Chapter 22: Questions (Part 2)

In the court of the Vampire Kingdom, the four generals gathered together share a sense of anxiety.

Ignis: "Well, why do you think the queen called us here?"

Aquarius: "I would guess it has something to do with the discussion they had while we were not here."

Ignis: "Oh yeah, we still haven't been filled in on what exactly they discussed that led Barry and that other ghost to rush out of here?"

As both talk, the other two generals sit in their usual seats silently like they always do. Ignis and Aquarius start feeling uneasy in that atmosphere and so turn towards them.

Ignis: "Hey, you two, don't you have anything to say? Aren't you worried or anything?"

Aquarius: "Actually Gaiz, Achlyz, I'm really worried about that too. What do you two think of this?"

As the two are questioned, they look at each other without saying anything as they both close their eyes.

Ignis: "Barry told us to contact him and after the queen did, she immediately told us to gather here to tell us something important. Come on, Gaiz, isn't there anything in all of this you find suspicious?"

Ignis asks the man sitting beside him in the arrangement of royal chairs, Gaiz.

Gaiz: "There actually is something that's been bothering me for a while now."

Ignis: "Oh? Of course there would be. What is it?"

Gaiz: "The fact that the queen and Reid looked extremely distressed when they were walking down the corridor."

Ignis: "Huh?"

Ignis becomes more anxious than before.

Achlyz: "I and Gaiz saw them walking down the corridor talking so we thought we would leave them be, but then we noticed that they looked like they had seen a ghost."

Achlyz, who sits in front of Gaiz and beside Aquarius, speaks next.

Aquarius: "Is that so?"

They wonder what that could mean. There can be countless reasons for it, but just as they were about to throw in their guesses, the door to the court opens,

Valdis: "I see you have all assembled like I told you to."

The four generals immediately stand up and bow to the queen. They notice Reid a little distance behind her not saying anything.

Valdis: "Well, you can raise your heads now."

Hearing that, the four stand straight and look at the queen.

Valdis: "First of all, I have something to tell you – something very important."

As soon as she says that, Reid moves to the front and hands them identical books of brown covering.

Reid: "This is one of the artifacts of The Psychic Library."

All generals: "What!"

The Psychic Library is a place impossible to get to. Yet Reid has brought artifacts from there? They don't understand how.

Valdis: "To be more precise, these are copies of a particular artifact from the library. It is the book on Vermillion's long-history."

Vermillion has existed from a long time. They were formed when Ozyllus was just a kid. And this book has their whole history. It is, by every means, an invaluable artifact.

Valdis: "I would like you all to read it and see for yourself what we saw."

Hearing that, the four generals bow to her in acceptance. But then,

Aquarius: "If I may, your highness?"

Valdis: "Yes, go on."

Valdis gets surprised to hear Aquarius asking her a question, but she allows him to ask nonetheless.

Aquarius: "Has he read it?"

Valdis: "Specify."

Aquarius: "Yes, I'm sorry. Has our strategist read it?"

Aquarius specifies his question just like Valdis asked him to. But that made the question much harder to answer than it was before.

Valdis: "Well …"

Valdis pauses in-between her sentence. The silence continues, but just when Ignis is about to reprimand Aquarius for asking a difficult question like that, Reid looks at the queen.

Reid: "Your highness, I don't mean to overstep my authority here, but I think that's a question they need to know the answer of."

It's true. Every single person in the court should know the answer to that. They are the highest authority after Valdis in the kingdom after all.

Valdis: "Yes, he has read it."

And the queen understands and respects that sentiment.

Valdis: "In fact, he is the one who told me to read it after sending me eight copies of the book."

Eight copies? All the generals as well as Reid wonder as this is the first time any of them have heard of it.

Valdis: "It was one each for me, Barry, Reid, the four of you and … Ro."

Aquarius: "Ro?"

Ignis: "But he didn't know Ro was going to be here, did he?"

Valdis: "I think he did. After all, he labeled the books with our names on them."

The four take a look at their books and find that there is indeed their name slips attached to the books.

Ignis: "But … that would mean that he saw all of this coming?"

Valdis: "Well, looks that way. Seems our strategist is not lacking in information on any part. Well, that's somewhat good to know."

The key word in her sentence is 'somewhat'. Even though he is the man her kingdom's plans are dependent on, no one in the whole kingdom trusts him. It's not something like Barry's case where some trust him and some don't or something like Reid's case where his group likes and trusts him but a lot of others don't. In the strategist's case, no one, not even Valdis, trusts him. Why is he still their strategist? Only they can tell.

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In the darkness of The Cage, the ghost of once-godly powerful psychic Ozyllus keeps floating. He knows he doesn't have enough time. He knows, with the way things are going, Kais is soon going to figure things out. So he needs to hurry and finish what he came to do.

Ozyllus: "But man, that bastard is nowhere to be found!"

He is not floating without any direction. He is constantly pushing himself to go deeper and deeper in The Cage. He does so to find the devil living there.

Ozyllus: "Well, not that I want to see his face though."

But he needs to. That's the situation this godly-power has fallen into. Or maybe that's just how out-of-control this situation is.

When he entered the place, he made Kais' consciousness return so that he himself could get as much free-time as he can to get to this demon. If his consciousness had been in The Cage then, being that this place is part of his mind, it wouldn't be easy for Ozyllus to get to his target.

And so to bring about the current situation, Ozyllus introduced himself to make Kais picture all the stories related to Ozyllus. Then he just connected his own knowledge to Kais' so he could fill all the gaps in those stories. This allowed him to connect with his mind, after which it was child's play for him to eject him out of The Cage. It was a done through a perfect mix of mind-control and energy manipulation.

Ozyllus: "That said, now he will start figuring things out a lot quicker."

Even if just for a moment, Kais did come in contact with all the knowledge Ozyllus has, so all of it is stored in his subconscious. And now, while he wouldn't suddenly know everything, he would definitely make progress lot faster than he did before. Hence, Ozyllus only has the amount of time it will take for Kais to figure out everything and push Ozyllus out of his mind.

Ozyllus: "Oh damn it! Where are you?"

Abyss: "Stop shouting!"

Ozyllus recognizes the voice as soon as he hears it and a smile forms on his face.

Ozyllus: "Guess I don't need to worry about all that now."

Ozyllus' body keeps going deeper and deeper in the darkness till he finally sees another body floating there. That is when he finds his target.

Ozyllus: "Been a while, hasn't it Abyss?"

Ozyllus asks the question to the figure that was once king of all demons and had brought upon Ozyllus' demise.

Abyss: "Yes, indeed. It has been a while."

In the legends that people use to refer to Ozyllus as 'god', they refer to Abyss as 'the devil'. So, once could say this is the meeting of the incarnation of good and the incarnation of evil.

Fortunately or unfortunately, things aren't that simple.

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