Chapter 64: The Inn at the Edge of Dimensions

  The multi-story building before them wasn’t merely burning—it was being erased.

  Unnatural flames roared with physics-defying fury, painting the night sky in choking orange and black. The surrounding chaos was absolute.

  Screams of neighbors mixed with the crashing of timber, but through the din, snatches of conversation reached Justinian’s ears—no one had seen the children. No one had seen the parents.

  He didn't waste a second on contemplation. He spun around, his eyes locking onto his companions with a weight that brooked no argument.

  "Seweryn!"

  His voice cracked like a whip, cutting through the roar of the fire.

  "Secure the perimeter. Keep the civilians back and don't let anyone near the entrance. If the structure collapses, I need a clear path out."

  "Understood," Seweryn responded instantly, without even a hint of his usual laziness.

  Justinian turned to the others. "You guys watch the rear. If anyone runs out the back, you catch them."

  Without waiting for acknowledgement, he spun into action. He took one massive, deep inhale—filling his lungs to their absolute limit—and burst into the inferno.

  The moment he crossed the threshold, the world turned into a furnace.

  The heat was physical, a crushing weight that instantly singed the hair on his arms, but the fire wasn't the true killer here.

  It was the air. Or rather, the lack of it.

  The conflagration had already devoured almost all the oxygen, replacing it with superheated, toxic smoke. Even with his cultivation base, Justinian still had to breathe. If he inhaled this, his lungs would scorch from the inside out. He had to hold that single breath he’d taken outside.

  'I need to move fast.'

  He moved like a blur, checking the ground floor in a heartbeat. The fire was chewing through hardened stone walls as if they were made from paper.

  'No one inside.'

  He vaulted up the burning staircase; the wood disintegrated under his feet. On the second floor, the heat was intense enough to blister his hardened skin. He kicked open the door to the living quarters. Small wooden beds were curling into ash.

  Without stopping, he proceeded to the children’s room. He scanned it with spiritual sense and sight. Empty. No bodies. No screams.

  His lungs began to burn. The air he took in earlier was depleting rapidly. His vision swam at the edges, the darkness was slowly creeping in. He had seconds left before he would be forced to gasp, and that would be the end.

  'Just one more room.'

  From the end of the hall, where the fire roared with the intensity of a blast furnace, he felt it. A faint, dying echo of energy.

  Justinian didn't hesitate. He barreled through a wall of flame, tucking his shoulder and smashing into the master bedroom.

  The king-sized bed was a charred skeleton. The room was empty of life, but the energy signature was screaming from the center of the floor—the epicenter of the blaze. There, the floorboards had been incinerated completely, revealing the sub-floor.

  And lying there, immune to the heat, was a charred, metallic object.

  He stepped closer, his chest screaming for air now. He looked down.

  It was a crest. He recognized it immediately—the symbol of the King of Names and Symbols. It was the same mark the delegation had worn, the same mark that had brought them so much trouble.

  'Hmm?'

  His eyes narrowed. The symbol he remembered from the delegation had been shadowed by two horizontal lines.

  This one had three.

  Before he could think more about this discrepancy, a loud crack tore through the room.

  The ceiling above him started tilting dangerously. The house wasn't just burning anymore; it was coming down.

  Justinian looked one last time at the symbol and turned. He couldn't leave through the stairs as they were gone already. He sprinted for the balcony, the floor dissolving under his boots.

  With a final, desperate exertion of energy, he launched himself through space as the roof caved in behind him.

  He hit the cool night air and landed heavily in the garden, rolling to absorb the impact. Immediately, he expelled the stale air from his lungs and sucked in a greedy, ragged breath of oxygen.

  "Justinian!"

  Seweryn and Bogna came to check on him immediately.

  As he brushed off ash from his coat, he instantly regained his composure. The building behind him collapsed in on itself with a thunderous roar, sending a plume of sparks into the sky.

  He turned to the questioning looks of his friends.

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  "There was no one inside."

  "In that case, we’d better get out of here. This crowd is getting rowdy, and the local guards will be here any second," Seweryn said, looking at the gathering mob. "I know a good inn nearby."

  Justinian nodded.

  "Lead the way."

  The group quickly agreed, following behind Seweryn. They left the scene of the fire just as the local authorities began to arrive. What almost no one in their group noticed was the gaze of an old devil dressed in plain robes, standing perfectly still amidst the panicked crowd, watching them leave. The sole exception was Septima, whose eyes lingered on the figure for a fraction of a second before she turned away.

  Justinian noticed her behavior.

  "Is there a problem?"

  She shook her head with an unreadable expression. "It's nothing. Let’s go."

  They pressed on. As the glow of the inferno faded behind them, the true nature of the landscape began to reveal itself. The air here grew colder, lacking the humidity typical of living worlds. The sky above didn't hold the usual constellations. It was mostly a vast, crushing void, punctuated only by single stars on the far horizon.

  "How much farther, Seweryn?" Alfons asked, as if the exercise of a few minutes' walking made him tired.

  "Just over this ridge," the nobleman pointed his finger ahead. "It is owned by a man whom I know very well."

  His voice contained a touch of pride, as if announcing there was something great about that association.

  Below them, nestled in a valley, sat a large establishment. It was lit by burning torches, casting a warm, inviting light against the stark, dead terrain. Beyond it, a lake of dark, glassy water reflected the eruptions of distant volcanoes.

  "Under the Devil's Lily. They serve a wonderful wine here. And have thick walls."

  Justinian nodded, adjusting his slightly burned coat.

  They descended the ridge, finally replacing the tension of fire with the warmth of a welcoming place.

  At the inn, they rented two exclusive rooms. The men took one larger room—while the devilesses were condemned to each other's company.

  Seeing Septima enter the room with narrowed eyes alongside an enthusiastic Bogna, Justinian felt a headache coming on.

  For now, however, the key was unpacking and clarifying their next plans.

  "We have a week until the time set by Micromegas. Until then, we shouldn't show ourselves in the 60th dimension."

  Seweryn's suggestion couldn't have been received better. True, Franciscus maintained his indifference, but Justinian and Alfons sighed with visible relief. The sight of Micromegas's minions' exploding heads had evidently stuck in their memories.

  Letting the rest unpack, Seweryn and the human went to check the state of the facility. The multi-story building didn't differ much in style from the one whose burning they had recently observed. Due to a slightly wider structure, the ground floor housed a great bar-and-dining hall. Outside, guests could look out at a charming lake and volcanoes exploding in the distance.

  "What is this place, anyway?"

  Justinian had no idea about infernal dimensions, though the name "66th Hell" suggested there were at least 65 others. He also remembered the story about the King of Names and Symbols destroying 40% of Dimension 67.

  Seweryn, for some reason much less stressed the moment he was out of Mrs. Wachowska's range, smiled and set about explaining.

  "It’s a transitional dimension that devil civilization commercialized for its own needs."

  The vague explanation caused confusion in the already ill-informed human. Seeing this, the nobleman shook his head.

  "You see, in the vast majority of infernal worlds, there is a problem with inheriting wealth from parents. Those of us who are cultivators often live for tens of thousands of years, and that doesn't bode well for inheritance prospects."

  Justinian frowned.

  "And how does that relate to this place?"

  "Ha! That is precisely our genius. Can you guess what this world is?"

  The human looked around, finding nothing unusual. As a cultivator, the place seemed quite strange, almost devoid of the richness of spiritual energy available in the 66th dimension. He didn't know why, though.

  "Your intuition isn't wrong," Seweryn commented on his conclusions. "We are now on a chunk of a dead planet, the size of a single devil estate. There is no dimension spirit here, and for all intents and purposes, one cannot cultivate."

  As the nobleman explained, devils fought many wars with each other, which quite often led to destruction and then the creation of new planets. This meant that many such scraps existed in the dimensions, drifting along without practically being in the space of any specific dimension.

  "If a descendant doesn't show much promise, one buys such a piece of dead land from the Lord of Hell and sends him on an eternal vacation. No one stirs up trouble at home because of it, the descendant keeps his miserable life, and the Lord of Hell earns an extra penny for his war preparations."

  Justinian shook his head listening to these explanations. He had to admit, however, that while the solution was typically devilish—combining absurdity with daily life—it made quite a bit of sense. After all, a life wasn't wasted, and the dynastic line was preserved.

  Septima watched with her usual grim expression as the rabble she was forced to travel with settled down at a table in the dining hall. It was all the more tiring because, for the last hour, her roommate hadn't stopped talking for even five minutes.

  She’d spoken more in an hour than Maleficius had in a decade.

  "That's why you have to watch out for that grim judge! Even when he smiles, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing!"

  The black-haired deviless had no idea what Bogna was talking about. If not for her high cultivation, she would have stopped listening long ago.

  Her cursed, highly developed senses, however, were working at full capacity, without any mercy.

  Forcing herself to pay attention to something else, she looked at the green-haired child taking notes in concentration. Supposedly, he was a relative of some poet, but she had never heard his name before.

  'Aren't those small bumps at this age typical for dimension 58?'

  So much time had passed that she wasn't sure. Information was hard to recover after the shattering and sealing of her previous cultivation base. What irritated her, however, was the strange spirit drifting from the pipe the child carried.

  It looked like a sealed soul of a human, most likely tormented by unearthly torture. However, ever since they had found themselves in this hall, it had been watching her, narrowing its eyes. Even though she didn't think it knew her, she still had the urge to tear it to shreds.

  Nearby sat the son of the Sarmatian from the 66th dimension. Seeing his idiotic expression and attempts to sit with prideful expression, typical of the simpletons from there, she decided not to waste another thought on him.

  The waitress took their orders and announced that the food would be served shortly.

  Septima regretted agreeing to come here at all. What was she thinking? That this ridiculous human would help her with her cultivation in some way? Now she could only sigh in dissatisfaction.

  On top of that, the atmosphere inside was so stuffy. Irritating voices everywhere; she wondered how long she could last in this questionable company.

  As she drifted off for a moment, thinking how wonderful it would be to silence them all, her attention was caught by energy approaching from the outside.

  'Hmm?'

  She managed to glance toward its origin just as the energy accelerated, and inside... a massive crash resounded! One of the inn's walls collapsed; a gaping hole several meters wide now yawned within it.

  Devils began to scream, many of them bolting to escape. Septima did not belong to this group, nor did her "companions," who remained at the table.

  In the slowly settling dust of the fallen wall, the silhouette of an unusual figure began to emerge. It was the figure of a massive, three-meter-tall boar carrying someone on its back.

  Her roommate, Bogna, seeing him, widened her eyes.

  The person jumped off the boar's back and looked around the hall defiantly.

  "Well, which one of you parvenues did it?!"

  The devil who asked this had green hair and a thin mustache curled upwards. He was also completely drunk and could barely articulate his sentences.

  Above all, however, the biggest attention-drawer was his legs. Very skinny legs with exposed calves, noticeably contrary to the fashion sense of the 66th dimension.