Midnight Prince: Empire of Sin

A few minutes after Adam vanished, a young woman could be seen flying in the sky at full speed until she reached the part where the body of the Queen Bee was located.

Looking at the crushed and charred corpse of the queen, she released a sigh of disappointment before looking all around her and the still-flickering flames that shone in the power of absolute death and demise.

There was no doubt in her mind that a fierce fight had transpired in this place, though it surprised her that only a few Pawn pieces had been able to wreak so much havoc on this part of the world.

The reason she was in such a hurry to come here was not for the previous queen of the bees, but…

"I was not mistaken. This is indeed 'his' energy."

She placed a hand on her stomach, while a warm smile spread on her face as she recalled the face of a young man that taken most of her mind during the last month.

"Hehehehe. It seems like you were a minute too late to arrive and meet him."

The smile immediately left her when what looked like a hug grin appeared out of thin air and an insufferable voice followed.

"So you knew he was here then?"

"I don't know. I don't really remember. Maybe something could help jog my memories?"

She sighed before forming a fish out of Dreamforce. The energy gathering in her hand was neither gaseous nor liquid but rather had a certain solid texture to it. When she finished molding the energy, it changed into a fish and she threw it at the floating mouth.

"Meow~ Thanks!"

A fat cat appeared out of nowhere and caught the fish before munching on it for some time, "Now I remember. Though it won't do you much good."

"What do you know."

"This is an important part of your training, you know?" n,-()0.

The cat finished gobbling the fish and then started licking its paws, "If the two of you meet, your resolve will break and you will waste too much time on him for you to improve."

She gritted her teeth, but the cat was not finished with his words.

"Furthermore, the Queen said that having you by his side right now would merely interfere with his journey and the same goes for him interfering with yours. In short, both of you should not meet for the foreseeable future."

"What did you do?" An uneasy feeling was starting to grip her mind but this feeling was confirmed when it finally answered her.

"Well, the queen said to make sure the two of you won't meet in this realm. So— I simply killed and ejected him out of this plane. Hehe…"

"What!? Are you crazy?" She ignored the cute way the cat was trying to present the abysmal situation to her.

Her eyes turned golden and a vast and deep aura rushed out of her body as if it was ready to crush the cat at any moment but he simply vanished and appeared on her head, being quite nonchalant about the hostility the girl was showing her.

"Kukuku~! Don't worry. He is very different from you. Death inside the Dreamscape won't be the end for him. He should be able to come back in one or two months from your perspective."

She clenched her fists tightly at the cat's brazen remark. Even now that she had become a Knight and had been in this place for a few months' time, she still could not fight nor hurt the wretched cat in the slightest amount. This made her quite a bit angry but there was not much she could do about the situation since she wasn't powerful enough.

"I swear. If anything happens to Adam, I will kill you. Even if that is the last thing I do…"

"Kukuku~! I will wait for that day to come."

The cat laughed one last time before completely vanishing from before the young girl's eyes.

[Los Angeles — Medusa's Laboratory]

[Saturday — 6th December 2030 — 11:30 am]

Medusa was sitting on her chair as she continued to observe Adam's state as well as the different machines and their reaction as they monitored Adam's mental faculties.

At first, she presumed that she wouldn't be able to get much information from him by deploying the machines but she had to admit that she had been wrong in this assumption of hers.

'His brain is simulating pain and other emotions.'

She could now more or less understand why the Dreamscape was often told to be so dangerous for an individual to traverse. The damage incurred in the Dreamscape was 'real' as far as the brain was concerned.

At the same time, experiences obtained in dreamscape was also considered to be experience that one could gain in real life.

Was it perhaps because the Soul was said to be situated in the forehead of a being? The forehead was the place where the Crown Chakra was placed and it was also the place where the sea of consciousness dwelled.

While correlation between the individual pathways could not be the only basis, it was a great start.

What was more interesting was witnessing how his muscles twitched and reacted in response to his experience inside the Dreamscape.

"Is physical effort in the Dreamscape able to train the physical body in the real world as well?"

She mused before scrapping that theory. While she hadn't experienced the Dreamscape herself, she knew that her assumption was bound to be wrong. =

There was something else that she was missing here.

She scribbled, scratched, and began writing new assumptions and theories over and over again. She had been moving for almost 12 hours straight, since midnight to be exact, and hadn't even drunk or eaten anything in the meantime.

But rather than frustration, all she could feel was a euphoric sense of elation in her mind. The feeling of delving into something truly mysterious was like a drug for her and her expression was slowly filled with madness as she looked at Adam like he was a treasure trove.

It was fun— but then, a high fluctuation of energy began to fill Adam's body.

"So something did happen."

After what happened last time, She knew that there was no way an incident of the same nature wouldn't happen again. As such she had long since started putting the system in place for the next eventual occurrence.

Clearly, she had been right about this matter.

She started moving immediately and began the protocol she had prepared specially for this moment.

Walls of energy that were strong enough to resist a few strikes from a battle-focused Zodiac appeared all around the pod that encased Adam and protected her as well as closed the door. She even put on black glasses to protect her eyes and quietly watched the light show of fire and lightning that moved like a storm everywhere while furiously taking notes of the current situation.

A smile was ever present on her face even at the sight of her equipment breaking down into pieces.

She wondered what face Adam would make once he saw what he owed her now. This promised to be quite fun.