Suddenly however, Grindelwald smiled eerily and before anyone could reflect on why, the world motioned in reverse.
It all happened in steps, as if someone had started to undo the turned pages of a flip book. Step by step, in frames, like the world was being transitioned through various save stages.
The monocles raised to their eyes went back down. The words that everyone had just spoken were taken back, Loki's theft of sound was undone, the Rose Bishop exploded and reformed once again and the world reached back to the point it was when everyone had just been brought into the Abyss.
When the world unpaused in its return, Loki was the first to break out of his trance as he keenly observed himself and then everyone else.
He looked at Grindelwald with confusion as the man smiled eerily with a wide grin while Loki remarked mentally, 'I fully digested my potion? How?'
Loki's gaze then fell on the doll in Grindelwald's hands that looked eerily familiar and then at the Outer God in the Abyss of the Sky.
'Did they realise that I 'parasited' the Aurora Order members?' Loki thought with confusion.
'No…their spirit body threads go back into the Sefirah Castle…they shouldn't have been able to glean anything unless they stole those spirit body threads from me in some way even if they could see those spirit body threads in the first place.'
Loki cast a suspicious glance at the doll in Grindelwald's hands as a strange thought crept up into his mind.
' 'She' did have the ability to take control of the Sefirah Castle for a few moments…' Loki frowned.
'Is there no simpler explanation than a Great Old One capable of hijacking other Great Old One's Sefirots?' Loki's thoughts suddenly froze as they reached this question since a different strange idea made a space for itself in his mind.
'Reboot?'
'Were we all rebooted?'
Loki kept his emotions under control, but his confusion and wariness were difficult to hide as Grindelwald picked up on them rather easily.
"Hmm…you figured it out surprisingly fast for being a mere Sequence 4 Demigod…" Grindelwald noted with furrowed brows, "Are you really only a Sequence 4? How do you even know so much anyway?"
Loki was about to return a snarky reply but he paused.
Was there a point in exchanging dialogues right now?
Wouldn't that just empower the enemy with more information about him?
"What happened?" Grindelwald snarled, "Scared already?" he asked with wide arms, the doll floating in between for a second until he picked it back up.
Nicholas and Perenelle had still not realised what had happened. They did have backups in case something about time had been messed around with in their presence, however, the Reboot of the Wheel Of Fortune pathway didn't reverse time itself. It simply reset the world into a previous save state by rewriting the current fate of the world in an area.
As such when they heard Grindelwald's words they found themselves confused, and slightly angry since they thought he was talking about using them as bargaining chips with Loki because of the presence of an Outer God.
Perenelle's fingers curled up into a fist until her nails dug deep into her skin, drawing blood as she glared at Grindelwald.
She'd only belatedly realised that Grindelwald had predicted her trap and then made sure she fell for the larger trap he'd placed to use her trap against everyone she wanted to save.
Her eyes fell on Loki then, to try and think of ways to send him back safe so that he could be with his sister, however she suddenly saw Loki smile.
"Scared?" Loki asked with a soft, pleasant tone as if his worries had been left behind in yesterland.
He then conjured a monocle in his hand causing everyone around himself to become surprised.
"You can feel it can't you?" Loki asked Grindelwald, holding the monocle on his palm and looking at it as it radiated a strong aura of suppression and authority.
The Monocle in his palm was a product of fusing the Mentor Deceit Characteristics and the Error Pathway Card of Blasphemy into a single item.
While it wasn't quite a mystical item since it lacked the use of the will within the Sequence 3 Mentor of Deceit Characteristics, Loki had made sure to heavily enhance its sense of divinity by deceiving the characteristics itself to believe that it was a part of him and while leveraging his connection with the Sefirah Castle.
This gave the item a free sense of suppression from a real Sefirot. Yet he still added the Blasphemy Card for good measure to deceive his target.
As such, the Monocle in his hand appeared to be the reincarnation of a Great Old One in flesh, or at least an item related directly to 'Them', contend 'Their' will within.
And at this moment, it felt rather suffocating, even more so than the outer god present above them.
Of course, both the Goddess of Fortune and Mother Tree of Desire saw it exactly for what it was, a cheap imitation.
But could such 'invaluable experience' to make comparisons with exist in the mind of a mere Sequence 1 Angel?
Loki didn't think so and hence he continued to speak.
"Do you know what happens if I place this on my right eye?" Loki asked while raising the monocle pinched between his fingers slowly.
Grindelwald's focus remained on Loki.
He gulped dryly as his grip over the doll in his hands tightened much to the displeasure of the one within.
Loki however continued without pause.
The Monocle sat on his eyes with a crisp clink. A light gleamed off its rim that blinded Grindelwald and all those present for a second.
However when the light returned, Loki wasn't 'Loki' anymore.
Loki emitted a strange aura of suppression as the Grey Fog rolled off his body. It was wrapped around him like a cloak, but its ends constantly unravelled into a grey mist that started to merge with the surrounding area.
Loki's face was slowly shrouded within the fog, hiding everything about his face except the Monocle which was irradiant as a golden ring around where his right eye was.
Loki's gaze was no longer on Grindelwald or even on Mother Tree of Desire, instead Loki vanished from his spot and reappeared in front of the Doll Grindelwald was holding.
The act made Grindelwald immediately take a step back, or at least made him try until he heard Loki's soothing voice, "I won't harm you." which genuinely caused him to believe that Loki was there to coddle him.
Loki deceived Grindelwald and stole any of his thoughts of rebellion or using the doll to reboot the world. Instead, Loki quietly and deceptively inserted thoughts of sitting back and watching as 'Loki made his last struggles to free himself and those around him from Grindelwald's clever trap that had worked'.
Loki gently peered at the doll that Grindelwald so eagerly showed off to him and stared at its face. His eyes looked at it for a while before they crinkled into an almost imperceptible frown before landing on an Aurora Order Demigod he'd fought recently.
Loki looked at the doll once again and then smiled in an appreciative manner although he didn't know if the doll could see him doing so through the veil of the grey fog.
He then, much to the displeasure of the one within the doll, left it in Grindelwald's hands who smiled happily at seeing his 'enemy' acknowledge the undeniable strength of his precious weapon of mass destruction and relaxed.
Loki then turned to Nicholas, Perenelle and the others.
His gaze lingered on Nicholas for a few seconds, until it fell onto Hermione.
"You've done well to call me Miss Magician." Loki said calmly, causing Hermione to feel flushed.
This was what Belmont had told her earlier.
Or rather, the message he'd delivered to her directly from the True Goddess of the Apothecary pathway.
She was to continuously recite an Honorific Name in her mind after receiving the message.
'The One Who Holds Bonds Beyond Time.'
'The Being That Can Grant Rebirth.'
'The Embodiment Of Protection.'
And while Hermione didn't know why a different True God would tell her to do that, since according to Nicholas the Honorific Name didn't seem to be related to the True Goddess of the Apothecary pathway, Hermione did so nonetheless.
She continued thinking and repeating it in her mind even when they were brought into the Abyss.
And just as she was worried that no one was coming to help them in the Abyss, and when she had started thinking of ways to waste the time so that whoever was to save them would arrive in time, Mr. Error descended.
It left Hermione surprised.
'A new Honorific Name?'
'Just how many does he have?' Hermione wondered, but then accepted the fact since someone who had lived seemingly as long as Mr. Error had, was bound to have at least a few mysteries.
Loki however knew none of this, at least until he happened to directly see Hermione's Body of Heart and Mind since his current form was rather unstable, a hop scotch of advancing in Sequence through a loophole being forcefully stabilised by the authority of a Sefirot which kept the will in the Beyonder Characteristics from corroding his sanity.
Time was running out, and hence, Loki spoke quickly.
"Your current contributions are enough for your wish." Loki said softly.
Hermione's eyes widened as Loki opened his palm and handed over to Hermione a white blob of warmth.
Not knowing how to handle the 'white blob' Hermione fumbled before Nicholas calmly used his wand to guide the soul into a thin glass container which he handed over to Hermione.
Loki then turned to Perenelle.
"Thank you for taking care of my vessel, your efforts-"
"Vessel!?" Hermione suddenly blurted, her voice clearly carrying surprise but an even greater amount of worry.
She'd expected Mr. Error to be angry, yet Loki kept calm. He looked at Hermione and spoke softly, "It's…complicated."
Sensing his time running out quicker than expected, Loki only nodded at Perenelle who was already in tears, before turning to look at Grindelwald.
Loki snapped his fingers making a sound that only Grindelwald heard, causing him to snap out of the trance he was in as he looked at everyone, bewildered.
Loki however walked up to him and spoke with a click of his tongue.
"Tsk. You're just as weak as you were back then you foul creature…"
Grindelwald's face turned red in anger but before he could speak, Loki continued.
"Either way, you've presented me with a fantastic opportunity."
Grindelwald's eyes widened but Loki continued regardless of his surprise in a sarcastic tone, "...just like the last time…what's it with you and providing me methods to grow stronger…? Is that why fate let me keep you alive back then?"
Grindelwald's eyes widened further in surprise as he looked at the doll in his hands.
He then looked back up at Loki in fear, his eyes jumping around the billowing grey fog obscuring Loki's features before locking in on the Golden Monocle causing Loki to chuckle.
"Don't worry. I still can't kill you it seems…for whatever reason…but I'll be back pretty soon for the bounty anyway…I just hope you're alive until then…" Loki's tone turned eerie by the end.
And instead of waiting around any longer for Grindelwald to speak up, Loki simply walked to the Aurora Order Saint.
Loki snapped his fingers and caused the Aurora Order Saint to raise his hands. Along with it rose a large gate made up of shadows.
Loki walked up to it, knocked on it lightly and then pushed it open to walk in.
He sent a last glance everyone's way before walking into the void that seemed darker than the Abyss.
…
With Loki about to vanish into the Abyss, Grindelwald came to his senses rather quickly and used the doll in his hands once again.
The world attempted to reboot this time, however it fell flat. Instead of the world turning around and returning to a previous save state, the Grey Fog thrummed with a powerful sense of suppression as all the spirit body threads in the area avoided having their fate be rewritten.
Grindelwald stared wide eyed, and confused.
He couldn't believe it.
The world had betrayed him once again, just as it had done a few centuries prior.
'....' His vision was coloured with rage as Grindelwald's only means of expression now was revenge.
Before Perenelle or Nicholas could even predict what Grindelwald was about to do, he looked at all the Aurora Order members who were simply looking at him blankly and rebooted his own fate, leaving them to die a corrupted death.
Except-
'Huh!?'
-Grindelwald's feet stayed planted at the same spot he'd been standing at.
"...wha-"
Before Grindelwald knew it he felt it.
The heavy explosive gaze of the Great Old One that had been hanging out just above, and rightfully so, if the doll could be stopped by just the lingering energy of a Sefirot, a True Great Old One like her was more than enough to take it on and suppress it without succumbing to any traps.
…
Loki looked at the dark and dreary world around him.
Each time he looked someplace else, he felt something shift at the edges of his physical sight.
In spite of his well defined night vision that made the dark as clear as day, it felt like the sourcelessly cast shadows were on a constant drift, moving slowly like the rustling of grass under the wind, only much more soundless while exuding a sense of deathly intent.
His 'goal' for entering the Shadow World, a domain of a True God was clear to him.
He hadn't realised it immediately, but his worms of time stowed away in the Sefirah Castle had survived the imminent Reboot inside the Abyss.
And so he'd regained his memories midway through after being forcefully fed them by his worms of time.
While it gave him some much needed perspective about their current situation, he'd gained a rather important key from the previous Reboot.
In the previous Reboot, when the Sequence 3 Templar had stepped in to check on the Aurora Order member who'd just exploded, Loki had used the Mentor of Deceit characteristics to immediately deceive and parasitise the man with full force since he didn't have anything else to worry about and having a surprise thorn in a battle would only benefit him.
Except along with a Sequence 3 Saint, who fought valiantly for a few petty seconds until he saw the True Creator's Image telling him to surrender, Loki gained a new piece of information he couldn't make heads or tails out of.
'They wanted to sacrifice me to the True Creator?'
'Not kill me? Or have one of them graze me?' Loki asked himself as he quickly went through the memories of the saint for any other clues.
He looked at the dark terrain around himself and tried matching it with the images inside the memories he'd just sneaked a peek into.
But to no avail.
While he could see plenty clearly in this darkness, the world didn't have any 'defining' features. Loki guessed that the members of the Hanged Man pathway had a special sense or affinity that allowed them to travel through this darkness without any visual anchors.
And so he wondered with a frown.
'Why hasn't 'He' come to me yet?'
'If they wanted to sacrifice me- oh…the grey fog.'
Loki quickly undid his 'getup' that he'd used to scare Grindelwald and the effect was immediate.
Even before the last of the Grey Fog wrapping around Loki vanished, the world shifted.
A heavy sense of rot and decay filled the air.
Loki could feel himself losing his mind at a rapid pace. The world started to seem filled with degenerate possibilities and Loki felt like he had to compulsively act on them if he wanted to maintain the ephemeral joy that seemed to be sprouting within him at the thought of doing so.
'...powerful.' Loki mumbled under his breath, trying to think straight as he once again searched around the area, wondering if all this was just the effect of the Shadow World or if the Hanged Man was somewhere around.
And when he didn't find one eyed Jesus, Loki sighed before closing his eyes taking a deep breath and whispering-
"Not so omniscient now are you…"
Loki expected something explosive to happen once he said those words and kept his guard up.
But nothing did.
It was as if the True Creator had suddenly turned deaf ears.
'...or he suddenly became busy with something?' Loki thought to himself.
Just then Loki felt the shadows rustle behind him.
His extended all round vision spotted them morphing into a single humanoid figure as it landed on its feet rather lightly.
The figure twitched for a few seconds. Its limbs twisting arbitrarily before they 'set' into place as they began to move more 'freely'.
Even still, each step that the figure took towards Loki looked like a struggle with sickening sounds of tearing flesh resounding in the mostly silent area as it did.
Its feet merged with the shadows each time it stomped the ground as if trying to gain more support and walk without falling in this 'new' form it had been given, before harshly tearing the strong bond to the shadowed ground as it ripped them apart to take the next step.
The creature stumbled down until it reached Loki before it simply stared at him while filling the area with an unmistakable smell of death and rot.
Loki nearly gagged as he turned around and looked at the shadow creature.
It felt like the work of an amature.
Even worse than the newly advanced Rose Bishop with access to Flesh and Blood Servants.
'Did making so many of his believers into marionettes at once turn him…more wonderful?' Loki thought to himself.
He had originally planned to instruct Walburga to kill more of the Aurora Order members at the right moment to madden the True Creator if he interfered directly in their fights, but things had spiralled out of control too fast for him to be able to do so.
And so all he'd done was turn a lot of his believers he'd sent into Marionettes.
It caused Loki to feel puzzled.
He looked around the shadow creature before looking back at it once again and speaking out loud, "You…wanted to see me? I mean…I know I'm pretty good looking….but you're not into me are you? I'm sorry, I don't-"
Loki didn't get the chance to finish his sentence.
A sharp, large, single eyeball opened up on the centre of the shadow creature's face as it stared down Loki while emitting an immense pressure and aura filled with degenerate madness.
Loki almost immediately activated his get out of jail free card to be teleported into the Sefirah Castle with the help of a Worm of Time, but he stopped.
The shadow creature's clawed hand gripped Loki's wrist firmly. Setting him in place, binding him in a sort of seal that pinned his body in place.
Loki could easily break the seal given how poorly it was constructed, but he didn't since the creature had already closed its eyes, making him confused once again since it had stopped harming him.
'Just…what's going on?'
The shadow creature kept its 'no eye gaze' held on Loki in a silent pause as Loki felt something scan him thoroughly.
However this surprised and shocked him terribly.
'This….'
The scan wasn't from the outside, or even a gaze that penetrated Loki's defences forcibly.
No. The gaze emerged from within the Sea of Subconscious itself.
As if someone had flooded Loki's mind from within.
His defences were bypassed, his heavily warded runic arrangements wholly untriggered, and Salazar's rune of concealment completely ignored.
A chill ran up Loki's spine.
And although the shadow creature didn't have eyes or even a mouth, Loki felt like it was wearing an inhumanely wide grin.
'Ho-...how?' Loki mumbled.
But the gaze passed away without doing anything.
It didn't plant a seed in his body like it had done with Klein and neither did it linger.
It only scanned Loki's memories on the surface, not even touching his secrets before leaving as silently as it had arrived.
The wrinkles in Loki's brain wriggled like worms trying to escape becoming prey as they tried to make heads or tails of the situation.
'From within?'
'Through the Sea of Subconscious?'
'Omnicient? But that's Adam's domain?'
'Is 'He' also from the Visionary Pathway? And Dumbledore is just his Virtual Persona…?'
'...no that can't have been the case or the Founders would've made a mention of it somewhere.'
But then thinking about Rowena's unfounded betrayal that was at the back of his mind, he questioned his conclusions, '....Would they have?'
However Loki quickly shook away such thoughts, he'd already seen how dedicated Salazar was even if Rowena had tried to sell him out, which hadn't even been confirmed, either way, Salazar would've immediately warned him about Dumbledore had that been the case.
But he hadn't.
So Dumbledore wasn't a Virtual Persona, at least not the True Creator's Virtual Persona anyway.
That still left the question, 'How then did he bypass all those defences and emerge from within my Sea of Subconscious?'
Loki's mind thought but for a moment before it spat out an answer that he couldn't or rather didn't have the courage to believe because of its immediate implications.
'...the chaos sea?'
Loki looked at the shadow creature in front of him and gulped audibly.
He thought of the chilling touch of the shadow creature around his wrist like the lunette of a guillotine around a condemned's neck.
As if waiting for this moment, the degenerate thoughts came back in full swing. Shadows of his actions or inactions in the past returned to haunt him.
His indirect choice to leave the three students who'd been ensnared by the Primordial Demoness to be 'taken' by her became amplified enough to force guilt down his throat, forming a tight knot in his chest that made his breath light, shallow and rapid.
His 'experiments' on various people in the darker parts of Knockturn Alley to fulfill the Disk of Wishes, or even simply learn more about magic made him feel disgusted with himself.
'Is this how Elane will feel when she learns about the real me?'
Loki almost felt compelled to carve himself up and offer bits and pieces of his flesh to the 'Great' being in front of him to cleanse himself of his sins and corruption.
Putting a forceful pin on such thoughts, Loki tried to calm the raging storm of degenerate thoughts that had washed ashore in his mind through the Sea of Subconscious.
And while a part of his mind did so, another part focused on decrypting the secrets of the situation at hand.
'....he hasn't killed me yet.'
'...or rather, he hasn't killed anyone using the Chaos Sea yet…or the Aurora Order members would've been much more sneaky with their ritualistic sacrificial assassinations.'
'The True Creator wouldn't even have been termed a mad god if 'He' had access to the Chaos Sea.'
While the True God of the Hanged Man Pathway did have a deep connection to the Chaos Sea which gave them the ability to use it to corrupt all things regardless of their nature, Loki didn't think the True Creator had anything more than that like a direct access to the Chaos Sea.
'And if 'He' truly had access to it while 'He' was mad, the world wouldn't have been such a….normal place to live.'
'That leaves two options.'
'Either he's been pretending to be mad all along and has been waiting to reveal his access to Chaos Sea for some 'grand' reason….or he truly is mad and has extremely limited access to it.'
While the former sounded grand and described the True Creator as the true Dark horse of the era, Loki found it rather unbelievable, 'Would a sane person truly live with people as crazy as those from the Aurora Order for so long?'
Maybe they could even use the Chaos Sea to cleanse themselves of the corruption induced by the nature of their crazy and fanatical believers, but would they subject themselves to such self inflicted torture for so long for no apparant reason?
Loki didn't think so since the True Creator would have nothing he could want if he had the Chaos Sea since that would single handedly give him the ability to take over every other pathway in the God Almighty Group.
What would such a strong being want with a mere Sequence 4 Demigod?
Had Loki offended 'Him' in some way like Grindelwald? But if that was true why hadn't he been killed yet? Why did 'He' wish to meet Loki instead?
Which meant that there had to be some other reason that the True Creator had access to the Chaos Sea even in his maddened state.
A reason which made it so that he could use the Chaos Sea temporarily for little tricks, but do nothing of significance with it.
A reason that had chained him to it without letting him use any of it.
Like bringing a parched man to the only pond in a desert, only to lock him inside a glass box.
'...Chaos sea…source of modern Magic…'
'The domain of degenerate…'
'How's all this connected?'