Silent, yet magnificent, it needed no words to embellish it. It was a stirring that reached straight into the soul, unhindered.
There was a sense of cleansing, too?
Ruger sensed that he could see this great river because he had transformed himself into a demon through a spell and endured that agonizing road on Cyclops Island that touched the deepest reaches of life; because he had helped the Golden-Horned Demon, Lord Smith, by disguising himself as the essence of his heart; because his spell had continually evolved; and, above all, because he had obtained a character of his true name. Yet what he felt at this moment, this stirring and this sensation, did not come from being a demon. Being a demon was merely his ticket to seeing this river.
Demons seemed to be a peculiar product of this river. They were special creations endowed with some sort of mission, and that uniqueness made it easier for them to see it. Yet ordinary living beings such as Ruger had an inexplicable connection to this river as well.
This river did not belong to demons alone.
As before, simply watching the river flow silently seemed enough to reveal certain things. The moment he had seen it last time, for instance, he had known that demons were born from it. This time, he understood a little more.
Feeling the chaos within himself, Ruger once again confirmed that his guess had been wrong. The seeds from which demons were born did indeed contain a unique chaos, but only the faintest trace. It was not this river that made demons so chaotic. That chaos influenced their essence and their temperament, but more than anything, it influenced their diversity. It was the endless Abyss that amplified their chaos. Yet the river had done nothing about