[In the end, you asked for King Ourimunda to remain too.]
The system panel flashed as Ryuk stood in the sky, beneath him, the rolling waves of the dark sea.
And it was right.
King Ourimunda had meant to come with him, but in the end, Ryuk had him remain with his family.
"I contracted him, but I also don’t have much of a path or plan for him."
"But there, he’s both an uncle and a brother."
"It’s a path he could follow," Ryuk mused to himself as he silently rose higher and higher into the sea.
"Besides, it’s not like this is the end, and I’m still with them back there,"
He said this because he had left one of his clones behind with them.
[Reuniting is beautiful, isn’t it?]
The system said, and Ryuk couldn’t help but nod.
Zaffre’s mother was a mermaid, a race that slumbers more than they’re awake.
Her finally awakening right as he and Zaffre appeared could only be described as a once-in-a-lifetime blessing for Zaffre.
Her father had been cold in order not to lose his battle will, driven by the thought of facing the vengeful Ourimunda one day.
Because of this, he had treated her coldly.
Essentially, all her life, she never had her mother awake to tell stories to, nor did her father spend enough time with her.
But now that the war was over, and her mother was awake, it was the only chance she had to experience what it felt like to have a family.
He could not ruin that, just because she was contracted to him.
And truthfully, the scene of their reuniting was indeed beautiful.
"It’s almost like a good ending in one of those books back on Endearth... and it really does feel like one," he mused to himself.
[Ever think you would find an ending like that?]
The system asked as Ryuk paused mid-flight.
His brows creased, faint veins of displeasure coloring his face, but it soon settled as he replied.
"That will never happen for me."
Before more could be said, he chased away the moody cloud around his heart, a steely, cold light shining from his eyes.
"I have to find the rest of the Calamities."
"There are three more, and I need to gather information on where they are as soon as possible," he said with conviction before becoming a glitch that disappeared through the sky.
Zaffre had been safely reunited with her family.
One could say her journey, in the end, was a successful one, and another mission Ryuk had completed.
Now, it was time to focus on the rest.
_____________
There were two ways to find the other Calamities.
One was to gather information, mostly from the other Knulls around.
If he met one who had enough power, surely they must be aware of the location of the other three Calamities.
But returning to the Knull Domain wasn’t what Ryuk wanted.
He didn’t want Knull anywhere near him.
While he had indeed grown far stronger than he was when he initially came across Knull, Ryuk wanted to make sure that the next time he sighted him would be the day he destroyed Knull himself.
So, returning to the Domain was out.
The second way to find the Knull Calamities was also to gather information, but this time, it didn’t involve going back to the Knull Domain.
It involved one of his body parts, his nervous system.
He had regained that body part from the Sixth Calamity, The Marionette Queen, and her power, as Ryuk had come to learn, was the ability to take control of the minds of other Knulls.
And what was more, every single Knull whose mind she had controlled had been done so with strings, and those same strings, right now, were also attached to Ryuk.
He descended from the sky in a barren mountainous land, perched upon a random tall mountain.
He sat atop the mountain, his clothes and hair whipping around, and his eyes silently shut.
Ryuk sat atop the mountain before his eyes silently shut.
The links that the Sixth Calamity had established still existed deep in his mind.
But he would need to concentrate to reestablish them.
And after about thirty minutes of closed eyes, his attention focused most specifically on the bones around the back of his neck.
Ryuk felt himself descend further into his subconscious, and in the next moment, his eyes opened, but they didn’t open to a mountainous ground.
Instead, they opened to a world of darkness... and strings.
All across the dark expanse, faint strings shimmered with a soft violet light.
"This is a domain," Ryuk mused to himself as he moved closer to one of the strings.
His hand reached forward, and in that moment, he called out:
"Domain Expansion: Strings of the Knullic Seer."
In the next moment, the various strings around him let loose a bright release of violet light, and then the light coalesced together, forming hundreds of images all around.
Images that revealed Knulls walking about in completely different areas.
Ryuk’s eyes burned gently with violet flames as he cast his gaze upon the holograms.
There were over five hundred of these holograms, revealing that Marionette had attached her strings to over five hundred Knulls, possessing full control of their minds.
And that same feeling transferred to Ryuk.
Stretching his hand toward a string, something materialized.
A pair of scissors floated just before the strings, ready to clip them.
He knew what would happen if he did, the death of the one whom the string controlled.
’It’s a game over for anyone dumb enough to get under strings,’ Ryuk thought silently to himself, but then, he wasn’t here to kill Knulls, so the scissors disappeared.
Ryuk turned to the footage instead, and he began observing each Knull.
It didn’t take long before he found one Knull gathered around the vestige of a seemingly broken world.
His finger traced across that image and lightly tapped the strings, noticing his mind immediately connected with that of the Knull.
The knull’s eyes also immediately turned violet as his body remained rigid.
Ryuk spoke into its mind.
"Under which army are you gathered?"
"Under the army of the Third Calamity, Devilish Dream Lord Aileren," the figure answered almost robotically, and a cold smile curled on Ryuk’s lips.
"Tell me, where is he now?"