[Thank you for your help, little Dragoness. You can move back down to the ke if you want now.]

  [I’m not little. A single tooth of mine is rger than you.] The Great Protector snorted.

  [Please, you are a child by dragon standards. Now, do you want to bask in the vain glory of our victory in front of the vilgers, or do you wish to just dive back down into the water?]

  The Dragoness expressed her fury with a loud, angry roar into the air before speedily diving underwater. The roar seemed to work as a signal to the clouds that had poputed the sky. They immediately started dissipating, revealing the simuted sun of the subdimension that was almost about to set in a dusky scenery.

  As for Alex, he made it seem like he jumped from the back of the dragon just in time and nded at the shore, where the survivors of the previous battle were all gawking at him. The only exception was Ying Nan, who had a look of scathing fury on her face. Her expression made it clear that she bmed him for whatever happened.

  Alex’s eyes then moved to Natasha, who had Xialing in her arms as the child looked on at the ke with a bnk gaze, still in shock.

  The stalemate sted for a few seconds before Ying Nan finally spoke up.

  “Ta Lo has won a great battle today. One filled with many losses and sacrifices. But today. We have finally rid ourselves of the pgue that had infested our ancestors’ nd many millennia ago. For now, go. Rest. Recover. Grieve. We will hold the st rites for our fallen tonight. As for you two. Follow me.” She gave a pointed look at Alex and Natasha.

  They made their way through the bodies of the fallen and the colpsed buildings before approaching a sort of Great Hall of the vilge. Despite everything, the Hall didn’t seem to have even a speck of damage. Not from the battle, not from the earthquake, and not even from time it seemed. It seemed completely pristine, as if untouched by everything around it.

  “I didn’t realize this building was built with magic to keep it safe. Why were the kids not evacuated here and were instead sent to the forest?” Alex asked casually.

  The woman merely grunted in response before walking in through the rge set of double doors at the front.

  Alex shared a look with Natasha before turning to Xialing in her arms. He extended his hand forward and held the girl’s hand.

  “Do you hate me, Xialing?” He asked her, not really expecting a response. She was still in shock from the events from before. After devouring the dragon, Alex finally knew just how much it was influencing Xialing. It had been whispering things in the girl’s ears until the very end.

  “No …” The girl finally moved to shake her head, but that single word seemed to sap away all her strength. She weakly buried her face in Natasha’s neck, too tired to speak any further.

  Alex looked at Natasha once again, only to see a sense of relief in his host’s eyes. He patted Xialing’s back before combing her hair as the girl finally went to sleep. He even used ?Hypnosis? to make sure that her sleep would be a dreamless one.

  Mind stuff, man … It’s the bane of my existence. Alex shook his head. The only solutions for the situation he had were things that could work after the fact, like purging her memory — either by using ?Hypnosis? or by using his old brute force method. None of his methods was good enough to allow him to directly block external psionic attacks other than utilizing the Mind Stone, which was far too overkill for something like this. It already gave him a passive defense against mind attacks that extended to his primary hosts, but the others were all still vulnerable.

  “Please come inside,” Ying Nan’s voice broke Alex out of his musing as he held Natasha’s hand and finally entered the magically reinforced hall.

  “What’s up?” Alex asked nonchantly, as if the woman wasn’t about to bme him for the death of a quarter of her people.

  “Did you have a hand in what happened?” The woman asked ftly with a steely expression on her face. She faced them while standing beside a small shrine at the corner of the hall. It had a picture showcasing a woman who looked a little like Xialing.

  “Is that Ying Li?” Alex asked instead. “Xialing’s mother.”

  “She was,” The woman nodded. “Now answer my question.” She spoke through her clenched teeth. It seemed that she was heavily suppressing herself from shing out at Alex.

  “It’s not a yes or no answer. I did not intend for what happened to happen the way it did. While I was pnning to kill that dweller guy, it would have been from within the seal itself. The prior events like that earthquake and the shockwave that wiped out every weaker subdimension in the universe were not events I had pnned, if that’s what you’re asking,” Alex said with a sigh.

  “You’re not telling me everything.” Ying Nan seemed to detect an omission in Alex’s words.

  “I did have a hand in that shockwave. But,” Alex raised his hand to stop the woman from shing out, “before you sh out at me, I did not intend for the events to go in that manner. The Chaos Dimension has been wiped off of the face of the Universal Reality. It doesn’t exist anymore, alongside countless subdimensions that were too weak to hold up against the shockwave that its destruction released. The casualties would have included this pce had I not intervened. You wouldn’t even have known what wiped you all out were it not for me.”

  “That’s why you were nowhere to be seen while my people were being sughtered …” While the woman’s words were accusatory, her tone was not combative and instead seemed slightly more agreeable.

  “Yes. Plus, if you look on the bright side, the biggest danger to your continued survival has now been abated,” Alex said.

  “At the cost of seventy-nine people. Warriors. Brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, need I continue?” The woman’s controlled demeanor broke for a moment, and she all but screamed at Alex. “I am grateful for your help, Mr. Apex. Don’t get me wrong. But please. Do not tell us to look on the bright side. We have sacrificed too much today.”

  “Understandable. Oh, by the way, something you should note. We will be leaving within the next week.” Alex said.

  “Where will you be going?” The woman asked, already aware that they weren’t going to stay for too long. “Try as I might, you will not agree to let Xialing stay in Ta Lo.” She shook her head in defeat. “Instead, now that our people’s mission has been completed, we can move out of the bubble that we have spent our lives in. So, I wish to continue to connect with my niece.”

  “Nowhere you can reach us,” Alex shook his head. “We will be moving to another pnet. I have my base of operations there.”

  The woman’s expression hardened at his words, her eyes honing in on Xialing. She spoke with a complex expression, “Will you be returning?” She didn’t attempt to pry into their information, having read into Apex’s secretive nature during the time he spent training here.

  “Of course,” Alex nodded. “After all, Xialing still has her family here: Her father, brother, and Aunt especially. As much as she may show a strong front, she is just a child of twelve years.”

  “I heard her mumbling some concerning things during your battle against the Dweller-in-Darkness,” The woman spoke about one of her biggest concerns as Natasha nodded.

  “Ever since we entered this vilge, she’s been hearing a voice in her head,” Natasha told the Aunt. “Specifically, the voice of her mother.”

  The woman’s brows shot up at Natasha’s words. “You mean …”

  “It was that dragon. It was maniputing her. It filled her head with lies about her mother being alive and stuck behind that seal. Just st night, she threw a horrible fit when we were talking about leaving this pce.”

  “That means that it’s better for her to leave Ta Lo instead …” Ying Nan spoke defeatedly, realizing that this was the pce where Xialing’s trauma would be the worst. “If she stays here, she will constantly be reminded of the dragon’s words. For a child to go through such an event. And that too, after already having lost her mother a few years prior,” She couldn’t imagine how much the experience had traumatized the girl.

  “You don’t need to worry about her,” Alex said before giving Natasha a fond look. “My partner here is already very attached to Xialing. We will take care very good care of her.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” She nodded. “Now, please excuse me. I need to prepare for the st rites of the fallen. As for everyone’s accommodations. Until the rebuilding is completed, we will be taking refuge in this very hall.” Leaving those words, the woman left Alex, Natasha, and the sleeping Xialing alone.

  After the woman left, Natasha opened her mouth, “How about we take a walk?” She asked Alex.

  “Let’s go.”

  Addyctive