Leonel wasn't sure what to believe when he heard this name. It felt like it could both be a coincidence, and yet too coincidental at the same time.
If it had been a name like Wise Sea God, or Intelligent Sea Order, it would have been fine. But the simple swapping of Star for Sea made him pause... especially when it was his Dream Force doing the translating right now.
If he could speak the language of the Oryx and this was just a quirk on their part, it was one thing. But for his Dream Force to translate it in this way and elicit such emotion in him, it could one mean that these two titles were truly mirrors of one another.
But the question was... why?
Were there tablets in this world as well? He guessed that could be possible. There was no reason for the Dimensional Verse to be the only Incomplete World the Cult and the other envoys were dabbling in.
Wise Star Order was an anomaly Leonel still hadn't figured out. Of course, this time he was referring not to the title, but rather to the man.
He had just upped and disappeared, somehow slinking past Leonel's safeguards and even out of Anastasia's world without any of them realizing. On top of that, he had taken away two Savants with him as well.
Candle and Vice were huge parts of Leonel's trump cards. If he had the Life Tablet and two Savants under his belt, just how much more powerful could he make the two of them?
But that much was beside the point. The core of it was that because of Wise Star Order's existence alone, there might even be an organization that was the antithesis of the Cult.
How else could the Silver Tablet appear in Valiant Heart Mountain? Or a Bronze Tablet appear in the Luxnix?
The fact that a member of the Cult had only a Black Tablet made it all even weirder. How was it that an Incomplete World had stronger tablets than the Complete World it was an offshoot of?
On top of that, none of these things seemed related to the Pluto or the Fawkes. It was clearly a third party dabbling in these matters, so who was to say that they hadn't dabbled here as well?
Leonel wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but what was certain was that he would need to see this Wise Sea Order at least once.
One way or another, if he wanted to claim this entire world, he would not only need to understand it, but he would need to subdue it.
That was easier said than done, though, not just because of the suppression he was facing, but because of the other characters moving in the dark. But for now, he could only take things one step at a time.
He stored the Oryx summons into the snow globes and then rushed away. There would certainly be people who noticed their deaths, but this wasn't his problem for now. His only goal was to make it to the last bastion of Human power, and now he knew where that was.
**
Emperor Fleeting Cloud was an old man. Though he didn't have a foot in the grave, his wrinkles were clear and defined, and his white hair had a more wispy and dry quality to it than a 40 or 50-year-old man would have. He seemed to be in his 60s, still a bit vibrant, but also clearly beyond his peak.
The heaviness of the current circumstances only made his condition seem worse. He had no choice but to project an outward feeling of confidence. That was his duty to his people. But what he exuded and how he truly felt were two different matters entirely.
Watching his court ministers argue about the same thing for the tenth time today, he released a deep sigh in his heart, closing his eyes for a moment.
...
Outside the final capital of the Fleeting Cloud Empire, there was an army... no, it was armies. There didn't seem to be a single old soul in sight, as though the Sea Gods had chosen to unleash their children on this last bastion of humanity.
And maybe they had such a right, because the title of Sea God Race didn't seem to be empty... at least if their appearances were everything one should go by.
The shortest of them were two meters tall. But they had such immature and doughy-eyed features that it was clear that they were teenagers at best.
The tallest of them cleared three meters, but this was hardly the most imposing part of this Race. In reality, there were many larger, many who were taller, many who looked more imposing from just a silhouette alone...
But they were beyond this.
Their skin was tinted a slight greenish blue, ranging from pale greens to pale sky blues. Beneath their eyes, along their forearms and down their shins for those where it could be seen, there were gorgeous, polished scales. On first look, these scales seemed to look like refined emeralds or glistening sapphires. But when you took a deeper look, you could find whole worlds within them, seas of green and blue rising up to form tsunami-like waves or gently bobbing in the wind.
Their ears were pointed like elves, long and angular, and their eyes seemed slit but not quite. Rather than looking sharp, their pupils looked like small pills of black, their irises reminding one of exploding stars of green and blue, while their hair wasn't much unlike this at all.
They didn't look like a Mortal Race at all. It seemed as though they had been plucked out from the God realm and then deposited here.
When Leonel laid eyes on them for the first time, he couldn't help but feel a strong feeling of danger in his heart, a feeling that shouldn't come from a Mortal Race, especially not only of an Incomplete World...
They reminded him of the Pluto.
