Adrien and Edward had only advanced for a few hundred meters when they heard some noise coming from the way they were heading to. This was the now-familiar sound of claws hitting the floor, Edward felt a rush of adrenaline traverse him. The beast couldn’t see them yet as there was a turn in the corridor that was hiding them from sight.

Shit! We only walked in and we already met another one of those monsters, we can’t survive a fight with them at our current level. We have to hide, but where? Edward thought.

He looked around him, the corridor was plain, even the green lines on the walls were here more to provide light than decorations, the contrast with the room they came from was impressive, they had clearly entered another area of the ruins. In the corridor there were no plants nor columns to hide behind, however, a few meters ahead there was a door on the side with a complicated diagram above it.

Edward run toward the door and pushed the button to open it as fast as he could, he actually didn’t take the time to drop his weapon and just pushed the button with the blade of the dagger. The door started to open, sliding into the floor without a noise, however, Edward himself had made some noise while running. The clatter of the claws from the beast suddenly stopped, come on, come on, open faster, Edward thought with cold sweat running down his spine, meanwhile Adrien had joined him beside the door. As the beast began to run in their direction, the both of them didn’t wait for the door to open further and quickly jump into the opening while the rest of the door continued to slide into the floor. They didn’t take the time to analyze the room they were in and quickly hid behind a desk.

The beast reached the door only a few seconds later, the door was not large enough to let it go inside. Edward and Adrien tried to stay as quiet as possible while that thing was looking into the room with its multiple eyes, trying to understand where the noise it heard came from. They could hear its loud breathing echoing slightly into the room.

After a few moments, the door came back up from the floor, slowly closing itself, the beast didn’t seem interested in forcing its way in and simply look at the door closed by itself. Adrien and Edward waited as the beast paced a few times behind the door before deciding to go roam somewhere else in the ruins. They finally breathed in relief.

“That was close,” Adrien said.

“Yes, that was too close in fact. That thing almost saw us.” Edward answered.

“Yes, but we don’t have a choice, we have to go deeper if we want to find a way out. The way back is close, with the library door and we don’t have a way to open it.” Adrien added

“I know, I just wish the situation was different. If we continue to encounter those beasts further in, I’m not sure we will be able to find a way out. How many of those beasts are even here?” Edward asked.

“Too many.” Was the short reply from Adrien.

“Oh, by the way, you were right, having to hold blades and not having a free hand is not the best idea in exploration. I wonder how the Damkinans were using them, I suppose that when you are on a battlefield you don’t have to open doors, still, it would be cool if I had a holder to put them on while I’m not using them. Putting them in the backpack would be a bad idea as it would take too much time to retrieve them, but a holder on the leg would be perfect I think.”

“I’m sure someone in the village could make you one if we ever manage to go back there.”

Now, that the monster was gone, and that they were in a relatively safe place, they took the time to look around the room. Behind their back, the whole wall was made with a smooth surface, it was covered in different scriptures and formulas, just like a board. Edward was able to read the language but it didn’t mean that he was able to understand anything from those formulas. It was exactly how a student would feel if he entered a math course right in the middle, if you don’t know what the different parts of the formulas are referring to, there is no way to understand it.

There were numerous desks like the one they had been hiding behind. Between the board and the desk, a large open space had been installed, and a complicated circle made with various runes was present on the floor in this space. The floor was blackened on the inside of the circle as if it had been burned by something.

“Where do you think we are?” Adrien asked.

“I don’t know, it looks like a classroom I guess,” Edward answered.

“A classroom, like the ones to teach children how to read and how to write?” Adrien asked for confirmation.

“Yes, except this one must be for magic. That race seemed pretty advanced and involved in the magical fields. I guess those formulas must be related to magic somehow, and that circle must be where they were testing spells.” Edward explained.

“Holy cow! A classroom to teach magic, where every one of them a magician or something? I’ve only heard of magicians and witches in stories and legends.” Adrien exclaimed.

“They probably weren’t that rare at that time, but it’s hard to guess. We don’t know if the kind of place we are in right now was common during their era or if it was an exception. All we can say is that at least the people who were here were talented in magic.” Edward answered.

They searched the rest of the room but there wasn’t much of interest, there were no textbooks nor anything looking like that, however, some runes were engraved on the different desks. The runes were different on each desk, they looked like some kind of draft or notes from the students.

There were no openings in the room to see inside the corridor, so Edward and Adrien had to listen carefully to determine if another beast was nearby or not. Once they were sure the path was clear, they opened the door again and stepped into the corridor. This time, Edward was holding only one of his daggers in his right hand to keep the other free in case he needed to open a door. He had given the other one to Adrien so that he would be able to defend himself, they both knew the daggers wouldn’t suffice against those monsters, but it would help them if they ever made it out of there.

As they progressed, they saw doors from time to time on the side of the corridor, they opened one of them, but the room they found looked the same as the one they came in to escape the beast. That’s why they decided to not waste any more time and to continue to go on. There were probably some other things that were worth seeing or retrieving from those ruins, however, their main objective was to get out of here alive. The more time they spend inside, the more likely it was that they would encounter another one of the beasts or that something unexpected would happen. That’s why they continued to go on without taking the time to check all the doors, explorations could be kept for another time and probably for someone else too, Edward wished good luck to the fellows who would discover those ruins and hoped for easy loot.

They advanced quickly in the ruins and soon left the area of the corridors, before them, laid a long open bridge with a void on each side. They stopped to appreciate it.

“We will be completely exposed on this bridge, we won’t be able to hide,” Adrien said.

“We were already exposed in the corridors, we were lucky that they were some rooms at regular intervals, otherwise we would have been caught by that beast. Though it sounds bad if we fall from here.” Edward said before looking over the edge below the bridge.

I can see some lights, this bridge isn’t that high actually. Wait, what are those? Are those pods, with monsters inside? My god, there must be hundreds in there.

Edward could see hundreds of rows upon rows of transparent cylinders, in each cylinder one of those beasts was floating in fluids with different tubes coming out of it. The beasts seemed to be in an unresponsive state as if they were in stasis. Each cylinder was lightened by either a green light or a red light, in the red-light cylinders sometimes a beast was dead, with only the skeleton of it resting inside, but at other times, the cylinder was broken and the beast was nowhere to be seen.

Holy shit, were those beasts coming from here? I thought we triggered a security alarm or something by breaking those symbols back in the library, but if they simply escaped because of some dysfunction there could be dozens of them or more roaming the ruins right now. What are those anyway? They are grown in pods, I thought the Damkinans were mostly made of mages, I wasn’t expecting some kind of mad scientist bullshit from them.

“Hey, Adrien do you see what I see?” Edward asked him with a low voice while gesturing at all the pods below.

“Bollocks, what the hell is that!?” Adrien asked after seeing this nightmarish display.

“I don’t know, but I guess we found where those monsters are coming from. We need to get out of here as fast as we can.” Edward answered him.

As they were talking, one of the lights started to flutter, they stopped to look at it. The green light was fluctuating on and off before shutting down, it stayed dark for an instant before turning back on but with a red light instead. The beast inside that pod immediately began to move, it tried to shake off the different cables attached to it, before breaking the glass, it then collapsed on the floor before getting back up with a roar. Adrien and Edward looked at each other.

“Run?” Edward asked.

“Run!!” Adrien shouted back.

The both of them fled madly on the bridge while dozens of roars were responding to the beast that had just come out.