Chapter 18: Nightmare

Leon spent the rest of the day inside the library. He read through all the books that he could find. He had a feeling that the information that he needed would have something to do with the demons or the old times.

But much like how history had been changed a lot, a lot of things about the demons had been changed. The books he read highlighted them as savage monsters that devoured all.

Leon did not remember the demons like that at all. He recalled that they were savages, but not in the way they were shown. The demons showed no mercy when executing their tasks. They killed whatever stood in their way and they enjoyed it, but beyond that, they were extremely cunning.

The demons plotted their attacks, their wars, everything that they did. They planned it out and they executed it properly.

"Why was so much scrapped from history? Why is anyone trying to change everything that has happened so badly that they go this far?"

He looked at the stack of books that he had gone through and then got up, wanting to stretch a bit, but his hand knocked into the stack and the books fell to the ground.

He bent over to pick the books up, only to notice that at the very corner of one of the books was a marking, a marking similar to the one that he had seen on the pillar. He picked the book up fast.

"Well, this was not here before," he muttered and started flipping through the pages. This book had been on something loosely related to demons and more connected to a being called Dio Larek, an outer god known for necromancy. He helped the demons in their war against humans at a time.

"Could this pillar have anything to do with Dio Larek?" Leon muttered.

An outer god was simply a mortal that somehow became a god via any means. Outer gods were not full gods and could live in the same world as the mortals while still wielding divine energy.

Dio Larek was a human who hated humanity and did everything to become an outer god and then help the demons fight humans. But in the story, many years into the war, he vanished and no one knew how or why.

"I’m not sure this has anything to do with Dio Larek, but if it does, then this could be very, very bad for us."

Bam.

The door of the library swung open and William walked in. He strutted in like somehow he was on top of the world.

He saw Leon in there and then put on a smug smile.

Leon looked at William and rolled his eyes. He knew that there was no way his brother would come for normal talks. It was surely going to be something that irked him.

"Hey, bro," Leon said casually.

"Hello, Leon," William responded. "I heard you went to become an adventurer."

"Yeah? So?" Leon asked. He held the book on Dio Larek in his hands, planning to take it out.

"Well, such a task is far too low for someone that’s the son of the count. Even if you are only the second son, you must learn to carry yourself as such," William explained.

’My first issue is, where the hell did this five-year-old toddler get this sort of vocabulary from?’ Leon thought.

"Sigh, I’m not in the mood for talks like this. I have a bit to handle."

"Father will not be happy if I were to tell him what you were doing," William said with a bright smile.

"You can do whatever you want, William," Leon said and walked past him.

William clenched his jaw tight. He turned around. "How dare you walk out on me? I am the eldest," he bellowed in anger.

"By a minute," Leon replied and kept walking.

"Tch, whatever you do, you’ll still be behind me. Your magical talent is less than mine, I am older and I am the one who will take over the family after father.

You will always be behind me, Leon, always!" he yelled. Leon kept walking until he got to the door, then he stopped and looked back.

"Somehow, you are the one worried about all this. I take up so much room in your mind that you need to convince yourself you are good enough."

He walked out and shut the door behind him.

Leon did not know this, but this would be roughly the last time he would even see his brother in a long, long while.

He returned to his room, now that his mother had finally allowed him to have a separate one from hers.

It was pretty cozy and enough for him. Leon walked to the bed and sat down.

"Come on, let’s try and see what we can get from the history of Dio Larek and what connection he might have with the pillar."

He started to read as much as he could. Minutes turned to hours, and soon his eyes started to close on their own. Not long after, his eyes shut and he drifted to sleep.

A few minutes into his sleep, he began to dream. Leon saw himself standing in the same clearing, but this time at night, looking at the pillar that had appeared. He wondered what it was.

He looked up and he saw the counter right there, and the counter was about to hit zero.

"What? How did the timer get down so fast?" Leon cried out.

The moment the timer hit zero, rotting hands and skeleton hands shot out of the ground, one after the other, with horrific groans filling the air.

Leon began retreating, but before he could go far, hands shot out of the ground and wrapped around his leg and began to pull him down. Leon screamed and struggled against them, but no matter how much he dragged and pulled, he kept getting pulled down until he was dragged under the ground.

Leon woke up in a panic, eyes darting around.