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Everything was beginning to feel strange now. Royo could sense a shivering change in his slowed perception. And it was slight, but he thought he could see a difference in the speed of everything. His hand was moving more quickly than it had been before. Seyos was falling faster. The information was spilling out of him more rapidly.

It was all still incredibly slow, just not as slow as it was.

And that suggested to Royo that this little slowdown event was going to end soon. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to wait for his hand to reach the Piercing Eye. The whole ordeal could break down at any moment.

Before the vision he’d just had, he would’ve considered that a good thing, but now he wasn’t so sure. Seyos was a wellspring of knowledge. There was still so much that Royo could see and learn here.

And perhaps, in spite of himself, he hated Seyos a little bit less now. Not enough to regret killing him, certainly, but Royo found it difficult not to pity him at all.

It was strange.

This was a level of understanding beyond simply knowing what Seyos had been through. Royo felt almost as if he had lived Seyos’ life himself. And this degree of emotional connection...

It was uncomfortable. He didn’t need it clouding his thoughts, right now. He needed to maintain his focus.

Thankfully, that was simple enough. He just had to remind himself that Seyos had tried to kill him, that he would have killed him if Royo hadn’t killed him first.

No amount of emotional thinking could counter that, as far as Royo was concerned.

Still, he didn’t want this to end just yet. He wanted to know more. He needed to.

About Ettol. Maybe the Piercing Eye could tell him something. Even if Seyos’ memories had been tampered with, even if they were in the midst of breaking down during this elongated moment, perhaps there was something to be gained here.

Royo had to try. He demanded more from the Eye. More detail. More anything.

The Eye provided.

Seyos’ knowledge was a mess. It was spreading out everywhere and vanishing into nothingness. So much information, bleeding out in all directions. None of it was coherent enough to formulate a vision like it had before, but Royo could still catch bits and pieces. And then he caught a glimpse of what he wanted.

A meeting between Ettol and Malast.

Words were being spoken in it, but they were incomprehensible. Silhouettes and even faces were being shown in it, but they were distorted and crumbling. Everything was off, like looking through some kind of swirling and cracked window, where even the light on the other side of it was fading away.

But even so, Royo was able to distinguish three things.

The first was that Ettol was not alone. He had a companion with him. A large, monstrous companion. The second, was that Ettol, judging from his skin tone, seemed to be a surface-dweller. But the third and final thing was, by far, what Royo found the most strange.

Ettol had a single horn on his head.