CHAPTER 97: THE FAERIE COURT

“Yeah no. I definitely lost my mind.”

Soren shook his head dejectedly with a smile. “Is it too late for a therapist?”

The voice answered, “In cases like yours, yes—it's too late. The therapist will die of old age before he can even fix half of you.”

“I didn’t know my imagination could be this crafty with words.” Soren chuckled.

“That’s a lie and you know it. If silver tongues were an Olympic event, you’d be taking home the platinum medal.”

“The Olympics doesn’t have platinum medals though.”

“Thank you for proving my point.”

Soren’s lips twitched. What a cheeky bastard… He frowned as he glanced down at the slowly approaching mysterious platforms.

“You called me Scribe of Worlds earlier. That’s the name of the website that brought me into this whole mess… What did you mean by that?”

The voice stayed silent for a bit, as if to contemplate an answer:

“The meaning is fairly literal. You are a Scribe of Worlds. A traveler of planes and chronicler of stories. That is the very meaning of your journey.”

The words Mr. Unknown had left him rang once more in his mind: Explore, Dream, Discover.

At first, Soren assumed He meant it in the context of Yarian—that the question he had used in the Secrets of the Records ritual held an answer somewhere in these mysterious lands.

But the acquisition of the fragment of a fragment of a forgotten rune certainly threw a wrench in that hypothesis. If the answer to that question was one that could be answered in Yarian, why did he acquire a method to travel back to Earth if need be? Was it just a coincidence? A matter of luck?

No, that cannot be the case—not when his path had been laid out to him by fate. The mistress clearly stated that her prophetic abilities showed her just how significant Soren was to that world’s Celestial Fate.

So then why would a ritual meant for obtaining answers to certain questions lead him to another world whose future heavily depended on his existence?..

As if sensing his thoughts, the voice asked:

“That question… Have you found the answer to it yet?”

Soren’s face didn’t change. As he fell further into the void, he shook his head slowly. “No… Not yet.”

“I expected you to say that.”

“And why is that?..” He raised an eyebrow.

“Because if the question you asked was so easy to answer, then a paradox like me wouldn’t exist.”

What does he mean by that?.. Just as he was about to ask, Soren noticed something strange. His body, which was perfectly normal just a second ago was now glowing in an aetherial golden hue. Strange gilded strings floated all around him, as if he had been enveloped in a furious yet graceful aurora borealis. Soren lifted his hands and stared at them for a few seconds—completely dumbfounded. He then shifted his gaze toward his Soul Weapon which was levitating next to his falling body. Its form seemed strangely alive—Soren had not issued any commands, and yet, he failed to notice that it had been active this entire time with its pages flickering like hungry flames.

Just before he could investigate it further, his trusty grimoire suddenly broke apart into pieces. Confused, he watched as its fragments scattered in the wind, dissipating into nothing.

A hint of panic filled his mind, but the voice returned—this time to assure him:

“Calm down. Nothing happened to me.”

He instantly relaxed, but that only made him more confused. Nothing happened to him? What?

But there was no more time for questions. Soren’s eyes widened as he noticed the distant platform his body was falling toward growing rapidly… It was as if time had sped up—or his body had turned into a shooting star. In an instant, millions of kilometers were covered, and before he knew it, he was no longer falling.

His body had reached solid ground.

Slamming into a bedrock surface at mach who knows what should have turned him into an artistic blood splatter, but nothing of that sort happened. Instead, he found himself simply laying on his stomach, as if everything he had seen just moments ago were nothing more than figments of an old dream…

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Where… Am I?..”

“You already asked that question…”

Soren recognized the voice. He shifted his body toward the source—which was surprising since the last time the figment of his imagination spoke, he couldn’t even tell whether it was all inside his head or not.

What he was seeing greatly shocked him. A large bonfire, flickering everlastingly illuminated all in its presence. Like a pillar of glory, its light shone upon the earth—golden butterflies swarm and orbited around its presence, like moths attracted to the lux. For whatever reason, everytime Soren focused on one of the tiny butterflies, his mind would begin to hurt.

It was all strangely attractive… A portion of him wanted to embrace the flame… To enter within its smoldering grasp. The allure… Was vast…

“Welcome again, Scribe of Worlds…”

Soren glanced around the mystical bonfire—awe was the only sensation filling his mind. The skies above were a gradient of pastel colors, shifting like an ever changing dream. It was as if the void he had been falling through was now being filtered through a mesh, blurring and blending it all together… Strange objects filled the skies—gears, buildings, furniture, toys, potions, magics, rainbows, stars, and everything in between.

A scene straight out of a picture book. A twilight of imagination beyond the presence of mortal minds.

He then glanced at his own body, and the ground beneath his feet. The ‘island’ was flat and made of cobblestone and grass, with the strange bonfire at the center. But what was stranger had to be the ever changing dimensionality of it all… If Soren simply tilted his head by a few degrees, the scene would change… The grass would grow taller, the cobblestone would look clearer, and strangest of all… The mysterious bonfire would disappear—in its place came a majestic stone canopy, with a round table at its center. All of it was made of marble and polished to an almost perfect degree.

“What… Am I looking at…” Everything about this place seemed paradoxical in nature.

The cold yet alive voice answered, “This is the Realm of Realms… A location beyond the grasp of any and all. A relic from the One Above All.”

“The One Above All?” The name felt strangely familiar, as if his soul yearned to understand it.

“Indeed. The creator of this universe as we know it.”

The words shocked Soren greatly. Obviously, he had always had a hunch that something had created this universe—if there can be a pantheon of gods in Yarian, what’s there to say there isn’t a god for the entire universe?

Still, he couldn’t help but be shocked. A forgotten rune fragment from such a being was now in his possession… The idea seemed both exciting and horrifying at the same time.

“Are you regretting your decisions now?” The voice said mockingly.

He instantly knew what it was hinting at—The Whispering Dream. Soren might have escaped from that bastard, but in the process, he had revealed what was now his biggest secret.

There’s no way that asshole is ever going to ignore my existence… Not that Soren had any hope that the enigmatic saint would forget all about him. Heck, even he refused to forget—he wanted revenge against him one way or another.

Not answering the voice’s question, he stood up and flicked the dust off his clothes. With a somewhat amused look, he glanced at the bonfire and asked:

“So who are you?” He had a hunch but figured it would be best to hear it directly from the source.

It answered, “The Records… Or more specifically, the paradox of your existence.”

He didn’t fully comprehend the second part, but it was now fairly easy to understand what exactly he had been communicating with this entire time. In fact, his arrival here wasn’t when they had first communicated at all…

The Records. His Soul Weapon which was of the Abstract Class had somehow formed its own persona. He had known about this oddity back when he first met mistress Sienna, who revealed the truth about his own demented existence…

“A paradox indeed…” Usually, only Soul Weapons of the Summon class are meant to house a persona. It was mainly a reflection of the kind of Abstract Rune a person had merged with.

But Soren’s case was special. Unlike a normal Phantasm, he had acquired his Soul Weapon in a fairly strange manner—most needed to undergo a ritual to create their Soul Chain and entrap the Abstract Rune fragment within the node… He on the other hand didn’t even possess a real Soul Chain—the one granted to him in Yarian was fictional in nature.

But now that he was standing before this strange, towering ember, everything was starting to make sense. Although it was hard, Soren could see a strange ring inside the bonfire. He instantly knew what it was.

His Soul Chain. It was here in the Faerie Court all along.

He accidentally tilted his head again and the world shifted—the strange stone canopy replaced the eternally burning bonfire. Soren frowned.

“Let’s forget about what exactly you are—explain to me what the hell is happening… Why am I seeing two different versions of this place overlapping.”

“Your existence is too pitifully weak to fully grasp how space operates here. Hm, let me assist you.”

All of a sudden, Soren felt his mind split in half—no. It wasn’t his mind that was splitting, it was the world itself. Then, just as quickly as it split, it merged back together, slamming with enough force to make him question his sense of direction.

Instantly he threw up as he struggled to keep himself balanced.

“Relax your mind.”

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes once more. This time, the world wasn’t split in strange angles and directions—it was whole again. In front of him stood the same familiar stone canopy, but above it, a small ember was burning everlastingly, illuminating the marble surfaces of the ancient construct. A small ring of golden butterflies were orbiting around it, with a small violet-colored sigil of an eye trapped within the ring.

It was mesmerizing to look at.

Wiping the small bits of vomit from his bottom lip, he adjusted his balance and walked to the edge of the canopy—his eyes widened once again.

The strange shapes floating above the crayon painted skies were now all gone—replaced with strangely massive bookshelves that levitated on their own. It was as if an entire labyrinth or maze was being created by their formation as they bloated out the stars above them.

Some of the shelves held tomes inside them, but the majority were empty.