"Medici, you can deny it all you want, but your reaction has already given you away."
Feeling the subtle stir from the Red Angel inside him, Luther chuckled.
The conclusion had taken him completely by surprise. But on reflection, it made a certain kind of sense.
"You have a remarkable imagination. I'm impressed."
Medici quickly suppressed his emotions, however. After that sarcastic remark, he retreated and refused to respond again.
"Afraid I'll pry more secrets out of you, so you're hiding?" Luther deliberately needled him. "Keep hiding. You're just like you were when you spent thousands of years holed up in those underground ruins."
But Medici said nothing. He seemed determined not to reveal another secret. Even when Luther threatened to give his spirit a bath in seawater, he refused to budge.
Forget it. At least his reaction has told me something...
Luther let the matter drop for now. If he soured their relationship too badly, Grazing flames would become difficult later. Still, he had reached one conclusion: this illusory sea really was connected to the Creator of the City of Silver.
That great deity had ended the Dark Age and brought light, only to fall suddenly for unknown reasons and become a stepping stone for several Kings of Angel. He alone had wielded the authority of several Adjacent Pathways. His power clearly exceeded that of an ordinary Sequence 0. He truly had been a god among gods...
How had a sea connected to such a being come to be linked with Luther?
And why did Adjacent Pathways exist in the first place? Did adjacent Beyonder Characteristics possess some property that drew them together into a single whole at a higher level? Could that bring all the Adjacent Pathways together?
Countless tangled thoughts surged through his mind, leaving Luther uneasy.