Chapter 89 - 88: Nyx Temple.

It was the time of night, 

Sleeping was an everyday struggle for me, but it wasn't an impossible task for me. I somehow manage to drift into sleep, but well usual nightmares always wake me up. 

Today was different, today the not so impossible task of sleeping was looking like an unachievable task. 

Shutting my eyes tight, I struggled to fall asleep, 

"Please don't kill me" 

"I have a wife and a kid, please spare me."

"Please------ stay away." 

"Please don't kill me"

"I am sorry." 

"I will turn my life around."

"Please don't kill me."

Opening my eyes, I sat up, it was a reflective action. A cold sweat ran down my chin, my body was sweating profusely. 

Inhaling a deep breath I tried to calm myself down, it was an attempt to stop my trembling body. 

"Fuck it," I said as I got up, heading out of the tent. 

I gave up on trying to sleep. staying awake seemed like a better option than hearing those nightmarish voices. 

The forest was dark, the only little illumination was that of three moons and stars. The night sky was lively as ever, the three moons could be seen resonating with each other. 

Well, most of the light was blocked by the trees, giving the forest a pitch-black vibe.

I walked towards the still dimly lit campfire, I saw that Ulrich was seated beside the campfire. His gaze was pointlessly fixed at the campfire. 

Walking up to him, I sat beside him. I didn't speak anything, we just sat beside each other maintaining the unspoken silence. 

Ten minutes have passed by, we were seated in the same place,

"Couldn't sleep?" asked Ulrich.

"No." 

"I am glad I have your company."

"Me too."

That was the last and only conversation we had all night. Eventually, Ulrich went back to sleep and I was the only one left awake.

To pass my time, I engaged myself in some training. I did polearm training in particular since I didn't want to wake anyone up. 

The night passed by and we continued our traveling the next day. Hina had her own horse, so we continued our travel on each of our horses.

During this time, I got to know Hina better. She seemed to not talk much, most of the time she maintained her silence, avoiding any unnecessary talks. 

Illya has grown more clingy, she prefers to stay close to me all the time. If not with me, she prefers to be with Rai, At night she sleeps beside Rai. 

Watching Rai take care of Illya, With a cheeky smile, I spoke up

"You will be a great mother."

"Of your kids?" she asked sincerely. 

It surprises me that how she is able to say inappropriate things with that sincere face.

"Do you want to make some?" 

"Would love to" she replied.

Illya was in our presence, her face lit up as she asked,

"Are you both going to make kids?!"

Her question was loud enough for everyone to be heard. With that, we started getting weird looks from everyone.

I could hear the soft chuckle from Hina, she was trying her best to not laugh. 

Ah, this is embarrassing!! 

I could sense an immense aura pressing down on me, the source of that aura was Aetna as she was shooting a death stare at me. 

{Author: From the next arc, Aetna will get more focus.}

Just like that, A week has passed. No, eight days to be exact. 

We were finally on the outskirts of the Farfern forest, from here it will take approximately 2 hours to reach the city of Colmoor. 

Traveling through the Farfern forest we did encounter some of the Macropus tribe people, they were friendly or didn't show any kind of hostility towards us, neither did we. 

"Before we go to Colmoor city, why don't we visit the Nyx temple,"  suggested Hina out of nowhere.

Hearing the name of Nyx was enough for Illya to be interested in it. No, she was dying to go there. 

"Nyx?! I want to visit the temple of Goddess Nyxx!!" 

Since I had no reason to deny her, I agreed to it. Visiting the temple might be a good change of scenery, so yeah, why not?

Apparently, Nyx temple was right outside Colmoor city, so we just had to follow the same route to reach the temple.

After traveling for half an hour, we were able to see a large lone rock formation between the forest. A unique and enormous column of rock stood precipitously from the ground.

Situated on the top of this enormous rock was the Nyx temple.

On the foot of the rock, there was a narrow pathway that led into the rock. Entering this narrow pathway, we were met with spiral stairs that led to the top of the rock to the temple. 

There was one thing I was wondering about, is this rock strong enough to hold the weight of the temple? 

On top of that, it was risky to hollow out the rock to build the stairs from inside. Would it just increase the risk of the rock collapsing?

"The rock is blessed by the previous reincarnation of the Nyx. Previous Nyx apparently was master in rock magic, so she blessed this rock, giving it the strength to hold this temple. This rock is said to possess the strength to hold ten temples like this." explained Hina. I didn't even have to ask the question before I got the answer. 

"Previous reincarnation of Nyx?" I asked.

But my question was not answered by Hina, it was Illya who opened her mouth saying, "Mom says that, Whenever people are sad, in trouble and hungry, Goddess Nyx will descend among the people of Amay nation to end their suffering and make them really really happy!!!!"

Illya's explanation is broken as ever, but also cute. 

"As the little girl said, every generation Nyx will descend upon mortal to lead them in the right way, at least that's what her follower says. Well, but the fact of Nyx descending amongst mortals is true, that I can say for sure." 

Our conversations continued, we eventually reached the top. The spiral staircase led us directly towards the insides of the temple, rather than some kind of entrance.

Now that I think about it, the entrance was the narrow pathway itself. 

What I had expected from the temple was something grand like some fascinating architecture, various scripture, a statue, and some other things. But on contrary, the temple was had nothing in it, it was empty. 

Well, not just empty, it was also wrecked from inside. 

As I was watching the wrecked insides of the temple, 

"Welcome, young ones."  greeted us a person, it was a shaky breathy old voice. 

Turning around, I faced the source of the voice. The source of the voice was an old man, seated on the floor he greeted us. 

He had smokey Grey hair, he had few remaining hairs on his barren head. 

His wrinkly hung cheeks rose up, his thin lips curved up, with a smile he greeted us "It's been a while since I had a visitor." 

His attention shifted to Hina who had just entered the temple "Oh, little Hina is also here, are they your friend?" 

Apparently, this old man and Hina are already acquainted.

Wait, No!!! I have forgotten to mention the most important detail. The detail is that the old man's face was beaten up. 

There were various bruises of various lengths and sizes on his face, his clothes were torn from various places.

There wasn't much reaction on Hina's face as she looked at the bruised-up old man's face. 

"Churchmen?" she asked the old man.

"Yes, look how cruelly they have treated me!!" 

This old man was not acting hurt at all, despite all his injuries. 

"Why didn't you just beat them up? you have the power to do so," said Hina as she sat on the floor. 

Following her action, I sat on the floor beside her. The rest of the group did the same. 

"Because of the Oracle," said Old man. 

"Oracle? did you receive some recently?" but before the old man could answer her question, she turned to face me as she said, "Forgive my rudeness, I haven't introduced him to you." 

"This is old man Astor, he fulfills the role of the high priest at this temple. Well, he joined the temple at the age of fifty, before that he was a serious gambler. He has the power to receive Oracle, basically, it's a power to get glimpses of the future. He used that power to gamble and he did win a lot of money. Eventually, people became suspicious, and a bounty was charged against him. Running away from the death, he became the priest at this church."

Damn, that's some crazy back story.

"If you ever need help with gambling just contact me, we will split the winning in half. But well, my power has gotten weaker recently. Not weaker, I just don't get oracle that often and the oracle I get seems to be a super important oracle. Like the one that shows the fate of the world or something." 

This old man is definitely suspicious, whose idea was to make this old man a high priest? 

"You know, one time I got this super amazing oracle, in which a human was fighting against gods. He seemed super cool, he looked super strong. Must be the protagonist of this world or something, but that was an awesome oracle. It was already insane to watch a human having the power of gods, over that he also commanded the most powerful army, isn't it cool? it's cool right?"

This old man talks a lot....