In a luxurious room of what seems like a grand inn, Relestia sat unmonitored by herself. Despite the strange situation, the princess remained unfazed. At the very least, she has some talismans on hand that can keep her safe, and even if all of the monsters turn on her, she has enough Ki left to summon her contract beast and elemental spirit. Since reawakening after the devil was exorcised, the Greater Water Spirit, Triteia, recovered substantial amount of energy. In fact, since it is not dependant on Heavenly Energies and can absorb any type of water element, it has the best recuperative ability out of all the ones that came from Gaia.

Still, this does not make the danger any less for Relestia. Just the supernatural ability of the monsters alone made the situation rather sticky. Recalling how the chimera seemed to be able to bend or bypass physical laws caused the princess to shudder. Not to mention, there seem to be a large organisation behind these cultists.

Fortunately, she is given some time to collect herself. She is free to walk about in the confines of this chamber and there are plenty of food and water provided. After her captors had told her that they will bring about her boyfriend, they left her unmolested. Even their task for her to torture and kill something once a day was not fulfilled.

Relestia had tried prying information from those monsters. At least, she wanted to know who they serve and why would they target someone with a devil mark. The gargoyle who seems to be their leader, said something about the darkness and the chaos are friends. After probing further, Relestia came to hear of several astonishing names. The Black Church, an organisation that seemed to stretch across many different worlds. The Outer Gods, chaotic beings that these cultists worship and each with different purpose and powers. No, the word ‘purpose’ might not be right to describe them, instead, instincts, desires, and tendency are more suitable.

Curious, she asked more questions, and the cultists were happy to oblige especially when they see her as a future comrade.

In the very beginning – or so they say – the spirit of order created the world for the first life to live in. Far above that place is a roaring ocean covered with darkness. That roaring ocean is the primal chaos – the birthplace of the gods, and from the darkness came the devils. Some of those gods came to the world to live in it, but not all did. Those that remained outside became known as the Outer Gods or the Great Old Ones.

Uncertain if this is a mere fairy tale or actual history, Relestia took it with a grain of salt, but from what they said, the beings they worshipped do have connections with the devils since ancient times. Madness and evil, it does go hand in hand.

There are more things that she wanted to know, like the reason they are here and what they want to do, but the monsters avoided those questions. After they left her alone in this room, Relestia started exploring her escape options and she soon came to a shocking conclusion. This place is not on Axis Mundi. Instead, it felt like a pocket dimension or a spatial lock.

Right now, only the smallest dragonling – the lightning dragonling – remained with her. Its larger siblings, the fire and ice dragonlings, are now the size of a small snake and too conspicuous if they hide in her clothes. The moment Relestia was kidnapped, the two dragonlings flew off to seek help, but they soon found themselves cut off from her like they are in two different worlds. Only the smaller lightning dragonling that is just a little larger than a long piece of string remained to safeguard the princess.

In an unfamiliar place and cut off from the world, Relestia resigned herself to wait and see as the situation unfolds more. At this time, outside of her room where the monsters should be, she heard a commotion and quickly went to the door and peeked through the keyhole only to see shimmering lights appearing.

“They are back already?”

“Surprising. I thought that guy was supposed to be strong. It’s not even half an hour yet.”

None of them thought that capturing Kairos would fail so they were amazed to see their companions return this quickly.

When the lights faded away, the monsters gasped on seeing only four people returning and all of them wounded. When Relestia saw Sparrow standing in the middle of the group that arrived, she was aghast for a moment. To think that someone that close to them were an enemy made her hair stood on ends. But it became clear very quickly that this is not the Sparrow she knew.

What is the identity of this fake Sparrow? What is the true purpose of their group? What can someone who has a devil mark do for them? And how to get out of this place? Relestia feel herself hammered by the questions. Of course, there is also the problem of being forced to torture and kill something once a day. Just thinking about this turns her stomach.

The monsters were even more surprised, because five paramount fighters were guarding Sparrow but only three returned.

…..

When Kairos heard that Relestia had been captured, he felt everything in the world turned pale. Despite his intellect and experience, nothing could have stopped that crushing wave of emotions that tried to bury him. If the world ends, it probably would feel something like this.

Kairos gritted his teeth and tried to suppress that stream of racing chaotic emotions. He knows that if he let it run wild, it will suck him in and keep him under. Besides, moping around achieves nothing and only makes everything worse.

Right now, the main priority is to find a way to retrieve his princess. Aisa had told him that Relestia had been moved to another dimension. The thing about travelling through dimensions is that it is different from heading to another place where you can find it by the location. Similar to planets, dimensions move around like the stars, and you got to catch them at the right moment or somehow know their pathing. Obviously, this is a simplified explanation, and for Kairos to find Relestia it will require more than calculations which is why Aisa withheld this from Kairos until now. If she had let him know any earlier, it might have deal him such a crippling emotional blow that could become fatal in a battle. Likewise, Kairos saw no reason to blame his dragon companion. She does not know the new ability he gained from the Yggdrasil Seedling that let him detect different dimensions. Kairos quickly headed towards the place where Relestia was kidnapped – the mansion he took from Thunderstalk. It is situated in the gnome city, but it is conveniently next to an intercity elevator and not too far away.

When Kairos reached the place, he can feel the remnants of a powerful dark magic that once enveloped this place. He shook off the unholy presence and closed his eyes in search of the feeling he wanted. After a feel minutes, Kairos felt a trace of transference magic – the same kind used to summon heroes. A gentle breeze of happiness bloomed in his chest. Finally, some good news. Aisa is also overjoyed when she saw the smile on his face. The dragonling had not expected that the Yggdrasil Tree had shared its powers with Kairos. However, it was within her expectations… after all, she had measured the predicament Kairos met this time can be resolved and was in no concern at all.

The little world tree seedling needed a little bit of encouragement to grow into a sapling, and since Aisa’s mission is to only help with things that does not belong to the world they are in, then helping the baby Yggdrasil would not be against the rules … right?

Kairos quickly figured out what happened here. His princess had been captured into a pocket dimension, and the culprit teleported away. The dimension that Relestia is in is tethered to a object and the only way to find her is the find the person who captured her. Kairos quickly pulls up the surveillance recording of this place. While his City Surveillance spell cannot cover both the dwarven and gnomish cities, the mansion is close enough for Kairos to extend the distance a little and he had been doing that for the safety of his friends. Of course, he did not cover every inch of the place for the sake of privacy. Incidentally, the way his spell can observe the area both visually and auditorily is through changes in the mana.

The images of this place quickly rewind until the moment where the darkness befell the courtyard where Relestia was at, then a dark figure appeared and seized the princess. Kairos stopped the image and carefully looked at the figure. A deception spell hung over the person, protecting him from being identified. Unfortunately, all spells are made of mana. As long as a mage can figure out what sort of spell circle created the magic, it is possible to undo it. Kairos might not be good at improving his cultivation fast, but understanding logical things will not fail him.

With a few waves of his hands, he largely reconstructed the outline of what is underneath the deception spell. The dark figure was not human. The grotesque features made it confusing on what it could be at first but a name soon came to mind: Gargoyle.

From his understanding of the elven spell texts, teleportation belongs to Circle 7 here in Axis Mundi. Additionally, Gargoyles are cursed creatures created by black magic that have abnormal strength, spell and physical resistant stone-skin, and magic-powered flight, but they are not magically inclined nor clever enough to learn complicated magic. For a gargoyle to be able to use teleportation magic, Kairos can only think of one reason, the creature used to be a mage. Moreover, it can bypass the defences of his mansion and easily kidnap Relestia. Kairos has a feeling that the gargoyle is at least a circle 8 spellcaster.

Thinking about the twisted energies from the magic remnant here, he is certain that the gargoyle belongs to the cult. Which means it is highly possible that it has the supernatural ability to interfere with this world’s laws. For the first time on Axis Mundi, Kairos felt his opponent is stronger than him and Relestia is in their hands now.

A sense of defeat tried to creep up his spine.

“I have no time to feel depressed. Aisa, I need your word. Can you help me with Veritus if he is a godling?”

A strong sense of affirmation shot across from the True Holy Dragon.

A smile finally appeared on his lips.

“I think it is time for us to meet with the Elf King,” Kairos said softly to himself. With those words, he quickly wrote down a few letters with all the things left to be done in the Blackened Soot Mountain and passed them to Leo before disappearing in a Circle 7 teleportation spell that will bring him all the way to the elven lands.