will have to be fast and strong enough to reach the key point of level twenty-five and exit the dungeon, then open a waygate back to us. We will see if we can cross. If not, all of us will follow in the same way. We need confirmation before going though.”
Everyone volunteered to do it. They discussed who would be the best suited, and at last, they selected Einar and Evrin. The reason was simple—Evrin could use her Air Step spell to skip most monsters and pseudo-fly. Damian had considered sending Dreamlight and Elias, but in case the Red Wave threw them out again and they got stuck somewhere in this planet’s past or future, that would be really troublesome, and he did not want Elias to go through such a thing.
Evrin and Einar could take care of themselves, and he would not let them go without appropriate tools.
Damian had already prepared a waygate cube that had no restrictions on who it could connect to—fixed to only their mana signatures. Damian had used condensed steel, refined to its purest and most runic-adaptable form. It was twenty percent better than regular steel and would endure runic inscriptions much better. The waygate cube should be able to handle five to six waygate openings. In addition, they also had their Sacrium bracelets that allowed them to return to Earth or directly to him.
Einar’s sword was weapon enough to protect them both, yet Damian created a bow for Evrin with explosion and ice arrow effects—depending on which end she connected mana threads from or touched with her hand. He also gave her a square, steel-infused quiver which only had one custom wood-style spell—creating arrow after arrow with mana to fill the quiver.
They were ready. It had been a couple of hours since their lunch meeting. They had informed the Pigmen about what they were doing. The Pigmen—at least the high-ranking ones—knew all the Highswords were trying to find a way to get back to their home. The king and Heather knew they were not exactly the god-sent help; it was just their people’s belief, not hard proof of divinity.
Einar and Evrin prepared themselves, and now everyone had finally gathered in one of the inner palace rooms to see them go. Damian’s biggest worry was the time difference, and his second biggest was the Red Wave throwing them out of the dungeon again—into another time on this planet.
Damian opened the waygate again, and the two readied themselves.
“If you are stuck in the past, use the waygate cube to go back to Earth. The tree there has been there for centuries—you can wait out the appropriate time on Earth,” Damian said, though he himself was not sure if time worked that way at all.
Evrin and Einar just nodded and looked at the shimmering blue portal. With one final good luck from the others, they walked inside with determined faces. Hopefully, they would be back before too long.
Damian and the others watched them go. He closed the waygate after some two minutes. It was clear no one was coming back immediately. Damian could only sense a few meters on the other side, and the monster was the only thing he sensed for a while. When he finally sensed Einar and Evrin beside him, he closed the gate.
“I hope it works..” Amy murmured. Damian just nodded and walked out of the room.
Now everything was done. Whether Einar and Evrin came back or not, the thing he had to do would not change. Damian walked to the nearest window in the hall and was about to fly out when he sensed Lucian following behind him.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Above the stone shrine,” Damian replied.
“Can I come?”
Damian simply wrapped his arm around her waist and flew out of the window, being extra careful not to use too much strength. It did not look like she was uncomfortable. Reaching the top, he let her go and walked inside his temporary workhouse. He had left everything as it was—books and pages scribbled with words and drawings were all over his desk.
Damian simply took his seat and started to work on the things he had left behind. With a refreshed mind, new ideas and possibilities came to him, and he wasted not a second putting them down in words. Lucian watched him work for a minute before she asked,
“So you are a Third Ranker, huh?”
Damian looked up from the paper he was scribbling on. “Yeah.”
“What was this method of evolution you said was possible to do with the help of the Sun God?”