Chapter 243: At the Edge of Everything
Chirp. Chirp.
Shaaawaaaaaaa!!
"Ooowwww~"
"H-hey, my face! Leon, your butt! Get off!"
Cyan pushed Leon’s body away from his face and lifted himself up from the dry ground.
Rubbing his eyes, he looked around.
The first thing he saw was a clear sky where eagle shaped birds soared through the clouds.
He tilted his head forward toward where Leon and Ethan were already standing and staring. Just in front of them was a sky touching waterfall, foggy at the top, crashing down with an ear piercing sound into a massive pit below.
Cyan walked closer to take a look just like the other two. He peered down into the pit and could not see the bottom. Just water falling endlessly into a depth that did not want to be measured.
"How deep is this thing?" Ethan muttered curiously.
Cyan’s eyes twitched.
That was his first question. After everything that happened. After the hole in the ocean and the water up their noses and landing face first on dry ground in a place like this!
"Hmm. Might be several kilometres." Leon answered, still gazing down.
"Are you two for real?" Cyan turned to both of them. "Don’t you think your first question should be something like, what is this place, how did we get here, weren’t we drowning a minute ago, and why is the ground completely dry?"
Both Ethan and Leon turned to look at him, blinking.
Ethan asked, "did you not notice the teleportation spell?"
"The what?"
Leon explained calmly. "It was embedded in the prism. When we got close enough to the marked point it triggered automatically. That hole in the ocean was not a natural phenomenon. It was the entry point of the teleportation spell."
The three of them had been pulled straight through it and dropped here, under an open sky, soaking wet on perfectly dry ground.
Ethan pointed downward near Cyan’s feet. "Look. There are a few fish next to you."
Cyan looked down.
Several fish were scattered on the ground beside him. Most were already still. One poor looking fish was flopping desperately, its whole body throwing itself against the dry earth with increasingly hopeless commitment.
"..."
Smack.
Cyan kicked the poor fish into the pit without a word. Then he stood there for a moment. Leon could see a vein popping out on his forehead.
"How the hell are you two this calm?!" he finally burst out. "We just got sucked into a hole or teleportation or whatever in the middle of the ocean, teleported to wherever this is, then I opened my eyes with someone’s backside on my face, there are fish dying on the ground, and you two are standing there discussing the depth of a waterfall like we are on a trip? Does nothing affect you people or are you two just acting tough?"
Ethan understood Cyan’s reaction. Honestly, both he and Leon had been distracted by the waterfall because for some reason they were sensing an enormous amount of mana pooling just below it.
After pulling themselves together, Ethan did his best to calm Cyan down. Cyan was here because of him, so it was his responsibility to look out for him as well.
Leon did not bother getting involved in the conversation between the two. He moved off on his own and started observing.
They were standing in Evana’s territory. Leon recognised this place from the game.
In the original story, when Ethan arrived here, he walked through the forest directly opposite the waterfall and entered the main land from there.
But before Leon moved toward the forest, he pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time.
11:00 AM.
"Twenty four hours..." Leon muttered. "Time is a valuable asset in Evana."
He glanced back at Ethan and Cyan.
Ethan was tapping Cyan on the shoulder and explaining something to him, the prism was open in his other hand.
Leon’s eyes settled on it.
The Time Device.
As the name suggested, it logged everything happening in Evana City. From its location across the centuries to the current iteration the city was in, everything could be found through that prism. It was also the reason they had been able to enter this territory in the first place.
Thinking about that, Leon recalled the three warning messages that had appeared before him just before they crossed through.
According to the original plot, Evana City was under the influence of Dreamweaver. He was the reason for Evana’s downfall. Silvermoon and Lancaster were the ones keeping the place intact, freezing everything within their space time at a single fixed point. It had been this way for several centuries.
He sighed and turned inward to ask Rumi.
’Can you sense the Astral Matter?’
Rumi replied without hesitation. ’Yes. From the moment we teleported here I have been sensing it. It is faint, but it is there.’
Leon felt the tension in his chest loosen slightly after hearing that.
After everything that had happened with Bronze and Shin on the ship, he had started to doubt his own knowledge more than he was comfortable admitting.
If only he had gotten to speak with Shin a little longer.
"...to save her."
Leon murmured Bronze’s words under his breath.
That was what he had said before Lumina. That everything he had done, across all of it, had been to save her.
’From who though?’
The actual reason Bronze had tried to say never reached Leon’s ears. Something had cut it off completely, as if something inside him had refused to let the information through. Like a wall that existed before he could even approach it.
That part scared him more than anything else.
What exactly had the original Leon Valentine done to himself? He was supposed to be a minor third rate villain.
’The clock is ticking, Haru,’ Rumi reminded him quietly.
Leon pushed the thoughts aside and turned back toward Ethan and Cyan.
"I am sensing several lives beyond the tree line," he said, pointing toward the forest ahead. Then he glanced at them both, and added. "I think it is safe for us to revert back to our original appearances."
"Wait. Just hold on a second." Ethan said to both of them.
He was doing something with the prism in his hand, and from the looks of it Leon could tell he was having trouble operating it.
It made sense though. The device had returned to its point of origin. For the first time since Ethan had acquired it, it was auto adjusting itself, calculating the total number of iterations and the centuries that had passed over the city. It was processing more information than it had ever been asked to hold at once.
It was only a matter of time before Ethan and Cyan understood what it was actually telling them. And what state Evana was truly in right now.
’Won’t you help him?’ Rumi asked.
’Nope. He needs to figure this out himself.’
"Haah.."
As he sighed, Leon tried looking at the far end of the forest.
This place will decide his fate. If he succeeded, then he would get closer to claiming the Astral World.