“Feeling better?” Gemini asked, directing his question to both Pai-Relix and Quinn. Both of them were in various states of shock, with the Demigod particularly affected for some reason.

Quinn was the first to recover, and Gemini couldn’t help but wonder why. Was it because Quinn was, at his very core, a Champion Support Entity? Or was he just used to all kinds of surprises and shocks now?

Amusing himself with that random thought for a moment, Gemini motioned for Quinn to stay and watch over the quivering Demigod, who was doing a remarkably impressive impersonation of his favourite jellies.

“Gemini?”

“I’m going in first. Take care of her,” Gemini replied. “It’s probably a result of coming into contact with her progenitor, so make sure she doesn’t suffer from anything like an overdose or allergy.”

“…I think you’re using those terms wrongly.”

“Shut it, you.” The Demon Sovereign chuckled. “I’m going in now. Take good care of her.”

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Wait. You…Gemini. Wait. Listen. Don’t do anything stupid inside there, okay? You’ve done more than enough for Orb.”

Gemini turned back to look at Quinn evenly. “I know.”

“That’s what you say, but I know you too well, Gemini. If lifting this black dome or controlling requires your life, you’ll gladly hand it over,” said the Champion Support Entity. “But you don’t need to do that. Okay? Even if no one can fly inside—”

“I know.” Gemini smiled. “This war is not over yet. I have yet to attain my desire. I will not throw my life away. Besides, didn’t I say that I was interested in researching this black dome, first and foremost? How can I research it if I’m dead and pushing up the daisies?”

“Make a vow.”

“Come on.” Gemini rolled his eyes. “Fine, I promise. I won’t do anything other than to research this black dome, as well as to investigate the Demon God’s final inheritance.”

“Alright.”

Quinn eyed him for a few more minutes, and then returned his attention to Pai-Relix.

Gemini, despite rolling his eyes as a show, couldn’t help but be touched by Quinn’s words. These words were proof that there were others who cared for him, who didn’t want him to throw his life away.

He knew that there were indeed people who cared, but…

“I’ll be back,” Gemini murmured. “Make sure nothing happens to Pai-Relix in the meantime.”

“Go, go.” Quinn heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I’m going to tell Lila if you do anything stupid, though. She’s going to blow her top and smack you into the middle of next year.”

Gemini trembled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

With those words, he shot towards the black pillar of light, leaving behind Quinn and the quivering Pai-Relix. The divinity within him cheered madly as he charged forward, and the darkness didn’t seem to hamper his vision. In fact, right now, he could sense the movements of everything in the Wildlands.

“The base of this tower…or the top?” Gemini spent a few minutes deciding on his destination, before he settled on the base. For some reason, the prospect of flying to the very top scared him, and his instincts were telling him that his goal was at the bottom of the tower…or at the very bottom, even.

Diving downwards, Gemini found himself wondering why he even brought Quinn or Pai-Relix along. He had originally intended for them to help out if he encountered any danger, but none of them looked well enough to take up the challenge.

Landing gently on the ground, the Demon Sovereign felt some relief when he saw a clear opening at the base of the huge pillar. The divinity within him was now in exuberance, and Gemini, driven by this feeling took one step after another.

The interior of the tower was completely wreathed in darkness, but that was of no issue to Gemini, who had switched to using his Divine Will to see.

The next few minutes felt like a waking dream, as Gemini followed the summons. A set of steps had been carved downwards, although he didn’t quite get the need for such mortal constructs in a divine land. His feet continued to move on their own, and before long, the unnatural construct, made from darkness and shadow, gave way to a natural-looking cavern.

His hackles rose as an overwhelming sense of death abruptly assailed his senses. An icy sensation followed, and the surreal, dreamy sensation Gemini was experiencing gave way to the freezing tide. He stumbled backwards a moment later, fully awake.

With his mental faculties operating normally now, the Demon Sovereign could tell that he had somewhat overshot his true destination. Whatever the Demon God left behind was actually higher up — he’d descended too much.

Fear continued to mount as the feeling of intense danger lapped at the shores of his mind. There was something dangerous here, something that could kill him.

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What kind of phenomenon could threaten even the Demon Sovereign? Gemini didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out either. He wasn’t all that interested in knowing how such a thing was possible either…but reality, as always, didn’t like him all that much.

Black lightning, in a shade of darkness that put the Demon God to shame, tore through the air. Divinity erupted out of his body a moment later, creating thick barriers as an automatic response.

Without waiting to see the outcome, Gemini obeyed his instincts and fled. A heartbeat after he darted out of the cavern, the barriers of divinity shattered like glass. Black lightning tore through where his body was earlier, smashing through the ground he was standing on.

A hollow void followed in its wake. Pausing on the last step, Gemini looked at the horrifying space the black lightning created, and then sped back into the tower before anything else decided to screw with him.

That particular bolt of lightning seemed to be unstoppable, however. The Demon Sovereign had a feeling that it might just make its way into the Five Lands or something, if nothing could stop it.

What kind of lightning could do that? One infused with the will of Isaac Newton?Shivering slightly, Gemini clambered out of the cavern and returned to the tower of darkness above it.

He could investigate this cavern later…which, to Gemini, meant a millennium later.

The overwhelming sense of peril that had flooded his nerves continued to recede as Gemini climbed up the staircase. This time, however, he was keeping his eyes peeled. The Demon God’s divinity, which had been holding the equivalent of a drunken party, had been shocked into sobriety by that near-death experience Gemini had a moment ago.

As a result, said divinity was now more responsive to the actual inheritance the Demon God had left behind, rather than just jiggling and whirling around because they returned to a familiar place.

It was as if they were partially alive.

“How would a mascot of divinity look like?” Gemini wondered out loud. “Should it have a cute face? Or just be a nice little blob of adorability?”

Given that there wasn’t anyone around to offer a good retort or suggestion, the question hung awkwardly in the air. Gemini couldn’t quite bring up a witty retort to his own question either, forcing him to deal with the remnant fear from that horrifying attack

In the first place, that black lightning…no, almost nothing should have been able to harm him. Gemini knew that he was almost certainly one of the largest repositories of divinity in Orb — but that lightning had shattered his divinity-infused defences with absurd ease. How was that possible?

Such ease shouldn’t be possible. As the Demon Sovereign, Gemini stood at the peak of existence in Orb. Absolutely nothing, save for pesky things like Zeroth Armaments, should have been able to pierce through his defences this easily…

“Wait,” Gemini said out loud. “That lightning’s a Zeroth Armament?”

That question hung in the air for a moment. Now that he had vocalised these thoughts out loud, his hypothesis actually seemed to make sense. After all, he had seen a Zeroth Armament in the form of a cube. If a small wooden cube could be a Zeroth Armament, anything could be a Zeroth Armament.

Or the lightning was produced by a Zeroth Armament. Gemini wasn’t all too picky about little things like these. Either way, however, that cavern that led down, in to the depths of Orb, was a death trap.

With that established, Gemini found himself wondering why the Demon God built a giant tower of eerie darkness on top of that death trap. He was vaguely cognizant of a small link between the cavern and the black dome that had enveloped the Wildlands, but he was as clueless as the next stone regarding the exact mechanism.

Gemini’s mind raced madly, splitting up into multiple strands to process the issue from all angles. At the same time, he continued to look around the stairwell, which he had earlier lost focus in when climbing downstairs.

Black lightning. A black dome. A black tower.

Gemini had long assumed that colour to be the Demon God’s motif, but the former was probably capable of injuring the World’s Blight too. Clearly, the black lightning was on a different scale or quality; it definitely belonged to something more primordial. Was it the original Orb? The true Orb that he had heard whispers about? Or was it a remnant from the two ancient gods that had created the false Orb?

He couldn’t be sure.

Enduring the uncomfortable heat building up in his cranium, Gemini continued to divide his thoughts. Divinity danced around him as his will swept out, creating a helmet of cooling air around his head, alleviating the distress his mind was experiencing.

“Still not enough,” Gemini murmured.

If not for the fact that Gemini hadn’t seen black lightning streaking into the black tower itself, the Demon Sovereign would have assumed that the former was the power source for the latter. No, the black lightning was probably a subsidiary element from the main source. Therefore…

One of his many thought strands changed its subject of study, delving into his memory of the black lightning that had struck. Another followed suit, but this time, it was replaying the memory of the black lightning’s formation. Gemini didn’t pay attention to that bit at that time, but his mind had unconsciously taken in the details.

More and more thought strands began to examine the context that surrounded the black lightning. Gemini didn’t mind — clearly, the independent thought stands had located something that had piqued their interest.

The sensation of controlling multiple strands of thought and logic was not something new to him, after so many days of reawakening as the Demon Sovereign. This was how the great gods thought and made their predictions, although most of them refrained from thinking much in more peaceful times.

Turning his attention away from the parallel processing going on in his head, Gemini returned his focus to the task of locating the Demon God’s inheritance. Of the two divinities within him, the one that belonged to the Demon God was growing rowdy once more, and—

“Hmm?”

The Demon God’s divinity had reached a new peak of exuberance, one that only diminished when he continued climbing upwards. Gemini, however, couldn’t find anything like a doorway to lead him inwards. He was still in a stairwell, a stairwell as featureless as an eggshell.

On instinct, he drew out the Demon God’s divinity from within him.

Gemini’s Divine Will, which he had been using to perceive the inwards of the black tower, abruptly disintegrated. At the same time, his awareness stopped operating, and time itself seemed to freeze.

The horrible sensation scattered a moment later, and Gemini found himself in a very familiar place.

A vast expanse of darkness laid itself out before Gemini. It was a darkness deeper than that of the Demon God’s; it was a place he’d seen before, back when the God of Water passed away.

The Demon Sovereign took a deep breath. Back then, when the Lifespring died, he had created a mental landscape that sucked all in. His holy symbol, back then, was hanging high in the sky, falling apart for all to see.

There was nothing of that sort going on right now, however.

Gemini pondered that fact for a moment, and then swept his senses out.

A mask of granite settled on his face three seconds later. “Found it.”

As it turned out, the Demon God’s holy symbol was just a small, black globe. Gemini didn’t understand why it had to blend in with this world, but great gods were odd that way.

With a simple thought, he reappeared right in front of the black orb.