“Yeah,” Nyx agreed. “There will be time to look into this when we meet this man.”
Fine, I said, knowing fully that I’d still end up thinking about him, and probably many times at that.
My Volcanic Bear strode forward as we made our way to the end of the grove. Before us lay another mountain-path heading upward, but this one was steeper and more rugged than the previous. It wasn’t well defined, but I could tell it rose to the castle and that’s all that we needed at the moment.
“Do you think this man would have sensed us?” Irmeia asked.
I hadn’t considered that, I thought. “Well, whether he has or hasn’t, we just have to keep heading up to that place. We don’t really have another choice.”
“However, I do feel that if this man knows of our position, we must do something to counter that knowledge.”
“We really can’t though,” I said. “If he knows where we are, then he would do it by sensing our presence. That means randomly moving around won’t hide us from him.
“Eternal,” Oris called out from behind. “How much longer to this place?”
I looked ahead, at the path before me. Rocks stood on trail, both embedded on the ground and lying loose on the surface. This was not an easy path to maneuver.
“We’ll reach in an hour,” I said.
The Knight didn’t say anything and just diverted his attention back to the ground before him. I caught a glance at Freya and the other two. Raffyr and Viola rode the same bear, and not a single question had come from their lips in all this time. Freya on the other hand seemed visibly emotionless, but I knew there was nothing I could do for her, and so I turned ahead.
We soon rode onto the rocky path and headed up the mountain. The route swirled around the rising structure, inclining upwards as it did. About an hour passed in silence before we caught first glance of the castle of stone.
My eyes kept watch over everything in my vision — at the end of the route a few hundred yards off from us, at the section of castle showing from the left side of my vision, at the light reflecting off the jewels studded into the design. Everything.
“We need to be alert,” Nyx said. “There’s no telling what this man might be up to.”
I know. I focused on the structure as I moved forward. Is there an alternative way to get into this place? I wondered. Walking through the front entrance is probably not the best idea.
“It is not,” Acnologia said. “I will take a look,” the Dragon added. I heard the sound of wings opening up, and the next thing I knew, the Dragon had risen high into the air.
What are you doing? I asked, a little worried.
“Trying to get a better image of this castle,” the Dragon said. “It will—”
What? I asked, panicking at his sudden stop.
“I found another entrance,” he said.
Wait, really? I stopped my Volcanic Bear and the entire cohort stopped along with me. That was fast.
“Indeed,” the Dragon said. “The entrance is much higher up on the mountain. It is embedded into the slope.”
My eyebrows furrowed. That’s an odd place to put an entrance.
“Never mind,” Acnologia sighed, and glided back down to us.
What? I asked.
“The entrance has a trigger field right out front.”
Ah, so you enter it and this place’s owner will immediately know.
“Exactly.”
“Fine then.” I faced everyone else. “We’re going in through the front entrance.”
“Eh?” Viola blinked. “Head on?”
“We don’t really have any other choice,” I said. “Acnologia found another entrance but it has a trigger barrier in front of it, meaning in our eyes it’s as good as not having that entrance at all.”
“So we’re just striding through the front entrance?”
I glanced at the pillars of solid stone before us. “Yup,” I said. “We’re striding in.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Freya bit her lip. “But it sounds like it’s the only option. Is it?”
I nodded. “I don’t know of anything else.”
“Very well then.”
I tapped on my Volcanic Bear and we headed forward once more. A staircase rose from the ground, and lead up to the section where the pillars started. I got off my Volcanic Bear a few yards before the steps, and waited for everyone else to do the same.
“It’s better to go through here on foot from now on,” I said. “Volcanic Bears inside an urban setting are not helpful.”
They nodded and got off as well. We made our way to the staircase, glancing around as we did. The jewels studding the pillars glowed much more marvelously up close, with the morning sunlight illuminating the flecks within their structure.
We stepped up the pathway, and climbed up to the upper surface. A wide entrance lay before us, about twenty yards in from where the pillars stood. A breeze flew out the darkness, and sent an eerie chill down my spine. I activated my Night Vision skill and looked through, noticing an empty room right within.
“Come on,” I whispered and stepped forward.
“Eternal,” Acnologia said. “What must I do? I do not fit in here.”
Oh, I blinked. I’d completely forgotten about that part.
“Zoran?” Irmeia asked.
“Sorry. Just a second.” I stood at the entrance of the chamber. Nyx, can you access the familiar storage system?
“I can work through the menu,” the spirit said. “Why? Do you want Acnologia to go back into the storage system?’
Acnologia, I said. You were able to summon yourself out of the system on your own, right?
“Indeed,” he said. “That seemed to be what happened.”
Okay, so we don’t have to worry about you being stuck in there again, or anything similar to that, I said.
“I don’t think you need to.”
I nodded. Nyx, open up the familiar storage menu and send Acnologia back into it.
“Understood,” Nyx said.
I saw a small flash of light behind me, and I glanced back. I no longer saw a Dragon but a stream of lights shaped like one. The glowing specks surged around me, spinning in a twister-like motion for a second and then dissolving into the wind the next.
“Dragon’s been stored,” Nyx said.
“Everything is fine Eternal,” Acnologia sounded softer, but fine nonetheless.
Good, I looked forward, gesturing at everyone else to follow. They all looked at the spot where the Dragon had stood but they’d all understood what I’d just done. There was no reason to explain anything, and so I turned my attention to what was in front of me.
The darkness before me was not unnerving, which was usually a good sign. I was an Eternal who thrived in darkness, and so if I ever found darkness nerve wracking, then there was something odd happening in there.
I’d honestly expected this place to also have such a kind of darkness, but that did not seem the case. At least for now. I glanced around, and used my Night Vision skill to scope out an entrance.
If we’re searching for the mystery man, we’ll probably have to head deeper into the castle, I said.
“He’s definitely not anywhere this far out,” Nyx agreed.
How deep does this place go? I asked.
“No clue. There’s no map I can access.”
That’s odd. I looked around, and noticed a dark cutout of wood right before us. An entrance, I thought.
Suddenly, a hand tapped my shoulder. I turned around to see Irmeia point at something, a design on the wall to our right. I glanced in the direction and noticed a large rune inscribed into the surface. I couldn’t really tell much about the rune, but I could tell it did something within this place.
I however did not do anything to it, and kept moving forward, asking everyone else to follow. We walked through the next entrance. A dull light glowed into the room, and I noticed that a gemstone of white lay in the middle of the ceiling. The room had three other d
oors, one on each of the three walls before me.
“This is a puzzle,” Freya whispered.
“Seems like it,” I said. Any thoughts, you two? I asked.
“None,” Acnologia said.
“Just be careful,” Nyx warned.
I nodded. I quickly realized that just randomly guessing a way out wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead I closed my eyes, focusing on my mind and letting my thoughts go through unopposed.
My concentration spiked, and I let my consciousness sense the energy around me, trying to see if I could sense precisely where this man was. If I could figure that out then it’d be easier to know which direction to go in. As of right now all we had was a blind guess.
And that wasn’t useful at all.
A minute passed, but I still felt nothing. I sighed and opened up my eyes.
DING!
Congratulations! Your skill Mind Arts, has increased to Level 2! Mana Regeneration increased to +2%.
DING!
Congratulations! You have learnt a new Mind Arts spell, ‘Ferazin: Mental scope’! This spell allows you to sense the flow of energy around you and determine what kind of enemies might be in your surroundings. Works better for stronger beings. Mana Cost: 4000 Mana. Duration: 10 minutes. Range: 10 yards. Cast time: 15 seconds. Cooldown: 30 minutes.
Nice, I thought, and closed the screen. Suddenly, I felt something from the right, as though an object had just sent a small shock toward me.
I quickly stepped toward the entrance, and when I sensed no obvious threat or trap in there I walked in. Another room with three other entrances stood there, perplexing me even more.
What made me come here? I asked myself. The sensation?
“Still don’t have access to a map,” Nyx muttered.
It’s probably because we’re inside an enemy castle, I said.
“That appears to be the case.”
I looked at the entrances available to me. Which way do I go?
“This one,” Irmeia pointed to the one at my left.
I frowned. “Are you sure?”
“I can feel something,” she said, and that was assurance enough for me.
“Wait,” Freya said. “I don’t think it’s safe to head down that path just because you feel we should.”
I shook my head. “That’s fine, Freya,” I said. “This is how I got through the first door. There’s something weird going on here.”
The elf looked a little worried but the other three seemed fine and so we pushed ahead, travelling into the door Irmeia had suggested. This door however, did not lead to another room, at least not immediately.
A long corridor stood before us and we walked along it, all the way till it dropped us off in another room.
The new room was different, with only two entrances instead of three, and both of them on the same wall. However, between the two of them stood a giant rune, painted in silver colors, glowing even though there wasn’t any light around.
I walked up to the inscription, scoping out the ground and ceiling as I did. I quietly placed my hand on the rune — only to have it pass through.
Eh? I blinked, bringing my hand back out and pushing in again, and it passed through the wall, as though it didn’t even exist in the first place.
An Illusion, I smiled.
I stepped through the wall.
And the ground beneath me gave away.
Colors emerged around me, with rainbow shades swirling through my vision like I was traveling through a painting. My eyes spun in the cacophony of shades, and then they closed, getting rid of the sight altogether.
I smacked hard into the surface below, and my back ached as I got up. I hadn’t broken any bones though, which I found very odd. Sure, a rock dropping on me fractures my leg, but falling like five hundred yards down onto stone does nothing.
“You were teleported down here,” Acnologia said. “That rune must have been a teleportation device or something.”
I heard multiple thuds behind me, and glanced around to see that everyone else had made their way here too. A dull light shone through the chamber, as if a small window lay cut open in the wall. I looked at everyone, making sure they were all conscious.
“Zoran.” Viola looked at me, her eyes wide, and a tremble within her voice.
And then I realized she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking behind me.
I turned around and my heart froze.
Cages upon cages stood before us, each one massive and stacked in a grid like formation. There were about a hundred of them in total, and within each one sat a carcass.
Dragons.
The majestic creatures lay hung upside down or chained to the cage walls, their dead bodies cut, burnt and mutilated in a hundred different ways. My eyes shivered at the sight, my heart confused between beating fast or stopping completely still.
The Dragons were dead, the walls of black hiding their echoing screams, abandoning their brutalized forms. One hundred cages lay before us. But they no longer contained one hundred dragons.
Just bones and blood.
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Screams haunted my mind, echoing for what seemed like hours. I stared at the red-stained bones before me, at the half-decayed carcasses, and I found myself unable to pull away from the toxic sight.
“Oh my god,” Irmeia gasped, clasping her mouth with one hand, while the other lay trembling at her side. I reached out and grasped her fingers, but I could speak no words.
No one could speak any words.
Not in the face of this.
To me, it was as clear as daylight what had happened. Runes of odd shapes lay dressed on some of the dead bodies, a few of them written in dark ink, and others written in darker blood.
“Whoever this man is,” Acnologia said, with a sorrowful, yet raging tone in his voice. “He was trying to become a Dragonborn.”
I nodded.
The history of this time was peculiar to me, and I knew a little bit of the Eternal Dragon War. Though many Eternals fought clean on the battlefields, there were few that desired to harness the power of the enemy, and thus was born the pursuit to become a Dragonborn. Many Eternals ended up torturing and killing the Dragons, all in the name of ‘research’ for this harnessing of power.
In the end, the actual way to become a Dragonborn wasn’t any less grotesque. One had to stab a Dragon at its heart and then drink its blood. This was one piece of information I was never going to let slip out here. Of everything I could do that could affect the future, that would be the worst.
“This is like hell,” Oris said, his eyes aghast. I was surprised for a second, to see someone from the Dark Alliance, someone from the enemy side, show sympathy for a situation like this. I had always considered them all to be murderers, an extension from the Dark Lord. But I realized that was an unfair assumption to make.
In all regards, Oris seemed a good man.
Just one with the wrong ideology in him.
“What do we do?” Freya asked, glancing at the tower of cages, and then at me. She was trembling from the sight too, but she held herself together nonetheless.
“We move forward,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do by staying here, or by turning back. We have no choice but to meet the man in the castle.”
“He’s probably very strong,” Viola said quietly, as if she was afraid to utter the words. “He must be if he took out this many Dragons.”
I nodded. “He will be a formidable opponent,” I said. “But there’s only one of him. We’ve got the advantage here.”
“He’s also MUCH higher leveled than you guys,” Nyx said. “In fact, it might not be too far-fetched to say he’s still higher leveled than all your levels added up.”
No way, I said. That’s far too high.
“Yeah, it probably is,” the spirit said meekly.
Stop messing with me, I said.
My eyes scanned through the cages, trying to see if there was a single health bar that would pop u
p, but there wasn’t. I hadn’t expected one too. All of these Dragons were completely dead, and not a sliver of life was present in a single one of them.
“We should…move on.” Irmeia squeezed my hand and then let go, her fingers still trembling. The others were pretty shaken too, Oris especially. But they were all much better compared to her.
“Yeah, let’s get going,” I said, looking down either end of the room. I could see entrances on both sides, with staircases leading up from each one. My instinct told me either one should be fine, but I was still wanted to make an informed decision. I looked at them closer, trying to see if there were any tell-tale signs of which one was a better choice.
“Just go this way,” Freya said, moving to the left.
“Wait, why?” I asked.
“Look there.” She pointed at the wall to my right, beside the very last cage on that side. A line of metal clasps lay embedded on the wall, a kind of device to hang weapons from.
“The clasps are only on that side,” she said. “Meaning the person who used this place, maybe even the man in the castle, came in from that staircase. It might not mean much, but given we have nothing else to go on, this staircase seems safer.”
“Fine,” I said, impressed with her logic.
“You’re never impressed with my logic,” Nyx complained.
Show me some and I’ll be impressed, I smiled.
“Wow.”
We walked up the staircase, and the sounds of footsteps echoed through the narrow pathway. Darkness entered our vision once again as we left the dull light of the chamber and headed to whatever was above.
Acnologia, I said, realizing he hadn’t spoken in a while. Are you okay?
“I am processing things, Eternal,” the Dragon said. “I remember some things from the Eternal Dragon War, things that caused pain and struck horror, but this is the first time I have seen something of this scale. Even monsters would tremble before the sight of such a grotesque act.”
I said nothing, for there was nothing I could say in such a situation. I would like to think I understood exactly how he felt, but I knew that wasn’t the case. I was not a Dragon. My kin weren’t the ones I’d seen brutalized before me. This was not my calamity to feel such sorrow for.
The Eternal: Transcend - A LitRPG Saga (World of Ga'em Book 3) Page 21
