Chloe had actually considered finding a safe place to methodically set up the ritual, while sending an airship back to the island to bring more people over for support—and perhaps summon an evil god for the other side to see.
Unfortunately, there was no time.
She could feel that the bizarre existence within the palace was about to cross some kind of threshold. Chloe did not know what that was, but her intuition screamed out warnings, telling her to stay away from this place at all costs.
In the world of Transcendence, crossing a threshold often meant a complete transformation. Will was originally nothing more than an intangible personal thought, but once it breached reality's high walls, Cognitive Interference and pollution would descend. Pollution was merely a negative effect that accumulated slowly, but once the boundaries of will were crossed, Transcendents would go mad, their flesh contaminated and warped into monsters.
The monster was still something that could be defeated now. Once it crossed that threshold, the world might not necessarily be destroyed, but the entire Storm Ocean would certainly be buried with it.
Was she going to sacrifice herself for this?
Chloe was a cultist, the chief of Moth Chasing Flame, a member of Castel, and a powerful Transcendent. Stripped of all those identities, she was only a young girl.
There was too much for her to consider, too much for her to bear. Yet at this moment, as she looked at the monster in the palace, the first figure that rose in her heart was, for some reason, her mother.
Her mother had been an ordinary person, the daughter of a miller. She had married a craftsman in the city and given birth to Chloe.
Chloe could not remember the details very clearly. They were too far in