Chapter 131: Opposite sides of the world
Daito's laughter echoed through the desert, and unlike the nervous reaction the creature might have expected, there was no fear hiding beneath it. His body was barely holding together, his shoulder was damaged, his ribs were likely broken, and dragon energy still poisoned his system, yet somehow the situation had become amusing to him.
Gyoran turned toward him with a confused expression.
"What?"
Daito wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and pointed toward the horizon, where the colossal eyes continued staring down at them. "That's cute."
Gyoran stared at him.
"The giant monster, the scary voice, the whole 'Graveyard of Gods' thing..." Daito looked around the desert as though judging the scenery. "It's a little dramatic, don't you think?"
The enormous creature reacted immediately.
"YOU DARE—!"
"Shut up."
The voice stopped instantly.
Gyoran's eyebrows rose.
Daito sighed and looked toward the creature again. "Nyx wouldn't send me here like this."
Gyoran's expression changed.
"What?"
Daito gestured toward his ruined body.
"My shoulder's destroyed, my ribs are probably broken, I've got dragon energy poisoning, and I lost my sword. If Nyx genuinely believed this place contained monsters capable of eating mountains, she would've never let me jump through that gate."
The creature's eyes remained fixed on him.
Daito's smile slowly widened.
"And the biggest giveaway is you."
Gyoran's expression became serious.
Daito pointed at him. "You've been trying to control people for years. You manipulate perception, judgment, emotion, and even people's understanding of reality. You don't just dominate minds, Gyoran."
His eyes narrowed.
"You dominate narratives."
For the first time, Gyoran did not immediately respond. A faint distortion passed across the horizon. But Daito noticed it.
The enormous eyes flickered. The shape of the distant creature warped. The mountains surrounding them began bending unnaturally, their outlines breaking apart like reflections disturbed by water.
Daito laughed quietly. "So stop trying to scare me."
CRACK!
The spooky sky shattered. The enormous eyes vanished. The ancient voice disappeared.
The mountains stopped trembling, and the monstrous shape that had dominated the entire horizon collapsed like a broken image being erased from reality. The illusion fragmented into countless pieces of light before disappearing completely.
The desert returned to normal. Or at least, as normal as an endless crimson wasteland filled with gigantic carcasses could possibly be.
The black stone formations remained. The enormous skeletons remained.
Fwooosh.....
The wind continued dragging sand across the dunes. But the impossible god-eating creature was gone. For several seconds, neither Daito nor Gyoran said anything.
Then Gyoran slowly began clapping.
"Impressive."
Daito shrugged. "I've met scarier people."
Gyoran glanced at him. "Like Monday Valhalla?"
Daito's expression immediately changed. "...Okay, fair point."
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Gyoran smiled genuinely. There was no manipulation behind it, no arrogance, and no performance for an audience. He simply smiled like a young man who had unexpectedly found something amusing in the middle of an impossible situation.
Then his expression became thoughtful.
"You really are his nephew."
Daito's smile disappeared.
He turned toward Gyoran. "...Whose?"
Gyoran looked genuinely surprised. "You don't know?"
Daito frowned. "Know what?"
"The Greyhell family."
Fwoo....
The wind swept across the desert between them. Daito's expression changed slightly, and Gyoran noticed.
"You act as though you've never heard of them."
"I've heard of them."
"Then why are you surprised?"
"Because nobody talks about them like that."
Gyoran stared at him for several seconds before almost smiling again. "Nobody?"
He pointed toward Daito.
"You're a Greyhell."
"So?"
Gyoran lowered his hand slowly. "So?"
The disbelief in his voice was almost comical.
"Daito, the Greyhells are taught in children's history classes."
Daito's eyes narrowed.
Gyoran continued before he could respond. "The Greyhells were war heroes. When humanity fought Disorder, your family stood among the people who became symbols of resistance. They led soldiers, protected cities, and fought monsters before those monsters even had names."
The desert suddenly felt quieter as Daito listened.
Gyoran's voice became more serious.
"They stood against things most people today don't even know existed. They became a beacon of hope during one of the darkest periods in human history."
Daito's expression remained controlled, but something inside him had shifted.
The name Disorder carried weight.
It was a word buried beneath decades of history, a name rarely spoken in modern society and almost never discussed in detail. Yet it was also the same name connected to the mystery Daito had been chasing for so long.
His own family had been part of that history. And somehow, he had never truly understood what that meant.
There was only one person who had ever given him pieces of the truth and that person was his uncle.
Ntate A. Greyhell.
The man who had raised him.
The man who had taught him swordsmanship, discipline, tactics, survival, and the responsibility that came with carrying the Greyhell name.
Daito finally frowned. "Why are you telling me this?"
Gyoran looked toward the horizon. His expression became strangely distant.
"You asked why I chose this path."
Daito nodded.
Gyoran took a slow breath. "I may not look it, but I possess one of the strongest Savage Powers ever recorded."
Daito glanced at him. "You definitely don't look it."
Gyoran looked down at himself.
"...Thank you."
"You look thirty."
"I'm twenty."
Daito stared at him.
"...What?"
"I'm twenty."
"No."
"Yes."
"You look like you file taxes recreationally."
Gyoran's mouth opened, but no response came immediately. After a moment, he sighed. "Fair."
The brief humor faded as quickly as it had appeared.
Gyoran turned toward the distant horizon. "I was born gifted. I possessed power from the moment I entered this world, yet twelve years ago, none of that mattered because I was dying."
Daito's expression became serious.
"What happened?"
"I was starving," Gyoran replied. "I lived in the outer ruins. I stole food when I could find it, slept inside broken buildings, and watched people disappear every week. Nobody cared whether we survived or not."
His hands slowly tightened.
"Then one day, something attacked our settlement."
Daito remained silent.
"A Freaker."
The word carried a different weight now.
Gyoran looked down at his hands as though he could still see the memories written across them.
"It slaughtered everyone."
His voice became quieter.
"I was eight years old."
The desert wind moved between them.
"I remember running. I remember hearing people scream. I remember hiding and thinking that I was going to die."
Gyoran closed his eyes for a moment.
"Then he arrived."
Daito's chest tightened. Somehow, before Gyoran even spoke the name, Daito already knew.
"Ntate A. Greyhell."
Gyoran smiled.
It was the first time Daito had seen him smile while speaking about someone else.
"He killed the Freaker."
Gyoran paused then he corrected himself.
"No. He erased it."
Daito's eyes widened slightly that sounded exactly like his uncle.
"Afterward, he stayed," Gyoran continued.
"He didn't have to. He could have left the settlement behind and continued on his way, but he stayed. He helped rebuild what had been destroyed, helped feed the surviving children, trained the people who remained, and taught us how to defend ourselves."
Daito stared at him.
Gyoran's expression softened as he continued speaking about the man who had once saved his life.
"I had never seen anyone like him. He didn't care whether someone was powerful or weak. He didn't care whether they were important or forgotten. If someone needed help, he helped them."
Daito's fingers slowly tightened around the broken combat knife.
Gyoran looked at him.
"Then I became his student."
Daito froze.
"What?"
"I trained under him."
Daito stared.
"What?"
"For three years."
Daito's expression became one of genuine disbelief. "What?!"
Gyoran laughed softly. "That was my reaction too."
Daito stood completely still as his mind struggled to process what he had just heard.
The uncle who had taught him. The man who had shaped his life. The man whose teachings had become the foundation of Daito's combat ability and philosophy.
That same man had once trained Gyoran Chitsujo. The Boss of Silver Moon. The mastermind behind countless tragedies. The man who had enslaved Champagne. The man responsible for Playmore's destruction. The enemy standing directly in front of him.
For the first time since entering this dimension, Daito genuinely had no response. Gyoran noticed the expression on his face and smiled, but this time there was no arrogance in it, there was regret.
"You know what's funny?"
Daito slowly looked at him.
Gyoran turned toward the endless crimson horizon. "The same man taught both of us how to save the world."
The wind began moving again, carrying sand across the ancient graveyard while the two men stood several feet apart, each trapped inside memories of the same teacher and completely different lives.
Gyoran's smile became bitter.
"And somehow..."
He looked back at Daito.
"...we ended up on opposite sides of it."
For several seconds, Daito said nothing.
He simply stared at Gyoran, trying to reconcile the enemy he had spent so long fighting with the eight-year-old survivor who had once been saved by the same man who had raised him.
The truth was impossible to ignore.
Their paths had begun from different places, but somewhere along the way, both of them had been touched by the same Greyhell.
One had chosen to protect the world.
The other had decided to force the world to acknowledge him.
To be continued...