"How did you do that?"
Cam's voice broke through the fog shrouding Aaron's consciousness, his head still aching from when he hit the floor after passing out.
"Uh… What do you mean?"
Rubbing his forehead with one hand, he looked up at the woman innocently, a small smile covering his face as his other hand gripped his sheathed sword.
"Passing out. You fell nearly a minute before the clock struck twelve thirty, even though you told me your ability lasted thirty minutes."
She paused for a moment, thinking back to what she had heard as she walked through the hallway.
"Did you have an agreement with the Pontiff? You've never spoken to me about your involvement with her before…"
Aaron's brow furrowed inward, then shot up as his eyes grew wide like coins, a dumbstruck look erasing the cocky smile right from his face.
"P-pontiff? The Angel is the Pontiff?"
He blinked slowly as if unable to process the words, the realization not quite connecting with him internally.
Inside his head, he heard a rather startled woman shout at him, his body flinching at the sudden shrieks.
『You're telling me that you've met her before—the right-hand of Death himself—and walked away with your life intact? I must've hit my head on that Raphael kid too hard because there isn't a timeline in which this nonsensical thing can be true.』
Penelope continued her mumbling, but Aaron was too out of it to listen to her.
His already pale complexion was getting even closer to white as he stared blankly into Cam's brown eyes.
"I-I just used her arrival as an excuse to have Pene… My sword knock me out…"
He shook his head as he spoke, still in disbelief at the true identity of the Angel whom he had only met by chance.
The brown-haired woman in front of him scoffed, and a similar sound came from inside his head right after.
『Why the hell would you have me do that, of all things? Couldn't you come up with a better solution? The moment you were out cold, that secretive deity invaded my territory again! Do you know how unpleasant that is?』
Throwing her imaginary hand down, she shut up the stirring Naelith and stopped speaking to the boy, fading into a deep slumber to regain the mana burned during the fight with Raphael.
Cam, however, wasn't in such a forgiving mood to let the boy off the hook just like that.
The mere idea of insulting two Sea Kings and the Pontiff by fainting at their feet was strongly against her moral code.
"Aaron Grimstall. Look at me."
His hands shook slightly as he looked up at the woman who sounded eerily like a mother about to scold her misbehaving child, an angry expression plastered across her face.
"Good job."
The blond-haired boy practically recoiled at the words, fully expecting her to start yelling at him, and not quite sure why she didn't.
G-good job? W-why would she…
Patting him on the shoulder, she followed up on her previous remark.
"The Kings were kind enough to allow me to listen in on your conversation, so I understand what position you were in. Therefore, good job on not revealing critical information and fainting before the Pontiff touched you."
Smiling, she placed her coat over her shoulders, the thick black garment covering the white button-up that she always wore.
"What do you mean by 'before she touched me'?"
He tilted his head to the right, feeling like he was missing some crucial information, considering his rather limited past experience with the chained woman.
Clearly not giving his question much thought, Cam only left behind a short explanation before exiting the room.
"She has the Hands of Truth. When you are touched by them, you instantly tell the truth regardless of whether you are willing or not. If the Kings had asked you anything about your secret during that time, then you would've revealed it."
Aaron's expression somehow paled even further, his appearance resembling a ghost even more than a real ghost would.
Looking at Cam's vanishing figure at the doorway, he exhaled with the force of a hurricane, the insanity of the day finally catching up with him.
W-what the hell…
Placing his hands over his face, for the first time since the fight at the arena, he realized that there were grotesque scars coating every inch of his skull.
"Huh?"
Streaking his fingertips through his hair, he cringed and added hair loss to the list of damages from the fight, alongside burns and mana deprivation.
Lying back in the bed, he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes meeting the crystalline chandelier that hung from the uppermost balcony.
Cam's room was magnificent—a gilded column held up the curved ceiling that had images of the sea carved into the middle.
Each wall was covered head to toe in artwork painted throughout the ages, the opulent sculptures that sat between the second-floor balcony and atrium adding a certain flair to the chamber.
How can one building have so many rooms of this scale?
Sighing, he finally stood up, feeling his muscles and bones creak with fresh pain from the various injuries he suffered during battle.
I should see a healer…
The adrenaline that was baked into his system from both the battle and the talk with the Sea Kings had aided his pain tolerance; however, now that things had finally settled, he began to feel the aftereffects.
"I-I'll get there eventually…"
His legs trembled as he took a few careful steps across the vast chamber, the doorknob seemingly just beyond his reach.
Only a bit more…
As he reached out towards the entryway, he felt his metallic leg give out, stiffening like a wooden pole due to the insufficient mana supply.
Oh no… This isn't good…
Trying to take another step forward, he realized that his replacement leg was like an anchor weighing him down, his left leg fighting a cruel war to move him even half a meter forward.
Struggling for nearly two minutes, he finally gave up, collapsing to the floor and letting out a heavy groan.
"This is pointless…"
Closing his eyes, he turned his consciousness inward for a rare moment of retrospection, which the boy could hardly ever allow himself.
He had finally come into contact with two Sea Kings face-to-face, and they were both interested in working with him.
However, to Aaron, establishing a Soul Pact was never an option, all because of the promise he made to the Old Man—to bring him Penelope and help him escape his binds in the Abyss.
Until the day that the unnamed man was freed, Aaron had no choice but to honor their pact.
Seeds of annoyance began to stir in the blond boy's mind, his irritation rising at the idea that he was forced to follow the elder without any say in the matter.
No…
He placed his fingers on his temples, suppressing the rapid emotions of the Naelith that seeped into his own.
Old Man helped me more than anyone else… I can't turn my back on him unless he turns his back on me first. That wouldn't be—
His thoughts snapped, sudden throbs of agony pulling at his heart as the Apex of Life laughed at him, the eerie sound echoing in his ears while unhearable to anyone else.
Aaron's breath turned ragged for a moment, his hands reaching out to grab at something, anything, yet grasping only air, forcing him to roll over and curl up in a ball.
Endless cold spread through his veins like a curse, sending convulsions through his limbs as his whole body twitched and shook.
His hands formed into tight fists, nails pressing into his flesh painfully, before he slowly relaxed again.
Opening his mouth, he let out a word that sounded more like a groan, a mere whisper, quieter than he had ever spoken before.
"Penelope…"
His voice was strangely raw—a glaring crack in the mature appearance he had placed over himself to mask the boy inside.
"How much… How much has he taken…"
There was no reply for a moment, the girl having awoken from her short-lasting rest, yet silent nonetheless.
"P-please, Pen…"
His heartbeat was uneven, and the turquoise eyes that usually glowed with strange radiance were now grim and bloodshot.
In the corner of the room, invisible to Aaron's own gaze, Mr. Crab turned away, the words from the sword not ones he wished to hear.
『That was another year…』
The blond-haired boy lay flat on his back, his eyes blank as he stared up at the ceiling, a darkness clinging to the edge of his vision.
"Good… I still have time to help her then…"
Closing his eyes slowly, he fell into a deep slumber, utterly devastated by the long string of events that ended with his very life force getting siphoned away.
However, deep inside his weakly beating heart, Aaron knew that this wouldn't be the end of his suffering, as he still had many trials to overcome, even if his death was growing closer every day.
Inside the most obscured crevices of his mind, the deity watched the development with no reaction, indifferent to the boy's woes.
That thing didn't care whether its host lived or died, only that its secrets stayed hidden while it manipulated the world.
Even though this blond-haired boy was the perfect pawn in its plan, there would be others who could take up the mantle.
Whether it took centuries or even millennia, it would find another to guide it towards its goal.
For it had done it before and nearly succeeded, a single mistake in its plan leading to its host being located by the gods of heaven.
This time, however, it was not the gods who would kill its host, but rather a foolish blunder brought about by its host's own free will.
It accepted this fact even as it lamented the inevitable loss of a perfect host who it knew offered the best chance at achieving its goal.
Alas, to the deity, Aaron Grimstall was replaceable, a pawn in its plan, and one that, while being the one chosen by him, was still on the path to suffer the fate of a fool.