The Night that (2): The sea cried.

EDIT: The clock was set to release the chapter at 11 PM instead of 1 PM. I only noticed when I got home and saw there were no comment notifications. Sorry about that—I set it up while I was half-asleep.

As always, if anyone wants to read 3/7 chapters ahead, or simply support me, this is possible on my (P)(A)(T). If not, I still thank you for reading my stories, thank you very much!

The next chapter will be released on February 27th.

Good Night, and enjoy the reading!

(P)(A)(T)/CalleumArtori

[...]---[...]

I spent some time exploring BlueHarbor.

There was nothing alive in the village—something I noticed instantly. The only sounds were those of the rain and, unlike other places, the crashing of ocean waves, which struck the sand aggressively.

The color of the water shifted: sometimes dark blue, an abyss I could only perceive because my eyes had adjusted to total darkness...

“Craaack!”

...Sometimes blood-red, whenever lightning illuminated the scene. There was a lot of lightning. The ocean seemed angry.

I stared at the sea from a distance. Each wave, each motion of its waters. Strangely and curiously, I couldn’t feel anything there. No kind of ‘gaze,’ no sort of ‘presence,’ contrary to what I had expected. I wasn’t sure whether to take that as good or bad news.

I walked slowly among the beach houses, letting my eyes wander, searching for anything I could uncover. The other villages were the same: houses upon houses, empty, drenched by the relentless rain, and sometimes containing green, swollen, decayed corpses. All eyeless.

But BlueHarbor was different.

The first thing I noticed were the doors. Some of them appeared to have been broken open. A closer look revealed that the hinges had been forced from the inside. Something inside the houses had forced its way out.

None of the other villages had this. None of the other villages had various bloodstains on the interior walls of their houses, as if something had bolted out so quickly that its injuries—or what I presumed were injuries—had sprayed blood across the white wooden walls.

The smell of the blood wasn’t normal either. I was used to the smell of blood; this blood didn’t smell like blood. It smelled rotten, rancid. The wood it had splattered on also seemed slightly corroded.

This stank—literally and metaphorically.

An Analyze: Item on the blood revealed it belonged to a Terrarian recently turned into a zombie. More specifically: blood from the veins of their eyeballs.

“A demon eye?…” I murmured, running a finger through the blood trail. It was dry but still had a consistency like glue—or tar.

It made sense. The explosion, or implosion, or whatever happened when the eyes came out, must have been violent enough to force the body’s blood to gush out.

“But why hadn’t this happened in any other village?…”

(“Could something have forced them?”) Ozma guessed.

“Maybe… But what?” I muttered. What was different about this village that didn’t exist in the others? Or at least, I thought it didn’t.

The answer was obvious.

I followed the faint, subtle blood trails through the village. They seemed ingrained into the wooden ground as if corrupting it—reddish-brown, putrid stains—and even after days of rain, the water couldn’t wash them away.

The trail seemed to lead to a single place. Not all the houses had their doors broken, but those that did all pointed to the same path: a more isolated house, slightly removed from the others and the village’s entrance.

The VoidBag gave it away before I even entered the house, but once I explored it, I found something in one of the rooms I’d been expecting to find for some time: a demon eye.

[(MOD)GeniusBillionairePlayboy]This is the most disgusting eye I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing in my entire existence. Please, DS, burn this shit immediately!(Iron Man flamethrower emote)

I dismissed the message with the back of my hand and approached the demon eye. It was dead—I could tell without closely inspecting it; the hole on the side of its retina was a dead giveaway. The eye also looked dry; it had been dead for a while.

Still, Stark was right about one thing: this eye was disgusting. Not because it was a giant, bloated eye—that was just part of it. Just looking at it gave me an uncomfortable feeling. Touching it was even worse. It was like holding a rotten, fleshy fruit; the smell wasn't much different, just more cadaveric.

I could tell the eye had died with an ‘expression’ of rage somehow. Just looking at its iris betrayed its emotions. Part of the thing also seemed sad for some reason.

A quick Analyze: Item gave me a description of what I already suspected: the eye was from a Terrarian, ‘born’ due to The Outer Foreigner Presence and awakened when its former owner looked at the ‘Great Eye in the Sky,’ awakening their ‘True Eyes.’ The stream didn’t specify whether that was the moon, the moon of the starless sky, or ‘The Eye’ itself.

I knew many people in the kingdom, who were likely infected by The Outer Foreigner Presence, gazed at the moon every night, but no demon eyes had been born yet. The ‘disease’ was still dormant. The question was: why? I could think of a few possibilities…

The most obvious was that the ‘Great Eye in the Sky’ referred to the moon of the starless sky, hidden behind the clouds, or ‘The Eye,’ not the world’s natural moon, but I doubted that was the case. There was no reason—it was just instinct. The moon was guilty; I knew it.

The second possibility was that The Outer Foreigner Presence, after reaching (High-Extreme)—which was the ‘level’ of ‘infection’ Juan had—could be ‘awakened.’ It was likely. But the third possibility seemed the most plausible: knowledge.

None of the people in the kingdom had knowledge of ‘The Eye,’ the starless sky, or what the storm truly was. The same went for whatever the ‘Great Eye in the Sky’ was—perhaps even something else entirely. None of them knew. They were all ‘blind,’ so to speak.

Ignorance was bliss. I liked that saying, and it seemed—and probably was—infinitely more accurate when knowledge involved anything Outer…

“Jinn, tell everyone to avoid looking at the moon at night. Just as a precaution,” I said aloud, frowning. “Not the general population; leave them in ignorance. Just those who know what we’re dealing with.”

I clicked my tongue, irritated and stressed. My head still hurt, too. Damn, I wanted to be wrong. I really did. But I felt I wasn’t, and I usually wasn’t. That meant I was screwed.

I knew too much…

I shook my head and returned to reading the information about the demon eye in my hand. One part had caught my attention, aside from how these eyes ‘came to be’: who it belonged to.

[The demon eye originally belonged to the traveling merchant Gallius. Caught off guard during one of his investigations, along with his caravan, his left eye wandered back to his home, driven by a final instinct: to warn his father about the danger looming above all.]

The son’s eye tried to warn the father…

I tossed the eye into the VoidBag, along with the bodies I found at the house’s back door and further down the trail. At the end of the trail of corpses—zombie carcasses—I found only a yellow rain hat buried in the sand.

No sign of Simon.

… He probably arrived too late.

[…]

I spent the rest of the night in the storm. I tried to find more—clues or living people. I found some of the former but none of the latter. Just bodies, more and more green, swollen, eyeless bodies.

I didn’t find Simon, alive or dead. I searched the area around BlueHarbor, but the best I found, besides the yellow rain hat that belonged to someone named Charles and had been swapped with Simon—something Analyze: Item revealed—was a sort of gray stone cave with a tunnel or path carved into the rock, at the northernmost part of the beach.

Inside the cave, I found some emergency provisions and supplies. The area had been ransacked, with various items scattered across the floor as if someone had grabbed whatever they could in a hurry. I followed the tunnel, its floor completely flooded, walking for a few hundred meters until I reached a fork.

The left path stretched on for another few dozen meters, sloping upward and ending in a section of forest whose exit was camouflaged by dense foliage. The vegetation was thick and dark, concealing a narrow, makeshift trail. The camouflage didn’t appear to have been disturbed by anyone before me.

The right path was different. It didn’t lead to the forest but instead narrowed and sloped downward before curving and ending in what seemed to be a sort of improvised dock. The dock was built from the same white wood as BlueHarbor’s houses, though much more weathered, and it was situated in a grotto.

I examined the place quickly. It didn’t seem like a living space—there were no beds or anything of the sort. The dock was empty as well.

On the far-left wall, there were shelves containing small boxes. Some held fishing hooks, others artificial lures, and some contained leaves—various kinds of leaves, all rummaged through. Some had calming properties, others helped with bad breath, repelled insects, were used as incense, or even to brew drinks.

Nearby, in larger crates, I found fishing nets of various sizes, repair tools, hammers, saws, nails, screws, and screwdrivers. There were also spare parts for fishing rods, shackles, lines, and other components whose names I only learned thanks to Analyze: Item.

“All of this belongs to Simon…” I murmured aloud. My voice echoed through the cave before fading into the tunnel.

Everything I analyzed so far had the same information: Simon’s name appeared in every description, indicating that he had either crafted or purchased each item.

(“Maybe he managed to escape?”) Ozma’s voice rang out, audible both to me and the stream. (“There’s no boat at the dock. The painter’s in the water.”)

I walked over to the dock, asking, “Painter?”

(“The name of the rope that secures boats to the dock. An old term for mooring line,”) he explained briefly before adding, with a faintly nostalgic tone: (“I was a fisherman in some lives. It’s a tough job. If there’s a Grimm attack, the chances of surviving at sea are slim. I’ve died that way before. Fighting adrift in a nighttime storm is truly difficult.”)

“I can imagine it’s complicated…” I murmured, crouching to observe the murky seawater flowing into the grotto. After a few moments, I stood and approached the dock’s edge.

I leapt onto the nearest rock, then onto another farther away, about ten or twenty meters distant. That last one was swallowed by each wave, reemerging briefly only to be submerged again moments later. The rain once again enveloped me, now joined by the stormy sea and its waves crashing against my body, failing to drag me into the ocean.

“Why choose the sea over the forest?…”

(“A fisherman would almost always choose the sea.”)

“This kind of sea?” I gestured toward the horizon.

The rain fell as if attacking the ocean, which retaliated with waves over ten meters high, colliding against one another and sending water even higher. On the horizon, I could see typhoons and hurricanes reaching the clouds, surrounded by red lightning.

(“You have a point… A fisherman, more than anyone, knows how deadly a sea like that is.”) His tone was thoughtful. He hesitated before continuing: (“Maybe he saw something in the forest and chose to risk the sea instead?”)

I didn’t respond verbally this time. I simply hummed while observing the ocean, tilting my head toward the sky, which began to turn gray again as the natural dawn broke through. After a few seconds, I murmured, “Maybe he did… Maybe…”

I cast one last glance at the sea before jumping away, crossing the rocky expanse where the grotto lay. I ran through the air for a few moments before landing in the forest and continuing on solid ground, the Shadowflame subtly enveloping my body.

“A stormy, tumultuous sea or a dark, silent forest?…” My voice was drowned out by the rain. A thunderclap echoed, painting the surroundings in blood-red light.

I didn’t know what Simon had seen to make him choose the sea…

… But it couldn’t have been anything good.

[…]

It took me almost an hour to reach my destination, without running at full speed, and confirm one of my theories: the starless sky had a limit, a boundary. The storm must have one too, logically. But where was that limit?

The answer came when the raindrops began to cool—without turning to snow, somehow—and the sky cleared just before I reached the base of the first mountain in the WinterHord range. It was as if something had sliced through the clouds. One moment, everything above was gray, and in the next, it wasn’t.

I’ll admit I sighed in relief upon leaving the storm behind. Not only did I feel a weight lift from my shoulders and the oppressive air ease, but I also noticed that the gaze watching my back had withdrawn. The storm still 'watched' me, but from much farther away, with a much blurrier, unfocused 'view.'

The first thing I did after leaving the storm was to put distance between us. This time, I didn’t hold back my speed and vanished from where I stood, reappearing seconds later at the peak of the tallest mountain I could find. At the summit, I used the Angel Greaves to go even higher and didn’t stop until I could see the top of the storm clouds.

“Clear as day, just like the kingdom’s view,” I murmured to myself, standing in the air on a small translucent platform of solidified wind. I grumbled, slightly puzzled: “The starless sky can only be seen beneath the storm?…”

Even in the kingdom, you could see the sky above the storm. A normal sky above an abnormal storm. That’s why I was so surprised to see that night sky—a sky that now didn’t exist. I could see the gray clouds, the thunder, and the rain falling fiercely, but above it all, it was clear. It was daytime. Dawn was breaking.

If I hadn’t seen that dark, starless sky for myself, probed the 'void' with my senses, and felt its boundary, I might’ve thought I was going insane. I might’ve even believed it was an illusion. Paranoia played tricks on the mind, and that damn place was undoubtedly a paranoia-inducing nightmare.

But no. I knew I wasn’t insane. And even if I didn’t have that certainty, I wasn’t the only one who had seen that sky. Ozma had seen it. The (CHAT) had seen it. I might be wrong, but I doubted the stream was. The recording didn’t lie; the sky had been dark and starless at that moment.

I watched the twilight above the storm as I thought. The contrast between the orange dawn and the gray darkness of the clouds was, in a way, beautiful.

A few seconds later, Ozma’s voice broke the silence around me.

(“Don’t you think the timing of this is a bit suspicious?”)

“Absolutely,” I agreed without hesitation, immediately understanding his point. “It’s almost too obvious when you stop to think about it...”

(“Not really,”) he countered, before explaining: (“It’s obvious to us because we have the information and because you tore through the cloud layer from the inside, exposing the starless sky. But without that, it would be tricky to connect the dots.”)

I hummed thoughtfully for a moment before agreeing again. “You’re right.”

That was when the messages started appearing in my vision, one by one, emerging from small clouds.

[AdvocateOfGenderEquality]And would you stop speaking in riddles, please? No one likes that crap! What the hell are you even talking about?!(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

[(MOD)GeniusBillionairePlayboy]DS, you need to remember that if it weren’t for you, all—or almost all—the people in WinterHord would’ve died. No one would know the deer’s powers.(Thinking man emoji with crossed fingers)

[GreenSatan]Some kind of power mimicry? Or did The Eye already have that ability and is just imitating something the Deerclops did?

[JiraiyaIsAnIdiot]It’s easier to follow a trail than to create one.(Emoji of a wise old toad)

[WiseWizardGleam]Miss Alalia mentioned she couldn’t sense the starless sky. Could that be why? An illusion or hallucination in this case.(Old wizard thinking emoji)

[AdvocateOfGenderEquality]Am I seriously the only one who doesn’t get this?! Aqua, Megumin, Darkness, where are you? Say something! I refuse to believe you guys understood!(Generic guy yelling out a window emoji)

I read the messages quickly before they dispersed into the air.

“Welcome back, Fukasaku. Have things calmed down on your end? Do you need a summary of what’s happened in the last few days?” I asked, sensing the old toad’s presence.

He, along with his wife, Jiraiya, and Minato, had been absent for some time due to the war. Their comments had become scarce during this period.

[JiraiyaIsAnIdiot]Jiraiya-chan was called away from the frontlines, so my presence hasn’t been required in the past few days. Something about negotiations or something like that. I’ll ask someone from the (CHAT) for a summary of recent events. No need for you to waste your time on this old toad.(Emoji of an old toad sipping tea calmly)

The message was carried by a fly, which was promptly devoured by a leaping toad that vanished moments later.

I nodded. “Alright then,” I replied to the message before chuckling at the spam of ‘Explain this shit!’ messages Kazuma was sending.

“The storm appeared right after the Deerclops’ storm,” I pointed behind me in the direction I knew WinterHord lay. Not that it was necessary—the storm had engulfed the entire mountain range before, though it was much smaller now. “Not only that, but the fact that the starless sky was hidden says a lot.”

Dumbledore had mentioned it: it was like an illusion—or, in this case, a hallucination. It was too coincidental not to be connected. And in some ways, it was obvious. The problem was that it was only obvious to those who knew about the Deerclops’ powers—or rather, knew that the deer had created the storm—and had seen the starless sky.

From the outside, it was just a bizarre storm. From the inside, it was even stranger, with that sky visible only to those within it...

Before I could move again, another message appeared in my vision.

[(MOD)JinnOfTheLamp]Alalia said the Deerclops made the world hallucinate! I’m relaying her words. According to Alalia, the sensation she perceives in the storm is different from the Deerclops’ storm.(Chibi-Jinn typing rapidly on a phone emoji)

“The Deerclops did what?! Are you kidding me?! What the fuck?! how?!”

My shock and surprise were so great that I partially lost control of the platform I was standing on, plummeting through the sky for two or three seconds before instinctively moving my arm, pulling air into my hand, solidifying it, and hanging onto the sky itself.

“Jinn, I want answers. Tell Alalia to explain what she knows,” I said, turning toward the stream camera before solidifying the air beneath my feet and standing upright again.

It took a few minutes for Jinn to transcribe everything the dryad had said. With each new explanation, my emotions shifted slightly. By the time everything was laid out, I turned toward the remnants of the deer’s snowstorm. It was much smaller than it had been a month ago, but it still lingered, holding its shape with the last vestiges of his nightmare energy.

I felt my own energy twist, as though excited by the knowledge, while my Nightmares stirred within my Spiritual Realm, howling, growling, and whispering upward.

“A hallucination for everything outside the storm, outside that little ‘world,’” I murmured, repeating Alalia’s words as transcribed by Jinn in the (CHAT), a growing smile forming on my face.

My storm wasn’t like the deer’s—it was close, but not identical. It was something mine, created from my ‘insanity’ and ‘madness’... but I had seen his storm. I had been within it. I knew how to replicate it even more effectively if I wanted to...

“This changes a lot...”

...This made a lot of things easier.

[...]

After the ‘discovery,’ I resumed running, heading straight for WinterHord. I passed through the storm surrounding it just seconds later and entered the city shortly after. The barrier was no longer active—it seemed that the current cold was something ‘normal’ for the inhabitants.

(“Aren’t you going to show yourself?”)

“No. I just want to check if the people here are ‘infected’ too.” I answered Ozma without stopping. “The rain didn’t reach them, just like in the Kingdom, but the Kingdom has Alalia and the matrix for protection. Here, they don’t.”

(“Good thought. Maybe this ‘disease’ spreads through the air too, not just the rain.”) He replied before falling silent.

I walked casually through the streets of WinterHord, wearing winter clothes that concealed my face while my nightmare energy diminished my presence. ‘The shadow at the corner of everyone’s vision.’ No one even noticed me, not even the residents I ‘accidentally’ bumped into to use Analyze: Item.

The city was much more bustling than the last time I’d been there. The residents’ expressions were tired, but with a kind of joyful exhaustion. The air of melancholy and despair had been swept away long ago, and everyone seemed to be recovering from what had happened. Even the destroyed houses and buildings were being rebuilt.

No one was infected. I analyzed almost two hundred people, those that cost less, spending around three hundred thousand SP.

After that, I headed to the WinterHord mansion. I could’ve entered unnoticed and gone straight to speak with Annabell, but I chose to reveal myself to the guards at the mansion’s entrance. They recognized me instantly, with wide eyes and surprise. In their gazes, there was respect and perhaps even a kind of ‘adoration.’

It was strange to be looked at like that...

I met Annabell a few minutes later. The countess wore clothes as elegant and stylish as I remembered—worthy of someone I knew to be the ‘stylist’ NPC. She seemed surprised by my presence. I could also feel a slight fear coming from her.

“My apologies for the delay, I wasn’t expecting visitors. I quickly changed to see you as soon as I could.” She gave a slight bow, pulling her winter skirt to the sides. I returned the greeting. “Please, sit down. What brings you here?”

“No need to apologize, I came without warning. The fault is mine.” I shook my head, waving my hand as I sat at the tea table. Nobles seemed to have a tendency for this, for some reason.“As for my visit: I assume you’ve seen the storm at the edge of the mountain range?”

Her face immediately furrowed.

“Yes, I’m aware. I couldn’t get in touch with the Kingdom; I thought it might be due to the snowstorm, so I sent my men out of it. To my surprise, there was another storm… Do you have any information on what that is? Is it another…?”

Her words died in the air. I shook my head, both to decline the tea she offered and to deny her last question.

“It’s not another creature like the deer, don’t worry.” The less she knew, the better. “But it’s something abnormal. My group, along with the Crown and the Oakwood house, is investigating. Did you notice a higher number of sick people in the duchy?”

“The Crown and the Oakwood house?…” She murmured to herself before her gaze focused on me again, alarmed, presumably by the last part of my statement. “No, but what kind of illness are we talking about? Something contagious?”

“As far as we know, no. It’s a really strong flu, resistant to medications and doesn’t pass with time.” I explained briefly before adding: “It’s due to the rainwater, from the storm. Don’t send anyone there, and WinterHord will be fine. Have you sent anyone into the rain?”

If she had, it would be better to take those people back to the Kingdom with me. There, they’d have a better chance of surviving than here.

To my relief, Annabell denied: “No, everyone living in WinterHord, myself included, is hesitant about any kind of storm. I intended to send some people to the Kingdom in about one or two weeks, in case the rain didn’t pass, but I haven’t done that yet.”

“Perfect. Don’t send anyone unless absolutely necessary. If you do, use carriages with waterproof Mystic Symbols.” I thought for a moment before adding: “Warn them not to let the rain touch their skin, and also avoid breathing outside the carriage. Use air filters.”

Annabell looked at me with a strange expression, clearly worried.

“Even the air?… Should I activate the barrier matrix again?”

“It shouldn’t be necessary, but keep an eye out for any abnormal number of people with the flu or colds. If you think you should activate the barrier, do it. Your instinct saved your people once, follow it, and it might save them again.”

The people of WinterHord should have a higher resistance to colds, so any increase in cases should easily alert her.

She simply nodded, remaining silent for a moment. I imagined she would ask if I was infected with the ‘disease,’ since the only way to WinterHord was through the rain, but she didn’t. She probably thought I came with the Humvee.

After one more short conversation, I said my goodbyes to Annabell and headed out of the city. I didn’t head back toward the storm, but went around WinterHord. I hadn’t been able to find where the Deerclops was sealed before, both due to lack of time to search and the lack of mobility I had back then.

Now, even though time was still short, my movement speed was incomparable to before.

While I searched for the place where the Deerclops was sealed, Ainz decided it was a good time to ask for the conversation he had mentioned earlier, when my group appeared with the others. I quickly pulled him into an isolated (CHAT), which, curiously, he didn’t want me to keep private.

It wasn’t hard to understand the reason after a few words.

[AinzOoalGown]: I wish to donate 1,000,000,000 SP for you to buy the upgrade [Reality 4D (Safe)]. I know how something like this can be invasive, since it would share everything you feel with the (CHAT), so I’d like to ask if you would buy it if I donated, as it’s not a small amount of money, given the conversion.

Ainz was smart. The private (CHAT) served to have the conversation without interference, while making it public ensured there would be witnesses. If I spent the SP on anything other than the upgrade, I’d lose the trust of many people who might think about doing the same now or in the future.

Serafall had done something similar by donating for me to buy the mental microphone. Stark too, at the beginning of the stream, donating for several cameras. In fact, more than half of the cameras the stream currently had were “bought” by him.

Of course, Ainz could have written in the donation that he wanted me to acquire the [Reality 4D (Safe)], but, as he mentioned, it was something invasive. The upgrade would share everything I felt with the stream—even though I was sure there would be possible settings for that. His approach, combining the public (CHAT) and the direct question, covered multiple possibilities.

Sure, I could simply accept and spend the SP on another upgrade, like the VoidBag or the Minimap, erase that part of the stream, and edit the recording, forbidding any mention of it in the CHAT. But there was no reason, nor any need, for me to do that.

“I’ll configure the upgrade the way I want. I won’t let my thoughts or emotions be felt, but almost everything else is acceptable,” I finally answered.

Was it hypocritical, in a way? Yes. I had been able to feel, “read,” and understand the emotions of everyone around me for some time. Humans were easy to sense, Terrarians more complicated, but Shadowflame helped me in that case.

Not wanting my emotions to be known, even though I did this to others, could be called hypocrisy… But I never denied being hypocritical, so fuck it.

[AinzOoalGown]: I didn’t expect another answer. I just wish to feel other worlds, just like you can. I’ll be satisfied feeling the environment around you, the mana, and what it’s like to be in the same place as you.(Skeleton emote handing over a credit card)

A few seconds later, a notification appeared in front of me:

-//-

[AinzOoalGown] Donated 1,200,000,000 SP!: Thank you for your understanding, Devas. The other 200,000,000 SP is for any inconvenience I might have caused, as well as a gift from me. You gave me good advice, and I’m grateful for that.

-//-

Unlike Stark, Ainz didn’t prolong the donation message. He simply wrote what he wanted and nothing more. Out of curiosity, I checked my total SP:

[Current SP: 1,362,431,677]

That was a hell of a lot of SP, but I didn’t hesitate to access the stream shop and buy the upgrade Ainz had requested. I hadn’t visited the shop in a while, since I had bought almost all the cameras. Everything was too expensive, so I avoided going there.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to search for the upgrade manually thanks to the search bar. With a tap, my total SP plummeted and the upgrade was acquired.

[Reality 4D (Safe): 1,000,000,000 (Purchased!) (Deactivated!)]

[Current SP: 362,431,677]

As expected, the [Reality 4D (Safe)] had several configuration options. I spent a good few minutes adjusting everything, to the point of interrupting my search for the location where the Deerclops was sealed, and stood still in the snow while I read.

Curiously, there were two available modes: ‘Share Senses’ and ‘Simultaneous Existence’. Both did what they promised, but in different ways, and both were only recommended for viewers who were sitting or lying down, although they could be used normally.

The first mode, ‘Share Senses,’ did exactly what the name suggested: it shared my senses with the viewers, putting them in my point of view. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell—everything could be configured. Of course, with specific restrictions to avoid sensory overload, as my current senses could literally melt the brain of ninety-nine percent of the (CHAT).

There was even a note explaining that the [Reality 4D (Safe)] prevented something called “extra-sensory addiction” and “extreme sensory addiction.”

The first occurred when a person experienced sensations beyond their normal capacity, such as mana or nightmare energy. The second happened when a person’s senses became so heightened that all their normal senses seemed insufficient, leading to addiction.

As for the second mode, ‘Simultaneous Existence,’ it was more complex. It created a “false existence” beside me for each viewer, allowing them to feel the world where I was with their own senses, rather than mine. They would feel what they should feel if they were in the same place as me, instead of feeling through my senses.

This simultaneous existence stayed close to me, with a maximum distance of ten meters. Just like the first mode, there were filters and detailed settings.

I spent the next few minutes configuring both modes. For the first, I completely disabled any functionality involving my thoughts or emotions. I also enabled the ‘Unrevealed Secrets’ mode, which basically prevented my senses from revealing secrets to the viewers, like Robyn’s second tail.

For the second mode, I only enabled ‘Unrevealed Secrets’ and left the rest for the stream to configure automatically. Although it was possible to manually adjust each viewer’s sense, I didn’t bother—way too much to configure...

Finally, I activated both modes, allowing people to choose which one they preferred. I’d probably leave only the second one activated normally, but I was curious and wanted to see everyone’s reaction to the first mode.

I could see the number of people using each mode, and as expected, the vast majority of viewers chose the first.

The entire (CHAT) literally froze for a few seconds. No new messages appeared in that interval until a single message appeared, seemingly summarizing what everyone wanted to say:

[(MOD)GeniusBillionairePlayboy]HOLY FUCKING GOD!?

I must have looked like a complete maniac, laughing alone in the middle of absolute nothingness, surrounded only by ice and snow. I went back to exploring the mountain range, even while I laughed.

... I didn’t find the location of the Deerclops’ seal, even after it started getting dark.

[...]---[...]

Now, let's get to the chapter!

A chapter with discoveries, some correct, some not so much, and some really useful for the future. This storm has several 'secrets' and 'whys' behind how and why it exists. It's something I plan to explore, it will be important. The starless sky as well...

This conversation that Devas had with Ainz is the 'spoiler' I deleted in the RWBY arc. Having the viewers with [Reality 4D] at that moment would have been a huge spoiler for something I want to do in this current arc, in case I were to write from one of their perspectives.

Ah, yes, the next chapter is from the CHAT's POV, but it will follow Devas. They will narrate what Devas is doing.

Finally, the Deerclops seal: There is a reason Devas didn't find it. I won't say why, but it’s something that will come back in the future.

Well, I think that's it. I'm excited about this arc and everything that will happen in it. I hope you are too. This arc should last the same as WinterHord, or even shorter, it's something small, just in case anyone wants to know. After that, Devas will move on to another world.

That said, good Night and happy reading!