The morning of the sixth day arrived. Quickly, Uriel found himself bored. Six full days had passed in central Antarctica after everyone had been evacuated. Aside from scattered nightmare creatures, there was no one else.
It reminded him quite a bit of the Forgotten Shore and his long journey there. Of course, unlike the Forgotten Shore, he was hundreds of times stronger and could leave for East Antarctica whenever he wanted. Nothing stopped him.
However, there was a catch. He didn't feel like returning to East Antarctica. He could simply fake his death, but he wasn't that kind of person. If he was already famous, why not use that fame?
A slight smile adorned his face.
"It's a bit strange, honestly. I suppose I was happier when everything was simpler," he murmured, looking at the skull in front of him.
The skull remained impassive and silent with two dark eye sockets. Uriel remembered that this skull had been one of the hundreds he'd taken after killing the Bone Lord in the Forgotten Shore.
Although he still hadn't been able to use them to decorate his room. A real shame, honestly.
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check everything I have in the dark storage," he murmured.
The darkness beneath him spread out completely, covering a large area. Rising like a tide, large and varied objects of all kinds and shapes began to appear, from the simplest to strange and decorative items.
Uriel, upon emptying his dark storage, whistled at the sight of the multiple mountains of objects. What caught his attention most were the enormous heads of abominations he had eliminated: the Winter Beast, Goliath, a Corrupted Terror, the head of the Devouring Conqueror, a massive rock that was an ancient part of the great devil Shade had killed.
Elsewhere, there were seven incredibly bright enormous cores—sacred-rank soul cores used in Forgotten Shore to create the Nameless Sun.
He saw a massive mountain of peaches—easily thousands of them. In another space were materials from abominations he had collected: fragments of the Stone Titan Goliath, the Winter Beast, the great devil, the other great devil Heart of Darkness, and multiple abominations of Corrupted rank.
In another area, there was a pile of food that remained hot, unchanged.
In another space were thousands of Awakened, Fallen, and Transcendent soul fragments, though there were none of Supreme rank since he had used them to create the two bombs.
Apart from the soul fragments, there were, of course, sacred fragments.
In another area was all kinds of survival equipment for any climate or circumstance. There was even a small sailboat for crossing great distances at sea.
Likewise, there was a large amount of material to continue studying runic sorcery. There was clothing among those objects—varied elegant outfits and mundane ones.
In another area was what he had looted from the castle, mostly furniture.
In another area was a large quantity of bones and skeletons, along with a beautiful statue completely missing its head—the priestess from the Forgotten Shore. Something else he didn't remember storing was several barrels of wine.
Elsewhere were simple weapons, from kitchen knives to mundane ones, like pistols, complete MWPs, energy cells, and gallons of gasoline.
There were more objects, but he didn't pay them much attention.
In conclusion, he had quite a lot of things, so he began to separate the useful from the not-so-useful, which took him quite some time. But once he finished, he looked at the pile of objects he doubted he would need. Mostly rocks, a few ancient bones, a rib or two he had extracted from a massive leviathan from the Forgotten Shore, and sand from the nightmare desert.
Stretching, he looked around, wondering what he could do next in Antarctica.
"Shade, do you have any ideas?"
"Mm... What if we explore the ancient tunnels that connect to old caves?"
"That sounds pretty interesting, but where would we find tunnels?"
"There are plenty in Antarctica from the war centuries ago and all that."
"Alright." Taking out a map from his dark storage, he unfolded it and looked at all the mountainous regions. He was halfway between the Erebus Camp and a siege city called Hope. It was a mountainous area with high peaks and inactive volcanoes.
He remembered that in that area, Dale had been sent first to deal with an annoying abomination with powers related to lava. In the end, he hadn't managed to kill it but had buried the creature under tons of rock.
Rolling up the map, he returned it to his dark storage. Creating two dark wings, he headed further south. It took him a few hours to reach Hope. From the sky, he noticed that the siege city was covered in snow. A large section of the wall was completely destroyed, along with parts of the main roads leading into the city.
On the ground were multiple abominations frozen by the passage of his Winter Beast, which had frozen them all.
Landing on the ground, he began to explore the city with curiosity. As he suspected, it was a ghost town. All the inhabitants had been evacuated to Erebus Camp and then to Falcon Scott.
After searching for a few hours, he found nothing interesting in the city, so he explored the mountains. It didn't take him long to find an area that extended underground, wrapped in very ancient darkness.
After moving aside the rocks, he observed the entrance to a deep cave.
Uriel looked at the entrance, and then Skadi appeared beside him.
"Why did you summon me, creature?" the Supreme asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice.
"Well, I'm about to take a trip underground to a mountainous area with surely a lot of lava, and I thought, why not bring a powerful Supreme with me to keep me company?"
"What are you saying? Besides, you must be bored from not finding anything to fight, so this could be a good opportunity for that."
Skadi looked at Uriel. Her scarlet eyes remained impassive as she observed the deep darkness.
Uriel waited patiently.
A few minutes later, Skadi nodded.
"Alright."
Uriel smiled inwardly in victory and, without saying anything, jumped through the hole, followed by Skadi.
It was a deep drop. The faint smell of ash and humidity contrasted strangely.
After descending for about two minutes, Uriel created two dark wings, slowing his fall, and landed on rocky ground.
He looked around, seeing rivers of lava flowing from one place to another, falling over large lava waterfalls.
The environment was hot, making him start to sweat. If he wasn't careful, he could die of dehydration.
Looking up, he saw a scarlet blur that crashed into the ground, generating an earthquake. Huge rocks rose into the air, landing in the rivers of burning lava.
After the smoke cloud dissipated, Skadi stood intact, looking around with mild interest.
"I like this place," she said, feeling the heat.
"It seems we've descended about two kilometers below the surface of Antarctica. It must be some kind of underground chamber that sank, forming caverns," Uriel murmured.
"Seems like the situation is on fire."
"Hey, Shade, that's the worst joke you've ever made. I'm disappointed."
"Your face is a disappointment."
"Hey, I'm handsome, not a disappointment!"
"Talk to me when you have a woman in bed."
"Son of a—"
Skadi watched the interaction between the two entities with a raised eyebrow.
"Are you always like this?" she asked.
"Yes, unfortunately," said Uriel.
"Your flaw is certainly strange, Creature."
"Everyone says that," he replied as several abominations began to emerge. They were a kind of demonic flaming bat, but Skadi used her will and took them under her control.
Uriel began to walk calmly as he continued talking.
"Generally, flaws are supposed to be parts of the Awakened. They are curses received in exchange for mystical powers. They usually involve restrictions related to mental state, physical condition, qualities. They are often ironic—like someone not being able to remember your name, someone who can't drink beer, someone who likes gambling." Uriel paused.
"Those are those kinds of flaws. But my flaw is that there's another version of me inside my head, which is already strange. I don't even understand what Shade really is—whether he's a part of me, whether he is me, or whether he's a product of my imagination and everyone else just pretends to see him so they avoid saying I've lost my mind."
"Hey, I don't know whether to feel flattered or angry," Shade murmured.
"Take it however you want."
"Your existence is strange, Creature. To such a degree that there isn't even a category in which you can be classified. Your aspect, your flaw, your soul, and lifestyle are discontinuous with each other. It's strange, even."
"Skadi, which divine realm were you born from?" Uriel asked, curious about the life of a Supreme from thousands of years ago.
"Do you want to know about my life, Creature?"
"Yes."
Skadi stopped, creating a lance of fire that she threw. At the same time, a massive humanoid made of lava rose up, only to be pierced and eliminated by the lance.
The spell's voice spoke in his mind.
[You have killed a Fallen Terror, Progeny of Lava]
Skadi continued walking without bothering to look at the corpse.
"I come from two realms..." she began.
"My parents were Transcendents. My mother was an ancient priestess of the sun god, one of the divine children that god typically had when using his avatar. My father, on the other hand, was a prince blessed by the goddess of war. They met on the battlefield trying to kill each other."
Uriel blinked.
Shade, unable to contain himself, spoke.
"So it was love at first blood?"
"More or less," Skadi replied.
"My mother won after leaving my father half-dead. He was taken as a hostage in the sun realm. For a time, he was forced to fight in coliseums against other captives of war for the right to earn his freedom. In the end, my father managed to stage a revolt with the prisoners in the sun realm. After much chaos and death, my mother—who was the head priestess at the time—captured him again. But my father, enraged, used a special drug he had fabricated with his aspect—a powerful aphrodisiac."
"To make a long story short, they had sex for days, and from that encounter, I began to be conceived. In the culture of the sun people, partners are decided by compatibility and the passion of their bodies."
"Hey... wait a second," Shade interrupted.
"How exactly does that work? I mean..." Shade couldn't even articulate words. He had expected to hear a story of enemies to lovers, not a strange story like this.
"The sun god is the god of creation, destruction, and passion—more of the latter than the first two. So he created a series of divine rules for his faithful," Skadi said with a shrug.
"So each god created rules for their followers?" Uriel asked with interest.
"Yes."
"But continuing the story, after that encounter, somehow they both began to feel passion that transformed into love. My father abandoned the throne and escaped, and my mother stopped being a priestess. They left their domains and went to the domain of the goddess of storms. I was born months later as a Transcendent, and for about two hundred years, everything was peaceful until the war began."
"And what happened then?" Uriel asked.
"I'll tell it if I feel like it. Besides, we've arrived."
Uriel blinked, looking around. They were in the center of the cavern, surrounded by burning lava.
The lava accumulated, taking the form of a large humanoid with multiple limbs.
Skadi simply took the Wyvern Fang. With a single movement, the nightmare creature exploded, splattering lava everywhere.
[You have killed a Great Beast, Burning Progenitor]
[You have received a Memory]
"That was disappointing," said Shade.
"I suppose having an ancient Supreme solves many things."
Skadi looked at where the great beast had been, only a Supreme soul fragment remaining.
After Uriel dismissed Skadi, he stored the soul fragment and left the cavern. The story that battle-addicted woman had told him left him with quite a few questions and one or two answers—for example, the fact that Transcendents could move between divine realms, and since divine realms were worlds in themselves, it meant that Transcendents could move between worlds.
He wondered if, as bearers of the spell, the spell literally moved them to a completely different world, and as they ascended, their existence became anchored to the dream realm.
This left him quite thoughtful about the nature of the nightmare spell and the rules imposed by the gods on their followers.
Certainly something he would investigate once he had time.