Chapter 603: A Daughter’s Vow
After their small interaction, they bade Lady Erda farewell and entered the teleportation chamber. The room was circular, its meshed walls woven from multicolored vines, their gentle luminescence spilling a calm and beautiful radiance that bathed the room in warmth.
As they stepped onto the central platform, Alex glanced sideways at Zahra. "How did you discover that the slate was linked to the Dark Ancient?" His tone carried clear curiosity.
If the details of the Dark slate had been public, Odysseus would already have claimed it for his collection.
Zahra’s answer came as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "I simply desired to be fated to encounter the whereabouts of an item tied to the Dark Ancient."
Her silver eyes remained calm, unblinking. "It took a few days before I stumbled across a six-century-old book in lost ruins, ’The Hundred Unknown Treasures.’ From there, it was merely the process of elimination until I narrowed it down to the slate."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, the glow of the chamber reflecting in their shifting depths. "Thought, locating the slate itself was far more time-consuming."
"The family that originally had it was erased during the Tharokarn Revolt. Their legacy erased, their belonging lost or looted." Zahra explained, before detailing the journey of the slate, until the Sea Serpent swallowed it.
As she spoke, the runic circle around the chamber flared to life, light bleeding through the carved channels. The air rippled, distorting like heat haze, and the chamber turned silent as the space itself bent around them.
Alex was not surprised. He had expected such an answer, knowing well how broken Zahra’s trait Cosmic Dominance could be. But her explanation was also a quiet reminder that beneath her striking beauty and her aloof exterior lay the sharp, merciless brilliance of a genius.
The two left the Drakaryx clan, teleporting straight to Oeyra Port, a bustling harbor carved into black cliffs where the sea was forever restless.
Within hours, they secured a captain willing and capable enough to take them into the Rage Sea, a region perpetually drowned in titanic storms.
The Rage Sea lay far west into the Great Ocean, a nightmare realm given form by the Rage Island, one of the Death Lands of the highest threat grade, whose origin was shrouded in mystery.
Their target was the Ozythar Serpent King, an apex predator of the Dhagath Serpent species, creatures infamous across the seas as Continent-Eaters.
The title was no mere decoration, as their kind possessed the innate ability of Assimilac Devour, the power to consume metals, minerals, even enchanted stone, weaving fragments of what they ate into their flesh and scale.
But Ozythar was no ordinary serpent. He was an outlier, a nightmare even among his kin, his nature and form having earned him an exergation of his species’ commonly shared title, The World Eater.
His monstrous body stretched over a kilometer, armored in a black-gold carapace capable of withstanding lightning strikes that could cripple an ordinary Rank Eight.
Ozythar ruled as one of the six vessels beneath the King of the Deep, being the most feared vessel, while also ruling the strongest and largest tribe that housed his kind, and other marine lifeforms.
The Dark Slate was currently resting within his stomach, having been there for the past eight decades.
Ozythar had grown obsessed with it because of its indestructible nature, convinced, madly, that once he fully digested the indestructible relic, he would ascend to a higher pedestal of a life form and would become the third king.
So, no matter how extraordinary Alex and Zahra were, there was no way they could kill the Ozythar, the Serpent King, on their own, and they also couldn’t negotiate with him, as there was no reasoning with an obsession that had festered for eighty years.
Since killing Ozythar was their only option, and they couldn’t do it themselves, they needed help.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to look far for help. In the higher echelons of the Rage Sea, there was no shortage of predators hungry for power, glory, and status.
Zahra, being the genius, had already struck an agreement with two of the six vessels. She offered them knowledge of the treasures Ozythar should have claimed from the very ship that carried the Dark Slate, while also giving them a poison potent enough to weaken even the so-called World Eater.
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The great sea was a maelstrom of black waves, foaming and crashing as though eager to swallow all that dared cross them. The sky above was cloaked in an impenetrable blanket of thunderclouds, drowning the world in darkness, pierced only by the white veins of lightning.
Atop this abyssal sea, A ship rose and fell with the storm, cutting through the sea like a beast bred for defiance. Its hull was carved from blackened ironwood, dark as the ocean depths, the grain polished smooth yet etched with scars of old battles.
Two towering masts pierced the sky, their ocean-blue sails straining against the howling winds. The main deck stretched wide and open, while railings of reinforced wood lined its edges.
Toward the stern, an upper deck lifted above the main, housing the captain’s cabin beneath it.
At the head of the ship, a stallion forged of deep-blue steel stood proud, its mane swept back, hooves pawing at the storm in challenge.
At the deck of the ship, a low lantern-light and three flickering candles were all that separated Alex and Zahra, their table piled with a collection of food, steam drifting into the wet night air.
"Aeon," Zahra said, voice soft enough to be carried away by the wind, "you never asked me about my past."
"There’s no need for me to know," Alex replied, blunt in his answer.
"If you don’t mind, I wish to share my past with you," She looked up and waited for his reply. Alex placed his spoon down and looked up.
She took a small, composed breath and steadied herself as if gathering words that had been sharpened on a thousand nights. "It is clear that my mother is a Realm Denizen, while my father was an otherworlder. I was born here, meant to stay."
"My father took me to the outside world, but he left my mother behind. He left her to suffer in the realm, away from the man she loved and her only child," she said, the memory sour on her tongue.
Alex did not comment, but he was not surprised, having reached this conclusion about Zahra long ago.
"I wonder what truly happened for him to take such steps, betray his love and not take her with him," She said, but just then a silent thought, bitter and sharp came alive in her mind. ’I know what happened. He had no other choice.’
Zahra’s hands tightened around her cup, but her voice did not waver. "My mother wouldn’t tell me the truth, as a matter of fact, anyone who knows it wouldn’t reveal it."
Many thoughts roared at the back of conciseness ’What would she tell me? That her own father made her just to be a vessel to create me? A special child that could grant him his freedom?’
Zahra pressed on, voice low and hard now. "Maybe my father had originally decided to stay with my mother, but then saw the truth about the Drakaryx clan and, fearful of his own life and his daughter’s, he ran away."
’Yes, he did... he ran away after learning what a monster his master is, and what plans he had for me, his own grand-daughter; he sacrificed everything to run away,’ The thought cut into her heart.
She chuckled, but it was lifeless and cold. "A thousand years ago, the Drakaryx clan still fought for its place in the realm. It was not the behemoth it is now."
She continued her words, carrying acceptance, grief, and hatred braided into one. "Perhaps he thought he was doing me a kindness, and perhaps he believed my mother would stop him."
She met Alex’s eyes, and for a heartbeat, the mask slipped: raw, bright hatred coiled under the calm. "I don’t blame him."
’No...I blame the creature that made my mother suffer. I blame the monster who stole my life, he is responsible for everything.’
’He destroyed my family in hopes of gaining his freedom. I will destroy that dream of his, I will kill him, take away the life that he cherishes so much,’
Zahra’s eyes met Alex’s comforting gaze, hiding beneath her sadness, she held the monstrous desire of revenge, ’You will be my blade, you will kill that creature, take away his dream.’ The thought that followed was no yearning but a solemn promise, driven by a monstrous will.
’I do wonder how you will achieve it, but not knowing it only makes me savor every moment of it. Knowing soon he will die gives me joy to no end.’
’Father, I hope you are watching over me,’ she whispered inwardly. ’I will free my mother from her prison and make that monster suffer for what he did to you, to us,’