Chapter 1214 — Some Answers

"Of course not," the black dragon maiden could not help laughing, evidently thinking of the same thing. "The council hall in the inner city isn't far from here. We'll reach it on foot soon enough."

In the inner city of New Agondor, within a council hall restored and converted from a half-collapsed old factory facility, warm, soft light glowed in one of the reception rooms. Mo Jin was led here by the black dragon maiden, and the dragon leader—one who had lived through ages beyond reckoning and accumulated knowledge spanning spans of time humans could scarcely imagine—had already been waiting here for some while.

After they entered the room, the black dragon maiden with her ear-length short hair departed without a sound. Mo Jin adjusted his mage robe slightly and strode toward the golden dragon who maintained human form. The latter happened to look up from the desk, his pale-gold vertical pupils fixing on the great adventurer in the black soft cap.

"Lord Hragor, you wished to see me about..."

Mo Jin had barely gotten half his sentence out when Hragor's expression suddenly changed. The dragon leader rose abruptly and leaned forward, staring at the old mage as though he meant to peer through that shell and examine the latter's very soul. "Master Mo Jin, where did your soul go just now?!"

Mo Jin's remaining words caught in his throat. His astonishment lasted less than half a second before he realized that this powerful golden dragon must have detected something wrong with him—and at the same time, his own thoughts immediately leapt to the bizarre experience he had just had in that black-and-white space that seemed to be the Shadow Realm. His expression turned serious at once. "Lord Hragor, have you discovered something?"

"Your soul retains a very distinct... otherworldly aura," Hragor said, staring fixedly into Mo Jin's eyes. In those golden vertical pupils, which belonged to a dragon, the old mage's figure was reflected on one side—and on the other, a pale, blurred soul. "Some power not belonging to the real world has left a deep mark on your soul... but this power is fading rapidly. Had you come even a little later, I fear even I would not have been able to see these traces."

"Truly?" Mo Jin looked astonished, and at the same time somewhat doubtful. "That shouldn't be... How could I fail to notice a problem with my own soul..."

"I fear that mark also interfered with your judgment—or else the power behind it is too sinister, sitting in your 'mind's blind spot,'" Hragor said, his expression not relaxing in the least. "Master Mo Jin, what exactly happened?"

"...I had a dream—or perhaps not a dream. As you said, my soul may have briefly fallen into some alien space resembling the Shadow Realm," Mo Jin said after a brief thought. He judged that this dragon leader had no reason to scheme against him over such a matter, and he had already intended to pry certain things out of the other anyway, so he no longer concealed anything and recounted that strange "dream experience" in full detail. "It happened just a few hours ago. I jolted awake from the dream and saw a desolate wilderness covered in gray-white dust and shattered boulders, and a black, broken city ruin that seemed forever out of reach...

"I also saw a figure as immense as a mountain seated on a collapsed, ruined throne. The throne was built of some unknown gray-white material, seemingly once of a piece with the surrounding dust, and the lower part of the throne resembled some kind of religious altar. The figure appeared to be a woman, wearing a black gown whose style and material I could not discern, with gray-white cracks or lines like layered light and shadow drifting across her body. I could not see her face clearly, but I could hear her voice...

"I also heard my own voice, but I could not see where that voice was coming from..."

To obtain as much help as possible, Mo Jin described everything he remembered in great detail, and afterward added the brief "dream entry" he had experienced aboard the ship. Hragor listened carefully beside him, never interrupting from beginning to end, and only when Mo Jin's account finally paused did the dragon leader softly exhale and ask with a grave expression, "Before boarding that mechanical ship from Northport, you had never had any similar experience, correct?"

"Correct," Mo Jin said, knowing what the other was driving at. "You could say this phenomenon only appeared after we drew near Talrond."

"A black-and-white space resembling the Shadow Realm, a boundless gray-white desert, great boulders... and a black city ruin that seems forever out of reach..." Hragor frowned, speaking softly as if to himself. "A collapsed, ruined enormous throne, and the altar structure beneath it..."

"Do you know what that place is?" Mo Jin could not help asking. "You've lived nearly two million years; there should be nothing in this world you don't know."

But Hragor shook his head. "There are no true omniscients in this world. Even the eyes of gods have limits. The place you describe I do not recall—not in the real world, nor in the Shadow Realm, nor in those strange planes of elements and spirits. Nothing matches its environment exactly..."

Mo Jin did not hide his disappointment. "Is that so... Even you do not know."

Hragor continued shaking his head. "I'm sorry—I cannot help you in this regard. But I agree with your judgment: that place's environment is very close to the Shadow Realm. Although there remain many inexplicable contradictions, it is absolutely deeply connected to the Shadow Realm, and moreover..."

The Gold Dragon suddenly stopped short, and the expression on his face turned distinctly strange — a look tinged with a measure of wariness, a measure of suspicion, and, more than anything, a tense solemnity.

He lifted his head and fixed his eyes on Mo Jin with an earnestness unlike anything he had shown before: "Could you describe once more what that enormous 'lady' looked like?"

"Of course," Mo Jin said at once with a nod, and went through his description again of the lady he had glimpsed in the "dream," the one he suspected to be a deity. At the end, something else suddenly came back to him, and he added, "That's right — I also remember that when she finally went to face that horrifying, blasphemous monster, a weapon appeared in her hand. It was a staff condensed from the gray-white fissures that drifted across her body, half black and half white, and it had such an intense presence that I could scarcely tear my eyes away from it..."

"A staff half black and half white!?" Hragor's eyes flew wide in an instant, as though some vague conjecture he had just formed had suddenly been confirmed. The leader of the dragon clan sprang to his feet, and only after several seconds did he seem to realize he had lost his composure, and slowly sat back down.

"It seems you know the identity of that 'lady,'" Mo Jin judged from the other's reaction. "Then what I saw was —"

"Just as you guessed, Master Mo Jin — a deity," Hragor said with a soft exhale. "But not a god of this age... He has been missing for more than one million eight hundred thousand years."

(End of this chapter)