Chapter 63: Revelation
The revelation hung heavy in the air. The purpose of the fight seemed to evaporate, replaced by a shared, albeit vastly different, position under the oppressive thumb of unseen forces.
Fin felt the Queen’s gaze on him, sharp and assessing. She had revealed truths that shattered his worldview, yet her own situation seemed just as constrained, albeit on a grander scale.
"So," he said, breaking the silence, his voice still flat, "this whole dungeon, the spiders, you... it’s all just a prison cell?"
"An oversimplification," she replied, tracing a pattern on the floor with the butt of Requiem’s shaft. "But essentially correct. A gilded cage, perhaps. Maintained by forces that find my existence inconvenient."
It made a sickening kind of sense.
Dungeons weren’t random anomalies. They were curated pockets of broken worlds, isolated dimensions stitched together. Farms. Prisons. Playgrounds for beings he couldn’t comprehend.
The monsters weren’t inherently evil. They were just... inmates. Forced combatants in a cosmic game, just like the Hunters scrambling for survival and mana stones on the other side of the veil.
Was it all just a game?
He had so many questions. A universe of them exploding behind his blank expression. Admins. Outer Gods. True Gods. Even fucking demons.
So little time.
This talk, this bizarre truce mid-battle, it was... interesting. But the fundamental equation hadn’t changed.