The excruciating pain that caused Eugene to clench his teeth gradually became a tad more bearable, and with every throb, the noise echoing within seemed to drift further away.
Boom, boom, boom…
It was not a comforting sensation by any means. Whether it was a knock to open or shatter, the very act of "knocking" bore its own agony. Yet, Eugene’s concentration overshadowed the incredible pain.
If he wanted to exploit this primitive method to its fullest, he had to synchronize perfectly with Sienna. This meant that he couldn’t be content with merely observing the magic and the flow of mana from Sienna. But instead, Eugene, too, had to harness the White Flame Formula in tune with the flow.
Slowly, Eugene became submerged in the flow of mana. He had his eyes closed from the very start, but at some point, he began to perceive the flickering flames even through his shut eyelids. The flames he saw weren't the characteristic white flames of the White Flame Formula but rather the purple hue of his unique flames.
Though his eyes remained closed, Eugene fixated on the swaying of the purple flame.
Boom, boom.
With every impact, the flame danced hither and thither. Eugene made sure to continue adjusting the manipulation of the White Flame Formula in harmony with the flame’s waltz.
Time became elusive. It always felt this way when deeply engrossed in controlling mana since his previous life. It was impossible to see mana with the naked eye, and without talent, it would take years to even begin to feel mana and even more years to start controlling it.
Mana was esoteric and baffling, yet to Eugene, it was often kind and straightforward. He excelled at many skills in his past life, but his control over mana had been his most cherished ability.
One could easily immerse themselves in what they loved and excelled at. Even if it felt like moments to Eugene, it was often a large span of time.
Right now, Eugene could lose himself so deeply in his mana control because he did not need to be mindful of anything other than himself.
His trust in Sienna was absolute. Synchronizing and matching the flow with another's mana would be challenging with other archwizards, but Sienna was an exception. Sienna could maintain her magic for days, as long as Eugene could endure.
And should, by some minuscule chance, their synchronization falter and their flows jumble? They had taken impeccable precautions for such mishaps. With the presence of the two Saints, Kristina and Anise, it would prove challenging for them to die, even if they wanted to.
Therefore, Eugene could focus solely on himself with a light heart. He didn't know how many iterations he'd have to endure, but considering his achievement in the White Flame Formula, the flow of mana, and the current state of his Stars, there was a good chance he could attain the Seventh Star before the expedition departed.
In the first place, this plan wasn't impulsively cobbled together. Before arriving in Shimuin, during their time at the Lionheart Mansion, they had scrutinized various perspectives, identified challenges, and ultimately derived this method. Hence, both Eugene and Sienna believed that he could break through the current bottleneck in the White Flame Formula using this strategy.
‘I’m obviously going to do great on my part, and if Sienna does hers….’ Eugene harbored such thoughts for a fleeting moment.
Booooommm!
The distant noise suddenly grew deafeningly loud and close. The shock that had been rumbling within felt as though it would obliterate his very consciousness.
‘Sienna...!’ Eugene thought.
A problem had arisen. Could it truly be due to that fleeting distraction? No, that couldn't be it. Eugene's manipulation of mana had been flawless. He had briefly been sidetracked by a stray thought, but his concentration hadn't been so weak as to be disrupted by such a trivial thing.
Thus, if there was a fault, it was not Eugene's but Sienna's.
It might have been an arrogant assumption, but Eugene was utterly convinced he was not to blame. He was helpless to immediately address the situation, so he turned his attention toward rectifying the mana’s distorted flow.
However, the issue was more severe than Eugene had anticipated. The flow of mana wasn't merely twisted — he couldn't sense it at all.
Had his senses been paralyzed?
That seemed too extreme. If the issue had been that severe, he would've either lost consciousness or screamed in pain. Eugene was unable to comprehend his current state.
Thus, he first opened his eyes.
"...What is this?" he muttered without realizing it.
He was rendered immobile for a moment from the shock. He had opened his eyes in the mansion's underground room, but now before him stretched an endless sea.
How was he to interpret this?
Dumbfounded, he remained seated with his jaws agape. He forced himself to dispel his growing sense of panic. Surely, Sienna wouldn't play such a prank. Could he be hallucinating from sheer shock? Eugene staggered to his feet while thinking so.
But what he saw felt too real to be an illusion.
The sea in front of him. No — that wasn't the sea. He belatedly realized what he was seeing. It wasn’t the sea, but a massive wave. It was a wave so vast and tall that one could only mistake it for the endless ocean.
Only the wave was in sight regardless of where he looked. It was a wave so colossal it seemed to touch the heavens. Beyond the wave was only the sea mist approaching with it.
But, despite the encroaching colossal wave, there was no scent of the unique salty sea breeze. The moment he realized this, he was overcome with an intense, overpowering odor. It was a stench he knew all too well — the smell of blood.
It was the stench of innards, rotting corpses, and expelled waste. All such stenches were combined into the nauseating scent of death. And this particular odor was especially vile.
Slowly, Eugene turned around. Frankly, he had a good idea of what he'd find and was somewhat prepared. The horrendous and putrid smell of death clearly indicated a sea of corpses.
He was all too familiar with it. It was reminiscent of the horrific days from three hundred years ago. Most of his memories in his past life were those of battlefields. Except for his earliest memories, when his parents were alive, and he lived in the small countryside village of Turas, Eugene, or Hamel, as he was known then, had spent almost his entire life on battlefields.
Battlefields were always littered with corpses, whether human, elf, dwarf, monster, demon, demonic beast, or any other creature. From a young age, Hamel had witnessed these scenes of death. Any shock from seeing such sights had been left behind in his youth.
Yet, what he now beheld left him in sheer astonishment. No, he was overwhelmed. It was so far from reality that it seemed like a dream. On one side were waves that were vast beyond comprehension, and on the other side were mountains of corpses as enormous, stretching out like an endless sea. Everywhere he looked, only the deceased met his eyes, so numerous that the rest of the landscape disappeared behind them.
"What the hell is this?" Eugene exclaimed, horrified.
A hallucination? A nightmare?
As Eugene grappled with his disbelief, the inexorable ‘wave’ continued to approach him. Before the wave could consume everything, a thick fog rolled in, so dense that it even obscured the scent of death.
There, Eugene stood, paralyzed in the midst. The fog covered the lifeless bodies. The world vanished in the gray haze. But this was not the end. The actual wave that would erase everything had yet to crash down.
In this thick, impenetrable fog, he could not see the wave. But he could sense its slow approach. A primal and ominous dread gripped Eugene. He had experienced such a feeling long ago. It was reminiscent of an entity so vague he had not even clearly seen it. A mere glimpse from the corner of his vision had been enough to make him realize what despair was.
Rumbleee.
Before the wave struck, he heard the sound of something breaking and crumbling. Enveloped by the dense fog, it felt as if his body, his very consciousness, was plummeting into the abyss.
And then, he was completely devoured by the darkness.
"Eugene!"
"Hamel!"
He couldn't grasp the situation. Eugene tried to focus while blinking several times. He saw Sienna and Anise looking down at him with wide, worried eyes.
"Wh… what…."
His voice quivered as he tried to speak. As soon as he uttered a sound, Anise rushed to embrace him, her hands trembling as she touched him.
"What on earth…? Are you truly alright, Eugene?" Kristina, having stepped forward, choked up.
Sienna, who had missed her chance to act, blinked several times in confusion and then, albeit belatedly, nudged herself beside Kristina.
"What... happened? I... feel alright, I guess…," Eugene muttered, dazed.
His mind was still in turmoil, struggling to grasp the situation. Lying almost beneath the two women, Eugene began checking himself for injuries.
There was no evident harm. His Core was intact, and his veins weren't twisted. The only pain was on his cheeks. Why? It wasn't hard to guess. While unconscious, it seemed Sienna or Anise had slapped him a few times.
"I should be the one asking... What just happened?" Eugene asked while squirming beneath the two bodies.
Kristina swiftly rose and shot a glance at Sienna.
"Was it your mistake, Lady Sienna?" said Kristina.
"Look here, kid! What do you take me for? I swear to the gods, I made no mistake!" retorted Sienna.
"You don't even believe in gods, do you?" said Kristina.
"Well.... That might be true, but I genuinely didn’t make any mistakes. If there was one, it wasn't mine, but Eugene's,” explained Sienna.
"I didn't mess up either,” Eugene muttered while sitting up. “If neither of us messed up, then what happened? Did anything strange happen?”
“Strange happening? Yes, there was.” Sienna affirmed as she pointed to Eugene’s left hand. When he looked to check what she was pointing at, he saw dried blood on his hand. Blood was splattered on Agaroth’s Ring.
“The ring was pulsing red. Was it not your doing?” asked Sienna.
“Me? Why would I?” said Eugene.
“The ring's power heals you, doesn’t it?”
For an unknown reason, a mishap occurred while Eugene and Sienna were synchronizing their mana flow. As such, something happened inside Eugene, which was why he had invoked Agaroth’s Ring. At least, that’s what Sienna, Kristina, and Anise believed.
Yet, Eugene had not summoned the ring's power. Though, at times, the ring had augmented his divine power without beckoning — it was merely to bolster. The ring had never activated its power of its own volition.
‘It couldn’t be because I cleaned the ring, right?’ This fleeting thought surfaced within Eugene’s mind.
That was completely ridiculous. With a scowl, Eugene fixed his gaze on the ring.
He concentrated on the ring, but no oddities presented themselves. After a brief scrutiny, Eugene impulsively sliced the palm of his left hand.
Sienna and Kristina remained unfazed by the sight. Since Eugene had recovered, the two were capable of making rational judgments. With the two women’s gazes on him, Eugene summoned the ring’s power.
It was a mere scratch on his palm. The energy expended to heal was but trivial. Agaroth’s Ring fed on a scant bit of Eugene’s life and swiftly mended the wound.
Then it was over. Eugene became lost in thought. He clenched and unclenched his fist.
‘What was it?’ Eugene wondered as he tried to search for possible explanations.
Did the recurrent shocks unknowingly activate the ring's power? Such a notion was hard to swallow. The ring's invocation wasn’t novel to him. When facing dire perils in the battle against Raizakia, he had not seen the same illusion when he used Agaroth’s Ring.
Was it because he… cleaned the ring meticulously? Impossible. With a sardonic smirk, Eugene smeared blood onto the ring. Yet, no anomaly ensued. He tilted the ring-adorned hand before wiping off the dried blood.
Still, nothing transpired.
‘In this country… in these waters, myths of Agaroth persist.’ Eugene thought back to what Gondor had told him.
It could well be the only place where legends of Agaroth still remained. Did he have to ponder upon the ring’s antics in this light?
“Agaroth is a name unfamiliar to me,” voiced Kristina in response to his pondering. “Most ancient gods have not left their names in this age. According to the theology of Yuras, the very first being called a god in this world was the God of Light. Those borne from the luminescence he radiated are but his progeny.”
In a distant past, an era devoid of the Demon King, where demons, beasts, and monsters were indistinguishable, all such beings had been merely termed monsters. The God of Light had descended during such a time. Humans feared the monsters, those born from and accompanied by the darkness. Thus, the God of Light bestowed upon them a brilliance to dispel the shadows. He graced the humans with the luminance of the flames.
By the divine descent of the God of Light, mankind was granted life in the world. Only the God of Light had descended from the heavens. All other deities had been birthed on the ground in the world illuminated by the God of Light.
"In the theology of Yuras, Agaroth would be such a being. Not a deity descended from the heavens, but one birthed from the world bathed in light. Most of these beings arise from the worship of men," explained Kristina.
To the followers of Yuras, the God of Light was the one true deity. They dismissed other gods as mere fabrications, idols of worship set up by primitive ancients.
In truth, even Yuras wasn't entirely above such accusations. Ages past, the Disciples of the Light had been so obsessed with a tangible object of worship that they used the remains of the Holy Emperor to forge a false idol. Yuras had been preoccupied with fabricated divinities.
"It was a necessity during those times," Kristina remarked with a cynical smile. "In that distant age, humans first became aware of the entity we call 'god.' Everyone yearned to worship such an existence, to call someone a deity."
After the God of Light, countless other deities graced the world, though many didn't leave their names in the annals of time.
"It's uncertain whether Agaroth truly was an entity worthy of the title 'god.' How do we address the demise of such an entity from the mythic ages? We can't fully interpret events from such bygone times. But Sir Eugene, in faith, what matters most is not the existence of a god, but belief itself," she explained.
Kristina and Anise were such entities. The Saint wasn’t a product of divine intervention, but false gods birthed from human desire. Although they were made entirely by human hands, merely the label of ‘Saint’ allowed them to lead countless believers to trust in the existence of their god.
"The ring you possess, Sir Eugene, is a divine artifact of Agaroth. And myths of Agaroth persist in these seas. Perhaps somewhere in these waters, the heartbeat of faith in Agaroth continues," Kristina suggested.
"So the ring reacted because of that?" asked Eugene.
"I can't be certain. Or maybe…." Kristina hesitated, wary of her words.
"It could be a revelation,” Anise interjected. She gazed intently at the ring on Eugene's finger with squinted eyes. "While the God of Light rarely bestowed direct revelations…. Hmmm, Hamel. That ring is a divine artifact of the ancient war god, Agaroth, right? And has its divine power not aided you in the past? If so, perhaps Agaroth holds you in particular esteem."
"So Agaroth sent a revelation to me?" Eugene asked skeptically.
"It's all in the interpretation. As Kristina mentioned, in religion, what's important is faith. There's a reason the leaders of false faiths obsess over idolizing themselves. That's probably why there were so many gods in the past," Anise commented.
With a suspicious look, Eugene eyed the ring on his finger.
"Was Agaroth a deity who descended from the heavens…? Hmm. According to the theology of Yuras, only the God of Light descended from the sky. But honestly, that tale is hard to believe," Anise stated calmly. It was something no other believer would dare state. "You know as well as I that the teachings of Yuras, the Church of the God of Light, have been twisted and perverted to the extreme. Perhaps there were multiple gods who descended, and Agaroth might have been one among them."
"If such an entity exists, it might send revelations too, though the meaning of such a revelation remains elusive," Anise mused.
Eugene concentrated on the vision he had witnessed earlier: the engulfing sea mists and the countless corpses....
A recollection surged within him, a vision he saw in the darkness. He had seen the image in the Dark Room.
The first had been of a battlefield littered with bodies as common as trash. A man, face obscured, had been staggering across it, shoulders sagging with despair as he moved towards a distant horizon. Then, he had seen mountains of stacked corpses and, atop it, a seated man with a blood-soaked greatsword resting on his shoulder.
‘Was that also a revelation?’ Eugene pondered while playing with the ring.
When he had entered the Dark Room, he had left Agaroth’s Ring behind. However, besides that, he had always worn the ring.
A ring on the left ring finger had historically signified various things like contracts, unions, and promises. From the moment Eugene first put the ring on that finger and fed it his blood, one could say he had formed a pact with Agaroth.
‘If we're so connected, I should be able to receive revelations… even without wearing the ring,’ he thought. Or perhaps, ‘I saw a fragment of Agaroth's memories.’
Eugene clenched his fist with a scowl. "Let's try it again."
"What?" Anise exclaimed. "Hamel, have you lost your mind?"
"If I'm uncertain, I need to try once more," Eugene grumbled while standing tall with determination.
