Two days after the Blood Moon Assassins team was granted a break due to their victory in the Academy Championship and securing first place, which lasted for three weeks, Tom was wandering through the city of Kissimborgh.
While purchasing various equipment and resources he might need for his upcoming trip, which would last for approximately three weeks inside the tunnels they had visited three days prior.
After several hours of wandering through the markets of Kissimborgh, a city rich in diverse resources of various types, shapes, and uses.
He decided to head to his apartment to rest after a while. He arrived at his apartment to rest and gather his thoughts about his upcoming journey.
"What is the secret of these tunnels, and why have I never heard of them before? Even the language was unknown, as if it wasn't from this world. Yet, I feel a strange sense of familiarity."
He said that while looking at the ceiling with a vacant expression. Then he got up and turned his gaze towards the window, finding that the weather was still bright. It was still 13:00. Then he got up and headed towards a ring on a nearby table. It was a storage ring connected to the user's soul, filled with countless books, files, potions, scrolls of high-level refining, even legendary and unknown ones. He then took out a book with a blood-red cover, written in dazzling gold, [Beginnings and Endings]. He then opened it, his eyes cold and focused on the book, pushing away anything that might distract him. He began to read it in a calm voice.
"Before existence and non-existence, before anything existed in the darkness that was not even darkness, before even nothingness was created, there were two entities representing the Beginning and the End. Creation and Annihilation created this world and established its own laws and concepts. But a problem occurred between them because Creation wanted prosperity, and Annihilation wanted blood. This led to a disagreement, wars, and battles between them, resulting in the loss of both. Every million years, Creation and Annihilation return and continue their eternal battle, and every battle ended with the same result: the death of both. Their battles continue every million years. This was their life: birth to die again. However, neither of them gave up, even after millions of lost battles. Will this series of battles, destined to never end, stop? And will the soul resolve everything? If there is a soul, then the body is the balance of good and evil, and the soul is the scale that balances them."
He closed the book and put it in the bag he had prepared his belongings in, then placed it in his personal dimensional space. He muttered in a low voice, his brown eyes glowing with a cold glare, as he sheathed his sword.
"It seems this book has something to do with those secret tunnels of my reincarnation."
There was a great deal of confidence and unwavering determination in his tone. Then he remembered something important he noticed: a small crack, barely visible, on the book's cover. He took it out of his personal dimensional space and began to search for the crack. Several minutes of intense searching passed until he found it. It was a thin, delicate crack, as thin as a hair. He then took out a papyrus scroll folded in half, opened it, and a smile of satisfaction appeared on his face. He discovered a message in an incomprehensible language that he could not understand. He set it aside and focused his attention on that parchment.
He discovered it was a map of those secret tunnels, and they all met at one point, a month's journey away.
Tom sighed deeply as he looked at the map, then placed it and the message in his dimensional space. He then immediately headed towards those secret tunnels.
Several hours after Tom reached one of the entrances to the secret tunnels, the sun began to set.
Swish, swish, swish.
Tom was cutting through the plants covering a gate leading to those tunnels as he advanced with steady steps.
His consciousness was focused on cutting those plants and at the same time on what was happening around him to avoid any unexpected problems.
An hour and a half later, Tom entered the tunnels, which were so vast they could accommodate monsters the size of large cities. Tom was wandering through the tunnels, recording the inscriptions written on their walls.
After a while, several monsters attacked Tom. Their numbers were very large, exceeding 4000 monsters of various races and types. The weakest monster among them was of Rank X (Legendary), and the strongest was of a Ruler Expert rank. However, Tom was of a higher rank, Sacred Ruler, and was about to break through to the Lord Ruler rank within a few months. He was three full ranks higher than the strongest monster, and at the peak of the higher Sacred Ruler rank.
Then the monsters attacked with terrifying skill and power, cleanly slicing through the monsters' bodies, free of any flaws. However, he felt something was wrong. His intuition, honed by a thousand years of experience during his travels in this world, was extremely accurate in these matters.
After several hours, Tom stopped fighting, realizing that the number of monsters had not decreased at all, not even slightly. It was the same number as it was five hours ago: 4000 monsters, just as it was before.
Tom retreated several steps, trying to assess the situation while defending against the monsters' attacks, which were like missiles of flesh and blood. But he managed to evade their attacks smoothly. However, he felt a prickling sensation in his back and muttered in a faint voice filled with pain:
"Not the right time to activate."
There was a tattoo of a yin and yang symbol on the back of his neck. The dark side of the yang was glowing with a faint purple aura, while the yin side was colorless and extinguished. On the other side, the yang symbol glowed with a dark purple aura, causing Tom to feel unbearable pain, making him lose consciousness. Then, a wave of dark purple energy erupted, causing the place to tremble violently, shaking the entire tunnels. Tom stood up again, his black hair becoming blacker and rising towards the sky, and his brown eyes became dark purple abysses.
He pointed his hand towards a group of monsters. A wave of dark energy filled with destructive power erupted, capable of eradicating everything it touched. As soon as it touched the monsters, they turned into a pile of dark purple dust scattered in the sky. He then lost consciousness due to the massive depletion of energy.
The place turned into a void, leaving only the tunnel walls, whose inscriptions glowed with a faint golden aura. Their glow gradually faded until they returned to normal.
As for Tom, he was lying on the ground, and the yang symbol, which had