Kael descended the stairs, his steps slow, his grip tight around the torch.
The light flickered against ancient stone, revealing walls worn smooth by time. The air grew colder the deeper he went; there was no light other than his torch's.
At the bottom, the stairs ended in a narrow hallway.
Kael did not step forward immediately.
He raised the torch and looked up.
The ceiling was low here, carved with shallow grooves that ran the length of the corridor. They weren't decorative. He could tell that much at a glance. They were part of the traps placed here.
He picked up a small pebble from the ground and tossed it ahead.
The moment it passed the midpoint of the hallway, the ceiling shifted. Thin spikes shot down with terrifying speed, shattering the floor, and went into place again slowly.
Kael exhaled.
"Hallways… and there are rooms like that."
He pressed himself close to the wall and advanced carefully, moving only when the ceiling was still. The mechanism reacted to motion directly beneath it.
By keeping his steps uneven and hugging the edge, he made it through with only one close call, a spike grazing past his shoulder close enough that he felt the wind of it.
He entered the first room and scanned the ceiling with his skill to see if there was any trace of mana.
But luck was not on his side; he could not see any mana presence there, and he moved on to the next room through the continuing hallway.
The second hallway was longer. The floor was made of different sizes and colors of parts, like a rainbow.
Kael did not advance at first; he studied the floor and looked at the ceiling. It was fine and in one piece, just a ceiling, no holes, no cut sections.
Kael narrowed his eyes and stepped forward and immediately jumped back as the entire ceiling collapsed, slamming into the floor with crushing force.
Dust billowed outward.
"So it drops instead of piercing," he muttered.
The ceiling slowly rose back to its former place again.
He studied the floor again, took out metal pieces shaped like a cube and weighing some mass, and threw the first one onto the yellow part of the floor.
The weight of the metal pressed the stone down, and little arrows shot out from the left side of the wall.
Kael narrowed his eyes and muttered, "So I need to be aware of the walls too, great." But he did not linger on the thought; time was crucial for him, as only a couple of hours were left until sunrise.
He threw the metal cube again and it landed on the white-painted part of the floor. Kael waited for some time to see if something shot out from the wall or if the ceiling collapsed again.
But nothing happened, and Kael began to move slowly through the way, only placing his foot on the white sections of the floor.
After he passed this part of the hallway and reached the second room, he looked inside and found nothing again. Room Two. Empty.
Room Three held broken pillars and old scorch marks, as if someone had once fought here and lost badly. The ceiling bore a large, circular indentation—but no stone.
By Room Five, Kael's torch was already half its original size. Kael threw the torch and lit another after taking it from his ring.
The hallways between the rooms grew increasingly malicious. One ceiling exhaled poison gas when disturbed, forcing Kael to hold his breath and sprint through.
Another dropped heavy slabs in sequence, a crushing rhythm meant to herd intruders into a fatal misstep.
He began to understand the design of the ruin.
The rooms were safe and not meant to kill.
The hallways were.
Room Eight had a ceiling too smooth.
That alone made him stop.
Perfect stone. No cracks.
Kael frowned, then smiled thinly.
He tried to enter the room, but
He leapt backward just as the ceiling inverted itself, turning into a massive maw of rotating blades that scythed down where his head had been a heartbeat earlier. The mechanism groaned, failed to find its target, then slowly reset.
"I think some rooms are dangerous too," he thought.
The core stone was not here either.
Room Ten marked the halfway point.
Kael leaned against the wall near the safe door, extinguished the torch, relit a new torch, and continued.
Rooms Twelve and Thirteen blurred together, empty chambers that existed only to drain patience and time.
Room Fourteen nearly killed him with spike shooting out near the door and mocked him with its emptiness.
Then he entered Room Eighteen.
The moment he stepped inside, he felt it. The ceiling here was higher than any before, rising into shadow beyond the torch's reach. Kael narrowed his eyes and focused his mana into his vision.
He scanned the room, and a faint glow answered him.
A smile spread across Kael's face.
"So this is where you were hiding," he whispered.
He activated Sword Master, took his sword in hand, and jumped to the ceiling with all his might. After carefully striking the part where he saw the mana glow, he landed softly on the floor.
Some stones fell to the ground, along with a crystal glowing with a deep, fiery orange hue. Finally, he found it—an A-rank core stone, he thought.
The wall opened behind Kael as he bent and took the core stone. Kael looked toward the opened wall and saw a circular portal glowing white and blue. It was not huge, but a person could enter it perfectly.
"So this is the portal that one went in and never came back," he said and moved toward it.
He activated Corrupting Gaze to see how much mana it had. The moment Kael's eyes began to glow, he saw so much mana that it lit the entire room. His eyes began to hurt and he closed them in a hurry.
"Ah, fuck, doesn't this skill have a filter?" he shouted. His eyes were in pain, like someone was piercing them with a needle, and Kael was supposed to endure it because of his curiosity.
The air behind him shifted, and something slammed into his back with crushing force. He was thrown forward, skidding across the stone as pain exploded through his shoulders.
He rolled just as a tentacle smashed down where his head had been.
Kael opened his eyes, even if it hurt.
Four of them burst into view. "I don't know why, but this scenery feels very wrong and disgusting to me," he said.
Kael pushed himself up, sword already in hand.
A tentacle lashed out, wrapping around his arm. The pressure was immediate and brutal. Bone creaked.
It began to pull Kael toward the portal. "So this was your purpose," Kael said enduring the pain and slashed the tentacle with his sword.
His blade bit deep, severing the tentacle in a spray of black ichor.
The monster screeched behind the wall. The remaining tentacles struck in retaliation.
One tried to attack Kael's body, but Kael shouted, "Mirror of Total Reflection." He didn't need to shout for the skill to work, but he forgot about that in the moment.
The tentacle slammed into the black mirror and ricocheted to the ground. The monster tried to attack again, but its tentacles continued to bounce back the moment they hit the black mirror.
The monster understood that and used all of its tentacles to move around the mirror and capture Kael's legs and one hand, pulling him toward itself so hard that the mirror deactivated and Kael's sword fell to the ground from his hand.
He dug his remaining hand into the ground and tried to pull back, but at that moment he heard faint footsteps from the hallway.
"Someone is there," Kael thought. "Who may it be? Ah, it does not matter. That monster is trying to throw me into the portal no matter the cost."
"Hey, somebody is there!" Kael shouted with all his strength, and he heard the footsteps getting closer and closer at fast speed.
After only two meters remained until the monster threw him into the portal, he saw a girl with red eyes and black hair peeking from the entrance.
"Kyra, is that you?" he asked loudly. "Quickly, help me! Take my sword and cut the monster!" he said in desperation. "I don't want to be thrown into an unknown place by an unknown monster," he thought.
But Kyra did not take the sword. Instead, she materialized a scythe from thin air and began to move toward Kael. She picked up a core stone that had fallen to the ground from the monster's attack, looked at Kael, and smiled.
Kael's joy completely changed into confusion and then anger as he was about to shout again. The monster finally threw him into the portal and went in itself too.
Kyra looked at the stillness after the battle—blood, monster parts, and the fallen sword.
She left as she came, not even looking at the portal.
But when she reached the entrance of the ruin, she muttered,
"I will take my revenge my own way."