"Roast beef jerky..." Lucian's expression twisted, which was a rare sight. If his astrology wasn't mistaken, then this blackened chunk of flesh should be the body Ramiro had separated out. The "prop" meant for resurrection had been roasted like beef jerky by this girl—roasted...
For some reason, Lucian didn't feel disgusted at all. He only felt an inexplicable urge to laugh.
"Good thing this is the Sonal River with no piranhas. If this were out in the wilderness and a stray dog carried it off, then Ramiro would truly 'die without closure.'" That was his thought.
The scarlet-eyed "girl" picked up a stick and, to Lucian's gawking astonishment, shoved the blackened, seemingly charred chunk of meat straight into her mouth, chewed a few times, then rubbed her belly with a somewhat reluctant expression: "So hungry."
Don't eat random food by the roadside... Lucian's warning never even made it past his throat.
Long golden hair, scarlet eyes, exquisite features, impossible to tell male from female—and she had casually digested the flesh essence of a Sky Knight. This girl's identity was practically screaming itself in Lucian's mind.
"Etana?" Lucian asked gravely.
If this was the Silver Moon Goddess Etana, then the inexplicable sense of familiarity and the mysterious gaze he'd felt when passing through here before made perfect sense.
The golden-haired girl swayed to her feet, using a long sword wreathed in black flames to prop herself up. She regarded Lucian without any trace of unfamiliarity and said with a mix of earnestness and complaint: "So hungry."
"What do you need to eat? Blood? A Sky Knight's flesh?" Lucian guessed at the current condition of this girl who resembled Etana—was she in a recovery period after falling from her rank?
Hearing Lucian's question, the golden-haired "girl" furrowed her brows and recalled for a moment, then shook her head firmly: "Doesn't taste good."
Then why did you just roast beef jerky... Even though he was very likely facing one of the most powerful beings in the entire world, Lucian couldn't help but mutter inwardly: "Then what do you want to eat? What would let you recover?"
The golden-haired "girl" maintained her coldly earnest demeanor, but her scarlet eyes suddenly sparked with a glimmer of light: "The cheese you bound before."
Cheese? When did I ever bind cheese? Lucian went blank for a moment, but in the next instant he remembered: "The Netherlord you killed?"
After entering this world, he had only used a binding spell once—when he helped Elisa escape, binding the Netherlord.
The golden-haired "girl" nodded elegantly: "Mm, cheese just like that one."
"Do you need to absorb divinity? Any kind will do, or only divinity from the Silver Moon, death, and resurrection domains? How much power do you have left? How long can you maintain this?" Lucian was now essentially certain she was Etana of the Silver Moon, and a barrage of questions tumbled from his lips.
Etana's nostrils flared slightly, and her body turned somewhat translucent and ethereal: "Only cheese like that one."
After those words, her body rippled like water, growing ever more ethereal. Her scarlet eyes drooped weakly half-shut: "I need to sleep for a while. Be careful of the Cyclops."
The moment those words left her, Etana dissolved into a beam of silver-white moonlight and shot toward Lucian at indescribable speed, burrowing into his left hand before he could react.
A will—vast as the infinite, holy as the boundless—erupted from nowhere and crushed Lucian's thoughts to a standstill. By the time he came to his senses and looked at his left hand, he found a pristine, dreamlike silver moon on the back of it. Then the moon slowly dimmed, melting into his skin until no trace remained.
Lucian drew a quiet breath, shaken by the mode of existence of quasi-divine beings. She could actually take up residence inside him like this—as if no material substance could contain her? Yet if she was a soul, a will, or a spiritual mark, she had just demonstrated beyond doubt that she was physical, capable of digesting flesh!
Focusing his spiritual power, Lucian carefully probed his left hand. After a while, he finally sensed that terrifying will faintly coiled in the flesh on the back of his hand.
Lucian tried to awaken Etana to learn the details, but she remained unresponsive, as though she had truly fallen into deep sleep, refusing all disturbance.
This forced Lucian to piece together what had happened based on the preceding events, Etana's words, and her apparent condition.
"Just now, Etana's ethereal state suggested she was extremely weak. Her injuries and rank fall seem severe—not something that can be recovered from quickly. She may even need to sleep just to sustain herself. This is partially corroborated by the fact that she killed the Netherlord."
"She must have been watching the Netherlord for a long time; otherwise, she couldn't have discovered the secret divine domain he'd relocated. Perhaps she was exactly the 'thing' Ashin mentioned—the Netherlord had brought her back. Yet she never made a move against her 'delicious cheese,' which means either she had no confidence in killing the Netherlord at all, or she had only a single strike in her and was biding her time, avoiding being targeted by other false gods after the kill."
"The fact that she could dispel the binding spell and ultimately kill the Netherlord indicates she was in the latter situation. In that case, having already absorbed the divinity of death, she should be able to accumulate enough strength for a brief strike after a period of sleep. To recover further—to even return to quasi-divine status—she would need to absorb sufficient 'divinity' of a similar nature. If she could find a mysterious entity from the realm of the dead to absorb, she would probably recover in the shortest time possible."