A Cruel Kindling


    With the existence of the core oil discovered, Richard looked at his leather bag and then back at Suman with surprise, "I didn’t expect your perception to be this sharp."


    Sumanughed, “You thought a treated leather bag would be able to hide something that distorts thews everywhere around it? Men,e and kill this brat!”


    There were eight guards in the hall, and all of them leapt forward in tandem as they aimed their des at Richard. However, a ring of green light suddenly blinded everyone in the room, and Richard walked past the would-be attackers who fell to the ground.


    Suman’s eyes went wide as he stared at Moonlight, slowly picking up the giant axe beside his throne. However, Richard stopped and shook his head, “You’re wrong, Suman. I’m not slightly weaker than you; I’m so powerful you can’t even fathom it.”


    He had barely finished speaking before he blinked forward, Moonlight aiming for the man’s throat like a sh of lightning. Suman roared and brandished his axe like a storm, but it was barely a minuteter when he howled and the weapon flew out of his hands. He went rigid as Moonlight sat on his throat, capable of cutting his head off with a gentle stroke.


    “Bring me to the timemes,” Richard said calmly.


    Unable to decline, Suman brought Richard underground to two stone rooms that contained braziers of different sizes. One seemed ancient and had been burning for hundreds of years, while the other was a little dimmer and reeked of blood.


    Richard’s gaze froze over as he looked at the dim brazier, and he turned to Suman, “You used living souls to light this.”


    Suman showed no shame, “They deserved to die in the first ce! Weaklings have no point other than to be used as food here; leaving their souls would have been a waste.”


    "You were a weakling when you first came here as well."


    “But I’m a lord now, and that’s enough. Besides, do you have any other method to light timemes?”


    Richard fell silent. Only Chosen had ess to tinder that could light timemes naturally, and this ruthless method was perhaps the only other possibility. Suman seemed to see that hesitation and continued, “These people deserved to die! I only brought it to them earlier, and their sacrifices lit a second veil of order that quadrupled the size of the city! How many people managed to live because of this? What have you done to be upset?”


    Richard sighed. Perhaps the grey sky was a theme for everything in the Darkness. Suman definitely had benefited arge number of people, and he himself wasn’t a samaritan by any means. Falling silent for a long time, he eventually answered, “Soulwood can sustain the timemes after they are lit. I’ll be taking the ones that haven’t dispersed.”


    Suman felt an inexplicable chill around him. His perception was powerful, but he couldn’t see the hundreds of souls that gathered towards Richard and merged with his soul.


    ......


    A few hourster, Richard left the city and followed the path towards the Land of Dawn. A dazed Suman was left in his throne room, unable to understand how Richard had spared him and even left the city. He simply couldn’t fathom why someone would want to head out into the forsaken wastnds when one could stay in the city and at least livefortably.


    For his part, Richard understood that Suman wasn’t particrly cruel to the residents of the city themselves. Someone would want to be the lord of such a city regardless, and Suman was at least strong enough to stop a butcher if it charged through the veil of order. Leaving someone like that behind was much better than subjecting the city to turmoil.


    The grey sky, fissured earth, and twisted trees seemed to blend into an endlessndscape of distortion with no start nor end. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, but Richard continued to walk more than a thousand kilometres a day. He had realised that keeping track of time here was meaningless; while he could track it urately in the Darkness, it was impossible to know how that mapped to the worlds of order.


    He spent the entire journey silently analysing thews of the Darkness, both by himself and via the souls he had absorbed along the way. He had over a thousand legendary beings within him after going through the two timefires in Suman’s city, and with that assistance his analysis had been boosted greatly. Law afterw was unravelled, boosting his power massively by the time he crossed over a veil of formless energy to arrive at the Land of Dawn. Over a hundred days had passed in this time, and he had analysed all thews of awareness and fifteenws of control. Only onew was left, and even after tens of days working on it he felt like he was an unknown distance away from an epiphany. He could solve things in the next moment, or it could take months.


    Richard had the faint feeling that the Darkness would present itself differently to him the moment he finished analysing thisstw. Even now, he found it difficult to describe just what this ce was. This wasn’t a solitary ne, nor did it seem to be connected to any powerful maind. This ce was supposedly just outside the Eternal Dragon’s control, ringing the void, but from his experience the void was an incredible expanse. Just how big did a ce have to be to surround it?


    Lost in thought, he walked into the Land of Dawn, feeling his entire world change in a moment. The ce grew much brighter as the monotony of the sky was broken up, with what seemed likeyers of clouds moving around. The terrain here also had some undtions, with a significant increase in the number of soul trees. He even saw a small hill forest in the distance.


    He saw asional shes of presence all over the ground, the inhabitants of the Darkness that included both butchers and many other things he had never seen before. He could only sense them because he had almost entirely resolved the distortion, but one thing was certain; this was and of life.


    He tried to observe these natives on the way, but they seemed to be rmed whenever he arrived and vanished no matter how stealthy he tried to be. He quickly gave up, deciding to focus on his goals of finding Flowsand and returning to Nond. ording to the old man’s route, his journey would bring him to the City of Dawn where he could collect a key ingredient to building the Lighthouse of Time, cyanite. It was a special product of this domain, acting as proof of having gained control of it.


    Richard harvested a few soul trees along his route to exchange for some cyanite, and speeding up steadily he arrived at the city in ten days. The ce seemed to be able to house tens of thousands of people, and the morous veil of order gave off a golden radiance that almostpletely suppressed the distortion in the surroundings. Even a saint would be able to live in this ce without much issue, and legends would be able to thrive.


    He noticed people entering and leaving the city regrly as he approached, a group of people even pushing wagons with goods into the distance. However, his attention faded the moment he arrived at the gates, focusing entirely on a set of statues erected in the za. It was a sculpture of three people walking through the wastnds, and even restricted to seeing their backs he felt his heart throb as he recognised them immediately.