Chapter 477: Surreal

Eiro pushed open the door in front of him without a moment's hesitation, and stepped into the white space beyond it. Once he actually entered the room, he took off his mask with a light sigh while seeing Bavet sitting in the corner of the room just curled up.

The moment the slime saw him, he immediately jumped up and ran over toward Eiro, changing his form away from Zaragon's over to that of a bird for speed, before turning into a large snake to curl himself around Eiro's body, "You're finally back! Do you even know what I had to go through while you were gone?!"

"I don't know, nor do I care all that much." Eiro replied bluntly, before he saw Bavet's snake-head with tears in its eyes. Which was kind of weird, since snakes didn't even have tear-ducts. With a deep sigh, Eiro rolled his eyes, "Fine, tell me what happ-"

"After you were gone, a bunch of people tried to come over here! Like, a bunch of priests and shit! It was terrifying, and they nearly tried to break through the wall for some reason! I thought maybe they somehow realized that Zaragon was dead, so I moved the door back to there to try and trick them somehow... So all those guys came in, and with them was the fucking pope! And lemme tell you, that guy's an absolute freak! He asked me to give him a bunch of really weird stuff, like whips and shit! And when I managed to finally find one, you know what he said?! He asked me to whip him, 'like I always do'!" Bavet exclaimed, and Eiro looked back at him with a wry smile, barely able to hold back his laugh. It was then that Bavet finally noticed the group of three standing by the entrance. Two girls, one man. He practically froze up for a second, before turning back into his Zaragon form.

"I mean... Welcome to my humble-"

"Bavet, I'm standing here without a mask, read the room." Eiro pointed out, and the slime quickly reacted, "Ah, got it! Right away!" Bavet replied, and one of his arms suddenly turned into a thin, sharp spike that he tried to hurl at the group of three. But of course, Eiro just grabbed it beore it was able to reach them.

"Idiot, they're with me. They're helping us ride the carriages. They were on the islands." Eiro said bluntly, and Bavet slowly turned his head back and forth between Eiro and the group of three people, "Oh."

Eiro rolled his eyes and kicked his foot into the ground, opening up the path right into one of the storage chambers. Of course, Eiro just hurled everything in there right up into the space above, while Bavet tried to intimidate those kids to show his superiority to them.

Of course, he stopped whenever Eiro was above the ground, even though he should know that there was literally no difference to what he could hear even if he was right here in these underground chambers. But well, at least he did his job and started carrying everything to the carriages that were set up outside already. And after they carried everything there, Eiro just had one more thing that he wanted to do... Just for fun, and also because he despised the Holy Empire for what they nearly did to Avalin. Of course he wouldn't do anything huge... just something that would slightly damage them and put them into chaos for a while.

He quickly set up a large magic circle here in the room, with Zaragon's corpse right at the center of it. Eiro chose to combine a few different sorts of magics together in the process of creating this spell. He didn't fuse them, of course, he just used certain elements of magic for different parts of the spell. It was a rather complex one, after all.

And then, they were ready to leave. Eiro jumped onto the front of his carriage, the one drawn in part by Lugo, and quickly led the others out of the Holy Capital. After a few hours, the group took a short break, for multiple different reasons, and Eiro left the group to Bavet and Lugo for a little while.

Eiro quickly jumped into the air and flew toward the Holy Capital again. Once he was in the right position, he finally activated the spell. It was just incredibly hard to keep it set up there for such a long time, but through the knowledge he gained from using Arcane Magic, he was able to set up a decent system for long-distance spell activation.

And with a snap of his finger, the signal to activate the spell finally went through. At that moment, a part of the castle simply shattered into pieces and collapsed onto itself, being sucked in by the gravity-well that Eiro created there with a mass amount of mana. And then, a moment later, everything exploded outward, destroying even more of the castle, and killing a few people in the process. Although Eiro expected this, he didn't expect the notification that appeared then. It seemed like the deaths of the people affected here was enough to push Eiro over one more edge.

--- 

[You have leveled up!]

[You have 110 unused Stat Points available!]

--- 

"Huh. Level 96. Just a few more to go." Eiro muttered to himself, as he slowly turned back around, flying back toward the lake where the others were waiting, while the panicking voices of all those people near or within the castle where slowly fading away.

And now that he had taken care of this part of it, Eiro didn't fly over toward the carriages straight-away, but rather made his way over to the lake. In the air, he fused with Nelli again and dropped down into the lake. Eiro swam closer toward where the Lonely Naiad was currently waiting for the Demon, and the two soon looked into each other's eyes.

"Have you already..?" She asked, surprised to see that Eiro returned so soon, and the Demon immediately nodded his head, "Yeah, I have. The Lord of the Lake was freed. And I will be taking that island with me, by the way. Even the people living on there before the monsters had been planning on trapping that child." Eiro explained, before the former Naiad Queen in front of him just chuckled quietly.

"Saying such normally ridiculous things so easily, I see." She pointed out, "But even so, I must thank you. And... you even realized that the 'Lord of the Lake' is truly nothing but a child..."

"...I did. But just... how is that even possible? If there was a being capable of laying such a huge egg, then..." 

"It is the child of one of the beings that live in the plane of water. It is an old being. Just so incredibly, incredibly old. It lays only a single egg in its lifetime. And due to how powerful it is, there were certain... forces that wished to take advantage of it. I made sure that this could never happen by bringing it here and hiding it from those forces. Since the beings of this plane do not know of its existence, it was easy to make it seem like some kind of guardian to them."

"And why didn't you just bring it to the ocean, where it could be hidden from the eyes of people in the first place?" Eiro asked, and the lonely naiad quickly replied, "Because this was the only way for it to stay hidden. These forces I am speaking of reign over the ocean. At some point, this child will truly awaken into its power and intellect, and then, it will be free to live wherever it wishes, since there will be nothing that can take advantage of it anymore. But until then, I must protect it."

"And how long is that going to take?"

"Three, maybe four hundred years?"

"And you will stay here and do that on your own?" The Demon asked, and the Naiad slowly nodded her head, "Yes, it is one of my reasons for staying in these parts."

Eiro smiled lightly as he looked back at the Lonely Naiad, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to live a lengthy life, if I don't actively do something against that. So... I will come visit you every once in a while, so that you won't be that lonely all the time." 

The Naiad smiled back at Eiro, and grabbed the Demon's arm as she pulled him closer toward the Spirit Gateway. It was time for Eiro to be given his reward for fulfilling the former Naiad Queen's request. Now, he would absorb his second Spirit Gateway, forever linking him and his soul to one more plane of existence.

Eiro stood in the center of this Spirit Gateway of Water. It looked similar to the Gateway of Flames, with everything around it being completely distorted, especially once Eiro forced his way into its center. This familiar feeling returned, it was a sight that Eiro had seen once before.

The world around him, everything just mixed together and created an absolute blackness. Once more, it was like he was falling, and as he looked down, there was the white plane that he was rapidly approaching. It was just, something was different here this time. Eiro soon fell onto this pure white plane, feeling no force of impact, and slowly lifted his head.

There it was above him... A sun. A sphere of pure flame radiating heat and light down onto his skin. And it didn't take long until the alternate Eiro's appeared as well.

After all, Eiro was once more making a contract with the very world to become the protector of a Spirit Gateway... This surreal process would now begin once more.