Chapter 263 Golden Dawn.

Chapter 263: 263 Golden Dawn.

"Yay! Road trip!" Lilith squealed, clapping her hands together.

I was significantly less thrilled about the prospect, but ten minutes later I was pushing the Cruiser down the highway, heading back into the dense heart of Metropolis with Lilith and Vanessa riding shotgun.

See, Metropolis was a city built by immigrants. And when they crossed the ocean, they brought all their local boogeymen, rogue deities, and mythological baggage right along with them.

Because those strange figures of imagination and myth tended to violently shun the light of day, they carved out their own space. They built the Floating World.

I didn’t have much business there. Again, magic was decidedly not my forte. But I was aware of the ecosystem.

A couple of times, I’d been approached by lesser gods trying to rebrand as D-list heroes just to pump up their belief metrics, and every now and then, that super-strong brawler robbing a late-night convenience store turned out to be a displaced vampire.

People did what they had to do to survive in this brave new world.

But mostly, the magical community kept to their hidden corner of reality, which suited my business model perfectly.

I knew the entrance was located somewhere near the industrial shipping docks, but outside of that, I was flying blind. Fortunately, Lilith and Vanessa were resident subject matter experts.

"Right here, Milesy! Pull into the alley!" Lilith chirped, pointing a crimson finger.

I eased the heavy armored car to a halt facing what looked like just another solid, dead-end brick wall separating two rotting warehouses.

I parked the Cruiser and stepped out, holding the door open for the demon.

Lilith had thoroughly scrubbed off the ritual ink and changed into a slinky, form-fitting crimson dress that clung aggressively to her hips and bust.

She paired it with oversized, tinted sunglasses and a heavy faux-fur cloak draped over her shoulders, looking like a celebrity trying to dodge the paparazzi at a movie premiere.

Vanessa stepped up beside me and walked straight to the dead end.

Now that we were closer, I realized there was a highly unusual pattern to the brickwork.

The stones weren’t just stacked on top of each other; they flowed in a strange, circular formation, resembling a solid whirlpool half-obscured by decades of thick green moss.

The young heroine traced the mortar carefully with her fingers, murmuring a harsh-sounding incantation under her breath.

She reached out and pressed specific bricks in a rapid, chaotic sequence that made zero sense to me. The effect, however, was undeniable.

The selected stones instantly sank inward with a heavy, grinding crunch.

Before my eyes, the entire pattern shifted, rotating slowly like a massive stone iris. The grind of rock eventually faded, the bricks falling away to reveal a set of worn cobblestone steps leading down into a neon-lit street.

Lilith instantly looped her warm arm tightly through mine. "Shall we, bestie?" she purred.

I realized my jaw was hanging open and forced my mouth shut. Come on, Miles. Keep it together.

I watched my own henchman die and duplicate himself every other week, a rotating brick wall shouldn’t throw me.

But... well, this was actual, raw magic at work. And as much as I disliked getting tangled up in it, there truly wasn’t anything else quite like it.

"Let’s go," I muttered, stepping through the gap with the demon on my arm.

The Floating World wasn’t exactly Diagon Alley (oh! Diagonally. Just got that one), but it was an incredibly impressive sight all the same.

And goddamn, it was crowded. It wasn’t just packed with people—although there were plenty of those—but I was being extremely generous with the term ’people’.

I spotted figures with severely pointed ears, squat humanoids that looked like they walked straight off the set of a vintage Rankin/Bass Hobbit movie, and a massive, gray-skinned guy with actual boar tusks aggressively walking down the center of the lane.

Meanwhile, the architecture was a chaotic, gravity-defying nightmare.

Buildings were crammed together so tightly they physically leaned over the streets, blocking out the sky entirely.

In the distance, I could see crooked tenements that rose in impossible zigzags, while others looked like mismatched houses literally dropped on top of one another. Architecture from every single human culture and continent violently warred for space.

Heavy rope bridges, power cables, and laundry lines crisscrossed the narrow gaps overhead.

Beneath them, vendor stalls sold an absolutely dizzying array of bizarre contraband.

A rusted wooden cart rattled past us, loaded down with iron birdcages containing tiny, furious winged women.

A street food vendor was actively grilling thick slabs of purple meat on a sizzling stone, serving up things I was absolutely certain didn’t exist outside the crushing depths of the Marianas Trench.

Hanging over all of this insanity were massive, buzzing neon signs written in indecipherable, glowing runes.

The harsh, colorful light of the foreign languages provided the sole illumination for the crowded depths of the market.

"This way, Milesy!" Lilith sang, practically dragging me into the chaotic crowd. "We have a bit of a walk to reach our destination!"

"Right," I said, trying to keep an eye on every single moving part around us.

My magnetic senses were pinging violently off the strange alloys and enchanted metals in the area, so I compressed my awareness into a tight bubble just to keep a migraine at bay. "You’ve shopped here before?"

"Oh my gosh, I used to come here all the time!" Lilith beamed, her breasts heaving with bubbly laughter. "Actually, a long time ago, the guy who originally summoned me bought the binding ingredients for my ritual right down this exact street!"

I blinked. "Wait. You were summoned by someone else before you ended up bound to Edna?"

"Of course, bestie! How do you think I crossed over?" Lilith laughed. "Goodness! Surely you didn’t think I just filled out a green card application at the border? Surely not!"

"Well, no. I guess I didn’t really think about the immigration process for hellspawn..."

"Nor should you! Oh, but that was ages ago. Simply ages! I was summoned to give some stuffy wizard a bunch of ancient sorcery cheat codes and whatnot. Dreary stuff. Simply boring!

"I think he belonged to some weird club... something Golden. Afternoon? Autumn? It was a bright color. Golden something. I remember my master hung out with this super weird, pudgy little guy who liked to wear heavy robes and a literal pyramid on his head. Strange dude. Strange fellow. Had a very specific hatred for chess players."

"The Golden Dawn?" I asked.