Edward hurried to pick up the rest of the equipment that was still scattered across the floor of the room. Now that the monster had roared, more would come soon. He had to leave with the equipment before they came. Otherwise, he would have to fight again, which would make more noise and attract more monsters. This would be an endless fight with more and more monsters coming. Now that the monsters were sealed inside, he didn’t have to fight all of them, he could just take what he needed and leave.

Of course, there was still the problem of having to do several round trips to take what he wanted. That was quite cumbersome and if he could take everything in one trip, Edward would gladly choose this option.

Edward managed to take all the weapons and armor before new monsters reached him. Their number had indeed decreased a lot, otherwise, there would have been no way that no new monsters came to him in this interval of time.

He run with his bag full of loot until he reached the airlock formed by his two runes barriers. Once he was in this safe zone, he stopped to think. I managed to run away without even one Bloodmaw on my heels. I’m almost disappointed. He dropped his bag on the ground. Now that I think about it, this place is a perfect meat grinder. I can provoke a few of them until they follow me here, they will be killed by the draining barrier without the need for me to lift a finger.

He left his bag, then ran back to the top of the stairs leading to the library to see if he could attract some of the monsters. “Hey dumbass, move your asses over there if you dare!!” he yelled at them. The monsters had no way of understanding him but they were drawn by the noise. Edward could hear several of them rushing toward his position. He swiftly run back to the barriers while laughing as the monsters were galumphing after him.

Once Edward reached behind the barrier, he stopped and turned back to watch the result. The Bloodmaws roared with rage and fury, the first one who impacted the barrier was stopped dead in its tracks, the others pressing him further onto the barrier. The monsters were doing their best, clawing the barriers to destroy that strange obstacle blocking them, but it was all in vain. Their very life force was feeding the very barrier they were trying to destroy.

It was like someone entangled in bedsheets trying to get out, while the weight of its own body was maintaining them. Except the monsters were growing weaker with time, until they stopped moving, falling dead. Edward couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this sight. With three people it was still a dangerous fight to deal with a group of Bloodmaws, and here, he had been able to kill four of them without any effort. As he moved the bodies away to free the passage, he realized the drawback was that the monsters were already drained of all of their power. Sure, this way it was easy to kill them, but at the same time, he couldn’t farm them and used them to grow stronger.

Uhm, this would have been too good I guess. What a pity, I was feeling like I had managed to find a real-life equivalent of a cheat code. He looked at the small mound of corpses that were starting to form in the forest from all the Bloodmaws he had killed. I guess this is enough. This will attract other monsters from the forest for sure. I shouldn’t build a mountain of corpses, I don’t want to attract a wyrm or any monster of this caliber. He shuddered at the thought.

He went back to the library, walked past it, and stopped once he reached the room which previously hold the pair of daggers that he was now using. On the stairs leading to their display stand, Marc’s corpse lay collapsed. It hadn’t changed much except that only the bones and clothes were left now. Let’s see what you were keeping for yourself you jerk. Edward walked slowly to his remains before leaning to search the skeleton. He quickly found a copiously full leather pouch. He opened it and saw a heap of gold coins with only the spare silver coin here and there. There wasn’t a single copper coin in sight. You had all that money and you were planning to pay the carriers only 5 silvers a day, heh. And you considered yourself generous.

Edward hesitated, but in the end, he decided to secure the money before getting further ahead to retrieve Adrien’s remains. The barriers were the safest space available, right now there were only two tokens to be able to get through them without danger. Caspian had one and Edward was wearing the other one. So, no thief would be able to steal it, and he wouldn’t have the risk to lose the pouch while fighting the Bloodmaws.

On the way back he paused in the library. While I’m at it, I could take another book too. I don’t have that much space, but I can still take one book with me on the way back. He looked around before he spotted one tome in particular. An introduction to magic sounds interesting. In the outpost at Shele Nalore, they only had advanced magic tomes besides the basics about the aura. This race seemed pretty advance in magic, but not so much with auras. I wonder how much different is magic from auras.

After leaving the tome and the money with the leftovers of the expedition’s equipment, Edward went back into the ruins. I will have to cross the whole ruins again. Even if there are fewer Bloodmaws now, I’m sure to attract quite a bit of them after me. I think it’s best if I bury Adrien’s remain on Shele Nalore’s side. He almost made it…This way he will be able to see what is on the other side. And the mountain has quite the view too. At least it will be better than letting him stay in those ruins.

He walked back to the room that used to hold the daggers. On this occasion, as he wasn’t pursued by monsters yet, he had more time to appreciate the extensive ornamentations. The major piece was the fresco on the ceiling depicting the Damkinan’s struggle against a dark tidal wave. I wonder what happened to them. Their end didn’t seem to have been peaceful. They were in a war but against who? What is this black tidal wave supposed to represent? Or did they hold their enemy in such contempt that they refuse to depict them? He shrugged. Anyway, this is a long-gone matter, it’s not like I can discover what happened to them. I should refocus on the present.

Edward continued in the corridor leading further inside the ruins. Until now, he had been lucky not to encounter more Bloodmaws. He was still close to the library and with all the ruckus he had done, the ones in the surrounding had already been slain by him. However, that didn’t last for long, as he was in the corridor, he noticed a Bloodmaw with its back toward him. I could kill it, or not take any risk to attract more of them and simply go past it.

With his aura, he was able to sense rooms on each side of the aisle. This section of the ruins was still holding adjacent rooms that he could use to hide. He didn’t even need to open the doors, and he simply teleported inside the room. He was standing in the same kind of chamber as when he had traveled through this part of the complex. The room looked like some school or laboratory, with several desks covered in runes. He didn’t dally and used them to overtake the Bloodmaw one teleportation at a time until he was far enough from the monster so that the latter couldn't detect him. Once that was done, he went back inside the corridor.

At one point, he found back the room he used to hide from the horde of Bloodmaws which went after him when he was trying to escape from the ruins. The monsters had destroyed the door and part of the wall to chase him down. Inside that chamber were shelves storing all sorts of jars with strange body parts floating in the fluid contained inside. Some of the jars had been broken when the Bloodmaws entered the room, and their content was spread on the floor.

Edward could see weird internal organs that he had no way to recognize, but some parts were a lot more familiar to him. He recognized the same ocelli that the Bloodmaws had on their face. In one of the jars, even a whole part of the forelimb was stored, the talon clearly visible on the member. Okay…that and the pods containing the monsters before they broke free. The Damkinan were creating those monsters…but why? They don’t seem particularly intelligent nor easily tamed. Unless they had another way to control them, maybe a spell?

If I ever found another one of their ruins in my travels, I will have to be careful. If this ruin is in this state, full of monsters ready to awake and run amok, who knows what can linger in another one of their bases. With this fresco depicting war in the previous area, it is almost as if they were trying to create a biological army to support them in their fight.

This is a clearly advanced race that found itself at the end of its wits and which started to explore biological experimentations to create an army. Somehow, I don’t see how it could have ended in another way than badly.

And Bloodmaws is certainly not the worst I can imagine in biological hazard. Edward’s face turned to white. What if one day I release a deadly virus that doomed this whole world to death? Exploring those ruins is a bad idea. I don’t know how much Marc knew. He seemed to be after the daggers, and not really aware of the Bloodmaws. But clearly, those kinds of ruins are not worth it, the risk is way too important to compare to the benefits. The best thing would be to leave them alone.

Edward decided not to explore those ruins further, he would stick to the parts he already knew. Once he went back to the village, he would also give a word to Balin and Caspian to warn them. Even though the chances were low, there was still the possibility of another biological experiment having survived here and waiting to be unlocked. He wouldn’t take the risk to see if that was the case. Him running in this complex was like a civilian running in an abandoned nuclear launch site, while being unaware of what he was doing. Even if one felt suicidal, there were other ways to do it aside from risking the whole world’s safety. When one saw a big red button, pressing it wasn't the safest option. It was the same for exploring the Damkinan ruins.

Of course, the threat of the Bloodmaws here was a lot weaker than a nuclear missile. But if you accounted for all the monsters, especially if it was possible to order them around, it was a force sufficient enough to raze a city to the ground. And other Damkinan’s sites could have something worse in stock.