?The woman stepped towards the Palace in the distance. The moment she took her first step, the surroundings changed. Karyk also felt some spatial disturbance as if he was being pulled to a different space.
He didn't resist the spatial pull, instead, he embraced it, curious about where the woman was trying to take him.
The surroundings changed completely. One moment, he was standing at the outer edge of the city, and the next moment, he found himself in a grand hall.
Just the sheer size of the hall alone was enough to give away its identity. This was the Grand Palace that he had only seen from a distance.
In the Grand Hall, there was only one throne, made from intricate jade carvings that glimmered under the soft light. However, the throne didn't look like it was made for people like them. Instead, it looked like it was made for a Giant.
"Is there anyone in this city besides you two?" Karyk asked the woman who was walking towards the throne, her back straight and graceful.
"There are millions of Undead in the city, if you want to count them," the woman answered as she stopped before the throne, her fingers tracing along the patterns etched into the jade.
"And the living?" Karyk asked. Although millions of Undead was a great fighting force, he wanted to know the true depths of these people.
"Only me." The woman spoke, taking a seat on the throne.
"Just you?" Karyk frowned, thinking back to the hooded man who controlled the Undead like a puppet.
He hadn't sensed any undead aura from that man. Instead, the man appeared to be full of life, completely unlike an Undead Being. He had intelligence as well.
The woman nodded, her gaze fixed on the patterns etched into the jade. "Yes, just me. I'm the only living being in this City of Dead. If you're wondering about 'him', then you will be wrong. He's not alive. If he was alive, he wouldn't even be able to step out of the city."
Karyk was slightly surprised to hear that the man wasn't alive. Even someone like him who had walked between life and death all his life wasn't able to see any signs of death from that man.
Although he hadn't seen the face of the man inside the hood, he still found it surprising that he failed to see through the reality. He didn't know if it was because the beings in this world were different from his, or if it was because the laws of death worked differently in this isolated world.
"Not only am I able to control the dead here, but I even failed to discover one. This shouldn't be the case. Something is really wrong with this city." He wondered as he thought back to the moment where he stepped in the Land of Chaos.
"I read in the book that the Celestial Dynasty was very prosperous, but it was completely different from the Elzerian Dynasty that I see. The people of the Celestial Dynasty weren't immortal and everything about the world was different according to what I read."
"The book didn't mention anything about Elzerians, as if they didn't even exist at that time. So how did the world become what it was today? How did the Celestial Dynasty, once invincible, fall to the point that no one even knows about it?"
"How did you reach the point where you've been trapped within your own city that's nothing but a shadow of its former glory?"
Karyk had many questions. Fortunately, now there was someone who could answer him.
"Do you think our fate is pitiful?" The woman laughed mockingly. "Our fate is nothing compared to the fate you will face if you fail to stop them from entering your world."
"We couldn't stop them from bringing carnage to our place, even after we exhausted all our strength. We were brought to ruins, even at the cost of so many lives."
"All we had left was this small city that we were somehow able to protect. But you... Things will be much different with you, especially since you don't have them."
The woman's words hung in the air, heavy with a sense of foreboding. Karyk's curiosity grew stronger as he listened to her speak. He couldn't help but wonder who "they" were that the woman was talking about.
"I don't have who?" Karyk asked, his voice filled with uncertainty.
The woman turned to him, her eyes filled with a mixture of sadness and loss. She looked behind Karyk.
Karyk traced her gaze, looking behind him. There, he saw multiple statues. And one of them was a giant statue whose physique matched that of the throne, as if this giant throne was especially created for him.
"You don't have the ones who could hold them back, even at the cost of their lives. All your lives will be futile the moment their conquest starts. You can only stop them before the conquest begins. If not..."
She didn't finish her sentence but her meaning was clear. Unfortunately, her words also confused Karyk.
She was implying that he could only stop them in Elzeria. Why was it only possible here and not in his world? What was different the moment this 'conquest' began? Weren't they supposed to be the strongest in Elzeria? Something didn't make sense about her words to him.
"Who are they?" Karyk asked. "And why can they only be stopped before the conquest begins? What will change once they enter my world?"
"The beings that threaten your world, and the ones which destroyed mine..." she replied cryptically. "They aren't Elzerians. The Elzerians are just 'their' pawns..."
"They are unlike anything you could ever have encountered. They are powerful, relentless, and driven by a hunger for destruction. They seek to consume everything in their path, leaving only chaos and despair behind. They are beings that shouldn't have existed in this universe."
"They are the ones whose darkness even eclipses the abyss. They are the ones that Elzerians address as Divine Archangels."
