Back atop the clock tower, when she saw Greg use the Bracers of Darkness without any prior training, Nightmare was surprised but found it somewhat understandable.
After all, she had bound half of her Godhood and power to him, which in a sense greatly elevated the ceiling of his potential. He also seemed to possess a decent Dark Magic Affinity.
The combination of these two factors making it possible to manifest a Supreme-tier magic, while rare, was not entirely impossible.
However, the second dark attribute spell Greg had just used—Dark Pulse—completely shook Nightmare.
The Bracers of Darkness were hailed as the Strongest Shield in ancient times, the ultimate manifestation of shadow power in defense and consumption.
Meanwhile, Dark Pulse was known as the Strongest Spear, the pinnacle of shadow power in terms of erosion, infiltration, and the infliction of negative statuses.
These two spells, one defensive and one offensive, were even somewhat contradictory and opposing in nature.
Mastering just one was incredibly difficult, requiring immense compatibility and luck.
To master two Supreme-tier spells with such poor compatibility simultaneously?
Even in the glorious era when Nightmare was active, an age of coexisting deities and countless heroes, such a thing was unheard of!
Even among the other deities' halves, there had never been such a precedent.
Everything happening now, combined with that extremely faint sense of familiarity—as if from the distant past—that had flickered in the depths of her soul when she first met Greg...
All these anomalies seemed to point toward a possibility that even Nightmare found hard to believe.
This mortal named Greg Sass might have had some unknown connection to her, the ruler of darkness, in the distant past.
Otherwise, how could one explain this common-sense-defying dual Supreme-tier compatibility?
But new doubts followed.
Although she had slept for a long time, Nightmare's memories in this regard were almost entirely intact.
She clearly remembered that she was still a virgin goddess who had never been intimate with any mortal, let alone left behind any progeny or bloodline.
Although she had countless devout and even fanatical believers during the peak of her faith—many of whom were brilliant talents—none of them had ever reached the point of sharing a 'connection' with her.
So... what exactly was going on?
Who was this Greg Sass, really?
Or rather, what was the true essence of his soul?
Nightmare lurked silently in Greg's shadow, her emerald eyes opening wordlessly in the darkness, reflecting Greg's oblivious profile.
Confusion, curiosity, a very faint sense of scrutiny, and an emotion she herself had not yet fully understood flowed slowly through her divine thoughts.
"Hey, why did you suddenly go quiet again?" Greg's voice came through once more.
But Nightmare did not answer his question. Instead, she asked back,
"I shall confirm with thee once more. Before our fates were bound, hadst thou truly never seen me?"
Greg was taken aback by this sudden, serious questioning, then responded irritably,
"Yeah, didn't I answer that before? What, do I have to pull out some 'I've seen this girl before' cliché, smash some jade, and then it'll make sense to you?"
Nightmare was silent for a moment before whispering, "Then it truly is... strange."
"Strange? What's strange?" Greg pressed.
"...No, it is nothing."
Nightmare's voice returned to its ethereal indifference, but the sense of inquiry had not entirely vanished.
"Damn it! You're such a riddler!"
Greg protested in his mind. "Do you have any idea how annoying it is when someone stops halfway through a sentence? It's going to stay on my mind now!"
While Greg was grumbling about Nightmare's cryptic behavior, he and Silvia had already finished walking through the safe passage.
The light shifted slightly as they officially stepped into the middle layers of the dungeon's first layer.
The overall structure here was still that of an underground cave, but unlike the shallow layers which were almost barren—containing only rocks, moss, and underground rivers—the middle layers showed signs of a much richer ecosystem.
The rock walls were covered with a wider variety of fungi and moss that emitted different colored glows—purple, blue, and pale green—looking like scattered stars.
Strange dark plants, resembling ferns or low shrubs, were sparsely distributed on the cave floor or in rock crevices. Their leaves were thick and appeared to be covered in a layer of wax to adapt to the lack of direct sunlight underground.
The air was filled with a faint scent, a mixture of damp earth, minerals, and the bitter freshness of some plants.
Visibility was slightly better than in the shallow layers. The light provided by the bioluminescent organisms was more concentrated, outlining the shapes of jagged rocks and deep forks in the road.
Although this was his first time personally setting foot in this area, thanks to his familiarity with the first few layers from the original work, Greg had a clear understanding of the overall layout and the paths of several main routes, so there was no fear of getting lost.
"Wow... so this is the middle layer? It looks completely different from above!"
Silvia also seemed to be drawn by the environment, which was so different from the shallow layers, temporarily pulling her out of her own thoughts.
She curiously walked up to a cluster of strange plants that emitted a faint blue glow with leaves that fanned out like feathers. She observed them carefully, the faint blue light reflecting in her pink eyes as a look of novelty appeared on her face.
Greg also stopped his internal bickering and began to scan the surroundings.
The novel sights of the middle layer did bring some freshness, but soon, a strong sense of dissonance replaced his initial curiosity.
It was too quiet.
Compared to the background noise of low-level monsters scuttling about in the shallow layers, it was eerily silent here.
Aside from their own footsteps, breathing, and the faint, untraceable sound of dripping water in the distance, there was almost no sound belonging to a living creature.
No roars of monsters, no flapping of wings, no sound of claws scraping against rock.
Moreover, as far as the eye could see, the ground and rock walls were quite clean, with almost no traces of recent intense combat.
In an area that theoretically should have more, stronger, and more active monsters, this was extremely abnormal.
It was almost as if... the monsters here had all been frightened into hiding by something.
This abnormal silence connected with the 'noise that didn't belong to the dungeon coming from deeper down' that Nightmare had mentioned earlier.
A familiar term suddenly crashed into Greg's mind.
Wide-area dispersal magic conduit—Screech.
Rate on N.U.
