There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language - and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
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Third Person POV
Arthur's aether blade, no larger than an ordinary dagger and with a blurred, indistinct edge, drove into the stone-winged creature and cracked, still unable to withstand the force of the impact.
Arthur's hand closed around the throat of the creature, which resembled a bat with a petrified, flattened face and an enormous mouth. Holding the gargoyle with one hand, he summoned the blade again in the other and stabbed it into the beast's head, which split apart with a deafening crack.
The blade broke, leaving his hands empty just as two more gargoyles hurtled toward him.
Two gray aetheric hands swept through the monsters' bodies, and the charging beasts froze at once as the aether left their stone shells. Momentum carried their bodies into the ground, and fragments came crashing down like hail, splashing into the stream that divided the area in half.
The familiar group of four stood within a canyon with sheer rocky cliffs on either side. The cliffs rose so high that only a narrow strip of sky could be seen above, like the reflection of the thin, clear stream running along the canyon floor. Loose stones and gravel-the remains of gargoyles-covered the ground.
Arthur sat down and focused on the fading memory Sylvia had left him as he activated the half-sphere-shaped relic. It trembled with aether, and a misty gray light wrapped around the portal, replacing the glossy, oily shimmer hanging like a curtain in the carved stone frame with a clear view of his room in Central Academy.
"Damn it," he cursed, cutting off the flow of aether into the relic and forcing the portal to revert to its original form.
Although he knew he had to picture the zone he wanted to reach, it was still frustrating to realize that in order to do so, he first had to either visit it or see it with his own eyes. Only then could he return there again.
"Want some fresh strawberries?"
Arthur looked up and saw Lucius holding out several ripe red berries.
"Sure," Arthur answered, quickly tossing all the strawberries into his mouth before looking over at Caera. "How's your new artifact?"
"Ridiculously disappointing," Caera pouted. "It feels like I've grown a new limb that I have to learn to use from scratch."
"Well, those two do that all the time," Regis remarked, shrugging his wolfish shoulders.
A faint smile touched the corners of Caera's lips, but it almost immediately vanished. She raised the silver bracelet and turned toward the portal. "Do you think the Compass works the same way my artifact does?"
"What do you mean?" Arthur asked, rising to his feet and straightening to his full height, as though he did not yet quite understand where she was going with this.
"When I first directed mana into the artifact, I actually thought it was just a defensive item, because of the way the fragments barely floated around the bracelet. It took me days of constant experimenting to understand that the fragments could be controlled individually," she explained, running her fingers along the engraved grooves on the silver bracelet. "What if the Compass's return function is enabled by default, and for it to do more, it just needs more specific instructions?"
Arthur's expression turned thoughtful, but before he could answer, Caera continued, "It seems unlikely that the ancient mages would allow their people to wander these zones aimlessly. Otherwise, what would stop them from stumbling into a death trap just by roaming around at random?"
"Are you afraid the Relictombs sent your brother somewhere impossible to escape from?" Lucius asked quietly, earning a startled look from the blue-haired Alacryan.
Arthur simply watched in silence. A few hours earlier, they had already discussed something similar, and now the whole scene was starting to resemble a strange, almost staged performance.
"Mind reading is another one of your supernatural abilities?" Caera asked in horror. "Don't tell me you've been hiding the fact that you can…"
Lucius shrugged and calmly held her gaze. "Did you forget how well I remember people? Every movement, every little detail. Even after all that time, while you were disguised, I still understood who you were. Do you really think it's that hard to read what's written all over your face?"
"…Right. Now that's actually a little creepy," she exhaled with visible relief. "I've been wondering for some time now… whether the zone where you found his dagger and cloak could have been a place…"
She trailed off, unable to finish.
"A place only I… or Grey… could have escaped from?" Lucius finished calmly.
She nodded hesitantly. "Like the mirror room or the frozen mountains? Even the bridge of faces would've been impossible to cross without that…"
"No," Lucius replied to her first question. "The zone where I found your brother's dagger wasn't like that. It was deadly enough to claim the lives of many Ascenders before I found it, but it didn't require aether to escape."
"At least that's something. I'm glad he had a chance to fight, even if he didn't make it out." Caera forced herself to smile before turning away.
Closing his eyes, Arthur pictured the place that had left the strongest impression on him, the one he could remember with the greatest clarity.
"The portal really is changing," Regis said incredulously, before groaning. "Why did you have to pick that place of all places?"
Arthur opened one eye and saw the smooth marble floor, the high vaulted ceiling, and the rune-covered doors sealing both ends… along with the armed statues lined up along both sides of the hall.
"It really worked," he snorted, feeling his core drain as the Compass continued drawing aether from him to keep the new destination open.
Deactivating the relic, Arthur handed it to Lucius, who began recalling the details of their new destination. Once the image sharpened in his mind, he pulled on the thread of consciousness, and Regis, without a word, headed toward Caera.
By the time the portal stabilized in the next area they intended to enter, Caera had arrived with Regis, her eyes wide with awe.
Regis's eyes widened too, but for a different reason than Caera's. He recognized the zone at once. It was the zone where Caera's brother had died.
× × × × ×
"Caera," Arthur called when he saw her getting to her feet. "Good jo-"
Regis emerged from the mound formed by the long corpse of the centipede, shaking dirt from his fur. He came to stand beside Arthur, while Lucius had already taken position near the exit. Caera found a relatively open space near the center of the lair. Soulfire burst from her, forming a sphere of black flame that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Now, standing in the middle of a bare ring of earth, she pulled out something that flashed silver in the dim light, then drove it into the ground.
Her brother's dagger.
Dropping to her knees, she leaned forward and rested her forehead against its pommel. Her shoulders began to tremble as tears slid down her cheeks and fell to the earth below.
"Come on," Lucius whispered, standing by the exit, before turning away. Regis and Arthur followed him, allowing Caera a moment of privacy to grieve. In the silence, the muffled sound of broken sobbing could be heard.
Half an hour later-
"I think we figured it out," Regis said.
After Arthur and Regis finished piecing together their shared memories, it became clear that Sylvia's final message had not shown the locations of the four djinn ruins, but the zones that led to them. The two of them had simply needed time to remember the details clearly enough for the Compass to guide them there.
"Yes," Arthur answered simply, imagining narrow earthen tunnels twisting like a labyrinth of giant wormholes in every direction.
Lucius opened his eyes, pulling away from his thoughts, and once again saw the enormous chitinous corpse of the giant centipede, on which Arthur sat while replenishing his aether.
Arthur rose just in time to see Caera returning from the makeshift memorial to her brother. The whites of her eyes were red from crying, but her gaze had hardened, and her jaw was set with resolve.
No one exchanged a word-only a simple nod-before moving on.
The exit portal was several hours away from the lair, and the rest of their journey through the empty zone passed without incident. Regis remained inside Arthur's body, recovering after using the Rune of Destruction. His control over the ability had improved significantly since the last time he used it, but it was obvious how much it had still taken out of him.
Focusing on the image of the winding tunnels, Arthur activated the Compass, and Caera stepped through. The zone beyond her was covered in a thick layer of dust hanging in the air and obscuring nearly everything.
Arthur turned his head and met Lucius's gaze. Lucius gave him a faint smile; his lips moved just slightly, but Arthur still managed to make out what he said.
Arthur nodded faintly, muttered the words he had heard from Lucius, and stepped forward into the portal that carried him into another zone. The space behind him warped, and Lucius disappeared from Arthur's sight. After standing still for a few moments, Arthur noticed two rats armed with weapons creeping toward Caera in the darkness.
"The Blood Relic Zone, huh? A fitting name," Arthur said, fully focused on crossing the zone, though with the knowledge Lucius had given him, it felt several times easier.
On the other side
After standing still for several seconds, Lucius stepped through the portal and found himself in the next zone in the very same instant.
The impact hit him immediately.
A sharp, piercing, shrill sound struck directly into his ears. His body flinched from the shock, and it felt as though his eardrums had been pierced by red-hot needles, though his rank-ten pain adaptation made the sensation feel no worse than a faint tingling. Warm blood immediately flowed from his ears, but aether stirred at once, beginning to heal the damage.
"Hah…" Lucius exhaled sharply, without changing his expression.
Almost immediately, he filled his entire body with aether, paying special attention to his ears in order to protect them from any further destructive force.
At the same time, an eighth-rank weapon had already appeared in his hand, instantly taking the form of a long silver spear. The weapon's cold metallic gleam flashed faintly in the dimness around him, and Lucius instinctively tightened his grip on the shaft, letting its familiar weight and balance return some of the control he had momentarily lost.
Only then did he finally allow himself to look around.
The piercing sound echoed throughout the entire zone in which he stood. Lucius spun sharply, enhancing his vision with even more aether and trying to find the source, but to no avail.
The sound seemed to reflect off space itself, splitting and scattering in all directions over and over again, making it nearly impossible to determine its source by normal means.
Realizing that would get him nowhere, Lucius divided his consciousness into five streams. One stream continued monitoring his body and maintaining his aetheric defense. The second kept control over his weapon and tracked any immediate threat nearby. The third analyzed space itself, trying to catch a pattern in the way the sound propagated.
Lucius devoted the remaining two thought streams entirely to aetheric perception, trying to locate the source through the surrounding aether, using it as a kind of radar. But that also yielded nothing. The aether in this zone seemed to ripple ever so slightly under the influence of the sound, distorting its response and making perception unreliable.
"What a welcoming zone," Lucius muttered, scanning the near-total darkness.
He stood beside a small rocky hill, and judging by the sensation, that was where the aether was being distorted most strongly.
The only source of light was the pinkish sky, whose faint glow reflected in strange pools of the same violet hue. These bodies of water glowed from within, and although the zone was still steeped in gloom, the hundreds of pools provided just enough illumination to keep the surroundings from becoming absolute darkness.
But Lucius had no time to take in the scene properly.
From all sides, the piercing sound rang out again, far more powerful and distorted than before. It rolled through the space, making the water in the pools vibrate violently.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Lucius breathed quietly as he saw twisted creatures begin rising one after another from the violet pools.
There were more than a hundred of them.
Their gray humanoid bodies looked as though they had once been sculpted in the image of man, only to be mercilessly deformed afterward. Each of them had four legs and six arms. Their entire bodies were riddled with holes, through which thin, strange threads stretched. All six arms were tightly bound together by these threads, forming bizarre, almost ritualistic structures. Their heads resembled spiral shells covered in jagged openings, from which more threads hung-this time adorned with small violet crystals that glimmered faintly in the gloom.
Lucius narrowed his eyes slightly. "Aether crystals… But what kind of form is this?.."
The answer came in the very next second.
Another distorted sound rang out from all directions, but this time it did not simply spread through the space-it seemed to gather inside the monsters themselves. Their mangled bodies turned toward Lucius in unison, as though obeying a single rhythm.
The monsters inhaled the sound as one.
For one brief instant, everything froze.
For 0.4 seconds, nothing happened, and Lucius was already about to activate God Step, understanding exactly where this was leading-but the stored sound burst outward faster than he could react.
The strike came from every direction at once.
The distorted sonic wave was at least ten times stronger than the first attack-the one that had instantly ruptured his eardrums.
"Hah?.." was all Lucius managed to exhale.
The next second, the sonic wave slammed into his body, shredding his protective layer of aether with monstrous force and hurling him toward the nearest hill.
"Khah!" Left without full protection, he crashed hard into the rocky mound. The impact was so heavy that several bones cracked at once, and their jagged edges tore into some of his internal organs. Wasting no time, he immediately summoned aether, wrapped it around his body, and activated God Step, shifting a hundred meters away from the pools.
Appearing atop a small outcrop, he froze for a moment, focusing entirely on the state of his body. The aether inside him flowed with unnatural heaviness, as though meeting resistance within the channels themselves.
And almost immediately, Lucius understood why.
"This sound… it's stirring up the aether in my body," he murmured quietly, watching the aether move through the damaged areas. "If I had mana instead, I'd probably already be dead…"
His gaze shifted to the sonic monsters whose bodies had sunk back to the bottom, and a faint, almost predatory smirk appeared on Lucius's lips. "What an interesting zone."
Tightening his grip on the spear, he did not rush at the monsters despite the obvious temptation. Instead, Lucius suddenly shot off in the opposite direction, carefully avoiding the glowing pools. His goal now was not battle, but the source of the sound-the hidden point from which this whole distorted, murderous cacophony originated.
In the brief instant when the monsters released their attack, he had no more than four-tenths of a second to process everything. That had been enough. Lucius instantly activated his rank-ten intellect at full capacity, and the number of thought streams in his mind jumped from five to forty.
It was thanks to that that he managed to catch a faint displacement of aether in two separate points at the exact moment the sonic wave erupted from the monsters' bodies.
A powerful explosion tore Lucius from his thoughts, and he snapped his head upward. The ground beneath his feet began to crack and sink, entire slabs of rock above broke away, and in the sky, among the artificial clouds, space itself bent as though the very fabric of reality was barely enduring the force of the sonic wave.
Quickly grasping what he was seeing, Lucius activated God Step twice and, an instant later, appeared seven hundred meters from where he had stood only a second before. He had shifted almost directly beside one of the points from which that strange sound and the distortions in the aether had been coming.
For one brief instant, he froze.
Before him hung a strange creature resembling a gigantic blood-red butterfly the size of ten full-grown elephants. Its enormous crimson wings were torn through with holes and riddled with strange threads and aether crystals, as though someone had forcibly stitched torn flesh and aether together into one warped whole. Seeing Lucius, the giant butterfly slowly beat its wings.
And in that same instant, a new sonic wave rolled across the zone.
It struck the place where Lucius had stood just a moment earlier with monstrous force.
Thanks to God Step, he was already a hundred meters away from his former position, but even from there his mouth fell open involuntarily as he stared at the destruction left by just a single wave at close range. The hill he had stood upon a second ago had simply vanished-as though it had been erased from reality. All that remained were twisted fragments, still trembling from the remnants of the sonic strike.
Activating the God Rune of Theft, Lucius reached toward the butterfly, trying to steal its aether. But the very instant his will touched the target, the creature beat its wings again. Another sonic wave surged toward him-far weaker than the previous one, yet still monstrously powerful. Fortunately, thanks to several parallel thought streams, Lucius reacted at once: activating God Step, he shifted another hundred meters away, evading the destructive attack.
But the next second, another sonic wave caught him.
It was weaker than the one the butterfly had unleashed a moment before, and far weaker than the very first attack, but even that was enough. The impact smashed Lucius into the neighboring cliff with crushing force. A sharp crack rang out as his body was driven into stone, and his bones fractured once more, even despite the enhancement granted by the pseudo-artifact.
"Khah!" A heavy stream of blood burst from Lucius's mouth. His eyes widened. For the first time in a long while, he was being driven into the ground so mercilessly, so close to the brink, that twice already in this brief battle he had almost physically felt death breathing down his neck.
But what shocked him most was not even that.
The butterfly had struck only one tenth of a second after his teleportation.
It now took him roughly four tenths of a second to recover after using God Step-and yet the creature still managed to attack faster than he could fully regain control of his aether after teleporting.
"Need to teleport farther. Three hundred… no, better four hundred meters," he thought rapidly, restoring the flow of aether through his body at the same time.
In the next instant, activating God Step, Lucius appeared three hundred and seventy meters from where he had just been lying. He slowly wiped the blood from his lips with his thumb, then pulled out an aether fruit and ate it in two quick bites, instantly replenishing the depleted aether in his body.
Almost immediately afterward, another sonic wave rolled through the zone, shaking the air. At once, Lucius's eyes narrowed sharply, and he focused all his attention on the butterfly. Its crimson wings, which just a few moments earlier had looked noticeably weakened, as though they had lost some of their power, vibrated once more after the wave passed through them, filling with strength again and returning to their former, truly threatening state.
Mentally preparing for the next strike, Lucius closed the distance to the enormous butterfly in several swift bursts and activated the God Rune of Theft once again, trying to rip the aether from its body. In response, he was met with a sonic wave of horrifying force, one almost equal to the very first attack-strong enough that it would surely have killed him if he had not, at the last moment, used God Step again and appeared directly above the giant creature's head.
Activating the God Rune of Theft a second time, Lucius pressed his palm to the butterfly's body, and in that same second his world flipped once again: a new sonic wave hurled him dozens of meters into the air. And yet, even with that almost reckless maneuver, he managed to steal part of the creature's aether.
After two consecutive hits and the theft of roughly two percent of its aether, the butterfly's wings shrank slightly again, as though they had momentarily lost stability. However, Lucius did not hurry to continue the attack. Right now, what mattered more than landing another strike was confirming his theory once and for all.
And he was right.
The sonic wave passed through the entire space once more, and the butterfly's wings instantly returned to their original form.
Standing three hundred meters from the creature, Lucius thoughtfully touched his fingers to his chin and lifted a brow slightly. Blood still dripped from his lips after the last attack, and his breathing had grown heavier, but his gaze remained absolutely focused.
"I can't get too close for a normal attack. Stealing the aether directly is almost impossible as well. There's no aether in the sonic attacks themselves, which means I can't absorb them either. Its reaction speed is monstrous… and on top of that, it gets healed by those very same sonic waves."
Lucius shook his head, impressed.
"There's something like a second butterfly on the other side of the zone, taking in the first butterfly's sonic attacks, and then, when the first one starts to weaken, the second sends the wave back to restore it…" He fell silent for a moment, never taking his eyes off the creature. "What an absurdly overpowered piece of shit."
Looking at the enormous blood-red butterfly, Lucius slowly exhaled. Then he leisurely pushed his hair back, and a strange smile appeared on his lips-calm, yet at the same time unsettling, almost sinister. He kept staring straight at the giant butterfly, which in turn stared back at him without blinking. His gaze slid over its crimson aetheric wings-monstrous things capable of obliterating a small mountain in an instant.
"I could play this game for an entire day, slowly draining the aether from its body and restoring my own through the system," he wiped the blood from his lips with his thumb and focused on the monster again, "but… that's how weaklings think."
Lucius reached for the rune in his soul, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the monster. "You see… you're just not leaving me any choice."
He said it softly, but his calm voice vibrated strangely, as though it echoed across several layers of space at once. With a slow, almost gentle movement, Lucius stretched his hand forward and raised his palm. His little finger and ring finger were folded in, while his index and middle finger pointed straight at the giant butterfly, as though sentencing it.
"Farewell. You're the strongest monster I've fought in all this time."
His voice trembled with that strange vibration, as though layered over itself, and that same calm yet unsettling smile still lingered on his lips.
"Destruction."
Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash.
The sound was strange, dry, and sharp, as though the very fabric of the world were being torn apart by invisible blades. In a single instant, hundreds of small ruptures crackling with violet light flared into existence around the giant butterfly. They appeared without warning, without visible trajectory, without the slightest chance of being noticed beforehand or avoided. Space itself simply began tearing apart wherever the creature's body occupied it.
Hundreds of violet aetheric strikes infused with Destruction fell upon the monster at once. The crimson wings, which only a moment earlier had radiated overwhelming force, became covered in ragged, warped cuts. Flesh split where the blows landed most heavily, while space itself tore apart to inflict that colossal damage.
It all happened so quickly that the butterfly never even had time to understand what was happening. No defensive reaction, no new sonic wave-only a single brief, almost impossible instant in which its enormous body was already doomed.
And then came the final blow.
An especially powerful cut passed through space directly before the butterfly, and in the next instant that violet rupture crossed the monster's body, dividing it in two without the slightest resistance.
That was his God Rune of Destruction.
But unlike Arthur, who saw Destruction as an all-devouring flame, Lucius perceived it in a completely different way. Back when he was little, he had watched JJK on TV, and during Sukuna's fight with Mahoraga, he had perceived those merciless, brutal, invisible strikes that always found their target as absolute destruction. That was why the rune had taken this form of attack.
For him, Destruction was not flame, but the shifting and tearing of space itself-an absolute, relentless phenomenon from which there was neither defense nor escape.
How could one run from space itself, if space had decided to tear you apart?
For Lucius, the power of this rune lay not in burning an enemy to ash, but in stripping them of the very possibility of continuing to exist as something whole. Wherever his Destruction passed, space shifted, broke, and split apart, and with it, everything caught inside it broke as well.
No armor could shield against it. It could not be dodged through speed alone. There was no hiding from it, no waiting it out, no escape.
All one could do was accept death.
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The next chapter won't be out until the 25th.