Chapter 1182: 169. Set Right

“Hiss... How long did I sleep?”

A ray of morning light fell across his face. Muen woke in a daze, the pain of a hangover assaulting his brain and even making his sense of time blur.

It had been a long time since he had felt this way... waking up the next day with a headache because he had drunk too much.

No, it would be more accurate to say that ever since arriving in this world, aside from certain unavoidable circumstances, someone as self-disciplined as him had never fallen into such depravity.

Muen gave a bitter smile and shook his head hard. He quickly cleared his mind and roughly realized that it was already the next morning.

Normally, with his physical constitution, ordinary alcohol could not possibly leave him in such a sorry state. But by the latter half of the banquet, the whole thing had completely turned into a pure drinking party.

They had even followed Miss Dragon’s suggestion and set up a stove on the spot to distill the alcohol. The liquor afterward was extremely strong, so strong that merely approaching it made the evaporating alcohol sting the eyes like mad.

It was comparable to rectified spirit.

Fortunately, no matter how strong the liquor was, it could only make him slightly drunk. A little sleep was enough for him to recover. As for the Notata people who had challenged him to drinking contests... Muen looked over and saw a dense mass of people sprawled across last night’s banquet grounds.

None of them had woken up yet.

They did not possess Muen’s powerful recovery and resistance. Even the chief, who had boldly slapped his chest last night and insisted on challenging him one-on-one, had probably been unused to distilled liquor and had refused to use battle aura to resist the drunkenness out of pride, so he had gone down after only a few rounds.

If even the chief had ended up like that, naturally the others had fared no better.

Hmph. A bunch of weaklings.

Muen looked down on them in his heart, then tiptoed around these unconscious defeated opponents and walked to the other side.

The only fiery-red figure who had defeated him last night was still standing there, as though she had not slept all night.

“Are you all right?”

Muen carefully moved closer and observed Miss Dragon’s still-blurred face, which seemed never to change.

“You drank more last night than all of us combined.”

“Was it a lot?”

Hamreign’s statue-like figure finally moved slightly. She tilted her head and glanced at Muen.

“Oh, right. I forgot that for humans, that really was an extraordinary amount.”

“You drank that much and still didn’t get drunk?” The corner of Muen’s eye twitched.

“Poison has no effect on me, and alcohol has no effect on me either. Since a thousand years ago, I have never been drunk again.”

The golden eyes that had not caused anyone pain or pressure since the banquet began yesterday flickered faintly. No one knew what this dragon, who had lived through a thousand years, had remembered.

She murmured in a voice so faint it was almost imperceptible,

“Perhaps... this too can be considered one of the curses of this so-called ‘strongest’ status of mine.”

“Calling it a curse is too dramatic. You haven’t seen what someone truly cursed by alcohol looks like.”

Muen heard her, shrugged, and expressed his disagreement.

Judging from the strength of last night’s liquor alone, a certain empress would have transformed directly into a humanoid tyrannosaur if she had stood there for a while. Unless someone put a pair of cute cat ears on her, blood would inevitably have flowed like a river.

Compared with her, Hamreign, who had both a high alcohol tolerance and good drinking behavior, was unbelievably good in this regard.

...Fortunately, that was the case.

After all, a certain empress was merely a humanoid tyrannosaur.

This one was an actual dragon.

Their destructive power was not remotely on the same level.

“...”

Hamreign did not answer. Perhaps she could not imagine what being “cursed by alcohol” meant, or perhaps she simply did not care.

She merely stood there, gazing at a certain place for a long time.

Muen was puzzled and followed her line of sight. He discovered that it was not some beautiful and moving scenery, nor some special and indescribable sight. The place Hamreign was looking at was merely the village enveloped by the gentlest morning sunlight.

The village was only an ordinary village. Earthen walls and thatched houses possessed no particular beauty. It was simply that, beneath the faint morning light, the place appeared especially quiet and peaceful.

Muen naturally could not understand why such a tiny village was worth looking at for so long. Yet at that moment, for no apparent reason, he thought of Miss Dragon last night.

At this moment, she was as quiet as the village itself. How different was she from the version of herself who had danced with him last night, so passionate and intense?

And going back even further, how different was she from the one with the violent temper, the ruthless attacks, and the habit of resorting to killing at the slightest provocation?

The differences seemed enormous, or perhaps there was no difference at all. It was only that...

“We should leave.”

“Oh.”

Muen was still deep in thought, so he only responded casually... It was not until the pressure of the wind swept over him that he abruptly came to his senses.

No way... again?!

“Wait! I’m not ready yet...”

He instinctively tried to flee, but after doing this so many times, Hamreign was already thoroughly practiced at it. Naturally, there was no chance of him escaping.

In the blink of an eye, Muen was once again “captured” by a dragon claw.

He looked utterly devoid of hope.

The dragon claw tightly restrained him. As the violent wind blew past, Muen could not help feeling an urge to shed bitter tears.

These days of being casually grabbed and carried around... when would they ever end?

Surely it would not be like this every single time from now on.

That would truly be... All right, thinking about it carefully, it was not actually that unbearable.

He was already used to it.

...Damn it!

Fortunately, Hamreign once again did not “hold” him like that for long. Once her enormous dragon body rose high into the sky and entered stable flight, the tips of her claws crossed, forming a cage between them once more.

Muen could at least be considered to have gained some basic “human rights.”

“You’re not saying goodbye?”

Muen lowered his head and looked down at the “oasis” growing smaller and smaller below.

“The people here all like you. If you leave without saying goodbye, they’ll be sad.”

“I have no habit of saying goodbye.”

The black dragon appeared completely without attachment to that place.

“Besides, there is no need to say goodbye. I will never meet those villagers again. If we truly do meet again... it will probably be because they have also been Polluted, and I have come to destroy them.”

“...That’s true.”

After a moment of silence, Muen nodded.

“Then it would be better not to say goodbye after all.”

“Hold tight.”

Without continuing the topic, Hamreign merely gave a cold warning. Muen immediately felt her speed increase by more than one level.

The scenery around them rapidly receded. It moved back so quickly that it became difficult for the naked eye to capture, producing distorted images. The white of the mist and the blue of the sky mixed together like an overturned palette, without the slightest beauty.

They reached their destination faster and more easily than Muen had imagined.

This time, no monster suddenly appeared, nor did any special accident occur. Hamreign began to slow down steadily and hovered above a sea of mist.

“This is the place.”

“I don’t see any exposed area.”

Muen looked around.

Even evil believers could not possibly survive in an absolute dead zone. Therefore, the target they were searching for this time had to be a surviving “gap” untouched by the mist, like Annabawei and the “oasis” from earlier.

But after searching carefully, Muen did not find any such place. All he could see was endless mist.

“They know I have been searching for them, so naturally they made preparations. It seems this is yet another illusion formation designed specifically against me, perfectly concealing itself within the mist,” Hamreign said.

“I see.”

Muen nodded.

He finally understood why, back in Annabawei, Miss Dragon had been unable to find something as large as Annabawei. Once this mist covered a place, even an Evil God could only stare helplessly from above.

The mist was too thick, and some special power seemed to be mixed into it. Muen had tested it before. The rate at which perception was consumed inside far exceeded normal, and he could probably only probe a range of several dozen meters.

Compared with such an enormous sea of mist, several dozen meters was pitifully small. Thinking about it that way, even Miss Dragon probably had no way to penetrate deeply into it through perception alone.

“So Priscilla’s main base is beneath this mist, right?” Muen asked.

“Yes. But strictly speaking, her hiding place used to be beneath it,” Hamreign said.

“Used to be? Is it another time discrepancy caused by hiding in the gaps of time?” Muen rubbed his chin.

“So that ancient relic did not affect the entire region.”

That made sense. Considering the size of the entire Shattered Sea, if that ancient relic were truly powerful enough to affect all of it, Muen would also feel there was no point continuing.

Who could possibly defeat a pure stat monster like that...

“It’s time to work.”

“Stop rushing me. I know.”

Muen revealed the miserable expression of an overworked employee and slowly raised his hand.

Dong—

An ancient and profound bell rang from an incomparably distant and ethereal place.

Vast magical power poured into the alchemical core. As heat flared behind him, Muen once again connected with the existence of the Eternal Clock.

At that moment, the intangible existence known as “time” seemed to gain a real trajectory in his eyes. His gaze swept across the vast clouds and mist, and faint colors of a different kind began to appear within the pure white.

“There really are traces of time power being used.”

Muen frowned slightly.

“But this time, they’re far more concealed than before.”

Last time, merely by carrying him through jumps in the void, Miss Dragon had been able to use the ripples produced by time power to lock onto a rough location. But this time, even though Miss Dragon had tracked Priscilla’s mark to an area this close, Muen still felt that those traces were difficult to capture.

They were like a loach burrowing back and forth through the heavy mist.

“You can’t do it?” Hamreign asked coldly.

“Miss Dragon... I’m a man. A real man!”

Muen’s face darkened.

“A man never says he can’t do it!”

“Then hurry.”

“...”

Muen took a deep breath and directly sank his consciousness into his mental space.

Because Miss Dragon was present, the Black Book had once again hidden itself somewhere unknown. Only that majestic Black Sun still hung high in the void.

Muen opened his eyes.

Or rather... the “Black Sun” opened its eyes.

Looking down upon the mortal world.

Dong!

Around Muen, the flow of everything gradually slowed until it nearly came to a stop.

The ancient and solemn bell echoed, as though carrying a sneer from the distant past.

So what if that ancient relic was powerful?

So what if the arrangement left by those survivors was exquisite?

So what if the disguise before the gap in time was complex?

Were you really trying... to oppose true Authority?

Dong!

The bell rang again!

The false things before his eyes were rapidly stripped away. The originally dim traces of time became clear at astonishing speed, until the most original network of paths fully appeared before the “eyes” of the Black Sun.

All disguises, all tributaries, were utterly useless before the true torrent of time!

This was not simple suppression through superior values.

This was absolute suppression through mechanics!

The phantom clock appeared once more. Muen took out the object Alan had given him earlier.

A minute hand.

Muen placed the minute hand onto the phantom clock, then gently... turned it backward.

Click.

There was no need to slowly reverse it bit by bit like last time. This time, the time indicated upon the phantom clock returned naturally to the point where it should have existed.

The “gap” that existed only within time was corrected and set right once again!