Chapter 172: Dead…?

"I had forgotten how far Hidria is from Azure... If we went by water, it wouldn’t be like this anyway..." Thalassa let out a sigh as she leaned against the carriage, exhausted from the journey.

Cassian didn’t make any gesture to respond, but the woman was already used to this and continued talking to herself.

They were currently passing through a heavily forested region.

The path they followed, if it could even be called that, wasn’t well marked; yet the tracks of carriages—whether pulled by horses or more modern models—were still visible in the mud.

Cassian opened his eyes the moment a loud braking sound came from the front.

His brows furrowed in annoyance.

Thalassa looked outside, confused, but suddenly the carriage door burst open and someone entered.

"Wow! I’ve never seen one like this," a sound of admiration escaped the person. "In all the ones I’ve been in, the space inside is always so cramped. But... how did you manage this?" Her eyes lowered and focused on the two people inside with suspicion.

Cassian glanced at Thalassa.

She already knew exactly what he was about to do, so she stood up immediately, approached the woman with a friendly expression, and positioned herself between them.

He simply closed his eyes and let her handle the situation.

"I think you should explain why you stopped and entered a carriage that isn’t yours. The man over there isn’t very friendly, as you can see."

"Huh? That guy who looks like porcelain?" The woman raised her hand and shook it gracefully, while her wolf tail and ears twitched with excitement as she spoke. It was as if she was ready in case something happened, but at the same time the situation delighted her completely. "You don’t have to worry! I just wanted to ask if you could give me a ride for a while!" As she said this, she moved toward one of the inner seats and sat down, still marveling at the luxurious interior.

However, this time it was Thalassa who showed annoyance. "Sorry, but we didn’t give you permission to stay. We’re in quite a hurry, you know? And we don’t have time to deal with this."

"Oh, come on! No carriage has passed through here in a long time, and ever since I esca— I mean, since I left my homeland, all I’ve done is walk. I’m really tired and I’ll never get where I want to go if this continues!"

The siren looked doubtful; the whole situation didn’t add up.

She glanced toward him, but even then, he remained with his eyes closed, ignoring everything that was happening.

Knowing that everything was now in her hands and thinking it best to continue the journey as soon as possible, Thalassa simply nodded and sat back down, resigned.

But that decision finally seemed to stir Cassian.

With a simple wave of his hand, the beastwoman was magically thrown out of the carriage, and the vehicle began moving at full speed once again.

"What a nuisance," he muttered.

He had been focusing his attention completely on constructing a technique that could search for the trace he had left on Margery across the entire universe and beyond. Having to waste even a tiny bit of energy on something as irrelevant as this...

He shook his head, crossed his arms, and returned to his relaxed—or rather, concentrated—posture.

Thalassa simply stared at the spot where the figure had disappeared and frowned.

Meanwhile, outside the carriage and watching it move away, stood the beastwoman with an expression of absolute bewilderment.

"Huh?"

"Xana is surprised! Xana is confused!! Xana is completely excited!!"

Her legs flexed, gathering strength and propelling her forward with surprising speed, following the carriage almost side by side, but unable to fully catch up.

Yet the vehicle showed no signs of stopping, and she could only barely keep up, with no intention of giving up.

At the same time, both her outside and the siren who had remained inside with him in the carriage were unaware of a reality happening right in front of them, but in a completely different dimension...

In Cassian’s personal space.

An environment whose extension was endless.

The primordial laws —fate, time, space, and even the untouchable ones, origin and chaos— were slowly but surely intertwining there. That area that had previously been almost empty began to fill with what looked like a web covering the entire visible panorama.

Booms echoed every time a section was completed.

But if one could see the entirety of what was being created inside, they would see that the dimension went beyond all comprehension.

What Cassian was attempting to do was something that could not be described with words; something so terrifying that it would make what he had done with the Lumen Cult or with those few worlds some time ago look like mere child’s play.

And he knew it.

Although his current body was around seventy percent similar to his past one, his handling of the impossible remained the same; but the burden this would place on him...

Was something he didn’t want to think about.

He also knew what universal spells could provoke.

Only once in the past had he performed one, and the consequences it left were not easy to fix; it took him millennia, if not more, to cover up the problem, but it was still there. Just thinking about it gave him headaches.

He truly hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, that he could leave it resting in his personal space and that it would never see the reality of the dimension in which they lived.

But once it was finished, if he found no other solution to find her, he wouldn’t be able to keep delaying it...

Cassian’s cold eyes watched what was forming in his personal space with full attention, completely focused and without stopping the process for even a second.

At this rate, it would take months, if not longer, to complete it.

He had thought that the trip to Azure was the best option to be able to concentrate on this without interruptions, but it seemed that even then he couldn’t finish something of such magnitude quickly.

"Should I settle for searching only the nearby worlds?" he murmured to himself, but quickly shook his head. No, that would only be a waste of time if she was farther away, or even...

An exhausted sigh escaped his mouth.

For a moment, his most selfish side wanted to take control and declare that he didn’t care what happened to those two women. After all, he hadn’t known them for that long, and they were mortals in the end.

However, the other part of his being—the one that still retained a bit of appreciation, especially the kind reserved for women—said otherwise.

Then, his mind began to think about Xuehua.

He always ended up returning to her. He didn’t want to keep giving her importance, but he couldn’t help it when he remembered that she had been by his side when both of them were nothing at all.

Although... he paused, doubtful. Maybe that was exactly why she was dead...

A headache suddenly assaulted him, forcing him to murmur once more:

"Dead?"