Chapter 161: Departing
Chapter 161: Departing
"It’s not a divine weapon," Hestia said before he could ask. "Do not treat it like one."
Rohan sent Hestia a glance regardless. "Why gift this to me then?" Rohan looked down at the Spear. It was a sturdy weapon, but that was all there was to it.
"Your own weapon will not be good enough where you are headed." Was all Hestia replied.
For some reason, that sounded more reassuring than being told it could split mountains. But at the same time, it was terrifying — especially coming from Hestia.
His own F rank Commander tier Spear wouldn’t be good enough?
’Just what kind of place is she sending me to!?’
He took a step back and tested the weight. His body responded. Not as sharply as in the Origin Realm, but enough that the motion felt familiar. Enough that, for the first time since finding himself in this strange temple, Rohan felt like himself again.
Hestia watched him lower the spear.
"You are still weak," she said.
Rohan sighed. "And there it is."
"Compared to what waits beyond this realm, yes. You are ignorant, unregistered, politically nonexistent, cosmologically suspicious, and carrying traces of a foreign system that some Gods would kill to study."
Rohan stared at her.
"Please stop listing my problems."
"No," Hestia said, "But you are no longer helpless."
Rohan’s grip on the spear tightened.
Her words settled over him more deeply than he expected.
No longer helpless.
Maybe that was the best he could ask for considering his situation.
He turned back toward the portal.
The Ashen Marches waited on the other side. Dark land. Violet sky. Unknown dangers. Somewhere beyond that bleak horizon, perhaps impossibly far away, was the anchor point of the overlapping universes. The place where his universe and this one had scraped against each other hard enough to drag him through. ’Why does this happen to me of all people...’
And somewhere beyond that, if he was lucky, was a way home.
Rohan took one step toward the portal, then stopped.
He looked back at Hestia.
There were a dozen things he could ask. A hundred, maybe. About gods, systems, the Ashen Marches, the Great System, her motives, her limits, whether she truly intended to help him or was simply using him to solve a problem too inconvenient to handle directly.
But only one question came out.
"Why are you helping me this much?"
Hestia was silent.
The portal hummed softly between them, its light reflecting in her silver-white eyes.
At last, she said, "Because you arrived at my hearth."
Rohan frowned.
"That’s it?"
Hestia smiled. She knew Rohan was wiser than to take her words at face value so easily.
"No." She said.
Her gaze shifted past him, through the portal, toward the bleak world beyond.
"Because whatever caused this overlap threatens more than you. Because your existence is proof that a boundary thought absolute has failed. Because if I send you out powerless, you will die before learning anything useful — both to you, and to me."
Rohan gave a slow nod.
That sounded more like the practical answer he expected.
Then Hestia looked back at him.
"And because a lost mortal who still wishes to return home should not be abandoned."
Rohan froze.
For some reason, that landed harder than all the talk of systems and universes.
"Thanks," he said quietly.
"You may thank me by surviving."
"That’s a very godlike way to accept gratitude."
Rohan huffed, but there was less bitterness in it now.
He faced the portal fully.
The new spear rested in his right hand. The cloak shifted lightly around his shoulders. The token of Hestia’s hearth sat warm against his chest, close to his own heart, as it just felt right to place it there.
His Origin Realm status was still gone.
He was still stranded in a universe that did not know him, did not welcome him, and apparently had multiple gods who might consider him either a threat, a curiosity, or raw material.
But his body was not powerless. For now, that would have to be enough. Rohan drew in one final breath of the temple’s still air.
Then he stepped through.
The first thing Rohan felt was wind.
It slammed into him hard enough that his cloak snapped behind him, carrying with it the smell of ash, iron, and something bitter he could not identify. His boots struck cracked black ground. The portal’s light spilled around him for half a second, painting the barren plain gold.
Then it collapsed behind him.
Rohan spun.
The doorway back to Hestia’s sanctuary shrank into a single point of white flame.
For the briefest instant, he saw Hestia standing beyond it, serene and distant, framed by the pale temple and its impossible calm.
Then the flame winked out.
Rohan was alone.
The Ashen Marches stretched in every direction.
The sky above was violet. It churned slowly, as though bruised clouds had been smeared across a ceiling too high to measure. Thin streaks of silver light drifted between them, moving against the wind. Far away, the jagged mountains loomed, their edges glowing faintly with red seams as if something beneath them still burned.
Rohan tightened his grip on the spear.
The warmth in his chest remained.
He exhaled.
"Alright," he muttered to the empty plain. "Find the boundary. Avoid gods. Don’t die. Simple."
A low sound rolled across the Marches.
Rohan went still.
It was not thunder.
Something far to the east moved behind a ridge of black stone. Something large enough that the ground trembled a moment later beneath his feet.
His fingers adjusted around the spear.
For a heartbeat, fear surged up his spine.
Then his body responded.
Not perfectly. Not with the full confidence he remembered from the Origin Realm. But enough. His stance lowered. His breath steadied. His eyes sharpened on the horizon.
Rohan swallowed.
Then, slowly, a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
But it was there.
"Of course," he said. "The first thing I see."
The distant shape moved again. Rohan turned slightly, angling away from the tremor rather than toward it. He was not here to fight the first monster he found.
He was here to survive.
With one last glance at the empty air where the portal had vanished, Rohan began walking across the Ashen Marches, following the faint, impossible pull of the boundary between universes.