Chapter 201: Book 3: Overtime
Gheraa stared at the destruction before him.
There was a whole section of the dungeon that was just... obliterated. He could feel it like a physical pain in his chest. Which was unusual and deeply unpleasant in and of itself, but not quite as unusual or as unpleasant as the hands he saw dragging themselves through the rubble.
His hands.
Well, sort of. They were clearly meant to be his hands—they had the same pattern of golden Firmament sealed into the back, even if it was kind of an ugly rendition of that pattern.
Except his hands didn't look like that. He'd put some real work into his hands! This was just a mockery of all the work he'd put into sculpting them. Claws instead of fingers, digging into the walls and floors with all the elegance of the inept supervisor he'd been forced to work under as an Integrator.
They were making an absolute wreck out of what remained of his soul, too. That was probably the bigger problem here. He was a paradox-existence pulled out of time by the living embodiment of Hestia herself, but that paradox rested on Ethan bringing him back via his dungeon. If the dungeon was destroyed, he'd fade away with it.
Even now, he could feel the damage these things were doing. It wasn't significant—not yet—but if he allowed these things to run rampant...
Gheraa let out an aggravated sigh. He was going to have to take care of this infestation, wasn't he? That was annoying. He'd been looking forward to seeing Ethan again, and now it turned out the disturbance he'd sensed was just a bunch of corrupted hands.
It was worrying, too, because outside interference with a dungeon shouldn't have been possible. The Interface had protections around that kind of thing. His dungeon might not have fully formed yet, but this looked like an intrusion from outside the Trial.