We traversed the obsidian corridors left behind by the First Era. The darkness within these ruins felt incredibly suffocating and toxic. The air around us reeked of dust from graves untouched by light, mingling with the aroma of dead moss clinging thickly to the walls.
Our only illumination was the dim glow radiating from the tip of Virelith's magic staff.
As I walked leading the way, my mind drifted ten years into the future. My memory returned to a freezing defensive trench overflowing with bloody mud.
There, I recalled Matthew's face. He was a rat-faced former convict forced into the Deck Hound squad during my first life. One night, amidst falling snow, a heavily intoxicated Matthew let out a discordant laugh and boasted to me.
"Do you know, Commander?" Matthew had babbled back then. "Before I was caught by the imperial dogs, I once infiltrated the First Era Ruins Sector, the remnants of the Solomon empire. I found an ancient noble chamber! Gold, artifacts, everything blinded the eyes!"
Naturally, the past me merely snorted in disdain. "Then why are you eating roasted rat meat with me in this trench right now, Matthew? Why didn't you take the treasure to live in luxury?"
Matthew rubbed his nose proudly. "Ah! At that time I was in a rush, chased by time. I left everything behind because I had urgent business!"
I smiled thinly in the darkness of this corridor. I used to consider Matthew's ramblings as mere boasts of a lowly drunkard trying to cover up his inferiority complex. Yet today, that drunkard's boast served as my exclusive treasure map.
"This place smells like a dragon's dung hole," grumbled Ragnar while pinching his nose. "Are you sure we are not walking straight into a giant monster's lair, Kael?"
"Trust my instincts, Bear," I replied with brimming confidence. "The end of this corridor will blind your eyes with the gleam of gold."
We continued walking until we arrived at an incredibly dark three-way intersection.
I paused for a moment, muttering softly to repeat Matthew's random babble. "Choose the middle path that smells the most rotten."
I pointed to the middle corridor and led the team inside. However, it turned out the path was not empty at all. The sound of bones and iron grinding roughly against each other could be heard.
Six First Era Skeleton Guards rose from alcoves in the stone walls. The steel armor and rusted swords they wielded had already fossilized. Those metals had biologically fused with their bones due to centuries of exposure to dark Miasma energy.
Ragnar immediately let out a loud roar. He raised his greatsword and prepared to slash blindly at the chest of the foremost monster.
"Hold your swing, Stupid Bear!" I shouted sharply, cutting through the formation. "Do not attack their chests! Their steel has fossilized into a single solid mass. Your weapon will only bounce off!"
Ragnar halted his sword in mid-air with great difficulty. "Then where is their weakness?!"
"They still need joints to move," I stated, issuing a tactical command. "Destroy their knee hinges!"
Our formation executed the maneuver flawlessly. Ragnar rotated his giant sword, using the flat side of the blade to crush the skeletons' knee hinges until the monsters fell to their knees. Virelith immediately summoned earth spikes from below to trip up the remaining monsters attempting to run.
I darted forward to act as the executioner. I decapitated those paralyzed skeletons with highly precise sword slashes. It was extremely efficient, mana-conserving, and brutal.
Our breathing was slightly ragged after that brief skirmish. However, Virelith did not lower her magic staff. The bespectacled girl actually stared at me with narrowed, scrutinizing eyes. The engineer's logical brain began piecing together the anomalies.
"This place does not exist on the academy library maps," said Virelith pressingly with an analytical tone. "This corridor was never recorded by any Historian. How did you know we had to turn down the middle path? And how did you know the anatomical weakness of those fossilized ancient skeletons just now?"
Virelith took one step forward. "Kael, you act as if you have been in this place before."
Before I had a chance to formulate a tactical lie to cover up my knowledge, Selena stepped forward to intervene between us. The scent of jasmine from her body chased away the foul odor in the air for a moment.
"Do not be too rigid, Virelith," said Selena, smiling with profound mystery. "This is called instinct. Certain men in this world are indeed born with a curse. A curse to always know exactly where death lies, and where gold lies."
Selena glanced at me with her sharp crystal blue eyes. "And I highly trust that instinct."
I was stunned right where I stood. I looked straight into Selena's blue eyes.
Suddenly, a terrifying and chilling sense of deja vu crept up my spine. Selena's words just now did not sound like a random poetic phrase. That sentence sounded exactly like a nostalgic confession from the battlefields of my past.
I felt there was a bloody puzzle piece missing from my memory regarding who Selena Lune truly was. How could she talk about my curse with such precision?
"Save your questions for later, Engineer," I cut in quickly, tossing away those complicated thoughts. "We have arrived."
We reached the end of the corridor and entered an incredibly vast circular chamber. The walls of this room were filled with soul-stirring ancient art.
Selena walked closer and wiped the dust off the wall. She admired a giant mural that had begun to fade. The mural depicted the golden age of the Solomon Empire. There was a painting of a king with brightly glowing purple eyes. The king sat on a throne, commanding hundreds of horrifying demons and rows of angels whose wings were broken and bloody. The aura from that painting radiated an ancient tyranny that made our breath catch.
I paid no mind to the mural. Following Matthew's instructions from my memory, I walked to the corner of the room searching for a stone carving of a Gargoyle with a deformed left wing. Upon finding it, I pressed the Gargoyle's eye firmly.
The sound of ancient stone mechanisms ground loudly. The main wall of the room rotated slowly, revealing a secret chamber hidden for centuries.
Golden light instantly blinded our eyes amidst this darkness.
Piles of First Era gold bars and ancient coins were scattered all over the floor. Yet the most prominent of all was located in the center of that room. Floating right above an obsidian stone pedestal was a crystal bound by rusted wire. The crystal pulsed slowly. The object emitted an extraordinarily dense blue mana, beating like the heart of a living creature.
Virelith dropped her parchment to the floor. Her eyes widened in disbelief staring at the crystal.
"By the Gods," whispered Virelith with a trembling voice. "That is the Heart of Durandal. An artifact providing limitless mana circulation belonging to an ancient war commander in the First Era. In academy literature books, that object is supposed to be mere fictional myth!"
Ragnar immediately knelt before the pile of gold, laughing hoarsely with full happiness. "What myth?! We are filthy rich, Kael! To hell with academy exams and Orvelis Nightbane! This money can buy a city!"
I smiled with immense satisfaction. I stepped forward toward the obsidian pedestal with high confidence. It turned out Matthew the rat did not lie to me. This room was entirely real.
I extended my strongly muscled right hand. I grasped the Heart of Durandal crystal firmly and lifted it from the obsidian pedestal.
CLICK.
A very faint mechanical sound was heard from beneath the floor. That sound was so quiet, yet its consequences were incredibly fatal.
The blood-red magic rune lines suddenly lit up brightly. The red light spread across the entire floor and walls of the room like a living spider web. The First Era Ancient Defense Magic Formation activated instantly. The giant stone walls around us began to vibrate violently, dropping thick dust.
Time seemed to slow down inside my veteran brain. A highly ridiculous, dark, and humiliating irony struck my logic head-on.
Wait a minute.
If Matthew the Trench Rat in the past truly managed to rob this room, then why was he still poor and ended up as a trench soldier?
An absolute conclusion smashed into my head like a sledgehammer. That bastard Matthew never took his treasure. The cowardly rat triggered this trap, got scared half to death, failed to take the treasure, ran away crying, and then boasted to the Deck Hound squad purely to maintain his prestige as a former elite robber.
And I had just swallowed that drunkard's boast whole.
The calm and cold facade I always maintained as a General shattered instantly upon the realization of my own stupidity.
"MATTHEW YOU BASTARD!" I shouted with bulging neck veins, discarding all my authority. "TAKE AS MUCH GOLD AS YOU CAN AND RUN FROM HERE RIGHT NOW!"
The stone floor beneath our feet exploded and split open into a seemingly bottomless chasm.
Ragnar reacted incredibly fast. The giant man pulled the collar of Virelith's robe right before the girl plummeted downward.
At the same time, the collapse mechanism at the top also activated. A giant block of obsidian stone weighing over a ton collapsed from the ceiling. That deadly boulder plunged down right above the heads of the four of us, covering all vision in a deafening explosion of dust and debris.
Absolute horror swallowed us alive within the belly of the earth.