Ruins are often odd places. Many of them were completely different from the others like they were from a different time entirely or had been made by a completely different civilization. However, there were two things that they all had in common. They always contained something, whether it was a library of martial techniques and cultivation techniques or various powerful magical artifacts. They also always contained dangers in the form of traps, Mana Beasts, or Inscribed automatons like the puppets that Gerry taught me to create. The exploration of ruins is something that changes the world allowing new powerful factions to rise or factions that already exist to grow even stronger. I have explored several runs myself and have used that power to create a place for my people in this world despite the forces that wished to tear us apart.

-Excerpt from Telram’s notes on Ancient Ruins.

Telram whistled as he looked around. He wasn’t sure what to expect on the other side of the portal, but he hadn’t expected to find himself in a large room. At the far end of the room was a large metal door that was covered in purely decorative looking carvings.

He glanced around when he heard Gerry gasp behind him before continuing over towards the door. The other let out similar exclamations of surprise as the followed Gerry through the portal.

“Well, this certainly wasn’t what I expected” Gerry said as he walked up behind Telram who nodded in agreement. “What are you thinking?”

“That we’re in the right place,” Telram replied. “I don’t know what we’re going to find here but there’s no way that exploring this place isn’t going to be worthwhile.”

While their current surroundings were pretty ordinary seeming at first appearance Telram could sense that a massive amount of Mana had been imbued in every stone but even more than that was how the Mana here felt. Not only was there a truly massive amount of it present but it felt different from the Mana that he was used to. Purer somehow which made an unsettling amount of sense to him. He had theorized for years now that the Mana of Nerrus had been polluted somehow and the Mana in this strange place seemed to confirm this theory to him.

“Agreed,” Gerry nodded. He was aware of Telram’s theory about the Mana on Nerrus and he knew what the young man was thinking without even having to ask him. The older man turned to look at Telram’s friends who were watching the pair with excited looks on their faces. A small smile crossed the old man’s face as he remembered the excitement that he had felt the first time he had explored a ruin. “Are you lot ready?”

“Yeah,” Ryu nodded. “This should be fun!”

Telram nodded as he reached out, opened the door, and stepped through while the others followed him. On the other side of the door was a simple corridor with a row of statues up each side. These statues depicted human-looking figures. Telram wanted to stop and examine the statues before they moved forwards, just in case they were somehow trapped, but Ryu walked past him before he could say so.

Telram cringed as Ryu stepped in between the first set of statues but thankfully nothing actually happened, and the Divine Beast continued on without even noticing.

“Well, I guess that they weren’t trapped then,” Telram muttered to himself causing the others to stare at him like he’d grown another head.

“I never thought of that,” Warren admitted. “Maybe we should stop Ryu before he does anything else that might get us all killed.”

“Probably,” Telram agreed before raising his voice. “Hey Ryu, you might want to slow down. We don’t know what we’re going to find here. There could be Mana beasts, traps just about anything that you can think of.”

“Oh, sorry I didn’t even think of that,” Ryu admitted. “I guess that I should be waiting for you to give us the go ahead to explore then.”

“Well, you could always help out by pointing out anything suspicious with your spiritual vision,” Telram told him. “That will speed things up dramatically.”

“Alright,” Ryu nodded. “That makes sense.”

The others all nodded in agreement. Despite his caution Telram couldn’t spot anything unusual in this corridor but he did take a few moments to have a closer at the statues. As far as he could tell they did seem to be statues of humans which was odd since as far as the history of Nerrus told me humans weren’t originally from this world. Each statue was slightly different, but they all had one thing in common. Every single statue was taking a fighting stance or had something that suggested that they were using some sort of Martial Technique. Telram didn’t recognize any of the techniques that the statues were performing but that didn’t mean much since they were statues, so they weren’t actually moving.

When they reached the far end of the corridor, they found themselves in front of another metal door. This door was a bit different from the one before in that it had the image of a beautiful young woman on it which Telram assumed was the girl that the ruins were named after. As he looked upon her beautiful face a slight chill ran down his back. Despite her beauty she had an expression on her face that reminded him of the spoilt noble kids that he had met over the years. However, one thing was different. Those noble kids didn’t have parents who could build something like these ruins. Telram just hoped that his suspicions about why this place was called the Cradle of the Daughter of the Silent Moon instead of something like the Grave of the Daughter of the Silent Moon weren’t correct because if they were then things could get messy.

Something about the image also seemed off to Telram, almost like someone had come along after it had been completed and changed it somehow. He had no proof that this was the case but for some reason he felt like he was right.

Shaking his head to disperse his doubts Telram reached out and opened the door. On the other side of the door was a large room that was ringed in statues like the ones that lined the walls of the corridor behind them. There were also several doorways that looked like they opened up into more corridors like the one that they had just walked down.

“Telram, do you see that?” Gerry asked as he pointed at the statue directly in front of them. Telram nodded in agreement. At first glance the statue looked just like the others that ringed the room but what he could see with his Spiritual Vision told a very different story. While all of the statues did have Inscriptions from what Telram could tell considering how different these Inscriptions seemed to be from the ones that he was familiar with the Inscriptions that were on the other statues were just to prevent them from being damaged. The statue that he was looking at right now was different. It glowed with Mana so bright that Telram was nearly blinded by looking at it.

“What do you think it’s going to do?” Gerry asked curiously. “Some of the Inscriptions on it seem to resemble the ones that we use when making our puppets.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too,” Telram agreed. “I think we should get ready for a fight.”

The others all nodded in agreement. Warren and Lelland both checked their weapons one more time while scales started appearing on Ryu’s arms as he activated a partial transformation. They had already been over what their roles were going to be if they got into a fight. Telram had also taught them all a technique that would protect them from his Dissonance technique. Telram’s control over his Dissonance technique had increased by leaps and bounds since he had Ascended but he figured that it was better to be safe than sorry. Especially since the technique that he’d taught them didn’t just protect them from his Dissonance technique but from other attacks as well.

Shimmering fields of energy surrounded the others as the now multi-colored mist that started coming off his body. Telram drew his Kanabo from his back as he stepped forwards into the room. As soon as his foot touched the floor of the room the statue’s head turned towards him and he froze but that was all that happened, so he continued forwards while the others followed behind. The statue watched silently as they approached it. Telram wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but he knew that they had to acknowledge the statue at some point.

“Who enters the Cradle of the Daughter of the Silent Moon?” the statue boomed suddenly causing Telram to blink in surprise. Not only because this was the first time that he had ever seen an Inscribed object speak but also because of the language that it was speaking in. He supposed that it shouldn’t be too surprising that it was speaking in English when that had been the language on that both the directions here and the instructions to enter had been written in.

“Was that English?” Gerry whispered at Telram who nodded in agreement. The statue turned its gaze upon Gerry when he spoke but didn’t do anything other than that. This suggested to Telram that it wasn’t intelligent but had a series of programmed responses like some machines back on Earth did. The statue had understood that Gerry was speaking but since the language that he was speaking wasn’t part of its programming it was confused.

“My name is Telram, and these are my friends,” Telram explained in English. “We’re here investigating these ruins.”

He had decided to go with the truth since they wouldn’t be able to trick the statue if it was waiting for a specific person. At his words, the statue turned its head once again to look at him. It seemed to be considering his what he had said.

“Then, you should leave,” the statue replied. “This isn’t a place for outsiders to visit.”

“Are you waiting for someone in particular?” Telram asked. “I only ask because the area outside of the Gate has been abandoned for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. So, if you’re waiting for someone in particular, I don’t think that they’re coming.”

“A few thousand years is nothing to the person that I am waiting for,” the statue replied sending a chill down Telram’s back.

An Ascendant Realm cultivator might have a longer lifespan than a normal human, but a thousand years was a long time. Even for an Immortal Realm cultivator. Despite their names it was unusual for an Immortal Realm cultivator to live for more than a couple of hundred years since they were often targeted by assassins or sent on dangerous mission so if the statue was telling the truth and the person that it was waiting for was so ancient that a thousand years was considered to be nothing to them, then they were far more powerful than any cultivator that any of them had ever heard of.

“Now please leave,” the statue continued after a few seconds. “This is your final warning. If you don’t leave in the next two minutes, then I will consider you to be trespassing and will be forced to remove you.”

“What’s wrong Telram?” Jai asked as he felt Telram’s reprehension through their connection. “Is it something that the statue said?”

“Yeah, it’s waiting for someone,” Telram replied quietly. “And it’s not worried about the length of time that it’s been waiting which means that the person that its waiting for is one hell of a monster.”

“So, what are we going to do then?” Warren asked as he watched the statue warily.

“I don’t know but we have to decide fast,” Telram replied. “Because if we don’t leave soon that statue’s going to attack us.”

“I say we go for it,” Ryu said as he stepped forwards. “As far as I can tell we should be able to defeat that thing and even if the person that it’s waiting for is as strong as you seem to think it is, they’ve abandoned this place for so long that it’s unlikely that they’re even planning on coming here at all.”

“That’s a good point,” Telram nodded. “What do you guys think.”

“That we don’t have a lot of choice,” Gerry said firmly. “We need to get stronger as fast as possible. We can’t afford to worry about angering some ancient monster who might not even still be alive.”

“Agreed,” Lelland nodded which surprised Telram slightly. Even if the rest of them were killed off by an angry noble Lelland would probably be able to use his father’s influence to survive. Apparently Lelland was fonder of them than he had expected.

“I’m afraid that you’re going to have to let us past,” Telram told the statue firmly as even more mist billowed out from his form to envelop the statue. “Because we’re not willing to back down.”

The statue’s expression didn’t change at my words but the rest of it sprung into motion. For a statue made of stone it moved with much more grace that Telram would’ve expected leaping off the pedestal that it had been sitting on and coming to its feet smoothly. Ryu stepped forwards and delivered a quick jab to test the statue’s defenses.

To his surprise the statue ignored the blow and delivered an attack of its own that sent him flying backwards as Lelland stepped in and stabbed it in its left elbow with his spear which was coated in Wind Mana. Once again, the attack bounced off but this time several shards of stone came with it thanks to the Wind Mana.

The statue didn’t even seem to notice the minor damage as it swung its fist at Lelland who backed off as quickly as he could. Telram was watching the statue carefully looking for any signs of weakness. From what he could tell other than the fact that the statue could move and speak it didn’t seem to be too different from the other statues that ringed the room. Most of the Inscriptions on it seemed nearly identical to the Inscriptions on the other statues which were just there to increase the statue’s durability. So far, the statue hadn’t used any Martial Techniques either and just relied on its massive weight to power its attacks.

This didn’t mean that it couldn’t use Martial Techniques and its attacks were still powerful without them. The statue also wasn’t particularly fast which meant that they had two advantages over it.

Just as Telram thought this Jai unleashed a roar layered with spiritual energy that caused some of the Inscriptions on the statue to flicker slightly and Telram mentally added a third advantage. Since the statue didn’t have a soul of its own that meant that the Mana that powered it could be disrupted by attacks that used spiritual energy far easier than normal.

Gerry also noticed this, and a smirk crossed his face as Telram discarded his Kanabo and launched himself towards the statue with a thunderous crack. They had both came up with the theory that Telram’s Resonance Palm technique would be very effective against the statue and Telram wasted no time proving that theory by disabling first one arm and then the other. In fact, it seemed to be more effective on this statue than it was on the puppets that Gerry and Telram made which seemed odd.

The statue turned its head to look down at its disabled arms which twitched slightly before looking up in time to see Ryu flying through the air towards it. The Divine Beast looked quite different from what he had before. Scales now covered most of his body but were especially concentrated around his knuckles so when he struck the statue it rocked it back so hard that the follow-up kick sent it tumbling to the floor. This form was a new development for Ryu. One that had been brought on by the increased mental control that he had learned thanks to Telram and the others teaching him meditation techniques. This increased control allowed him to control his transformations with greater ease and speed which made him even more powerful than he used to be even if he wasn’t using any of the martial techniques that Telram and the others had taught him since he could use more forms that were specifically chosen for the situation.

The form that he was currently using was one that focused more on increasing his strength and durability which allowed him to knock chunks of stone off the statue’s head with each blow while it was unable to do anything to him. Eventually the statue’s whole head was reduced to rubble and Ryu dismounted from its chest.

“Hoy shit,” Telram muttered as he stared at the destroyed remains of the statue’s head. “You really didn’t like that thing, did you?”

“Well, if it had managed to hit any of you guys it would’ve done some real damage right?” Ryu asked awkwardly. “Well, you might’ve, but if it had managed to hit Gerry, we would’ve had a real problem, right?”

“Don’t you count me out just like that,” Gerry chuckled as he placed a hand on the young Divine Beast’s shoulder. “I might be old but I’m tougher than I look.”

Telram shook his head in amusement. It felt like he waws realizing more about his friends with every step they took upon this journey. Of course, he wasn’t the only one learning new things about them. They had learned something fairly shocking about him too. In fact, he was willing to bet that they were all going to question him a lot more once they stopped to rest for the night.

“Just a minute,” Telram said as he took a closer look at the statue. “This thing isn’t dead yet.”

“What are you talking about?” Warren asked. “It’s a statue. It’s not alive.”

“You know what I mean,” Telram replied as he rolled his eyes in exasperation. “It’s not completely destroyed yet. The Beast Core powering the Inscriptions is still active. Ryu just destroyed the head which probably held an important part of the Inscriptions that allowed it to move or something.”

“Telram’s right,” Gerry nodded. “We should probably take a few moments to examine the Inscriptions and remove the Core. If its powering something like this it must the Core of a pretty powerful Mana Beast, so I’d like to recover it.”

“Alright we can wait for a bit,” Lelland agreed. “We’ll just get some rest while you do that.”

“That would be for the best,” Telram nodded even as the impatient Ryu scowled in irritation. “We don’t know what else is lying in wait here for us after all.”