"Luria and Sirion!"
Ezra’s blurting disrupted Zydrax’s concentration.
"Tch" Zydrax clicked his tongue, obviously displeased. "Would you not do that?"
He almost flipped over the energies floating above his hand.
Ezra didn’t reply.
Taking that as a response, Zydrax continued tinkering with different energies.
Two days later.
"What were you saying?" Zydrax spoke to Ezra.
"Huh?"
"What did you shout about a lun or what was it?"
"...."
No answer.
"You can talk now" said Zydrax.
"You’re completed it?" Ezra asked in response.
"No..." Zydrax said it slowly. The excitent in his eyes had dimd "Contrary to my expectations...again...there’s yet another hurdle in my path"
"What is it?"
He sighed. "Unlike the last few tis. This ti, the problem doesn’t have a straightforward answer"
"Last ti, it was the placents that simply needed changing, and before that, it was the energies that were imbalanced" he said. "This ti, I found that it’s a problem with the negative mana"
"I have an abundance of pure mana and more than enough dinsional essence-
"What’s dinsional essence?" Ezra prompted.
"Let finish" Zydrax huffed. "I have an abundance of other two energies but the negative mana is lacking"
"Then, shouldn’t you just get more?" Ezra answered with a ’how did you skip such a simple answer’ tone.
To which Zydrax rolled his eyes.
"If it were that simple to solve, I wouldn’t have called it a problem in the first place"
"Its beyond just quantity. The negative mana itself is not up to par"
"Eh?" Ezra was confused.
"If I have to explain the problem, it would be to illustrate how atmospheric mana and refined mana are basically the sa thing, but their effectiveness is incomparable"
He draws upon a small bit of negative mana. "The negative mana in my hand is like atmospheric mana, but for the creation to co to life, I need negative mana on par with refined mana"
"I see" Ezra now understood. "Okay. How do you intend to find it?"
"I’ve thought of opening the portal to the demon world and searching for treasure within, but our chances of succeeding are slim with how many dangers there are, not to ntion how many things could go wrong"
"Can’t you just kill demons and suck out the negative mana like you did before and refine it?"
Zydrax shook his head.
"I’ve already tried. It takes ten fistfuls of unrefined negative mana to create a half a fist of negative mana with the needed quality; and we need an imnse amount to complete the artifact-if I would call it that"
He continues. "To use such a thod, we would have to kill at least ten tis more than we did last ti, and besides, their world’s will wouldn’t simply watch us do it"
"If yov’ve thought this far, then you must’ve figured out sothing" said Ezra, pushing him to continue.
"What we need is a negative mana artifact equivalent of mana stones or the mana cube, and the only way to do that is to search the demon world"
"Didn’t you say chances were slim we’d survive if we tried such a thing?"
Zydrax sighs again, "That’s why I’m currently trying to think of sothing else, or maybe co up with another idea"
"Why don’t you just reduce the quality of the dinsional essence and the mana to accommodate unrefined negative mana?"
"That is a terrible suggestion" Zydrax replied. "Tell , if you had the best eyes in the world, would you reduce your eyesight so you could read soone’s terrible handwriting or even an art piece?"
Ezra went silent for a while, beforreplyimg. "No"
"To cut quality from everything else would be to make this artifact flimsy, unrefined and most of all, it would an insult to all the effort I put in until now" Zydrax’s tone had chilled. "Don’t ever make a suggestion like that again"
Ezra shrugged. "If you day so"
No, Ezra wasn’t afraid of Zydrax, but respect was to be awarded where it was deserved.
"So what are you going to do?" Ezra asked.
"I don’t know" he said, and then chuckled. "It’s been a while since I didn’t know what to do"
"For now, I don’t have any good plans. So I’ll pause, take a break and go over the artifact over and over again to see if there’s any way to bypass this problem"
"You’ve been on this artifact for more than fourty weeks, taking a break would indeed help clear your head"
"Who do you think I am?" Zydrax retorted. "I’m simply pausing so I reexamine my progress. At my level, even in my current state I can go seventy weeks without much trouble. Don’t underestimate "
"I’m not" says Ezra.
"Anyways, tell more about Lun and Siron"
’Lun and Siron?’ Ezra was firstly confused, until it hit him.
"You an Luria and Sirion?"
"Yes" Zydrax replied. "Why did you shout before?"
"Sorry about that. I just suddenly rembered them"
"Why?"
"Well, right now, I realized that they’re still both unknown to everyone. Also I was on my way to Sirion befor I was killed"
"And that’s when you reincarnated?" Zydrax guessed.
"Yes" Ezra nodded.
"That aside. You were heading to Sirion?"
Zydrax was suddenly interested.
"Yes" Ezra nodded.
"Sirion is a place then?"
"Oh. I hadn’t ntioned?" Ezra realized. "Luria and Sirion are continents"
Zydrax was taken aback, Ezra hadn’t told him any of this when he first pressed him for answers during the Life Ark incident.
No, it wasn’t surprised that Orion had two more continents. As soone inhabiting the world’s will, he’d known about them from day one.
He was instead surprised that Ezra knew them, and that they had been given nas.
Though, he had inkling as to which was which. "Is Sirion the island of Ice?"
"You know about them?" It was Ezra’s turn to be shocked.
"Of course I do. I’ve been this planets will for centuries, it would stranger if I didn’t know"
’That’s true’
Thinking about it, Ezra nodded.
"Yes, Sirion is the Island of Ice. Well, I was unable to see it in person, but that’s what it was described as"
"Luria must be the beast land then"
"It is" Ezra nodded.
"But how did you find it?" Zydrax questioned.
If the three continents, Lexon, Puton and Hellison were at one part of the planet, Sirion was a floating island on the other side of the world and Luria wasn’t too far from Sirion.
Few Grandmasters would ever travel that far, because there was nothing inbetween but water, aning you had nowhere to land in between.
Not to ntion, of the few Grandmasters that did make it there, none ever returned.
So how did it happen that not only did they find it, knights like Ezra was being dispatched to it.
Ezra simply replied. "We didn’t"
"Hmm?" Zydrax was confused.
"It ca to us"
"...?."
"During the apocalypse, I don’t know why or how, the continents rged into one. That was how we discovered Luria and Sirion"
He continued "The rging forced us into corner as we pushed against otherworldly creatures, beasts from Luria, demons and ice n"
Ezra’s voice had almost died out. "Multiple Millions died during that ti, and humans would’ve completely lost if not demons. They attacked everyone, making them fight each other. Thus giving us a chance to catch our breathe"
Zydrax imagined just how horrible that must’ve been.
Ezra made a dejected laugh "All through that, I refused the power of the Life Ark. In my eyes, the Life Ark was created by whoever sent down those damned dungeons and I couldn’t stand the thought of using such a thing"
"I made sure to never use it, and I convinced all my subordinates not to use it as well, thinking I doing them a favor, but all I did was hold them down"
"Eventually, my stubborness lead to all our deaths" he said, in a light tone. "My self righteousness had die to people who should’ve never been able to step within ten feet of "
"I was beyond angry at the ti and when I found myself in the past, I vowed I’d make those people pay, and then worked day and night to make sure of it"
"But eventually, thanks to alone ti in Arcadia, I realized I was just doing them a favor" Ezra shook his head in laughter.
"Those that hurt didn’t exist anymore. I was just torturing myself in mory of things had yet to happen, blinded in pursuit of sothing beyond worthless. I realized I had to put the past in the past, and look forward to the future. Then sohow, I ended up here with you"
A smile lay across as he recalled and compared his present and past selfs.
The events of his betrayal no longer triggered him, his anger over the issue had shimred, gone like dust in the wind.
As a result, regardless of what happened, the days were far brighter and living life never felt better.
Like a bubble bursting, Ezra broke out of his reminiscence and ca back into the present.
"Ah, forgive . It seed I’ve blabbered so nonsense"
"Nonsense?" Zydrax spoke in a pleased tone. "Stories like these are what life’s really about. It was very pleasant"
His tone turned neutral, as he tapped his chin.
"Now, where was I? Ah, yes, why were heading to Sirion?"
Ezra brainstord a bit.
"Let see...ah! It was to join the main forces already stationed there"
Ezra nodded, affirming his words.
"Yes, yes, we were to assist them in fending off the otherworldly creatures that had attacked the place to stop them from taking sothing..."
"Taking sothing?" Zydrax retorted.
"An artifact I think...yes, ah, I can’t seem to recall exactly what it was...wait! There’s a book in my space ring that should have the answers. Take it out"
Adhering to the introduction, Zydrax fishes out a dium sized book from the space ring.
This was the book that Ezra had jotted down all he could rember about things of his past life while he was still small and his mory was at the sharpest.
No wait, that’s wrong, his mory now was sharper than before, but he had little he was thinking off at the ti and the mories were still intact, so it hadn’t convulated with the events of this life.
"Not that one, not that either, not that too"
With Ezra in his ear, Zydrax flipped through pages with swiftness.
Then, he hit the section that talked about the apocalypse.
Many of the items written were now useless since many events had been shifted.
For instance, since the demons didn’t invade, the location of their portals and war strategies beared no significance.
Finally, they reached the parts containing matters about Sirion.
At their level, the contents of the entire page was absorbed in a second.
There it was.
The na of the artifact otherworldly beasts sought in Sirion.
The Ice source.
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