endless path, infinite cosmos

chapger 32

Vahn continued running in the direction of the Guild while checking the time within the system. At his current pace, he would still need around 20 minutes to reach the Guild, which would leave him less than an hour and a half to make his way to the City gates and back to the Inn.

He began to sweat after realizing he would most likely be unable to finish everything in time. It would take several minutes to wait in line at the Guild, and even if he was seen immediately upon his arrival it would take time to process the exchange. As his worries began to compound, Vahn felt energy begin to slowly release from his abdomen as his speed began to slowly increase.

("I can use [Will of the Emperor] to increase my speed!?") Because he hadn't been switching between the two recently, he was unaccustomed to the differences between his normal state and empowered state. He knew the skill seemed to increase his speed, but thought it was just a result of the increased perception and mobility within the domain.

While fully activating the skill, Vahn resolved to perform more experiments over the next few days as he trains Lili. After completely activating [Will of the Emperor] he noticed his speed more than doubled and began to have hope that there was enough time to complete everything.

In his gleeful state of mind, he hadn't been paying attention to the looks of the surrounding pedestrians. The moment he activated [Will of the Emperor] they felt a suppressive wave pass through them. They stared in horror as the boy ran with a terrifying speed through the City streets with a demonic grin on his face. Weaker civilians even had hallucinations that the boy was the grim reaper himself come to collect their souls, which resulted in some of them passing out on the spot.

Vahn continued forward blissfully unaware of the rumors he would cause to circulate in the following days. His only focus was arriving at the Guild as fast as possible, so he began using some of the alleyways he had previously mapped to circumvent the populated roads. With his minimap and the mobility he had polished within the forest and dungeon, he was able to easily navigate through the various corridors without losing speed.

When he was close to his destination, Vahn began to further increase his speed due to his excitement. Unfortunately, even with the increased perception brought about by the skill, he was unable to prevent himself from colliding with the body of a person that had just walked by the entrance of the alleyway. At the last moment, he tried to shift his weight to avoid a direct collision and ended up losing his balance after bumping into the unsuspecting passerby and slamming into the ground. Hard.

He sat on the ground in a daze, unable to recover from the near head-on-collision. From an area behind him, he could hear the sound of a woman addressing him.

"Hey kid, are you okay?"

After shaking his head a bit, Vahn looked towards the source of the voice. He fell into a daze after seeing who had been speaking to him. Looking towards him with an expression of intrigue stood a character he was familiar with from the manga.

Probably due to her identity as a Goddess, she looked nearly identical to her manga counterpart. She stood at 165cm with matching red hair and eye. She was garbed in casual attire, wearing a loose linen blouse and black pants which seemed to hug her figure. On her arms and legs were a pair of brown knee-high boots and black gloves that went past her elbows. Her most striking features were her large breasts that peaked through the open collar of her blouse, and the large black eye-patch covering the right half of her face.

It was Hephaestus, Master Smith and Goddess of the 3rd ranked Hephaestus Familia. Vahn knew that she would be the one to receive Hestia in the future and that she would one day forge the living dagger for Bell which would aid his monstrous growth.