Chapter 1268 — Another Rift
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
Milmina raised her hand, and a sphere of light rose from her palm. The glow of the illumination spell dispelled the gloom around them, but farther off the chaotic darkness kept surging in, as though formless clumps or shadows churned within it, layer upon layer of dark patches like visual errors piling up in the deepest part of that chaos.
Kamael glanced toward that chaotic darkness and suddenly felt the sight was not unfamiliar. After a brief recollection he finally realized where he had seen something similar—the Shadow Realm.
The "sky" of the Shadow Realm was a state of chaotic darkness almost exactly like that!!
"So you've noticed too," Milmina's voice came at just that moment. "The region where the divine realm floats is called the 'deep sea,' and the deep sea is in a sense the deepest part of the Shadow Realm. Unlike the clearly demarcated structure between the Shadow Realm and the manifest world, the divisions from the Shadow Realm to the deep sea and on to the divine realm are not so distinct... Especially now that the divine realm's borders are broken, such boundaries grow ever more blurred..."
"Can one go directly from there to the Shadow Realm?" Kamael asked, unable to restrain his curiosity. His scholarly curiosity and powers of deduction were beginning to work. "If the 'direction' is right, could one even reach the Court of Defiance?"
"...Unfortunately, it isn't that simple," Milmina said with a soft laugh, shaking her head. "What can be seen cannot necessarily be reached; what can be reached is not necessarily visible; what can both be seen and reached does not necessarily exist; what exists is not necessarily knowable... That is the lowest layer of the world. The relations of birth and reflection among all things are not as simple as mortal common sense assumes. Even the deities cannot fully know the specific mysteries within—but I think... perhaps one day, you will be able to figure it out through your own efforts."
Kamael pondered these mysterious, abstruse words of Milmina's, and just then Malm Dunite's voice suddenly came from ahead: "We've arrived—the border of the divine realm. The anomaly I want to show you lies just ahead."
Only then did Kamael start from his musings. He raised his head and looked ahead, and the sight of the divine realm's border rushed at him!
The City of the God of War had reached its end. The ground before the expeditionary team seemed to have been snapped off by an invisible colossal force, presenting a shocking, shattered state. On the other side of that grim, fractured dividing line, the ground had vanished entirely; broken building debris had torn free of the divine realm's domain, heaving and tumbling in a surging dust that resembled a sea of clouds. And on this side, at the end of the earth beneath everyone's feet, the broken high walls and the edges of buildings likewise showed a torn state; pulverized sand and dust flowed down from those fissures like water, pouring endlessly downward, falling away from the earth, plunging into the unsettling boundless sea of clouds beyond the divine realm.
Milmina raised her hand, and another sphere of light soared up, drifting above the sea of clouds. The sphere radiated boundless brilliance, illuminating the entire sea of clouds, letting Kamael see farther—
He saw countless vortices scattered throughout the sea of clouds; at the far end, the sea of clouds seemed to boil, churning and steaming without cease. Where the distant chaotic darkness met the sea of clouds there was a very distinct boundary, and matter endlessly escaping from the divine realm was swallowed by that boundary, becoming fine particles in the blink of an eye and vanishing in the next instant.
This was the sight of the divine realm after death, endlessly devoured by the ripples of the deep sea—even the White Knights, hardened of mind, could not help but be shaken by this magnificent scene no one had ever witnessed, and let out low gasps.