NOVEL NEXT Chapter 178: Relic
Kai clicked his tongue but didn't argue further. He adjusted the strap of his weapon and moved deeper into the ruins, boots crunching faintly against scattered stone and dust.
Vael, still perched lightly atop his head, tilted his feathery head to the side, his eyes scanning the path ahead with restless flicks.
The deeper they went, the colder it got.
Not the kind of cold that came from temperature, but from stillness, from age.
Stone pillars stood half-crumbled, vines crawling through cracks, and time had gnawed away at every corner.
Then suddenly he halted and expanded his essence, sensing the traps ahead.
"Great..." Kai muttered, running a hand through his hair. "Couldn't be as easy as just grabbing it, huh?"
Vael let out a faint, amused chirp and shifted slightly on his head.
Kai arrived at a collapsed stairwell that twisted downward.
The ceiling had partially caved in, letting strands of weak sunlight leak through.
Stone and debris littered the way, but more than that, faint blue glyphs flickered against the floor.
"Old warding runes…" Kai crouched down near the edge. "Though half of them are degraded."
He reached into his storage bracelet and took out a small orb of raw essence stone, something he used to test ambient wards. He flicked it ahead.
As soon as it touched one of the glyph-etched tiles—
BZZZT!
A sudden discharge of energy burst out.
Bright blue crackles arced in a violent surge before vanishing into the ground.
"Yup. Still hungry." Kai stood. "Alright. Time to play ghost."
[<Stealth!>]
He let his presence thin and blur slightly, his body lighter, footsteps fainter.
He stepped between the tiles, carefully watching the glyph patterns.
Some were safe, completely dead. Others flickered with dull pulses, feeding off residual mana.
Halfway through, a faint hum kicked up. A pulse of mana rolled through the floor like a sonar ping.
"Shit." Kai pressed himself against a pillar.
He didn't wait.
[<Ghost Step!>]
One flicker, he blinked from one tile to the next.
BWHOOOM!
The ground beneath where he had just stood exploded in a burst of fire, melting ancient stone into slag.
He skidded across a patch of loose gravel. Vael flapped up into the air and hovered beside him, squawking sharply.
"I know, alright?" Kai hissed. "I didn't plan to almost get melted."
But the stairwell was finally past.
Ahead of him, through a wide arch, stood the watchtower's heart.
A chamber crumbling at the edges, with a stone pedestal at its center.
The Relic Fragment hovered just above it, a jagged piece of obsidian-like crystal, wrapped in soft violet light. Around it, six broken floating rings spun lazily in the air. They pulsed with dying raw energy, each rotation shedding more of the aura shielding the fragment.
Kai approached carefully. Something in the air was wrong. Heavy.
Vael chirped softly, wings tense.
The moment Kai stepped inside, the fragment's aura flared, just once.
And then, suddenly, all the light was sucked inward.
CLANG!
A circular sigil on the floor activated, massive and intricate, spreading in red and purple hues. The floating rings snapped into position, forming a cage of shifting runes.
"Mana drain trap!" Kai cursed and leapt back, but the room locked him inside with a boom.
His mana began to drain, slowly, but steady, as if the air itself wanted to feed.
"Of course."
Kai scanned the circle, then noticed a small glowing point on the outer ring, slightly off compared to the rest. A stabilizer rune.
"That's the anchor."
He sprinted forward, his dagger flashing, brought it down with all the weight he could muster.
The dagger struck the rune, the floor cracked—
The runic cage flickered, collapsed, and the room dimmed again.
Kai exhaled, sweat running down his brow.
The Relic Fragment dropped slightly before floating in front of him, no longer shielded.
He reached out and took it carefully. The moment his fingers touched the surface, a chill crawled up his arm, but nothing resisted.
The artifact clicked softly into his storage bracelet, registering its presence.
Vael landed back on his shoulder, talons gripping firmly.
Kai stood still for a moment, breathing in the silence of the ruined tower. Then turned back, murmuring,
"Let's get out before the ceiling decides it wants to cave in next."
****
Somewhere far beyond the reach of sunlight…
Beneath the crust of the world, where light dared not crawl, lay a chamber cloaked in endless night.
The walls, if they could be called that, were jagged and misshapen.
Breathing shadows crawled along the stone.
There were no torches. No lanterns. And yet, a dull, unnatural glow pulsed from the very veins of the obsidian floor, crimson lines like lifeblood, carved into impossible patterns.
At the very heart of the chamber stood a black pedestal, and upon it, a single obsidian orb rested, no bigger than a human head.
It was polished, perfect, and radiated a pressure so dense that even the air seemed reluctant to exist near it.
Then—
Crack!
A thin, splintering line ran across the surface of the orb, spreading like a spider's web.
It was silent, yet the very fabric of the room shivered.
The shadows halted. The blood-red veins in the floor dimmed… and then flared brighter.
----
Somewhere far, far away—
In a grand, dimly lit chamber adorned with tall gothic pillars and endless stained-glass windows, a man's eyes snapped open.
They were sharp, shade of deep violet that shimmered like starlight in the dark.
He sat on a throne of dark iron, his figure draped in loose silken robes, the color of night.
His expression was calm.
A girl knelt beside the throne, clad in ceremonial garb of black and silver.
Her face was veiled, but her voice trembled with concern.
"My lord… what's wrong?"
He didn't look at her. Slowly, he stood up.
"…The seal cracked."
He descended the throne's steps with measured calm.
The chamber's air shifted with each step he took, shadows deepening in reverence or fear.
The girl's breath hitched. "The seal? But that should've held for another—"
"It's early," he said, cutting her off softly. "Much earlier than it should've been."
He paused before a titanic door, engraved with runes. Its surface pulsed, reacting to his presence.
Then he reached out and placed a hand against it.
Behind him, the girl shivered as the temperature dropped.
"Should I… inform the others?"
He gave no answer at first, the massive doors began to groan open with a deafening grind.
He stepped through, his voice echoing faintly.
"No need. I'll see it myself."
------
End...
[A/N]
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