《Ashes of Empires》Chapter 135 - Inside
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At that time at unknown location.
"They are going in again", a voice said with some corcern. "Do you think its this time?"
"You know as well as I do that we aren't able to know that", another voice replied.
"Neither was I able to sense anyone matching among them", a third voice added.
"Then we can only watch as usual", the second voice replied.
--------
Considering how the entrance worked where Kaden had entered, it made sense that no one else followed him and Emina into the same path. Despite this, Kaden could hear fighting and also some shocks as something exploded. This gave him idea to try making his own paths, but nothing seemed to break when he tried to, for example, shoot a wall.
"This entire place is infused with mana", Emina told Kaden. "If you compared this place to a person, it would at least be an Archmagus. Your attacks wouldn't even count as an annoying mosquito bites. Nothing will break unless its is 'intended' to break or will restore itself right away."
"No harm trying", Kaden replied. "Do you expect this place to follow any rules?"
"No, but if it follows some rules, its the rules of mana", Emina replied.
Kaden chose not to reply. There was also little sense trying to determine where the sounds and explosions happened. In fact, Kaden was pretty sure, if he listened carefully enough, he could hear things that probably didn't exist. Everything inside the remnant was completely messed up.
Also, Kaden and Emina quickly noticed things were not going what one could say 'well'. They had been inside that corridor for quite a while, but had found no end. In fact, they could not see the end, but neither the start of it.
"This isn't good", Kaden muttered.
Luckily Emina had a solution. The same object she used previously back at the void. Kaden wanted to ask more details of it, but didn't.
"It picks up connection even here", Emina said calmly. "Perhaps this place isn't some spatial trap, if it can get a signal. I recommend we continue moving."
Kaden didn't have any better ideas so he followed Emina. The corridor didn't seem to change at all, but eventually Emina slowed down.
"The connection is stronger here for some reason", she said as she looked around.
"Are you sure that trinket isn't malfunctioning?" Kaden told Emina. There were no visible changes. "I feel like we have been at the same spot for the entire time."
Emina frowned, but said nothing.
"Hmmm, then again, we did get here somehow", Kaden said after thinking for a while. "They way back looks exactly the same, but perhaps we can return and chalk this up as bad luck to pick endless corridor out of all the possiblities that were available in the distorted space."
Kaden turned around without even waiting Emina's reply. After a few steps something happened. There suddenly was a door on the side.
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"What the hell?" Kaden muttered.
Emina turned around too and was just a surprised. They should have seen the obvious door along the way, but it was never there... until they turned back.
"We better take this chance", Kaden said after a while. "Who knows if we will find another door ever again."
"I agree", Emina replied.
Just before they were about to open the door, they heard sounds from behind it. It seemed some people were in wherever the door led to.
"... are just dried up corpses", a voice said. "I don't wish to join them. This place is creepy. We should go and find something actually useful."
"They could have something valuable", another voice replied. "I'd rather pick stuff from these bodies than kill some saints for stuff."
That does it. Wherever the door led, it was out of the infinite corridor. Not only that! There were people from Sacronan to kill!
"We will go in and surprise them", Kaden told Emina.
Kaden quickly opened the door instead of simply crashing through, even if it didn't look very tough externally. He wouldn't mess his surprise by slamming against a possibly impenetrable door and alarm the people inside in a pathetic manner.
"What? There was a door?!" One of the Sacronan's soldiers inside managed to shout just before Kaden slammed against him. Luckily for the soldier, he had some defensive spell that triggered around then and Kaden's talons only caused minor external wounds and was able to step back and prepare for next attack.
Emina played her quitar and was dealing with the other soldier. The sound based spells were already making that soldier's ears bleed. That soldier was basically incapacitated.
Kaden quickly observed rest of the room. It was very clean, no any sort of damage visible. White walls, chairs around a table. A few cupboard in the corner. In general a very slick appearance. It was like a meeting room. What was not something fitting in a meeting room were the mummified corpses sitting in the chairs. Some of them looked extremely old, but were clearly not ancients. Possibly people from previous times the remnant had been open?
Still, he was fighting and he had no time to do more than that quick observation.
Kaden's opponent proved to be stronger than he had expected. The soldier seemed to be good at defensive magic. Kaden still he had the advantage, but the soldier from Sacronan still had to be at least of similar strength to his own. Emina's seemed weaker, though. If he wasn't able to end it by then, with Emina's aid the soldier would be doomed.
The room stayed strangely intact and pristine through the entire thing. Even by the time Emina's opponent was bleeding from all of his orifices and was dead on the floor, the blood didn't seem to stay there for long.
Noticing the death of his companion, Kaden's opponend was starting to throw everything he had at Kaden and attempt to get away. He took an advantage when Kaden used a Flame Burst to knock him away. He allowed himself to get further than expected. Due to this he crashed against the cupboards in the corner.
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The cupboards were almost as high as the room and had large doors on them. As the soldier from Sacronan crashed against these doors, they shattered unexpectedly like normal wooden doors. Considering the place, this could have been strange, but what happened then was the stranger thing.
With a horrified scream the soldier fell into some kind of darkness that seemed to just exist within the cupboard.
Kaden who had leaped after to continue fight, stopped just in front of the cupboards. He looked inside and there was nothing in there. It seemed a bit too familiar in comparison to the void he had just seen at Brit, but it wasn't the same. He could still hear the screaming from the soldier that was starting to quiet down as the soldier kept falling deeper into... whatever place the dark and empty place was.
"What the hell...", Kaden cursed and stepped back.
Emina took a few steps closer and to get a look.
Around at that time, the wooden fragments of the cupboard door shuddered and started to float. Kaden and Emina both leaped back. There was no telling what was going to happen. The wooden fragments then collected back to the cupboard and 'unbroke' itself, if thats a word. It seemed like the breaking process went backwards rather than it repairing itself.
Both Kaden and Emina stood there for a moment quietly not sure how to react.
Yet again the remnant was messing with their sense of logic.
"Lets just leave", Kaden said. "We also should pay attention to any objects we see from now on."
Emina nodded with agreement.
Yet, the oddities were not over yet. As they were going towards the second door, the one the soldiers from Sacronan had to have used, something happened.
*CRASH*
Kaden and Emina prepared for a fight, but it proved unnecessary. Something had fallen through the ceiling panels. It was a mummified corpse and it somehow landed on sitting pose on one of the empty chairs in the room. It looked just like the others.
As the ceiling panels reformed just like the cupboard, Kaden noted that the mummified corpse looked familiar. Indeed, it was the soldier from Sacronan who had fallen into the darkness.
"Could it be that the darkness sucks things out of all life and vitality and then spits them out?" Kaden said question outloud.
Emina went closer and examined the newly appeared mummy.
"This seems... old. Very old", Emina said after a while. "He fell in there just a few moments ago, but this body is old. The body, the clothes its wearing. Everything shows degradation that happens over long period of time."
Emina looked closer.
"Cause of death is a cut on his neck", she then pointed out. "There are some remaining blood stains on the clothes. I do believe he commited a suicide."
Kaden had no idea what to say.
"The time for someone to of his cultivation level to mummify and degrade into this condition is extremely long", Emina continued. "I can only guess that what seemed like a moment or us, the body probably spent unknown length of time in there. Hundreds of years probably. Perhaps that darkness was some incredibly long spatial tunnel or loop. Not that I know much of spatial manipulation, but considering how this place and its internal spatial structure is, I wouldn't be surprised."
Then she turned to look at Kaden.
"What would you do if you found yourself inside dark emptiness with no way out?" Emina asked. "Would you wait until you perish due to lack of nutrients? Or would you perhaps eventually choose to die? Regardless, your body would have more than enough time to mummify."
"I have no plans of jumping in there so I won't bother thinking about it", Kaden replied. It was an irrelevant question.
Instead he went to open the door away from that creepy meeting room. At least this time the outside looked normal and not some infinite space distortion. He also could hear fighting, but with a quick look outside, it wasn't right there.
"I recommend we continue going deeper", Kaden told Emina. "Rooms such as this one are not only deadly, but most likely contain nothing valuable, because all of it, if there was ever any, has been looted likely in ages past each when the remnant opened previously. There had clearly been visitors before. We need to go deeper to find ones that no one ran into before."
"Danger also increases", Emina pointed out.
"Such is the way of things", Kaden replied. "Weaklings will not reach that far. Powerful ones do. I do not wish to be a weakling."
Emina didn't refute the point as she followed Kaden out of the room.
Not long after Kaden and Emina started running into corpses. It seemed they had originally picked a tunnel that very few or likely no one else did. The others had likely ran into each other and started killing each other. Not only that, but along the way they also saw more of the bizarre things. There were literally tears in space leading into ... things. From far away they even watched someone be dragged inside by tentacles that seemed to be two dimensional lines in appearance seemingly be something that a child would have drawn with colorful crayons.
Minor remnants were active everywhere. In fact Kaden assumed almost every room, possibly even the corridors they were in, were minor remnants with different levels of mana stagnation and available concepts. Luckily the pathways at least were something that were passable.
Still Kaden wanted to press on. The deeper the better.
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