Studying sleep meditation through Benson's Reverie, witnessing the completion of Stray Hair One's Divine Temple and the transformation into godhood-these were all ways for him to ensure his own progress and avoid being eaten when that visitor arrived. Beyond all that, however, he had always been concerned about his teacher's condition, and when his thoughts wandered, he would draw connections between his teacher's peculiar state and that uninvited visitor.
Sometimes, he also saw his teacher as a possible way forward.
"Hmm?"
Immanuel moved the book away from his face, looking slightly surprised by Ruger's question.
"If you insist on putting it that way, there was indeed a faint smile on that person's face," Immanuel said thoughtfully.
Ruger had only asked a simple question, without saying much about the Demon Wizard. His teacher had already deliberately avoided remembering anything about that being.
A smile?
Ruger pondered this. His experience had been the same as Soldrich's, whom he had parted with not long ago. Although meeting that being had not given him the feeling of being about to be eaten that had frightened Mona white, it had certainly not been enjoyable. There was no way he could have smiled.
Soldrich had also mentioned that when he was with his teacher, who was likewise a Two-Ring Wizard, and that being arrived, he had sometimes awakened first. He had personally witnessed his teacher, that elderly Two-Ring Wizard, waking up. Just as Ruger would have imagined, his face had shown discomfort and pain.
Ruger tilted his head.
His teacher Immanuel's words confirmed that the lingering smiles on those faces were not isolated cases.
In other words, those dead wizards, the ones who had died after the Demon Wizard's visit, must have seen something in their final moments that people like them-the survivors-had never seen.
"Ah!