Riding a dragon across the ocean was awesome.

“Is master liking Gorynych’s back?” the zmey asked, eager to please like a good dog. Vainqueur led the group, while Kia flew on her own griffin nearby.

“It’s a bit rocky, but I will get used to it,” Victor replied. In retrospect, his [Monster Rider] perk synergized extremely well with his [Chaos Rider] and [Weathermaker] classes. “I just wish you didn’t bring rain everywhere though.”

The zmey couldn’t help but summon rain around him, making the trip very uncomfortable. At best, he managed to make it a faint drizzle instead of a heavy downpour. It bothered Victor as much as Sigrun’s ghost glaring at him in silence.

“Gorynych can change it to [Hailstorm] or [Thunderstorm] if master wishes it!”

“Minion, do not enjoy this!” Vainqueur complained. “To ride on the back of a dragon is contrary to the spirit of minionship!”

The zmey tilted his three heads in giddiness. “Big V recognized Gorynych as a dragon!”

“An inbred, poor excuse of a dragon!” Vainqueur loudly complained, while doing his best to ignore Victor’s mount. “Minion, I am sure his mother and his sister are the same!”

“My mother is my sister’s niece!” Gorynych defended himself.

“Hey, guys, is that normal?” Kia glanced at the waters below them. The sea had suddenly turned from blue to orange, the corpses of dead fish floating on the surface. The very smell had changed from algae to that of a cocktail bar.

“It looks like alcohol to me,” Victor said as he glanced down. Having seen much weirder things in Outremonde, it wouldn’t surprise him.

“Who cares?” Vainqueur replied, catching sight of an island in the middle of that strange sea. “I see our destination!”

Floating in the middle of that strange orange sea, the new island that would become the final battleground between Vainqueur and Furibon was small; smaller than Grandrake’s own private resort. Covered in green grass, it would have seemed almost unremarkable except for its location.

However, Victor noticed hundreds of head-like statues lined up on the shore.

It appeared that they had found Outremonde’s version of Easter Island.

The group landed on the shore while the sun began to set. “So, what do we do now?” Victor asked, climbing down from his zmey’s back. “We train for cards?”

“Now, I rest,” Vainqueur said, falling on the sand. “I burned tons of fat to reach this place.”

“Me too!” Gorynych rolled in the sand, laying on his back right next to Vainqueur. The bigger dragon instantly crawled farther, turning his back on the happy zmey with snobbish zeal. Kia simply let her griffin go hunt the dead fish in the orange sea, following Victor on foot as they approached the head statues.

They all represented the same guy: Victor himself.

Everywhere, he could see dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of statues with his face, each wearing a different hat.

Only one statue, in the middle of the main line, differed from the rest. Instead of a head, it represented a muscled, idealized version of Victor carrying the giant god Dice on his back. The scene reminded the Vizier of statues of the titan Atlas lifting the world on his shoulders.

The builders had engraved a sentence on that statue’s pedestal.

"The rolling of the Dice."

“Wow, the resemblance is astonishing,” Kia said, completely oblivious to the statue’s true nature. “What a coincidence.”

“Indeed,” Victor deadpanned, realizing that they had landed on his island.

The Island… of Daltonia.

Or maybe Dicetopia? Since they were the first people to set foot on the island, Victor could give an amusing name.

“I BLEEPed up!”

… or maybe not the first.

Kia and Victor turned to the shore, noticing a strange mermaid sitting nearby while drinking away her sorrows. Unlike most members of her kind, she had a squid’s tentacles for her lower body instead of a fishtail, and held a bottle with each of them; the upper part reminded the Vizier of a Japanese yakuza, with all the tattoos on her skin and only a bra for modesty.

“Are you okay?” Victor approached her, worried. She looked completely depressed.

“I screwed up!” The mermaid complained, completely drunk. “I screwed it up!”

“You too?” Victor asked, curious. “How?”

“I, I turned the sea into whiskey!”

“Whiskey?” Kia immediately moved to the sea to investigate.

Victor, meanwhile, comforted the mermaid by patting her on the back and sitting next to her. “Hey, it’s fine. I mean, I destroyed Heaven, which is way worse.” Thankfully, Kia was too far away to listen.

The mermaid handed him a bottle with one of her eight tentacles. “Do you want a drink to forget too?”

“Sure.”

“Guys, it’s really whiskey!” Kia shouted, having somehow summoned a bottle to gather as much of the precious liquid as she could.

“That would explain all the dead fish,” Victor noted out loud, sipping his drink.

“Yeah, I figure a whiskey sea sounds fun for us… but for the aquatic wildlife? It must be a very hostile environment.”

“I shouldn’t have!” the drunk mermaid kept ranting to Victor, having adopted him as her talking board, “I’m Seng! Goddess of the sea, dreams, adventure, and alcoholism! I shouldn’t have killed all these fishes!”

Just in case, the Vizier checked up on her with [Monster Insight].

Seng

Screwup Deity (Aquatic/Divine!)

Strengths and weaknesses: aim for the liver.

*Sounds of crying*