Monarch of Gluttony: System of Sin

"Raphael, can I ask you a question?" On the way to the temple, Azekiel asked, breaking the silence.

"Anything."

"If you were a boy who had a stepmother who hated you... And she sent you away from her, essentially abandoning you and making you leave your own home. Would you hate her?" Azekiel asked.

Throughout the way, he had been trying to make sense of the young spirit\'s actions, yet he couldn\'t come up with a logical conclusion. He wondered if Raphael could make some sense of it.

Raphael tried to imagine himself in the situation that Azekiel talked about. "Possibly. I can\'t say for sure since I\'ll have to be in that situation myself to know what I\'ll do, but most probably, I won\'t like her if she does that."

"What about you, Lia?"

"If my mother was like that, I\'ll surely hate her to my core. Fortunately, my mother was nothing like that."

"Alright, suppose she kicked you out of your home, abandoning you. And along the way, you die. Right before your last breath, you find out that the same mother who kicked you out, placing you in such grave harm\'s way, was also in danger. What would your last wish be? Would it be for her to be safe?"

"What kind of idiot would wish for the safety of a crappy person like that as their last wish right before death? If she hadn\'t sent them out, they wouldn\'t have died. She\'s also partially responsible. In a situation like that, who would ask to protect her? Instead, my last wish would be to have revenge on the ones who killed me."

Lia\'s answer came swiftly. She didn\'t even have to think twice before deciding what she would\'ve wanted.

Azekiel wasn\'t surprised. He had expected this to be her answer as well. Even for him, he didn\'t believe he would have the safety of a person like that as his last wish. Then why would the young Prince want that as his last wish? Just what kind of person was he?

"What about you, Raphael? What would your last wish be?" Lia asked Raphael, seemingly curious. "Is it also revenge?"

"My wish would be for survival. I would wish to survive that adversity so I can take care of my revenge myself," Raphael answered.

"Yeah, there\'s that option as well." Azekiel frowned. "He could\'ve asked me to save himself as well, yet he chose that woman. I don\'t understand why?"

"Who are you talking about? Is it about a Spirit?"

"Yeah. The story I told you was the life story of the Spirit who made me clear the Floor. It was a ten-year-old boy\'s spirit."

Azekiel explained the entire story as he had seen.

"If his last wish was about you saving his mother, then how did you clear the floor already? That wish should be impossible to fulfill." Lia couldn\'t make sense of it. The floor was cleared with the wish that was impossible to be fulfilled.

"I made a Blood and Soul Pact with the Spirit that I\'ll fulfill his wish when I have the resources to do it in the future. He accepted the pact," Azekiel explained.

Hearing about the Blood Pact, Lia\'s face went pale. She couldn\'t help but stare at Azekiel in disbelief.

"A Blood and Soul Pact? Have you gone crazy? You know a Blood and Soul pact has a time limit of seven days? If you don\'t finish what you promised in seven days, you\'ll die! How could you be so stupid?!"

"Don\'t worry. Seven days are more than enough to finish this pact."

He knew how far he was from the Temple. It was only a matter of time before he got to the Time Stone. And from there, he believed it wasn\'t even going to take a day to finish this wish of the Cold Prince.

"I don\'t understand either. How will you fulfill this wish? Isn\'t that Spirit\'s mother already dead? Is that even possible to save it, Unless..."

Unlike Lia, Raphael managed to figure out something. If Azekiel was so confident, that meant he already had a plan for it. That could only mean one thing.

"Is there a way to fulfill the wish inside the Temple?"

Azekiel only smiled in response. "There is a way to fulfill everyone\'s wish inside that temple. You\'ll know what I mean when we get there."

Azekiel had already left the range of the trial zone of the third floor, entering into the barren lands. There was no rubble in this part of the rubble, only a barren land as far as the eyes could see.

After walking for two hours straight, Azekiel finally managed to get a glimpse of the Temple in question. It appeared to be a beautiful white temple with mysterious golden letters covering it from every side.

It was exactly as it was in the memories. Even the two statues standing near the entrance became apparent the closer they moved to the Temple.

"Yeah, the first one is the statue of Osiris. I\'ve no idea who the second statue is supposed to be."

Amongst the two statues, only the first one was recognizable to Lia. It was the same case for Azekiel. Even he didn\'t know who the second statue belonged to, yet that wasn\'t of concern.

The second statue was just as majestic as the first, if not more. It appeared to belong to a really dignified man who was donning warrior Armor and held a stone ax in his hands.

While the first statue appeared to belong to the Kingly Osiris, who seemed more like a scholar, the second appeared to belong to a Warlord.

"It doesn\'t matter who that statue belongs to. Just know that they can come alive at any moment. Even though we have both the keys needed to enter the temple, it\'s still better to be safe."

Azekiel was already holding onto the two books that were supposed to be the key to entering that mysterious temple.

****

Just as Azekiel had approached the Temple on the third floor, a mysterious woman came out of the third-floor portal.

A strange mark on her forehead shone briefly as she glanced in the direction of the Temple.

The girl had no expressions on her face. Her eyes remained blank, as if she wasn\'t in her senses.

She was the same woman who had recently entered the Tower of Sins. People on Floor Zero were already looking for her, wondering where she had disappeared. Meanwhile, she was already on the third floor, which shouldn\'t have been possible since the Floor could only be accessed by the Lords of Sins who cleared other floors.

For some mysterious reason, she had managed to get access to this floor without having to clear the other floors.

A mysterious voice kept echoing in the young lady\'s head, issuing her the instructions on what she had to do.

Through her eyes, there was another person who was seeing everything that she was seeing, and that person wasn\'t even inside the Tower of Sins.

The young lady also started advancing in the same direction that Azekiel had selected as if she knew what was there.