Lord Shadow

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, on an area filled with tall grass and greenery, the space distorted all of a sudden like something is ripping through space and someone come out from the fluctuation of space energy and that space distortion

The moment he steps on the ground, the grass all jump out from the ground and floats around the area before falling back down like dandelions.

It is man with tight dark black attire. His jet black attire and this powerful emanation of power that seems like a storm is an indication of who he is

Death Monarch Azief.

Azief sighed as he is now on an island. The sky is clear and the overcast is gone. Sea water on its four corners of the island is sparkling blue.

Birds in the clouds, flapping its wing, large fishes jump out from the water, playing around. The island looks like a top ten attraction place in the world

If not for the circumstances, Azief would not mind resting here, enjoying the beauty of this place.

Azief eyes then narrowed.

‘Time’ he suddenly said and then muttering to himself he said

‘Time is weird here.’ He did not delay anymore. He walks through the sandy beach, not eager to meet this one last person before he return to Pandemonium

He had met Hirate and talk to him about Loki and his decision. He had met with Hikigaya and heal him so he could help him

And he also met Raymond and entrusted Sofia safety to him when he is gone.

There is one more person he needed to meet. He had met this person just a few hours before. But just in a few hours, things had changed drastically.

This island is the same island that Jean had come before to greet an old friend. Just a few minutes before, Jean was here. 

Azief could sense the trace of Time left by Jean

Of course, if Jean wanted it he could erase it. But he did not. Means he did not care if he, Death Monarch knows about it.

‘This is where it started’ he thought to himself

This is the island where the oracle is waiting for him. She had been waiting ever since he had returned from the future

Azief had seen her waiting under the tree when he glances and scans the world with his Divine Sense before. 

The journey to the future shows him many things. It shows him pain. It shows him betrayal. It shows him what he could be and it shows what others could be

It shows him the truth. 

But the truth is not simple. He knows what is going to happen. The one thing he doesn’t know…is how it is going to happen and whether he could stop it.

Whether he could change it.

A part of him hope that by seeing the future, he had changed it. 

But, as Azief had learned, changing the future did not necessarily mean they changed future would be better

You would never know. 

The act of him seeing the future might actually seal the future for him. Or it might have changed it to something worse

One way or the other, Azief could only face it head on. 

After all, it is already done. And it is not like him to bow easily to fate and destiny, not when he knows he had a chance of fighting

There will be no strings on him.

The breezy wind flaps his black robe. 

Azief is now on the verge of a metamorphosis. 

He is not only meeting with people to design a plan when he is gone. At the same time, he is preparing to breakthrough to Essence Creation.

He could do it. He could breakthrough to Essence Creation while still not breaking the Perfection Path. 

This is the confidence he had

The gains that he had on the Supremacy Stairway is still not yet fully calculated. It did not only change his body and his power, it changes something fundamentally about him

Azief hair sway left and right as the wind keep blowing toward him. Azief could not even enjoy the beautiful island as his head is messy thinking about many things.

He walks slowly toward the Oracle; each step he took create a powerful ripple around his feet. 

The grass a few meters away from him sways fiercely like a gust of wind is threatening to pull their roots away.

Some of it sways fiercely, others were flattened under the pressure of each step of Death Monarch. 

Ttak!

Ttak!

The sound of his footsteps seems to echoes. 

Even from afar, he could see that Erika is smiling. But to him, it was an eerie smile. She didn’t seem to be affected by the forceful pressure that Azief is emanating.

There are only a few people in this world that could withstand such forceful pressure that targeted the mind and he did not think that Erika could withstand it

But then as he looks intently at the Oracle and saw strings around him, waving like some kind of waves in the oceans, he understood why

The Price protect Erika. As long as he did not pay the Price, the Price would protect Erika. This is why he hated magic

Especially the kind of magic that Erika has. The illogical magic

His face is expressionless as ever but for some reason, he knows the price he had to pay. He still remembers the vision from the future.

He had a pair of eyes. And the pair of eyes had two different colors. The right eye is his hazel eyes. As for his left eye, it was blue.

Like he had heterochromia iridium, having two different colored eyes 

‘Her pain’ he thought to himself. He understood it now

Jean at that time manipulate the space around him and immediately arrived in front of Erika. But Azief did not do the same thing.

Instead, while he did not delay, he takes his time coming toward her, as he was thinking of all the thing he had seen and all the things that would happen later.

He then come closer to that woman

There is sadness in his heart right now. he still remembers what she said to her when he asked her what is the price for seeing the future

At that time, she told him, the price was her pain. He did not understand it at that time. But, now, he could somewhat understand.

Around him, time move very differently. It is not a phenomenon because of him. Instead it is because of the tree behind Erika

Azief could see that the tree had been nourished by the energy of the world. It is not shocking considering the amount of energy that is now enveloping the entire world

And there is even a weird Time energy surrounding the tree. 

This is without a doubt a tree that possess some Time properties. 

Probably training and condensing energy under this kind of tree would be even more beneficial. It is a lot like some kind of Time Chamber technology but without the side effect

She has been sitting and standing under that tree for around six years. Who would have thought that tree would become like this, possessing so many benefits?

But then Azief thought back and he remember that he is talking about the Oracle right now.

How could the Oracle not know?

She must have known that this tree would be like this. Azief also take a second to use his Divine Sense before and he could no longer see the Stonehenge around him

This island which could not be called an island is actually a part of England.

But it was cut off when the world expanded. 

Azief could see that the splitting off is not natural. 

Someone had cut off the area with magic. It is not some sword strike or some melee attack but instead a magical formation.

The Oracle had managed to hide from the world for six years. No doubt she is also proficient in formation

The trace is too obvious for Azief not to notice it. At his current level there is not many things that could be hidden from his eyes

Azief could guess how the Oracle does it. She did not have to cut a lot of the area. 

She did not even have to cut the area around the Stonehenge. 

Azief close his eyes for a moment and then his Divine Sense sweeps all around the island and in just that one moment he got the answer

‘So, it could also be done like that?’ he thought to himself.

When he uses his Divine Sense, he could already deduce how the oracle manage to create this island.

Before the expansion of the world really started off, the Oracle made a round formation around her and he tree. The radius is only around fifteen feet.

This formation did not include the Stonehenge. The Stonehenge itself is probably still existing somewhere in the world in some continent.

When the world expanded, the radius inside the formation seems to separate itself from England and teleported into the sea. 

The fifteen feet spherical land around her then started to expands as the soil seems to grown out of nowhere and plants and trees erupted from the ground

Magic from the soils and it is also the same for the trees and the plants and every single blade of grass under his feet

This island is mostly made up of energy of the world instead of naturally occurring. In the end, when the expansion slowly slow down, that circular land of the size of fifteen feet had become a large island that could support tens of thousands of people inside it

Ingenious, he thought to himself.

Then Azief opens back his eyes and look at the Oracle with complicated feeling

If even this, she had foreseen, then how much she could see and how much she had seen? 

It is not very comfortable when you are meeting someone who probably had predicted everything about you in advance

She might even predict what he would say a few second later. The feeling is very eerie, like he is in some kind of a twilight zone.

He of course knows that the Oracle could not see everything. But even just looking at her, he knows that she had been expecting him coming here.

No wonder, people always feel a little averse in meeting the Oracle. He had his thoughts and Erika has her thought.

And both of them look at each other, as the wind blows both of their robes. Death Monarch has come to the island to pay the Price!

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