Chapter 173: Not in the Same World Anymore?

Titus kept running without stopping for even a second. He only turned once to look back, checking whether Narcissa or her Shadow were pursuing them.

To his relief, neither of them was paying any attention to them.

The last thing he saw was the Witch desperately trying to save her skeleton army, but it was no use.

The skeletons that had been crushed by the spectres looked like they could not come back anymore. They were completely dead.

For a Death Witch who followed the path of the undead army, losing an army she had spent years building up was probably the worst thing that could happen to her.

Even if tonight’s loss did not completely break Narcissa, it would hurt her badly enough that she could not recover for many years.

Satisfied that she had finally received the justice she deserved, Titus heard Celeste’s voice.

"How did you come back?"

It was actually what he had been wondering about too.

As time passed, his mind became clearer. Titus slowly remembered his last moments. He remembered sitting on his knees in his own pool of blood while the life slowly left his body.

Now he remembered well the moment he had died.

Yet now, while he ran, he could not feel any of those wounds on his body. He wasn’t even feeling tired.

"I don’t know," he muttered with a frown. Then, a small fragment of memory suddenly came to him, though he was not completely sure about it. "I think I was somewhere very dark."

Slowly trying to remember, he felt the cloud in his mind begin to clear.

"I couldn’t feel my body or my emotions, but I think I was going somewhere."

He even started to slow down now that he was sure nobody was following them anymore.

He made the frost shield in his hand disappear. Then he shifted Celeste, whom he had been carrying over his shoulder, into his arms, holding her like a princess.

He looked at her still pale and shaken face. When he saw her reddened eyes and the dried tears there, he felt his heart tremble.

"I’m sorry."

He had failed to protect her. Failing to fulfill the only duty he had as a Shadow felt terrible.

"Why?" Celeste finally smiled, wrapping her arms around his neck. "We’re both fine now, aren’t we?"

"Yeah, we are."

Those words made Titus feel better. For now, knowing that they were alive was enough, especially after they had been certain they were going to die.

With that sense of relief, his expression changed again as he remembered something.

"Actually, I kind of remember that I was speaking to someone. I guess."

He tried to remember the face and voice of the person who had spoken to him, but his mind once again became covered in fog.

***

’White Bishop from f1 to c4,’ Magna thought as he looked at the imaginary chessboard he had created in his mind.

If he could move his face, he would probably be frowning at that moment.

’Black Knight from g8 to f6.’

He fell into thought again for only a second before moving the imaginary white Queen from h5 to f7.

’Checkmate... How can I lose 3 games in a row?’

He became furious with himself for losing, especially since he quite liked playing with the black pieces more.

He had started playing chess to pass the time, but it looked like it was only making him more annoyed.

Wanting to feel at least a little better, he opened his stat panel.

When he saw that his Stamina had already broken past the 1000 mark and reached 1098, he felt his spirits rise again.

As he kept sinking deeper and deeper, the water seemed to grow hotter, while the density of the mana around him continued to increase. His stats had been rising faster than ever, and seeing how much they had increased in such a short time was already far beyond what he had expected.

His Stamina had been only around 300 before he fell into the water. Now, it had already risen to more than 3 times that amount in such a short period. It was an incredible amount of progress.

The only thing weighing on his mind was how he would swim back to the surface later.

He was sure that once his Stamina reached a certain point, the scorching water would stop affecting him as much. At the very least, it would no longer be able to kill him.

The problem was his breathing.

Currently, his active spell was providing him with the oxygen he needed, but he wasn’t sure how long he could hold his breath with such high Stamina.

While doing some quick calculations in his head about how long it would take him to reach the surface if he started swimming upward with all his strength, he suddenly felt his surroundings tremble.

’What’s going on? An earthquake?’

It wasn’t actually like an earthquake. It felt more like his entire body had suddenly started trembling, almost like an airplane caught in turbulence.

The shaking suddenly became so intense that his head started spinning, and his consciousness began to fade.

He started wondering if he should deactivate the spell and swim upward.

Wherever he was going, it looked very dangerous.

Then his body suddenly started falling faster.

All at once, the golden light surrounding him disappeared, and he found himself falling through the sky instead of sinking through the water.

Without hesitation, he deactivated the spell, allowing him to move his body again.

He immediately turned his body and looked down at where he was falling, only to see the ground rushing toward him.

THUD!

He fell face-first onto the soft ground.

He immediately pushed himself up with his hands and spat out the dirt that had gotten into his mouth while quickly scanning his surroundings.

’Where the hell am I?’

As far as his eyes could see, the ground was covered in soft black soil, with tall hills rising in the distance.

’It’s actually ash.’

He smacked his lips, tasting the remains of burned wood, charcoal, and stone.

He looked up at the sky above the place where he had fallen, thinking he might be somewhere deep inside the volcanic mountain. Yet there was no ceiling above him.

Instead, a vast crimson sky stretched endlessly overhead.

He looked toward the distant, towering black mountains, then raised his gaze back to the sky.

For a while, his eyes shifted between the mountains and the endless crimson sky until his expression changed.

’Why do I feel like I’m not in the same world anymore?’