There was silence.
A long.
Painfully long.
Silence.
Elias stared at Raileigh.
Raileigh stared back, his hands remained raised, his expression was completely sincere.
"I want you." he repeated.
Elias blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then with a grunt he slowly got out of the chair. Without a word, he turned on his heel, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and began walking toward the exit.
"Sorry," Elias said his voice flat. "I can't return your feelings."
"...What?"
Elias continued walking.
"I appreciate your honesty though."
Raileigh blinked, confused. Then his eyes widened, and a flush crept up his neck.
"Wait—no—that's not what I—" He scrambled to his feet, waving his hands frantically.
"I didn't mean it like that!"
"Then what did you mean?"
"We are both way too young for romance, and more importantly, we are both boys!"
"...Oh."
"Yes! Exactly that! What I meant was I want you and me to team up. To work together! As partners. As allies."
Elias paused. "Mm?"
He slowly turned to face the twelfth prince with a skeptical arch of his eyebrow.
"And why would I do that?"
Raileigh offered a wry, self-deprecating smile, scratching the back of his head.
"Well...Laplace told me you're not too fond of your own patron deity. So I want to make you an offer."
The name immediately caught his attention.
'Laplace huh?'
"I help you break free from Deus," Raileigh continued, his voice earnest. "And in return, you help me take the throne."
"...And how exactly does Laplace know that I wanna be free?"
"Wait... am I wrong? Are you actually fond of your Patron?" Raileigh tilted his head, looking mildly confused.
Elias let out a dry, humorless bark of laughter.
"Why would I be fond of that off-white bastard? He's the one who took advantage of my situation and made me a pawn in whatever the bloody hell this game between beings is supposed to be. I hope he eats dirt and goes back to whatever celestial dumpster he crawled out of so he can die and rot."
Raileigh chuckled, stepping closer.
"Aren't you afraid Deus will smite you down for talking like that?"
"He can do his worst, its not like I'm gonna die anyway." Elias said with a shrug.
Raileigh's smile returned—bright and genuine.
"Good."
There was something strangely reassuring about the way he said it.
Elias remained suspicious.
The boy was eccentric, dangerously so. Yet there was no obvious hostility behind his words.
That almost made him more difficult to understand.
"Where are we anyway?"
"Ah..." Raileigh gestured vaguely to the sprawling, cavernous architecture around them.
"We're in a subterranean chamber that forms part of the Old Ruins buried deep beneath Aethelberg."
Elias once again looked around the cavernous space, with pillars scattered all around holding up the ceiling. Now that he looked more closely, these pillars had writings on them. The writing resembled Runic but he found it difficult to read meaning that whatever language it was was the basis for the contemporary Runic alphabet. There were a few Containment Arrays carved into the pillars too. Elias had felt them resonating with his energy when he spread it out to charge up that lightning bolt strike.
'They probably haven't been charged with energy, that's why they broke when we were fighting.'
" During the height of the old kingdom, this subterranean complex had served as a high-security subterranean vault and emergency fallout bunker, engineered to withstand cataclysmic warfare and protect the ruling elite. Because of its deep structural isolation and the complex dampening arrays woven into its foundation, it was completely off the grid—a ghost of a forgotten era that barely a handful of modern historians, let alone common citizens, even knew existed." Todd said.
Elias glanced at her and smiled knowingly.
'She is so much like her mother Firdaus.'
"It usually doesn't collapse," Raileigh added, almost apologetically.
"I used my Trait to Pillage a hole in the ceiling so you'd fall through."
Elias chose to ignore that.
"Where do the things you Pillage go anyway? If our Traits work similarly that means that the are limited similarly. The limitation to my Editing is the Complexity of what I'm trying to achieve so the Magic Coefficient or medium I use is the wind. Your Magic Coefficient is those bubbles but you aren't limited by Complexity but most likely Quantity so how do you bypass that?"
Raileigh winced, rubbing the back of his neck with a nervous laugh. "Ah. Well. I can't really explain the theoretical mechanics of it, but Laplace gave me a pocket space she calls the 4.0 Dimension because I had nowhere else to store all the stuff I pillage since they blink out of reality."
Elias blinked.
Then he blinked again.
"The... 4.0 dimension?"
"Yes."
Elias looked down at the prince, his expression utterly flat.
"The 4.0 dimension?"
"I know, it sounds incredibly stupid when I say it out loud—"
"No, hang on," Elias muttered, his eyes drifting away as his academic gears started turning. He absent-mindedly began tapping his chin.
"Deus gave me access to something he calls the 4.5 Dimension... which partially exists outside linear time. If that's the case..." Elias snapped his fingers.
"Your 4.0 Dimension must be its inverse! A localized spatial pocket anchored purely in physical mass rather than temporal coordinates. No, I think there's more to it."
Elias paced a half-circle across the floor.
"If the 4.5D is nigh-infinite in temporal scope then the 4.0 Dimension has to be its exact mirror. A nigh-infinite spatial expanse. A cosmic-scale warehouse."
He reached out, his hand slicing through the empty air as if drawing a blueprint in real-time.
"But just like me there must be calculations made to keep stuff in there. One miscalculation and the dimension shears apart whatever you were trying to pillage in half, with the feedback occurring in this dimension. So you use the bubbles to automatically read whatever enters and scales its 'mass' parameter down on the fly, packaging it to fit the pocket safely."
Raileigh's eyes lit up like stars. A brilliant, genuine beam broke across his face, and he practically skipped forward, closing the distance so they were standing right under the gaping hole in the ceiling together.
"See?! I told you! We have so much in common!"
Elias stared at him, bewildered and slightly embarrassed that he had allowed his curiosity to get the better of him like that.
"Wait, I didn't mean—that's not what I—"
Despite the sudden surge of camaraderie, Elias felt a cold knot of caution tighten in his stomach.
'Think, Elias, think.'
This whole setup could easily be an elaborate trap orchestrated by another deity trying to use him as a pawn on a cosmic chessboard. But at the exact same time... the desire to be free of Deus, to rip that invisible collar off his soul and walk away from this entire rigged game, burned like a fever in his chest.
Now that he really thought about it, as an Acolyte, Raileigh should be able to manipulate the Concept Layer. Utilizing that natural interface alongside his Trait, Raileigh theoretically should be able to hack away or dismantle Deus's control over him—much like Tamamo had claimed she could consume the divine imprint.
But there was a problem, that being power.
Neither of them was strong enough to pull it off right now. Raileigh was still a novice Acolyte, and Tamamo was operating at a fraction of her full power with only five of her nine tails. Elias himself possessed the raw predatory capacity of Predation and could technically try to force-devour the divine contract himself but he was also a novice Acolyte and lacked the power.
'But with an amplifier...'
He thought of the Oblivion Cube fragments. The pieces of primordial power scattered across the world. If they could find one, use it...
He looked Raileigh in the eyes.
"Hey. What do you know about the Oblivion Cube fragments?"
Raileigh paused, his cheerful demeanor dipping into thoughtfulness for a moment.
"You know about them?"
Raileigh nodded.
"Your patron. Laplace. What does she want the Oblivion Cube fragments for?"
Raileigh blinked, then shrugged.
"She mentioned they existed. But she said I should ignore them unless I want to look for them."
"She doesn't want them?"
"I think she does. But only because everyone else does." Raileigh shrugged.
"She's not really the ambitious type. She just enjoys the chaos of it all and says it'll be fun. I told her I'd find them if she wants me to but I wantedt o talk to you first."
"...That's her reason?"
"Pretty much."
Elias stared. Then something clicked.
Laplace.
Erynn.
The strange girl from his visions.
The girl who had laughed at danger.
The girl who had destroyed a beast with her bare hands.
The girl who had spoken of traveling the world as though it were the most natural thing imaginable.
The girl who had lost her village.
The girl who had searched for the beast that destroyed it.
The theory he had had about these visions for a while now solidified into absolute certainty
Erynn...and Laplace... were the same person.
'But how?' Elias wondered taking a step back, stunned. He rubbed his temples as a migraine began to form.
"Elias, are you OK?" Raileigh asked worried.
"I'm fine." Elias said steadying himself and using Flow Circulation to calm his nerves.
"So," Raileigh said offering a hand, "Are we teaming up?"
Elias stared at the outstretched hand. His mind was made up. He knew the risks. Before he answered, he decided to confirm his theory with Raileigh, and he looked up.
"Hey. Are we friends?"
Raileigh's face lit up with an unfeigned, radiant smile. "Obviously!"
'At the very least,' Elias thought grimly to himself, 'I can use the kid for my own intentions. They say if you're being used, you should use the users in turn... though that's a terribly stupid-sounding saying when you say it in your head.'
"Say, Raileigh... is Laplace actually #####? And do you happen to know anything about someone called ######—"
Raileigh blinked.
"What?"
Elias tried again.
"#####?"
Silence.
The name disappeared. Censored.
Elias didn't look surprised. He just let out a long, heavy sigh.
'Figures. Tamamo did say that the universe itself redacts that which isn't meant to be known.'
Accepting reality, Elias raised his hand and met Raileigh halfway, slapping his palm against the prince's in a sound that echoed sharply against the ancient stone walls.
CLAP.
"Partners!"
Elias stared at his hand. Then at Raileigh.
Before either of them could say another word, a bright, cheerful voice echoed down from the hole above.
"Hey, Ellie!"
Both boys looked upward. Jamie stood at the edge of the hole, her indigo hair hung over her face.
"Jamie?"
"What are you doing down there?" she asked.
Before he could respond she jumped down.
"Jamie, wait, don't just—!"
Elias quickly let go of Raileigh's hand and forced the wind upward to slow her fall while making a cushion of air for her to land on.
Jamie landed on it, bounced once, and dropped gently onto the ground.
She stood, dusting herself off. Elias immediately walked toward her.
"What were you thinking?"
Jamie blinked.
"Jumping."
"You could have hurt yourself. What if there was something dangerous down here."
She grinned.
"I could have used my Trait to prevent myself from falling. Besides, I knew you'd catch me."
Elias sighed.
Raileigh on the other hand just stared, completely mesmerized. His eyes followed Jamie.
Her indigo hair.
Her confident posture.
The enormous grin.
The complete disregard for danger.
"I...I think I'm in love." he muttered.
Elias turned.
"Huh, what was that?"
"Wow, this place is HUGE. What are you doing down here?" Jamie asked as she looked around the cavern.
"And why were there some people tied up on the surface?"
"Huh? Oh, right. Those would be the revolutionists who sneaked their way into the palace and tried to kidnap the twelfth prince." He gestured vaguely toward Raileigh.
Jamie blinked, glancing back at the twelfth prince, looked him over from head to toe then back to Elias with an eyebrow raised.
"They didn't seem too happy about being tied up," she noted off-handedly.
"Their intent was all over the place, and they kept yelling at me about how they hated nobles and how they know tyrants who would treat their captives better and the least you could do was give them some water. Yeah they wanted me to untie them or at least drag them out of the sun."
"And what did you do?" Raileigh asked.
"I froze them so they wouldn't whine about the sun anymore," Jamie said smoothly.
"Though oddly enough, that just made them even more displeased."
Raileigh burst into a bright, genuine laugh, finding her casual ruthlessness utterly delightful. Jamie stared at him for a long moment, then turned to Elias with another questioning look.
Elias opened his mouth to explain, drawing in a breath to start untangling the mess.
It was precisely at that exact, miserable microsecond that Blackwave chose to step forward out of the shadows, cracking his knuckles with a heavy, ominous pop.
"Right then," Blackwave boomed, his deep voice vibrating through the chamber.
"Now that you kids have finished sorting out your little tea party and making friends, it's high time we sit down and talk about my problem."
The three turned in unison to stare at the, scarred pirate.
Jamie slowly leaned over toward Elias.
"Who the hell is that weirdo?"
Elias groaned.
"Its a long story."