A Goddess's Doubts

Back when she had watched Greg use Dark Bracer atop the bell tower without anyone teaching him, Nightmare had been surprised, but she could still understand it.

After all, she had bound half her divinity and power to him, vastly raising the ceiling of his potential in a sense, and he himself seemed to possess a respectable affinity for dark magic.

Together, those two factors could bring forth an ultimate spell. It was rare, but not entirely impossible.

However, the second dark spell Greg had just used-Dark Wave-had completely shaken Nightmare's composure.

Dark Bracer had been hailed as the strongest shield even in that bygone era, the ultimate expression of shadow power's defensive and devouring capabilities.

Dark Wave, meanwhile, had been called the strongest spear, the pinnacle of shadow power's ability to corrode, penetrate, and inflict negative effects.

One defensive and the other offensive, these two spells even conflicted and opposed each other to a certain extent in their very nature.

Mastering even one was extraordinarily difficult, requiring exceptional compatibility and a rare opportunity.

Mastering two ultimate-tier spells with such poor compatibility at the same time?

Even in the glorious age when Nightmare had been active, with gods standing side by side and heroes emerging in droves, such a thing had been unheard of!

Even the other gods' counterparts had never set such a precedent.

Everything happening before her, combined with that exceedingly faint sense of familiarity that had flickered deep within her soul when Nightmare first met Greg, as though it came from the distant past...

All these anomalies seemed to point toward a possibility that even Nightmare found hard to believe:

This mortal named Greg Sass might have shared some unknown connection with her, the ruler of darkness, in the distant past.

Otherwise, how could his compatibility with two ultimate-tier spells, defying all common sense, be explained?

But new doubts followed.

Although she had spent some time asleep, Nightmare's memories in this regard were almost entirely intact.

She clearly remembered that she was still a virgin goddess. She had never been intimate with any mortal, much less left behind any offspring or bloodline.

Although she had possessed countless devout, even fanatical followers at the height of her faith, including no shortage of astonishing talents, not a single follower had ever reached the point of forming a "connection" with her.

So... what exactly was going on?

Who exactly was this Greg Sass?

Or rather, what exactly was the true nature of his soul?

Nightmare lurked silently within Greg's shadow, her spectral green eyes opening soundlessly in the darkness, reflecting his oblivious profile.

Confusion, curiosity, the faintest trace of scrutiny, and some emotion even she had yet to fully understand flowed slowly through her divine thoughts.

"Hey, why did you suddenly go quiet again?" Greg's voice reached her once more.

But Nightmare did not answer his question. Instead, she asked one of her own:

"Let me confirm with thee once more. Before our fates were bound, hadst thou truly never seen me?"

Caught off guard by the sudden, solemn questioning, Greg froze for a moment before replying irritably:

"That's right. Didn't I already answer that? What, do I have to trot out that tired old 'I've met this sister before' line, then pull out a piece of jade and smash it before you'll think it makes sense?"

Nightmare was silent for a moment before murmuring, "Then that truly is... strange."

"Strange? What's strange about it?" Greg pressed.

"...No, nothing."

Nightmare's voice returned to its ethereal calm, though that probing undertone had not entirely faded.

"Damn it! You and your fucking riddles!"

Greg protested inside his head, Don't you know stopping halfway is the worst kind of tease? Now I'll keep thinking about it! It's going to bug the hell out of me!

While Greg continued complaining about Nightmare's cryptic behavior, he and Sylvia finished traversing the safe passage.

The light before them shifted slightly as they officially entered the middle region of the Dungeon's first floor.

The overall structure here remained a network of underground caverns, but unlike the nearly barren upper region, with its rocks, moss, and underground rivers, the middle region showed signs of a richer ecosystem.

The rock walls were covered in a greater variety of fungi and moss that glowed faintly in different colors-purple, blue, pale green-like scattered stars.

Strangely shaped dark plants resembling ferns or low shrubs grew sparsely across the cavern floor and in cracks between the rocks. Their stems and leaves were thick and fleshy, their surfaces seemingly coated in a waxy layer to adapt to an underground environment without direct sunlight.

A faint scent filled the air, blending damp earth, minerals, and the fresh bitterness of some plant.

Visibility was slightly better than in the upper region. The faint light provided by the glowing organisms was more concentrated, outlining jagged rocks and deep, shadowy branching paths.

Although this was his first time setting foot here in person, Greg's familiarity with the original work's first few floors gave him a clear understanding of the overall layout and the routes of several main paths, so getting lost was not a concern.

"Wow... so this is the middle region? It looks completely different from up above!"

The environment, so different from the upper region, seemed to capture Sylvia's attention as well, briefly drawing her out of her own thoughts.

Curious, she approached a cluster of peculiar plants that gave off a pale blue glow, their leaves spreading like feathers. She studied them carefully, that soft blue light reflected in her pink eyes, a look of wonder on her face.

Greg stopped arguing too and began surveying their surroundings.

The unfamiliar sights of the middle region did feel refreshing, but soon, a strong sense that something was wrong replaced his initial curiosity.

It was too quiet.

Compared with the constant background rustling of low-level Monsters moving about in the upper region, this place was eerily silent.

Aside from their own footsteps and breathing, and the faint sound of dripping water from some unknown source in the distance, there was almost no sound of anything alive.

No Monsters roaring, no wings flapping, no claws or fangs scraping against rock.

Moreover, everywhere he looked, the ground and rock walls were quite clean, with almost no traces of any recent fierce battles.

That was extremely abnormal for a region that, in theory, contained more Monsters, stronger Monsters, and more frequent activity.

It was almost as though... something had frightened all the Monsters here into hiding.

This abnormal silence connected with the "noise coming from deeper down that did not originally belong in the Dungeon" Nightmare had mentioned earlier.

A familiar term slammed into Greg's mind.

A wide-area repulsion magic device-Screech.