Lyren was not ready for the next sight at all. He watched as the two patterns stabilized but that was not all. It was almost like the two patterns were self-sufficient and would keep running on their own without him infusing his Elyria any time soon
This gave a sense of relief and he felt some weight lift off of his shoulders. Then, a sight beyond his expectations appeared as the two patterns started glowing more at the edges and it appeared as though each one of them was growing tendons.
Golden tendons!
No, strands of solidified golden energy—snaked out from the edges of the lit patterns…
Someone might have thought that someone had tore two holes on each pattern and the energy he had spent his entire reserves on started flowing out. This sight left Lyren's eyes wide open. Had he made a mistake?
He watched as the four tendons started stretching out all heading towards the first row. This made Lyren press his hands on the sides of his head as he watched all his hard work go down the drain.
The four tendons each connected to a first row's pattern and Lyren was already on his knees shedding tears for his failure. He wanted to wail but the sight was too traumatic for him and his spirit was getting crushed.
'It is all useless. There is no way out. I should have known not to get my hopes up!'
He watched as the golden tendons attached to patterns on the first row and they got connected. Lyren could only await a chain of reactions if the pattern's cores cracked one after the other.
And then it happened. The four first row started glowing slowly and soon, also their cores lit up. Seeing this sight, Lyren felt his heart almost stand still and his body moved on its own. Afterall, the danger he had experienced in this place had taught him to be alert.
Lyren dashed and stopped almost twenty meters away. Here, even if there were explosions there was no way he was going to get caught up in it. He watched from afar and the explosion he was awaiting to bury his dreams of leaving this place alive never occurred.
Instead, the four pattern that were connected to the second row's patterns by the tendons started glowing on themselves. They too stabilized and at the moment, there were six lit up patterns.
There were no flickers and Lyren realized that he had overreacted. He walked towards the lit patterns and stood between them as he began his analysis. He connected the pieces and realized just was happening here.
It appeared that the X lines that connected the second row's patterns were not the only things he had overlooked. There were other lines that he would not have noticed at all. These lines that connected the patterns on a row to that behind it.
This was a major discovery as the theory of these patterns being a giant interconnected pattern seemed to fit in perfectly. It appeared that the first two patterns of the first row were connected to the first pattern of the second row.
The same went on and forth. It appeared that these patterns were reducing by half as you went deeper. This lit up a larger flame of hope in Lyren as he could feel that victory was within his reach.
Also, he came to a new discovery. The energy of the patterns did not go backwards and could only get transmitted from one pattern to two that were ahead of it. This explained why the second row's patterns had not lit up after lighting the first row.
He could not wait to try out the stairs but he stopped himself and decided to save that for when he was done with the fourth row. That was probably the only way he was going to come up with a real math of how he was supposed to get out of this place.
Also, if he was going to light up those patterns, he was going to spend a lot of time on his cultivation or else he was going to be stuck at lighting the second row's patterns for the rest of his days in this place.
Lyren sat down and started trying to recover the Elyria he had lost feeding the patterns but how was he even going to do that? Maybe he was going to have to draw Elyria from the air around and use it to refill his reserves but could he even sense Elyria let alone draw it.
This was not like mental energy where he would just wait and recover. Well, he could wait but how long was he going to have to wait? He could only try on his own to sense Elyria first.
But as though it was aware of his intention, it became very slippery to the extent it felt like he was trying to scoop water from the rain with his hands and expecting to fill a can that was kilometers away with it.
Thinking to this point, Lyren felt as though a spear had been driven through his chest. Just when he thought he was making progress, he just had to reach this unsurmountable mountain that stood between him and his goal.
After numerous tries, he gave up and waited for the rain to fill the can on its own. It was possible that he could recover Elyria naturally. Yes, it would be slow but with the high concentrations here, it was possible that the can might just get filled without him trying hard.
He could not afford to get idle at all as he decided to move on to the third row. There was no harm at all. After all, he was already done with the second row and the only thing that remained was lighting them but that was not really necessary after giving it some thought.
Lyren started by investigating the second row and discovering his hypothesis that the patterns seemed to reduce by half in each row. There were four patterns here waiting for him to understand them and light them up.
Also, it was becoming obvious that patterns of a single row were just a tweaked version of each other. This made it slightly easier for the learner as they just had to master what the core pattern was and they would easily understand the rest of the patterns.
Lyren stopped diving into the third row as he returned to the second row. He was yet to discover the core pattern of the second row and he could not move on to the third row without identifying it. That was his gut feeling telling him.
When Lyren finished memorizing all the eight second row's patterns, they overlapped. The differences blurred, and a single, elegant archetype burned at the center.
The source pattern from which all variations of the second row were born. He felt the pattern in his palm turn and suddenly a golden glow that started turning orange to red appeared.
Lyren was caught by surprise with the changes but he had ignored the burning sensation that always came with the golden glow. It intensified with the orange glow and when it turned to a deep, pulsing crimson—the color of the backlash, there was no hiding the fact that it was about to happen again.
His hand shook even before the pain took over as his muscle memory clearly recalled what had happened the last time there was a red glow in his palm. A cold sweat dropped from his armpits and he swallowed hard as he felt the pain start intensifying.
A single thought formed in his mind as he felt like shedding tears of betrayal. The pain of heartbreak in his tone clearly evident, almost like he was trying to convince himself.
"I did not make a mistake…"