Return of the Fallen Volume 11 Chapter 16

Stez escorted Kazuki up the tower and into a certain room. He wasn’t shown any other place in this strange building. Whether it was because he was an outsider and Stez didn’t fully trust him or there was really nothing much else to see, Kazuki didn’t know.

The room was pitch black, but the moment the two entered, the lights came on automatically. The room was a wide dome shape. The walls were odd-looking panels with unidentifiable crystals jutting out from them. In the center of this weird room, there was a floating sphere. The sphere was dull and translucent. One could almost see through it but not quite.

Kazuki felt small amounts of divine energy pouring out of the sphere before entering the crystals in the panels.

“This place is?”

Stez walked toward the center of the room and held up an amulet he wore around his neck. It was similar to the crystals along the wall but there was a slight difference. This crystal amulet was shaped in the form of a key. The moment he held the crystal amulet to the sphere, a large force pulled at the amulet, and Kazuki could sense a good deal of divine power being sucked away and drained. This power pooled into the floating sphere, and the translucent sphere began to darken as if someone had dipped its core in black poison.

The sphere began to pulse and seemed as if it was on the verge of doing something but at the very next instant, all of the darkness clouding the sphere seeped out and entered the crystals embedded in the panels on the walls.

“This is the source of the tower which keeps the island afloat.”

Stez showed Kazuki the amulet and tapped it.

“Once a day everyone comes and pours a bit of their divine energy into this amulet and I then transfer it to the core here. The power begins to fill the core up but before it reaches a certain limit, the energy is then transferred into the rest of the tower, those panels there. This power keeps the island from dropping out of the sky.”

Kazuki instantly thought something was odd.

“That amulet, it can hold the divine energy of multiple Demigods. Does their individual power not conflict with and destroy one another inside of it?”

Stez tilted his head.

“You know about divine energy as well?”

Kazuki shrugged.

“Not enough to avoid the label of being an old fool.”

Stez smiled.

“One who can manipulate lower energy like ki and use it to materialize the elements of magic is not someone who I would call a fool. If I knew how to do that with magic and replicate divine energy, I would not be a prisoner here to this day.”

“So this place really is a prison?”

Stez ignored this question and continued on from before.

“What you said earlier is correct. When it comes to divine energy, this power contains one’s soul to some extent along with the mastery over an element. Because of this, one can not simply absorb the divine power of another, as the souls would naturally collide and fight for preservation. This amulet, though, negates that in some ways.”

“How is that possible?”

Stez shook his head.

“Kid I wish I knew. This amulet, this entire tower, all of it was built long ago by some master craftsman, maybe? It uses some type of ancient Magitech, well at least that is my best guess. No one really knows for sure. Don’t mention that to Marticia, she’ll argue your ear off if she heard this.”

“Marty?”

Stez nodded.

“That child is very knowledgeable. I’ll admit she has far more knowledge than most, and she has her own theories but not enough evidence to prove things one way or another. You see, Marticia likes to do her own research. Most think she’s a bit crazy.”

“Hmm, how does doing research make her crazy?”

Stez stared blankly for a moment.

“Sorry, I guess you two did just meet, so she must not have mentioned it. People don’t consider her crazy just because she researches this ancient technology but rather because she volunteered and went out of her way to come here. The rest of us have our own circumstances and ended up here one way or another but none of us chose this place, but Marticia did. This is why some see her as a crazy oddball.”

Kazuki was taken aback.

“She purposely came here!?”

“Yes. I have barely scratched the surface. This place, this world is not really a world at all, at least not in the traditional sense. As I said earlier it is called Resadez. Resadez was an ancient being said to be more powerful than the Gods themselves. It is said that Resadez was responsible for breaking the original Higher Realm and splitting it into three Realms. This being that could not be stopped, one day met someone, and this is all that’s left of Resadez, a mere decaying eyeball.”

Once more, another piece of information came out of nowhere.

“This planet, it’s not a planet but some dead ancient beings eyeball. What’s more, this being was so powerful that other Gods could do nothing but someone managed to defeat it. Just who could go against such a being that could split a Higher Realm?”

“The one who devours all. The God of gluttony. Ourodyess.”

Kazuki’s eyes widened in shock.

“Ourodyess!”

“Kid you know of him?”

Kazuki had already given it away, so he just went along with it.

“A while ago I ran into a being that possessed the body of someone. This being was a Vazul. Defeating it was almost impossible, in the end, it destroyed itself by consuming too much. The power was too much and it exploded.”

Kazuki took what he knew and quickly forged a new memory inside of his disguised soul just in case this came up later. This way he would not be found to be lying. The soul-reading ability was far too convenient for this application.

Stez was surprised at first but not too surprised.

“There were rumors that his followers had found gaps in their exile and had found ways into our Realms, to think it was actually true.”

After he said this he stared at Kazuki with slight suspicion before he shook his head.

“Even if it is true I suppose it matters not for one who has been abandoned and left for eternity.”

An awkward silence formed for almost a minute before Stez spoke again.

“Sorry, I just thought of some unpleasant things. I just wanted to give you a short introduction of this place, and I went in an entirely different direction. This amulet does something to the divine energy within and the pieces of soul within. I don’t know what it does exactly, but with it, I can then transfer the divine power into the core. The core then powers everything else, even these lights above us.”

Kazuki was still a little confused.

“Sir, if the divine power that powers this place comes from you all and it contains a bit of your soul, then how does the divine power in this world even exist? Don’t you need to produce your own divine power, how can it just be ownerless out in the world as it is?”

“Have you forgotten what I just said? This place was once Resadez. The owner of the divine energy is in fact him.”

Kazuki was lost for a moment.

(This situation is kind of similar to Fera’s corpse. Her body continued to leak divine power even after her death but that doesn’t explain how the people here can just use this energy…Unless.)

“The sandworms!”

Stez nodded.

“It seems you are not too far behind. Yes, we can use this energy because of the sandworms. Since you fought one yourself you know that they eat aura/soul. The soul is one of the main factors that prevent one from using another divine energy but the worms eat the soul. Therefore the divine energy then becomes ownerless so to speak. Once it is ownerless, anyone can tap into it, absorb it as their own, and use it as they see fit. The divine energy is within the eye and the worms usually eat the remaining soul energy that still resides within. Afterward, some of the divine energy that they can’t digest gets spit out from the surface and floats all around. We Demigods then absorb as much of it as we can but it truly is very little. We then put it into my amulet and then like I mentioned earlier the tower’s core.”

(So the worms are the enemy but at the same time without them, the towers cannot remain in the sky. That is not quite a cath 22 but it’s close enough. Still, something isn’t adding up.)

“If the sandworms consume souls and they are still eating Resadez, does this not mean he still technically exists, and then doesn’t that mean he can revive at some point.”

Stez didn’t deny it and nodded.

“Correct.”

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