1665 Pride Clan
After putting his mind at ease, Dyon turned his attention toward the center of the battlefield. He had accomplished what he wanted already, it was time to go and save Eli. Little Aiden had spent long enough without a father… But, before he left, Dyon wanted to see the Pride Clan’s burial ground.
Dyon’s instincts told him that there might be an answer there to what was truly troubling.
As his main body continued to wage a petty war against long dead Dragons, Dyon wanted to know if his arrogance was truly worth it. Did he even understand what it meant to be arrogant?
In the English language, arrogance had a negative connotation. But, there were many languages where arrogance referred to a dignified self of worth. It represented what it meant to be a man, a woman… A being who understood their value.
Dyon wanted to understand what his so-called ‘arrogance’ meant to himself. Why was it so important to him? Why was there a rational side of himself that said he needed to place it down, but a deeply enraged side of himself that pointed forward and said, ‘Don’t you dare’?
When Jade spoke to Dyon one last time before leaving her final wishes to Rose and her younger self, she noted that the calmness in Dyon’s voice wasn’t something he should have now…
The calmness Jade referred to was something only Dyon’s future self had cultivated. Though Dyon tapped into it for a moment, allowing him to reach a level of focus he had never felt in his lifetime, it wasn’t truly his… Nor did he understand where that calm stemmed from, until he read what Jade left for him, that is.
His alternate timeline self spent years running. Time and time again, he was slapped in the face and forced to endure. He learned harsh lesson after harsh lesson about why it was he hadn’t earned his arrogance.
Those years took a toll that Dyon. It whittled him down, and chipped away at his very being.
But, was that Dyon a failure? Of course not. In fact, it could be said that that Dyon was far stronger than the current Dyon.
He was a man who suffered through untold horrors, yet still stood atop the world at the end. Sure, he lost to The Entity, but was that a result of his tempered arrogance? Of his calmness? No. His only fault was not being as lucky as his current younger self…
Dyon knew this. He didn’t blame his elder self, nor did he look down upon him. In fact, he was the kind of man Dyon wanted to be, even right now.
What Dyon needed was understanding. The issue was that even he himself didn’t know what sort of understanding he was looking for. There was no one to tell him that his personality should be this way or that. And even if there was, was Dyon really the type of person to listen to such things?
ραndαsnοvεl.cοm Instead, Dyon chose another path.
This calmness that Dyon was seeking after was an idealized caricature of something he didn’t truly understand, so why try to understand it at all? Instead… Why not dive further into arrogance? Why not learn what the true meaning of arrogance was?
Who better to learn of arrogance from than the Pride Clan?…
Dyon’s body melded with the wind. He rarely placed much emphasis on his movement techniques, especially after his spatial qi got such an abrupt boost, but one would be surprised to find out that he wasn’t actually using a movement technique at all as he snaked through the thick, red forest.
His power wasn’t the only thing that improved over the past year, his understanding of the Ancient Battlefield did as well. One such aspect was related to his wills… When he learned that they could be used in such a way, he realized that his understanding of wills was too shallow. But, this could only be expected considering he artificially boosted his comprehension by exchanging his life.
The map Orcus drew was several trillion years old and was only accurate for the Ancient Battlefield’s second opening, but luckily, a sturdy space like the Ancient Battlefield didn’t change very much over time.
Though, this wasn’t to say that no changes occurred at all. After all, Energy Surges were still massive catastrophic events that could change an entire landscape. But, they didn’t drastically hinder Dyon’s ability to read the map, mostly because Energy Surge activity was incredibly rare on the outer edges of the battlefield and only increased in frequency toward the center.
Dyon wondered how Orcus received such a detailed map of the battlefield, but he had no time to wonder about it. Plus, t was completely useless for the positions of Clans and Tribes. Though, when it came to natural landmarks and mapping the sheer size of the battlefield, it did an excellent job.
Imagine the Ancient Battlefield as a massive floating disk. A large portion of the center of the disk was untouchable, as much as 70% of the battlefield was inaccessible to humans. There were large concentrations of impossible to defeat beasts that took up the center of this land.
The human population was located in the remaining outer ring, taking up about 20% of the land while the remaining 10% were taking up by untouchable mountain ranges and water sources, that, once again, had powerful beasts.
Currently, Dyon’s 13 conquered Regions were located to the far southern edge of the battlefield and maybe by fate, the tombs of the Pride Clan were relatively close compared to how far away they could have been.
However, as one of the most powerful Failed Clans to have existed, the Pride Clan was incredibly close to the edge of that 70% untouchable territory. So close in fact that Dyon took into account the possibility that their lands could now be a part of that untouchable territory with the passing of so much time.