“An unfamiliar ceiling.”
Sol smiled as he looked up at the “unfamiliar ceiling” above him. It was a sort of joke for him— another way to remember vestiges of his past life that were becoming hazier and hazier as time went by.
Nowadays, he could barely remember what his old life had been like. His reminiscence was akin to watching blurred photos that signified his past.
"Darling!"
“Ouf!”
Sol was soon brought out of his musing when he felt something or rather some ‘being’ jump at him with the force of a cannonball.
Of course, he immediately recognized who the culprit was.
“Skuld…”
In a way, Sol wasn’t really surprised that she was the first one he would lay his eyes upon when he woke up, already predicting that outcome long ago.
He could vividly imagine her being at his side for however long he had been asleep.
He gently patted Skuld's head as she kept suspiciously sniffing his scent, while his eyes focused on identifying where he currently was.
For one, he was sure that they weren’t in Kiyohime’s castle. The room was rather dreary with little to no decorations, but it was nonetheless, well-lit and organized. The room only had a huge bed as furniture, but it didn’t make the room cramped as the room itself was sufficiently spacious.
Of course, that wasn’t all.
‘The scent of the sea.’
Looking to his right, from beyond the bedside window, Sol gazed at the sea that seemed to spread as far as the eyes could see. The sound of the waves resonated in his ears with a gentle rhythm while the unmistakable salty scent, representing the sea, drifted to his nose.
‘A beach house?’
“Where are we?”
His throat was a bit parched, but he had no problem speaking.
“Oh!”
As if remembering she had something to do, Skuld looked up hurriedly and smiled at Sol before replying, “We are on a resort island belonging to Kiyohime in the lower heaven. We decided that the air of the sea would perhaps be useful to let you relax.”
“Hah…”
“Just how long was I out and what happened during this time?”
Skuld nodded as a reply and began explaining the situation to Sol, filling in the void in his memories.
———
Once Skuld finished her explanation, she immediately left and closed the door on her wake, saying that he had to rest more to recover fully. She had already asked someone to prepare food and it would be shorty delivered.
It was clear for anyone to see how happy she was to see that he was well.
Now alone with only his thoughts as accompaniment, he felt a slight bit of loneliness for some odd reason. At least until the food came, Sol just closed his eyes, not in order to fall asleep but to fully analyze the current condition of his body.
“Ugh. This is a mess.”
His mana circuits were so fucked up, the pathways became so twisted and jumbled up, that it was honestly unsightly to look at them.
The fight had simply been too hard on his body and Sol was sure that if he didn’t have the speedy Super Regeneration ability that he got from the phoenixes he would have overloaded his mana circuits, thereby making him unable to bear the pressure and break apart from the inside.
One couldn’t mess with Fate that easily. There would always be consequences…
Taking a deep breath, Sol focused even more on his inner self and when he opened his eyes, he could once again see himself sitting in his mindscape.
A boundless extent of a blue sky above and a tranquil blue sea below his feet, both converging together in the horizon with him in the middle.
Despite everything that happened, his mind was as calm as ever and not particularly different from its initial state with the exception being the existence of a huge black sun hanging above in the clear blue skies.
‘This should be the influence of Isis’s soul.’
Sol wondered what his mind would look like when he finished filling up all his capacity. However, it seemed that thought of his would never be fulfilled.
If his hunch was right…soon, things such as Capacity Points or even racial limits would be utterly meaningless to him.
‘Well, this isn’t why I came here though.’
*Whoosh*
A wind seemed to blow from everywhere and the calm sea stirred as ripples appeared everywhere below. Soon, Sol began to sink into the sea until all of his body was deep under.
His goal wasn’t just to observe the surface of his mind. But to go far deeper within.
Everyone seemed to think that he had obtained his divine power from Luxuria or Castitas or perhaps even Superbia.
After all, those were the only goddesses he was related to directly or indirectly.
Only Sol knew that that wasn’t the case. He didn’t know why but something…something had happened inside him.
Something monumental.
Sol had always been curious. This was his true nature. He was even more curious since it was something that had to do with his own body and being.
The deeper he sank, the harder it became for him to move. But Sol forced himself to dive further and finally, he stopped sinking.
He was now in a completely white world, and standing before him was a gate.
The first thing that startled him was the state of the gate, it was now closed.
When someone became a Duke, they had to assess and understand a truth that belonged to them and them alone. The representation of that Truth showed itself in the form of a gate.
Each gate was different, as no two people could share the same truth. But there was a thing common among them all. Once someone became a Duke, the gate would always stay open.
Why then was his gate closed?
Walking closer, he took a deeper look at the gate. It was a simple gate with no markings engraved on it.
A simple and huge Black gate.
‘Ugh…’
Sol groaned.
Something was definitely wrong here.
This should not be….
Something flashed in his mind and the pain vanished.
Blinking rapidly, Sol looked around and realized that he was back in the real world.
He had been booted out of his mindscape and the only thing he could remember was a message.
No. It wasn’t even a message but more like an intent.
It was to come back to that place, in front of the gate—
his truth, when he would be able to shield his own thoughts from the goddesses.
His eyes narrowed.
‘It seems like I need to visit Tiamat.’
He remembered that Tiamat could even stop the goddesses from observing her and talking to her without her permission by using her dimension.
Now that he was a Duke… The breadth of applications he could cover with his dimension was on a completely different level.
‘Now though, I should rest.’
He was extremely tired.
Mentally drained.
Physically weakened.
It wasn’t just that. He felt so useless in his current state. He could still feel the sweet pleasure of being an all-powerful demigod.
The electrifying and rhapsodical feeling of making Fate itself bend to his whims. The joy of toying around with two powerful demigods as if they were just kids in front of his almighty presence. The power to even escape the constraint of life and death. The power to transcend all…
This was a level of power he could have never imagined wielding before. A level that could have allowed him to even face the goddesses without any fear.
But now?
Now he was just a puny Duke.
The dissonance of his two states was jarring. He felt like he was crippled. His mind and body felt so slow and weak.
It was the first time Sol truly realized how disgusting weakness could be.
He could also understand just how huge the difference between his current self and his self empowered by Divinity was.
He then had a clear grasp of how absurd the Other Sol who literally inverted all the timelines, in one point, back to thousands upon thousands of years was.
This was a power that surpassed even the goddesses. After all, their full might could not stop that Sol from the other Timeline to act as he wished.
‘There are many obscure points I need to discuss with Skuld.’
Sol groaned. He had just woken up and already, his head was buzzing with world-ending problems.
It was then,
“My, my. I see that you are awake.”
Sol looked up as a man with black hair clad in nothing but swimming shorts and an open shirt as well as a cocktail in his hand stepped into the room.
He tilted his head as he forced himself to remember who the man was…
“You are…”
The man chuckled, “I am Anubis. Some call me the Necromancer King, others call me the Demon King and some call me the Horror of the Night. I have many titles to my name. But there is only one I am really proud of. Do you know which one?”
Sol gulped as he realized what the man was about to say,
“I am Isis’ father. Nice to meet you, Son-in-law.”
The way the words ‘son-in-law’ was said made Sol close his eyes and exhale deeply. It seemed that this would be quite a prickly discussion.
‘Perhaps thinking about world-ending problems would have been better?’
Thus it was with those slightly bitter thoughts that the first meeting between Sol and Anubis, the Dragon Emperor and the Necromancer King, took place…
