Chapter 942 — On the Dragon's Back

She sat there quietly, hands folded on her knees, seemingly lost in thought, gazing ahead with little focus, and the platinum scepter she never let out of her sight was not beside her now—Gaoyang knew that Virodai had handed the scepter to Wright for safekeeping before departure, and there was nothing questionable about that, but her silence throughout the journey still made him unable to keep from wondering.

"Are you feeling unwell?" Gaoyang walked over and asked casually. "You seem to have hardly said a word this whole trip."

Whether it was an illusion or not, he felt that Virodai seemed to take half a beat longer than usual to raise her head and respond in a placid tone: "Thank you for your concern. I am well."

Gaoyang frowned on reflex—there was indeed something off about the way Virodai felt at this moment. He thought it over carefully before vaguely grasping where the wrongness lay: compared with usual, Virodai now lacked a trace of human liveliness. He had always felt that this Saintess Princess was so flawless she hardly seemed human, so exquisite she was like a doll, but that had only ever been a vague impression; now, however... he genuinely sensed in her something mechanical and rigid, a stiffness in which even the emotional fluctuations a human ought to have had vanished.

Frowning, he looked her up and down once more: "Are you truly all right?"

Virodai raised her head, and those crystal-beautiful yet inorganic eyes stared earnestly at Gaoyang for a long while; then, as if coming to a realization, she nodded. "Ah, it seems I overlooked some details... Please rest assured, my condition is entirely normal—there is no problem with my bodily functions or my capacity for thought. But you should indeed be able to sense something unusual... Do not worry, it is normal.

"When far from the Loren Continent, I suffer some weakening."

When far from the Loren Continent, she would suffer some weakening?

Gao Shao instantly caught the information in Virodai's words. His expression grew slightly grave, and a question already surfaced in his eyes, but before he could voice it, Virodai had already put on a faint smile and said lightly, "This is merely the price of having survived until now."

"...I understand," Gaoyang stared at her for a few more seconds before his expression eased and he gave a slight nod. "If you do not wish to go into detail, I will not press. But one day I still hope you will satisfy my curiosity. As for now... just make sure this 'price' will not affect our mission."

Virodai met Gaosong's gaze, still smiling, as though that smile had frozen in place for the time being. She nodded and said in the same calm, placid manner as always, "Of course. I calculated everything carefully before we set out."

...

The foul clouds surged and rolled, covering the sky like some nauseating, semi-gelatinous mire and bearing down on the earth; the whole world seemed oppressively stifled beneath that low-hanging cloud layer—and more oppressive than the sky was the dead, severely corrupted and polluted land.

The heartland of the former Empire, transformed into wasteland by mana contamination, stretched on in an unbroken expanse of black, hardened earth. Folds and radial cracks left by ancient shockwaves spread outward from a single central point; seen from the air, it resembled a hideous giant eye threaded with blood vessels, and at the center of that eye was a vast crater sunken into a ring, and at the bottom of the crater, a conical structure formed of molten crystal pillars.

Seven centuries later, the Deep Blue Well was still in operation. Within that remnant reaction tower incredible energy surged; a colossal blue pillar of light shot skyward straight into the clouds, and where the pillar met the cloud layer, lightning flashed without cease.

Around the Deep Blue Well's crater there were now many things that had not originally existed—small fortresses built of some black polymer, small watchtowers that seemed grown from a mixture of plant and stone, strange writhing woods, and figures moving among the woods, fortresses, and watchtowers.

Those figures were several patrol squads, all dressed in the mage uniforms of the ancient Gondo era. Men and women alike had proportions of extreme perfection and features exquisite as though artificially crafted; they were patrolling the areas surrounding the imperial capital—just as they had done seven hundred years ago.

Yet as for those newly appeared fortresses and watchtowers around the impact crater, these patrol squads seemed not to see them at all. They simply went around the obstacles blocking their path, naturally altering their already fixed patrol routes.

They even... looked almost as though they were patrolling the place in order to protect those fortresses.

Along the edge of the impact crater, in the district of black fortresses, the ground and the surrounding structures were overgrown with masses of vines and a gray matter that resembled clumped mycelium. With a great rustling sound, a patch of vegetation at the front of the fortresses suddenly stirred and drew back to either side, and several twisted creatures—things that seemed a hybrid of human and tree, with dry, shriveled bark and a profusion of overgrown branches—crawled up out of tunnels underground.

The leader of these twisted creatures shifted his roots and stepped to the rim of the impact crater. On his dry, wrinkled bark there surfaced an aged face, and the pale yellow eyes set into that face gazed down at the bottom of the crater—at the Hill of Crystal Pillars, surging with radiance, and the blue light that gushed from the crystals, both reflected in those eyes and making them shine ever more with greed and longing.

"The Deep Blue Well... we are only one step away from it..."

The leader of the tree-folk murmured to himself. He shook his branches, and at once a mass of vines at the boundary of the fortress district received the command, rearing high and stretching out toward the interior of the impact crater—but the instant the tips of those vines crossed the boundary line, the Hill of Crystal Pillars at the crater's bottom reacted. With several flashes of bright light, the vines that had crossed the line were burned straight into gas by searing plasma beams.

"Damn it!! This damned tomb, this damned coffin, and these damned gravekeepers! Seven hundred years, and can't this damned lot just lie down and die properly?!"

The leader of the tree-folk, the current "High Pontiff of the Congregation of All Things Final," immediately launched into a torrent of curses.