Greg pushed open the door to the room Reina was being treated in, careful to be as quiet as possible when doing so. It was almost impossible to believe that the girl sleeping peacefully on the bed had been knocking on death's door just a few short hours ago. Greg was already impressed by the miracle his teacher had pulled off. He, however, couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't fully comprehending just how impossible the feat was. By all indicators, the young woman on the bed should have been dead. The assassin hadn't skimped out when getting a poison powerful enough to drop a third-tier mage in a matter of seconds, and yet, the girl was now sleeping peacefully on the bed, her breathing steady, and her skin no longer the metallic grey it was when Greg last saw her. Despite pulling off what most would have likely considered impossible, his teacher didn't seem at all pleased even as she sat regarding the young woman. Raksha was seated on the floor near the foot of the bed, but his

"That... that is a baby?" Lothar, who was standing at the railing looking down, voiced the very thought that had crossed Greg's mind when Morpheus told him that the gigantic snake below was actually a baby. Unable to think of a better reply, Greg gave the same reply he got from the deity. "Considering that these things can grow large enough to squeeze whole planets between their coils, yes, what you are looking at is a baby world serpent," he replied. Morpheus had then gone on to congratulate him for being a mortal who had seen a titan-class creature and lived to tell the tale of it. Greg, however, left out that last bit as it would have felt a bit pretentious for him to repeat. Greg had gathered all of his allies on deck along with the airship's captain for them to brainstorm a way out of the pickle they found themselves in. Olivia, his teacher, Lothar, Calyn and Athalia were all currently standing by the railing looking down at the massive serpent below with various looks, rangin

At first, Greg found himself being skeptical of the claim, thinking that Morpheus was just exaggerating for effect. But then, he remembered the sight of Morpheus' mother. When she had first reached through his clone into Greg's mind and pulled him into her presence, there had been a split second in which Greg found himself looking at two sun-sized orbs that turned out to be her eyes. That single moment of exposure had been enough to cause Greg a soul fracture. He had no idea where in the rankings of power a fully-grown world serpent landed, but if it got anywhere close to the powers Elders held, then perhaps the claim wasn't as far-fetched as Greg initially thought it was. "You... you are linked to a deity!" Athalia finally spoke, cutting into Greg's explanation of events, her voice still shaky. Greg could tell that, for her, it wasn't just that she had encountered a deity and lived to tell of it. On top of that almost unbelievable fact, she'd also come face to face with her great-g

Greg hadn't even considered this possibility, but now that it was mentioned, he couldn't help but think it plausible. "Could be. Your guess is just as good as mine," he stated with a shrug, before turning back to his teacher. "This is why what you are asking for is impossible. Just because the force pulling us toward the center isn't doing so violently, it doesn't mean that it is by any means an easy force to counter or overcome. Like I said before, the most dangerous aspect of this zone isn't the tier zero mage that was the conduit, but the deity whose will was channeled through them. Simple as pulling this airship out of the zone might sound, in practice, it's one deity fighting against the will of another deity with me caught in the middle. Had we been close to the edge of the zone when we discovered what was going on, then perhaps we would have had a chance at escape. Unfortunately for us, the assassin waited until we were well and truly inside the black zone before making her mov

With her already aware of and paying attention to them, that plan was already dead in the water. Should she wish to, she could decimate the entire ship right now, and there was very little Greg could do about it. He didn't even bother to ask Morpheus about it. Greg already knew that if they were attacked, the deity wouldn't waste even a smidgen of his power trying to protect the mortals onboard. Morpheus cared nothing for his family, allies, or crew. Instead, the deity would do all he could to escape. Should that prove impossible, then he would fight without holding anything back, damn whoever was caught in the fallout. He knew this, and there was zero doubt in Greg, that she knew this too. She hadn't been trying to clarify how old she was. She was telling him that she had all their lives in the palm of her hand. "Give us a moment," Greg spoke up. Though his gaze never left the woman the others seated around the table immediately understood that it was to them that he was speaking