Sometime later, Kieron was down at the seventh belfry with Welthe and the other sentinel. Her name was apparently Evelyn.
Welthe was walking side by side to Kieron, while Evelyn was walking right behind him.
"Don't you have questions regarding the enemy?"
The one who said this was Welthe herself.
"No, not really. I know all I need to know."
Kieron suddenly kicked Welthe really hard, launching her many meters ahead, right into a wall headfirst and choked Evelyn with the celestial cord. It didn't even take long before she fell unconsious.
By the time Welthe got back on her feet, Kieron was already onto her.
"Why? Why are you doing this."
He did suddenly feel weaker, but that didn't stop him.
Before she could even do anything, Kieron cut her right arm from just above her elbow. Following that, he did the same to the left arm.
She let out a terrible screech, her eyes watering.
'That was too easy.'
"Because I want to."
Welthe fell to the sudden ambush. She couldn't even use her aspect properly before getting mauled. All she succeeded at was transfering some of Kieron's strength to herself.
She would have had a decent chance at running away if she knew I would attack randomly.
But she didn't know.
Kieron bound the Master with the Celestial Cord and dragged her into a superior cell. It was empty, but it was meant to keep even Master's insides.
He put the invisibility sentinel into the same cage too.
"Get her help to survive as long as you can. Heh."
'Aw, I didn't even get injured... I don't have an alibi now. Well, I guess I will stay here for a bit, pretend I healed. Or I can just injure myself purposefully too.'
Not that Kieron had successfully seperated one of the masters from the inner sanctum and made it weaker, Mordret would have an easier time killing more of them.
Kieron has a reason to trap these two here, for why he didn't kill these two himself.
But it couldn't be done yet.
For now though, he'd give them a little food and water to them to survive a few days, until all this is over.
***
He waited a few hours near by, letting Mordret finish his work above.
He continued to hear sound of battle and people screaming.
However, Caster felt inddiferent.
After the sounds stopped, Caster begins to walk back to the inner sanctum. It was about time he got rid of them all.
Upon reaching there he saw the terrible situation the camp was in. However, he didn't exactly focus on that. He let it become night, when there are only a few guards, to infiltrate the place again.
Just as he was about to enter, he saw a figure surrounded by corpses of four guards. It turned around and saw Caster before waving at him.
And then the slaughter began.
The figure went ahead and attacked at the weakest point of the camp and killed off over half of the Master's echoes and a big chunk of the awakened warriors.
Before Caster left the place with Welthe and Evelyn it had around seventy people, now, just by the end of the same day, there were only about forty people left. Caster himself had killed a few stragglers to get soul fragments.
The people at the camp don't have any chance at lasting for a week unless Mordret makes a big mistake.
'Wait a minute... I have been... killing... without any remorse. W-What? N-no... this... okay. Calm down. Calm down Kieron.'
He went and hid himself first of all.
Kieron was very conflicted upon finding out that he had been killing without remorse. It started when the people came to question him, and now this.
He had killed, and he hadn't bat an eye.
He suspected this was caused by him turning the fourth wall off.
'Am I... being affected by Caster's tendencies?'
He spent a couple days like that. A bit miserable, but not letting that get in his way. He systematically, killed any person he deemed to not be needed, and made it easier for Mordret to set up what he wanted.
It is now the morning of the fifth day here. There were only the two masters and twenty five sentinels left here.
Caster covered himself with a pool of blood, making it seem like he is injured.
Like that, he tried entering the camp.
"H-Help, I'm injured."
However as soon as he entered, the sentinels began attack him. The act didn't work and it looked like they had realised that Kieron was with Mordret.
He wasn't actually with him, but he was indeed helping Mordret so that assumption was obvious.
Pierce and Tracker were the two people who actually ran after Caster, using his aspect ability, was able to run away for a while before he stopped.
He had seperated Pierce and Tracker with the others and just then horrific screams could be heard.
They ran back to the camp.
Pierce simply crashed through the door, pulverizing it into a cloud of splinters.
What met them inside…
Was a bloodbath.
The encampment of the Lost was unrecognizable. Before, it had been clean and orderly, somewhat somber, but looking like a well-inhabited space.
Now, all Caster could see was blood.
The floor was slick with blood, and so were the walls. Even the ceiling was painted red. All of the hall was one vast, morbid pool of the crimson liquid, with severed limbs and mangled bodies sprawled in it, some of them mutilated so thoroughly that it was almost impossible to recognize them as former humans.
The sight of it was revolting and horrid.
…And in the center of this vile slaughterhouse, a lone figure was sitting cross-legged, a carefree smile on her lips.
The beautiful female sentinel looked different, too.
Her appearance was the same, but everything else about her — her bearing, her gaze, her presence — had changed. It was relaxed and friendly, almost polite. She looked… exactly how Mordret had sounded, back when he and Sunny spoke in the lightless abyss of the Sky Below.
The dissonance between her pleasant demeanor and the gruesome bloodbath surrounding her was ghastly, bizarre, and deeply disturbing.
When the two Masters appeared inside the hall, five Echoes weaving themselves from sparks of light around them, Mordret's smile widened.
He absentmindedly threw a knife cut out of a single piece of a pristine white stone into the air, then caught it again, and somehow made it disappear without a trace.
"...Ah. Sir Pierce, and the other Master. You have finally made it."
Then, he shifted his gaze and looked directly at Caster, who was hiding in the shadows near the door.
"...And you, Caster! Without your help this all would have been so much harder! I wonder why you've been helping me though... Still, what an occasion. I've waited for it for a long, long time."
He looked back to Tracker and Pierce, his smile remaining the same, but his eyes growing cold and frightening, as though there was a dark ocean of unfathomable depth hiding beneath their surface, full of harrowing terrors.
"...But not as long as I've waited to meet you. Actually I wanted to meet Master Welthe too, but I think she got killed by that guy over there."
Pierce growled, taking a step forward:
"You bastard!"
Mordret threw his head back and laughed.
"What? Don't you like my handiwork? I've tried so hard, just to impress you!"
He grinned, then slowly rose to his feet, the friendly smile disappearing from his face. Instead, an expression of dark, cold, murderous wrath appeared on it.
"Six years… six long years you have kept me in that empty mausoleum. You and the rest of the great, noble, illustrious clan Valor."
Suddenly, Caster interjected.
"Okay, Shush Mordret. I don't want to interrupt your revenge, but we don't have time, the Saint can come any instant. Let's join hands."
Of course, he didn't actually want to join hands, he just wanted to make it look like Caster doesn't want to be overtaken by his ability.
Mordret replied in his usual, playful, nonchalant voice.
"Hmm? Sure."
***
With the two divine aspect holders, and no other sentinels alive, the defending side just didn't have anything they could possibly do.
Tracker and Pierce both fell to the hands of the two divine aspect holders.
It wasn't even a proper fight.
They were annihilated.
Now Cas- Kieron and Mordret were the only people in the Night Temple, except the three people he had entrapped.
'I killed again...'
He pretended to continue his act of trusting Mordret.
"So… what now? How are we going to escape this place before the Saint arrives?"
The Prince of Nothing bent down, picked up a saber, and sighed.
"Oh, that… don't worry. I do have a plan. It's just… I am not sure that you are going to like it very much, Caster."
"What?"
Immediately he closed his eyes.
"...We don't have to do this, you know. There's no quarrel between us. We can just go our separate ways. Maybe even work together… uh, for a bit. Let's be friends?"
Mordret chuckled.
"It's hard to trust someone who refuses to look you in the eye, you know. Why don't you look at me, huh, Caster?"
"I'd rather not."
Mordret grinned.
"That is a pity. But oh well… to tell you the truth, we wouldn't have become real friends, anyway."
"Oh yeah? Why is that?"
The Prince of Nothing stopped smiling.
"Do you take me for a fool? Did you really think that I would not smell the stench of Dreamspawn on you? Huh? You better tell me, Caster… why did Asterion send you to the Chained Isles? Why hunt down my Beast? What is that abomination scheming now?"
"I have never met someone by the name of Asterion. I might 'stink' of of dreamspawn because there is another dreamspawn you know. Nephis."
Mordret frowned.
"Nephis… Nephis of the Immortal Flame clan? Wait, she is still alive?"
Kieron nodded, and the banished prince threw his head back, laughing.
"Oh! Oh, my! So there is another Dreamspawn walking the Dream Realm, and she is the daughter of Smile of Heaven and Broken Sword! This must be fate… ah, I wonder if the old bastard knows…"
Suddenly he stopped laughing and looked at Kieron with cold eyes.
"However, none of this changes anything. You were so obviously coming to Night Temple. Your goal is me isn't it? Tell me, why did you come here. I know it isn't the knife."
Kieron smiled, his eyes still closed.
"You caught me. It was through that memory of mine, book of books, that I found out there is a third divine aspect holder in this world. So I gathered all the information I could and tried unsealing you. I want to get rid of the great clans after all."
This was all lies by him, he just wanted Mordret to divert his attention.
"Why do you even need my body in the first place? We can try escaping together."
"Your aspect is also divine, and its movement based. I need something to escape the Saint don't I?"
Kieron opened his eyes. He can't win a battle with his eyes closed and he wants Mordret to try to possess him anyways.
Mordret's figure came into focus, a surprised and joyful expression on his face.
"You can try. But you won't succeed."
"Ah I know, you must be betting on that Fourth Wall of yours right? How unfortunate that it isn't working."
Kieron saw his reflection in his eyes, clad in the bleak black steel of the Blackplate armor. No… no, it wasn't him. There was another reflection hiding even deeper, almost lost in the darkness…
…And then, it was gone.
Something cold and alien entered him through the reflection, sinking deep into the dark depths of his soul.
A moment later, the world disappeared.