Chapter 185: Ch183. You start from there
Silence clung to the forge like steam that wouldn’t lift.
Mara stood motionless near the glowing glyphs, leaning on the wall with her arms crossed tight. Her brows had furrowed so deeply they looked carved from stone. Beside her, Sarissa sat up in the cot with her back straight and her hands clenching the linens.
Her pale face was a mix of exhaustion and disbelief as she watched Miles with tired resignation in her eyes.
"You... What?" Mara finally said, staring blatantly from Sarissa to Miles, and then back to Sarissa, her brows so furrowed that they looked almost like one entangled line.
Miles remained seated near the foot of Sarissa’s bed, elbows on knees, his expression a mask of calculated anger and quiet surprise.
"The master of Luna Sea is a god." He repeated, calmly. "He’s not just a powerful entity from some forsaken place. He’s the god of war and progress. A lesser god, like Kurt once told me, sure, but divine all the same. You went toe to toe with that, Sarissa."
"I lost." Sarissa blinked slowly. "And I almost got killed by that thing."
"But you didn’t. You faced him and survived, that’s more than most of us will ever get to claim. Also, I know what you mean... You almost regressed, but..." He paused and then asked. "Even if you did, didn’t you get the reward for killing me when we fought? You know, that item or whatever that was capable of boosting your [Regression] skill?"
"No." Sarissa’s shoulders slumped down. "When I... Killed you, the system notified me about the clearing of the quest, although I wasn’t rewarded anything but some experience points, because the system said that I couldn’t earn an Artifact that was already bound to someone else’s soul."
Miles tilted his head, thinking for a little bit before saying.
"Bound to someone else’s soul?" He scratched his chin before a flicker of realization lit up in his mind. "I see... The system was probably trying to let you get your hands on the essence and the core of the [Clockwork Rabbit] that I fought back in Wonderland."