Unnamed Café
Zeusea City
Asteau, Ireth Continent
September 1st 2050
Camellya Seradain heaved a sigh as she found herself seated at one of the café's window tables, her eyes darting to the wall clock, which read 8:00 am, before another sigh escaped her lips.
'Why am I doing this to myself?'
That was the one singular thought that crossed her mind a mere second before the café doors opened and a violet-eyed teen stepped into the building.
He had a bored expression on his handsome face, but that expression of his immediately brightened up the instant he noticed her, and he dashed over in the next.
"You were already here? Why didn't you say so?" Leon asked, taking a seat opposite her.
"There was no point," Camellya responded curtly. "You already said you were on your way."
"Well, you could have still said something. What if I ended up taking a detour since I didn't think you were already here?"
After mentioning that imaginary scenario, Leon called a waiter to order, and seeing this, Camellya asked, "You want to eat? Didn't you do that before coming here?"
"I did," Leon responded, picking up the menu and pointing at the items he wanted so the waiter could see. "But I felt like eating another cake again. I'm starting to like them."
Camellya didn't immediately reply, instead moving her gaze to the pair of glasses hanging from the chest pocket of his t-shirt.
"Why did you take off your glasses? Aren't you worried about being recognised?"
"I only took it off right before I entered. Before that, I was in a car," Leon said, then glanced up at the TV mounted on the wall, which was soundlessly playing a news channel.
"Oh, mum is on TV."
His little mutter drew Camellya's gaze to the screen, where she saw Lucia speaking with a man she distinctly remembered as the president of Asteau, all while surrounded by several other dignitaries and ministers.
"It's about that human-dragon conflict, right? What are we gonna do about the attack that's gonna happen soon?"
Camellya's question reminded Leon of the first major mission in Chapter One of Deity Rising, which picked up just after the protagonist, who had recently lost most of their memories, woke up in an unfamiliar country, completely disoriented and clueless about where they were or how they had ended up there.
They eventually got involved in the plans of a racial supremacist group trying to widen the rift between species, and ended up needing to help resolve the situation before two of the greatest human and dragon nations on the planet could go to war.
After recalling these details, Leon turned away from the TV and looked at Camellya as he responded.
"I'd just go on the airship myself, and when those crazies try to act, I'll kill them."
He spoke about killing the attackers so casually that Camellya snapped her gaze toward him in surprise, but the boy only yawned lightly as he scrolled through his phone and sent a text to his mother.
Turning back to the TV, he watched as Lucia glanced at her phone, a small smile appearing on her face as she typed a response.
Leon chuckled at the reply she sent, then looked back at Camellya, who then asked, "You say that so easily, but are you really going to be able to do that?"
"Do what?"
"Killing them," Camellya said.
She fell silent as the waiter brought Leon's order, and after the waiter left, she continued.
"You can say it casually, but how sure are you that your previous life's memories aren't going to affect your ability to take another life?"
This was something she had planned to ask him today, since they intended to enter ruins where they would encounter living monsters they would have to kill.
But upon hearing Camellya's question, Leon just chuckled and shook his head.
"My ability to take another life wouldn't be affected by my previous life's memories. You don't need to worry about that."
He spoke with complete confidence, and Camellya silently narrowed her eyes at this. Still, she said nothing, deciding to wait and see if it was just baseless confidence.
She didn't believe Leon's memories of being a civilian in his previous life would have any effect on him at all, especially since there were more of those memories than there were memories of being Leon.
◇ ◇ ◇
The two finally set off for the Pohedurn forest after Leon finished his meal, travelling in a car driven by his angel guard, Beriel.
Their destination was a gorge in the middle of the forest, located to the south of Zeusea City. The area around the gorge was scattered with ruins of a facility from before the War of Ancients, and at the base of the gorge was an underground dungeon.
There were two ways out of the dungeon: retracing one's path back to the entrance or pushing all the way to the top and exiting through an upper route that sent challengers off a waterfall into the river below.
Leon had every intention of taking that second exit route, drawn by the idea of the natural water slide and the thrill that came with it.
Of course, he only planned to reveal this to Camellya at the last moment.
"I wanted to ask before, but why didn't you bring Cameron along?" Leon said, his gaze on the maps app on his phone.
"And leave my mother alone at home?" Camellya replied, turning toward him with a raised eyebrow.
"Oh, right. Her health's bad, so I guess you can't leave her alone for too long in case of emergencies."
Finally moving his gaze from his device, he met Camellya's eyes and asked,
"Figured out what to do about that yet?"
That question made Camellya heave a sigh, and from her reaction, Leon could already tell that things weren't going well on that front.
"I could figure out what to do if I knew exactly what's wrong with her, but unfortunately, she's being very tight-lipped."
When Camellya said this, Leon recalled what Genevieve had told him the day before about her Core Skill and how it drained her lifespan.
'In Deity Rising, even after the protagonist finds the items their mother left behind before her death, the details of her core skill are never revealed. Her cause of death was one of the biggest mysteries in the fandom.'
At that thought, Leon's eyes widened as realisation dawned on him.
'Wait a second. The protagonist loses their memories in the same incident their mother dies… but what's killing Genevieve now is her limited lifespan…'
Immediately, Leon swiped up on his screen, opened his messenger app, and sent a text to Genevieve using the contact he had received yesterday.
[Hey.
Good morning.]
[Sorry that this is the first thing I'm asking, but exactly what city or territory did your skill tell you to take your kids? I need it to confirm something.]
Leon repeatedly tapped the back of his phone with his fingers as he waited for a response, the constant noise drawing Camellya's attention to him.
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting for a respon—"
*PING!
Leon abruptly went silent when he saw the response from Genevieve, his eyes ignoring the greeting at the top and focusing only on the name of the city sent below.
[Vato.]
'That's where the main game starts! Where the protagonist wakes up after losing their memories!'
And just like that, Leon had uncovered one of the greatest mysteries in Deity Rising, along with the reason for the protagonist's mother's death—why the protagonist ended up in Vato City.
It had been thought to be a random choice, but now that Leon knew Genevieve had been planning to send her children there, the story took an entirely different direction.
'There's a connection between them. Something happened in Vato that caused the protagonist to lose their memories, and Genevieve was definitely involved. I just don't know how…'
Leon had too little information to follow this train of thought further at the moment.
'I need to speak with Genevieve in person and learn more about her plans. I should also have someone investigate Vato around the time the incident likely occurred.'
He locked his phone and glanced at Camellya, who was texting her brother, and before he could speak, the car came to a stop.
"Young Master, we have to continue on foot from here," Beriel said, turning back to look at Leon.
"Okay."
Leon opened the door and stepped out, stretching slightly before closing it behind him as he began walking toward the forest on their left.
Camellya closed the distance to him in an instant, her phone vanishing in a flash of light as the bracelet on her right arm glowed faintly.
The sight made the ever-silent Elidyr narrow his eyes slightly, as he, a master of spatial magic, immediately recognised that the bracelet on Camellya's wrist was no ordinary piece of jewellery.
'A spatial storage artifact. The fact that I didn't notice it until she used it means it's of extremely high quality, almost as high as the young master's watch. Where did she get that?'
The man had naturally run background checks on the Seradain family following Leon's encounter with them the day before, and from what he knew, there was no way their family should have the income to acquire such an artifact.
But here it was, on Camellya's wrist.
'I need to report this.'
The man's expression betrayed none of his thoughts as he followed Leon and Camellya down the forest path, the sound of rushing water reaching their ears.
The Pohedurn Forest and the gorge running through it were not a scenic location that drew many tourists, but it still had the occasional visitors, so a walkway had been constructed through it by Zeusea's government to allow ease of navigation.
As they walked along it, the trees gradually thinned ahead, opening into a wide clearing where the ground ended abruptly.
A railing was installed around two to three metres before the edge, set back from the uneven drop where the land broke away, its placement leaving more than enough space to approach and look out without getting too close.
Beyond it, the gorge stretched out wide, the opposing side far in the distance, and far below, water rushed through the depths, trailing off toward an ocean that lay far beyond sight from this point.
At a glance, parts of the water appeared broken by scattered rocks, but with closer observation, those shapes revealed themselves as the tops of ruined buildings rising just above the surface.
The sides of the gorge sloped downward rather than dropping straight, and they ran jagged and uneven as they descended, with the terrain dipping and rising irregularly.
Much of these slopes was overtaken by thick greenery, with grass and creeping plants spreading in dense layers until large portions of the surface appeared entirely green rather than stone. Openings dotted parts of the slope like shallow caves, though none extended far inward.
Along the slopes on both sides, broken stone structures could be seen, partially embedded into the terrain or left exposed between the greenery.
Looking across to the opposite side, a single tower stood out, rising from the midpoint of the slope and extending upward until it reached the same height as the cliff top.
Eyes fixed on this tower, Leon cracked his knuckles and spoke, "That's our ticket in."