Staring at Bain—his puppet—he didn't know what to do with him now. He was bored, and the emotions he had gained from the real Bain were fading. The Stone Tablet [The Tablet of the Eclipsed Heart] only stored emotions for a few hours, and by his guess, he had spent around a day inside, maybe less. But he wasn't sure. In the realm of the Dead Eye of the Fallens, anyone would lose track of time. The way time worked in the Dead Eye Realm and the real world was complicated.
And he guessed the tablet stored emotions for only 24 hours.
Anyway, the real world froze whenever he entered the Dead Eye Realm, so drawing any clear conclusions was nearly impossible.
He could let Bain do anything he wanted. While sitting on his chair, Bain could wander endlessly around the City. That was the benefit of having a puppet. And the best part was that Ibaan could even use his own powers through the puppet.
He had already decided to use the puppet as a private detective—as Clami Almond instead of himself. Sitting in his place, he could get a lot done without exposing his identity.
But first, he wanted to increase his Mark Branch, and that wouldn't be easy.
With that thought, he simply dismissed his puppet, letting it fade into the thin air.
Yet he had only one way to enter back into the realm of the Dead Eye, and that was to speak the contacting name—a kind of epithet name of the Dead Eye. As before, he had stuck to another way to enter the Dead Eye of the Fallens by blinking, which had disappeared into the fabric of reality without making any sense, and he felt he would once again have to face that terrible thing.
And it would be his 3rd time contacting the Dead Eye by reading the contacting lines.
Closing his eyes, he read the lines loudly: "The Dead Eye of Fallens… The Name of the Dead… I ask for a path to the great realm."
."
Just as the words left his mouth, darkness enveloped him, followed by countless eyes gazing at him, starting from infinity and yet far too close.
Ibaan felt a sense of déjà vu, and his heartbeat quickened, as if the calm he had managed to adapt to in the past few days was slipping away again.
Time to get back to normal.
But as he smirked, inhuman ravings crawled deep into his mind, a bit clearer this time.
"Yoi sh&# +ow.r cl(@/r Must."
"W+- pre@$_@d"
"@$en! @$en! @$en!"
Just by hearing them, his mind was about to burst—now more than before and more than usual—and it gave him an immense, unbearable headache.
He fell to his knees, finding himself back in the small cave made of stones. Sweat fell down his face, and his eyes had almost bulged out.
Cough! Cough! Cough!
Huf! Huf! Huf!
After breathing heavily and steadying himself, he sighed loudly and leaned back against the rough cave wall.
Last time, he had left the first tower, which took him almost a few hours to descend, completely contradicting what had happened the first time—it had taken only a few minutes. With nothing to do in the tower, he had moved forward and found a hidden stone cave where he rested a bit, but somehow lost to sleep, and the next moment he woke up back in his bedroom.
After relaxing, Ibaan finally stood up and decided to move to the next tower. It would be just a waste of time if he stayed here any longer, nothing else.
He had even faced some misfortunes—too easy to slaughter with the Black Flames, not even worth engaging. They were of the Beast Level rank, lower than the Creepy Orrock, Splein Octod, and the Blood Veilroot. Those were the highest in the rank class, which he guessed was Beast Lord, but at the peak of their species were demons rank—or so Ibaan had concluded.
The misfortunes he had faced were of the Creepy species and the Octod species, both of beast rank. And he didn't even receive a small amount of anything useful from them, but maybe he would in the future when he faced something more dangerous.
And perhaps the further he went, the more dangerous the misfortunes he would have to face.
So without wasting any more time, he summoned his divine sword. From the base of the white blade, with its rough black boundary, the Xorra's Inferna Noctis—the black flame—spread upward. The flames were ready to devour anything that dared to go against its master.
Appearing outside the cave, he blinked slightly due to sudden contact with the demonic light
The crimson-red demonic eye, which resembled the sun of the Dead Eye of the Fallens, gazed upon its world like a sun gazing at the real one, being the source of everything that lived in that realm. It blinked every hour, acting as a time marker, a watcher, a source of light. The countless other small dead eyes shone across the sky, like a constellation of stars mirroring the real cosmos.
Ibaan felt pain and irritation in his eyes as he looked up, forgetting what had happened the last time he had gazed at the Crimson Dead Eye. Small tears formed in his eyes and he immediately looked ahead at the misfortunes gathered and lurking. He cursed inwardly.
Swinging his divine sword behind his torso, the Xorra's Inferna Mody flickered, devouring the very atoms that lingered in the air, giving them a merciless death—nothing could escape the death judgement and hunger of the black flames. Surely death was patient, and above all else inevitable, but here the case was very different; the legacy of the Utopians made it merciless, impatient, creeping hunger and harsher than the Angel of Death of the respective 7 deities, and even death itself.
He charged forward at the misfortunes, gritting his teeth, growling as the adrenaline in him pushed him,