13.4

Consignor.

It was the same title he read on the gauntlets that Aurelius gave him.

It was what the floating eyeball said to him before he fell down into the deep chasm where all the ethereal people were imprisoned.

Millennia ago, a myth regarding the lawless and chaotic purgatory where all lost souls were sent was said to be conquered and restructured by an unknown event. An event so drastic that eventually spawned the existence of the Laws of Consignation that may or may not govern the lives of those who were bound to the nether realm.

Though no one knew what the list of laws comprised, but according to the denizens of the underworld, the Laws of Consignation was something deemed to be feared and cowered to.

The origins of such laws were as scarce as the reliability of the myth itself, but like any myth, such information usually stemmed from a kernel of unrealized truth.

Could they all be r-related?

John can’t help but to wonder.

This voice that he heard was now directly referring to someone known as the Consignor. And it was under the Consignor’s orders that he was to receive the chalice that Team Rectiser had been looking for.

“W-who is this person, t-the Consignor? How am I related to him?” he asked the voice.

“I am afraid, I am in no position to answer. I am simply a soul fragment of the man who crafted this chalice. My duty is to assure this relic is to be passed to your very hands at this moment.”

A soul fragment? I-if a soul fragment could take away my hearing temporarily, w-what would happen if it was the original owner?

John drew a flat line with his lips and gulped. He did not want to entertain such a thought, nor had the luxury to.

“I’ll walk into the glowing pool… Before that, answer me this: Which of your descendants’ devotion do I have? What race are you from? Who are you?”

“…I am simply a soul fragment to pass on a message to you. Though I have already passed on. The decree I have sworn to prevents me from disclosing such information to you. I can only offer you my sincerest apologies.”

John wanted to argue back but decided not to push any further. The last thing he needed was to upset the voice and lose any trail of finding the chalice his team needed for their first task.

Besides, he was tired.

Of both himself and the unpredictable events that spiraled around him, he just wanted things to be over with.

His mind ached, his body screamed at him for a rest and a well deserved meal—which he was deprived of since morning.

Here goes nothing...

With [Heal] at the ready to cast at any moment's notice, he took a step forward into the toxic pool, full expecting his foot to dissolve in the highly corrosive liquid before him.

Thud.

The foot that he had expected to fully immerse to the glowing pool had stepped on an invisible surface a few centimeters above the corrosive liquid’s surface.

John blinked in disbelief at what he was seeing, so he raised the other foot and took another step forwards.

Thud.

And sure enough, an invisible surface appeared on his other foot, supporting him above the eternal decays’ glowing pool.

“Very well, young one. Now, navigate to the center of the water. What you seek awaits you.”

John’s heart throbbed as his two legs stood above the glowing pool. All that was in his head was to quickly end this entire ordeal before whatever magic that supported him from falling into the glowing pool dissipates.

Wasting no time, he dashed to the center of the pool, fingers crossed, hoping he would not fall to his death. As he got closer to the center, the image of a waist high pillar fade into existence. Atop the pillar, a golden chalice stood.

This is bizarre…

He hesitated to pick the chalice with his hands, but when he looked down into the glowing pool where the pillar protruded from and was once again reminded that the magic supporting him might disappear at any moment’s notice, his fingers moved on their own and retrieved the chalice.

I have to get back to everyone before anything happens—

The moment the chalice was in his hands, a great whirlwind surrounded him, instantly swallowing whole. John instinctively shielded his face, but the very next moment, he was standing beside his fellow teammates, who were all still rejoicing over the defeat of the eternal decays.

“My best wishes to you, young Consi—”

“Bran!!! You are the man—no, you are the god! Who knew you can handle those nasty things with John healing your body constantly!”

“That was still risky… I know [Heal] has incredible properties, Bran. You still have to not overexert yourself,” Matilda said in a troubled voice.

“Hahaha, don’t worry Mats, John was thorough in his magic. I bet all the side-effects I usually would have won’t…” Bran’s voice disappeared as he looked at the guy in question. “John?”

John, who was still in a daze from the torrent of wind that brought him back to his teammates, simply stared blankly at the rest of the five. His deep gaze may be in their direction, but the same could not be said about his mental state.

Aurelius was the first to place his hands on John's shoulders, shaking John from his daydream.

“What’s the matter, brother? You looked like you’ve seen a ghost…” Aurelius' eyes grew wide when he looked at John’s hands that firmly gripped sparkling item of interest. “John, how, what, how— You found it!!!”

John blinked once, twice, then the misty gaze he bore a moment ago dissipated.

“Huh, A-Aurelius? Oh right, yeah, I found the chalice for the team.”

Aurelius’ tail wagged as he nodded excitedly at John’s response. It was as though the wolfkin had long expected him to find Team Rectiser’s item of interest, that John was someone who could do the impossible.

“The chalice? That chalice we all needed to pass the first task?” Bran raised a brow at John, an amused smile crawled on his face. “You’ve found the relic while using you healing magic on me?”

Sensing the unusual tone in Bran’s voice, John cast an uncertain look at Bran.

Did I do something wrong?

He already upset Kirksten for merely existing yesterday, and now with all of Team Rectiser’s gaze cast on him, John could not help but to second guess himself for doing the right thing. Since he was just Team Rectiser’s healer, for him to retrieve the chalice out of nowhere, his teammates could misinterpret him for stealing credit from them after they defeated the eternal decays.

“Uh… Listen guys, I apologize. I was not trying to—”

“How’d you d-do t-that!??” Cacti squealed in excitement as she looked at the chalice in John’s hands. “D-did you produce the item? D-did you pull i-it out of thin air? I w-want to know—"

Matilda covered the excited Cacti’s mouth and spoke, “You were standing silently for some time, everyone thought you needed time to yourself. It seems like you already are ahead of all of us.”

Following Matilda’s comment, Bran, who was grinning as much as Aurelius, placed his arm around John, “John, good sir, you have to tell me how did you crack the academy’s puzzle.”

“The academy’s puzzle? You’ve got it wrong, there was no puzzle, there was this voice that told me where the chalice was...”

John looked down to the golden chalice in his hands.

He had still yet to investigate the design of the item itself. All he cared for moments ago was to not fall into the radioactive pool. And now, when he finally got a closer look that the chalice that was the prerequisite for Team Rectiser’s first task, his brow scrunched together.

I am sure I’ve seen a similar design of this somewhere… This chalice is from ancient times. I am sure of it. Even the luster is no longer there...

Bran’s gaze was still on John, “Go on, you said there was a voice, and?”

“The voice told me to walk to the center of the pool,” John pointed to where he had been minutes earlier. “That’s where I got the chalice from.”

The smile on Bran’s face faded when he heard John had walked to the center of the glowing pool.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Why would I lie?”

“I am not saying I don’t believe you, but none of us saw you went there. I am sure Aurelius would have gone ballistic if you did something of that degree, John.”

John made a face at Bran’s distrust.

“Did any of you not see me walk on that glowing pool!?” He then turned to Aurelius, Cacti, Matilda and Kirk, who all shook their head.

“You were just standing beside us silently.” Aurelius explained. “Let alone walking towards the pool. You barely moved.”

Kirk shrugged, “It’s fine. You got us the chalice and saved us all the trouble of finding it. I am sure it really didn’t matter how you solved the academy’s puzzle, if only you told us how you got it though… Maybe you were hiding it on you all this time?”

John rolled his eyes at Kirk’s remark before staring into Kirk, who stood tall above him, “I am serious. That’s how I got this thing,” John passed the chalice to Bran and moved behind Aurelius, hands shoved into his pockets.

The fuck is wrong with all of you?

With the chalice in his hands, Bran spoke, “We’ll just leave how you got the chalice it at that. There’s still the wurm blocking our exit. Cacti’s protection has an hour left before it expires. We need to find a way out of here before we all die from radiation poisoning.”

If none of you believe what I say, why ask me to begin with?

“Matilda, what does the map say?”

Matilda responded by activating their mission sphere. She expanded the image of the underground passages that the eternal decays had dug beneath their lair.

“It is we’ve seen yesterday. There seems to be no other way out other than the exit we came from.”

“Anyone else have any ideas?” Bran asked.

Kirk immediately offered, “We can go full force at the wurm. All we have to do is to defeat it before Cacti’s magic runs out.”

“No, that won’t work. It will take too long, even with my avatar magic. We have to burn away most of its body. I don’t think neither John nor I have the energy left to spare for that.”

“W-we can explore the caverns a-and hope to find an exit?”

“That would be ideal, Cacti. However, the map shows nothing—"

“There is! Beneath us, look!” Aurelius pointed to the map that was projected before everyone’s eyes. Sure enough, one of the passages that extended the deepest started to hollow itself, making a full sized passage that extended to the very end of the map.

Wait… isn’t that where Prishine wanted me to go?

When Team Rectiser first entered the underground caverns, John was relieved when he heard Bran and Matilda reported that there were no additional paths that led downwards, that in essence, this cave was just a shallow one that the eternal decays made into their lair.

Which meant all of what the succubus told him about the mysterious door had all been something she made up.

Despite her insistence of John approaching the mysterious door that teleported people where they needed to go, if there had never been a passage that led him further down, John could always make up an excuse to the succubus that he ‘attempted’ to help her but could not due to physical constraints of the caverns themselves.

However, their mission sphere now had shown an underground passage that connected to the exact spot that Prishine had asked John to go investigate.

He had no choice but to follow through his promise.

He really didn’t want to.

But on the off chance that Prishine had stationed someone there to ascertain whether kept his word with the succubus… He did not want everyone else in Team Rectiser to suffer because of him.

Even if they don’t believe how I got the chalice for them.

A clear route already showed itself on the mission sphere, and inside his mind's eye, John could see a blinking red dot at the exact spot Prishine had marked on her own map like she had the other day.

“That wasn’t there...when I read it last night…” spooked by mission sphere, Matilda leaned backwards, almost losing her grip on the metal sphere. “This makes little sense, the geography, how can it be…”

Bzrt!

The map projected by the mission sphere suddenly fizzled, the map flickered and in the next moment, the mission sphere ceased functioning.

All six members of Team Rectiser looked at the sudden malfunction of the magic device as though they each received a slap on their cheeks.

“T-that...s-should not h-have happened.”

“It ran out of power!?” Kirk exclaimed. His face was the most surprised out of everyone else’s. “I could have sworn it runs on a magic core.”

“This is bad…”

“Uh…”

Clap!!!

Just as everyone was about to panic, a loud clap came from Bran’s palms, dispelling the nervous atmosphere that was building up.

“There’s no need to worry. We just have to follow that center passage that the eternal decays created. If we follow the path that the mission sphere indicated before it died on us, I am sure we’ll be out here in no time.”

“R-right.” John immediately followed up. “It’s a one-way passage to the outside. If we follow the map, we should, theoretically, be able to exit the caverns before Cacti’s protection wears off. Right now, we are still within the range of the toxic radioactive waves. As long we get further d-deeper, we should at least be safe…”

“What makes you so sure, John?” Kirksten shot a glance at John. “You don’t sound too confident yourself after seeing that map showing a series of different passages.”

“I…” John wanted to reply, but his voice faltered.

Truth to be told, John was as skeptical as Kirk regarding the analysis he just gave his teammates.

But ever since the incident with the two wurms chasing them during the sandstorm to this underground cave system, something did feel off.

How was it that the wurms could chase Team Rectiser to their exact mission location indicated by the mission sphere? How was it when Team Rectiser had thought that they were stuck in the eternal decay’s lair, a new passage opens up for them, inviting them downwards? How was it possible that at the exact moment he was searching for the chalice needed by his team, a man’s voice came to him?

Kirk was right. The things that had been happening to John for had been far too coincidental, that even he was doubting his reality for being far too convenient.

Perhaps it has something to do with the succubus?

John kept his silence as he mulled.

“Our best option right now is to travel down, Kirk,” Aurelius said with a flat expression. “Anytime now, the wurms—”

Boom!

The rocky ground that they had been standing on gave a violent shiver as the wurm used whatever energy it had left and squeezed its body closer to Team Rectiser.

“—would keep banging, forcing entry to the cave, and risk collapsing the upper cave system.”

Kirk looked to Matilda for support, but she simply shrugged at her brother, “Don’t look at me, smart guy. But Cacti and I are almost out of mana. We can fight the first wurm now and exit this cave, but is there any guarantee that we can deal with the second wurm forcing the first inside the cave?”

Kirk’s face convulsed into an ugly scowl when he realized his plan of eradicating the wurm was disapproved by everyone. Then, a small hand tugged on the hems of his shirt.

“K-Kirk… P-please, w-we’ve finished the first task, there’s no need to risk o-our lives.”

Finally, at Cacti’s plead, Kirk let out a long sigh and gave in to everyone else’s suggestion. “Fine… Only because Cacti is asking me to.”

“Great! Let us depart now!”

Without another word, Team Rectiser moved to the center most passage made by the eternal decays followed downwards.

All the while, Team Rectiser traversed deeper into the cave passage. As indicated by their mission sphere, Bran, who led by the front with Matilda, was in high spirits.

Even as they descended into more uneven and steeper passages, Team Rectiser’s leader seemed as though he had springs in his steps.

No doubt, the acquisition of the chalice and the completion of their first mission set an elated emotional state in everyone. Bran was just the most obvious of them all.

Though everyone else was chipper, Aurelius, who was beside John, wore a minor frown on his face. At almost each twenty steps they have took, John noticed Aurelius’ face would scrunch up and his tail would stiffen.

No longer able to ignore the wolfkin’s unusual behavior, John spoke, “You look like you’ve got mites on your body or something, Aurelius. What’s the matter?”

In response to John, Aurelius’ nose twitched and moved in John’s direction.

“Woah, woah, woah, wait.”

When he finally realized what he was doing, Aurelius froze in his tracks and immediately scratched his head bashfully. “Sorry, I thought I smelled something familiar. I thought it came from you…”

The beastkin’s nose twitched again.

Sniff, sniff…

“No… It’s disappeared again…”

“What’s disappeared?” John asked, placing his hands on Aurelius, who almost stopped walking alongside him. Giving the wolfkin a nudge on his back, John prompted Aurelius to ignore the scent and catch up with the other members of the Team.

Still looking around their surroundings warily, Aurelius mumbled, “This place keeps giving off a scent… I don’t know what it is… But I feel like I have felt it in my past. I just can’t make it out.”

John, whose curiosity was as boundless as his overactive mind too, began scrunching his nose in the similar fashion as Aurelius and started taking in the surrounding scent, hoping he would better understand his friend’s trouble.

One whiff, two whiffs, three whiffs…

All that John could smell was the pungent odor that came from his own clothes. Aside from the chilly wind that entered his nostrils, he could not quite smell anything out of the norm.

“I can’t really smell anything. Let’s just keep moving for now, Aurelius. I’ll help you figure out what it is when stop for a rest… Aurelius?”

John cocked his head at the wolfkin when he saw that Aurelius’ nose kept twitching and sniffing at the surrounding air.

Aurelius had become so entranced by a scent that John could not do a thing to snap Aurelius out of that trance.

“Aurelius?” John whispered to his wolfkin buddy, taking great care to not startle Aurelius. But even with Aurelius’ name being called out, the beastkin did not respond to John. “Umm guys…” John called out to the other members of Team Rectiser who were in front of him “...can we slow down our pace a bit? I think Aurelius is…”

Before Bran and the rest could turn back to John, Aurelius’ ears twitched back and forth, then his head immediately jerked to attention.

“Bran! We have to go now! There’s something coming our way.” Without warning, Aurelius pushed John with his enormous arms and force him into a forward sprint.

“Oi, what’s the matter with you? Stop—”

“Go, go, go!!! The cave passage is collapsing on us!!!”

Though Team Rectiser’s battle with the eternal decays had been thirty minutes earlier and their energy had yet to full recover, Aurelius' panicked voice was enough to set everyone into motion.

“Go, go, go, everyone! Listen to Aurelius!!!” Bran commanded, inspiring everyone to pick up their pace into a rapid jog.

Tap, tap, tap, tap…

All John could hear were the sounds of Team Rectiser’s footsteps echoing in the caves as they ran forwards.

John looked back as he ran now and then, but every time he did, all he saw was the same type of dark and damp passage behind him. He felt no tremors, saw no signs of the rocks from above caving in downwards. Like the rest of his team, he was too busy moving forwards as fast as he could in fear that what Aurelius said would come to be.

It was common sense that the senses of a beastkin were far more perceptive and sensitive than a human’s. Hence, everyone immediately took Aurelius’ word for what was to come. As all of them were only human, none of them wanted to question the validity of the beastkin’s words on such a serious matter.

It wasn’t until Team Rectiser exited the underground passage and arrived at yet another cave, did Aurelius signaled everyone to stop.

“W-what was that all...hah...about?” Bran, who had two hands on his thighs supporting himself, asked Aurelius.

Aurelius, who was facing the cave passage they exited from like an esteemed guardian who took his job with the upmost caution, raised a hand. “Five, four, three, two, one…”

Boom!!!

As in on cue, rocks tumbling from above the cave system, filling the cave completely, causing a large wind of dust to surge from it and blasted against all six of them.

Shielding his face with and arm and his hood, John could only stare at what had just happened before him with a shiver running down his spine.

That’s not normal. It collapsed with no warning or signs...

“How the h-hell did you s-sense that!?” Kirk, who had blocked the dust from the two girls with his tall body, spat his words. His face was as pale as the highest quality of paper found in Registoria, all blood that was previously on his face had been drained.

“T-that could h-have killed u-us all…” Cacti mumbled as she struggled to get to her feet.

Bran and Matilda had become far too stunned at the passage’s collapse that they simply blinked at the now blocked passage that they exited from.

“I thought I smelled something familiar, but the next thing I knew, I heard endless rumbling all around us,” Aurelius said as he turned to John who still had an ardent gaze on the collapsed passage. “You good, John?”

“Rocks don’t just collapse from…”

Finally snapping himself from analyzing the collapsed passage, he turned to his team, who were looking at him curiously.

“Huh? Aurelius? Yeah, yeah, I am doing fine. It’s just I don’t know…the way the cave passage collapsed, it feels extremely out of place.”

“What do you mean?” Bran asked.

John turned his gaze to the ground, and counted with his fingers, “First, the wurms were chasing us to the exact spot where the eternal decays were, though they were aggressive, but none of them attempted to attack us yesterday,

“Second, the mission sphere malfunctioned exactly right after we caught a glimpse of an exit route. Which might be a coincidence if its power supply went out, but doesn’t the mission sphere run on our mana? I know a mana core powers it too, but it uses our mana to function, doesn’t it?”

Bran and Matilda shared a look.

Matilda immediately brought the mission sphere and activated it. Sure enough, the mission sphere powered up without problems and displayed the layout of the underground cave that they were in without problems.

“The collapsed passage we used is no longer there, but this cave we are in is. Bran, Bran! Look, we are close to leaving the underground cave system. We just have to head west and there would be an exit there.”

I thought so…

John continued after Matilda finished her sentence, “Let’s just assume the first two points are just uncanny coincidences we just faced. There is something else about the cave passage collapse that bothers me.”

John then moved to where the blocked passage was at and picked up a piece of debris.

“This stone is far more brittle than the ones we saw in the eternal decay’s lair. It’s doesn’t even feel like a natural rock to me, it’s more so like...conjured into existence.”

“That’s...a sharp observation, the dust explains it,” Kirk nodded, already accepted John’s assessment. “It’s hard to imagine that the academy prepared such a challenging mission for us to overcome. If Aurelius hadn’t said a thing, all of us could have…”

“Yeah, Aurelius saved us all. That’s for sure,” John flashed a small smile before giving a light pat on Aurelius’ back for the wolfkin’s efforts. “I thought that this might be the academy’s work, but I think there’s something more to it… Look over there.”

At John’s instruction, all of Team Rectiser redirected their gaze from the collapsed passage and focused on the cavern landscape behind them.

“No way…”

“I did not even notice it.”

“What? How? ”

“T-this is i-impossible. H-how c-can a p-place like this e-exist?”

From the corner of John’s eye, he saw Aurelius’ nose twitched like it had earlier.

As if on instinct, Aurelius immediately moved himself in front of John, “I smell blood… Not fresh blood, but something had once spilled a lot of blood on these grounds. I don’t know what place this is, but it is very ominous. I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, me neither,” John nodded as he steadied himself as he scanned their surroundings.

As if urged on by an innate fear, all of Team Rectiser for a moment, huddled in close in caution of the scene splayed before them.

The cave that they entered was an old, abandoned settlement.

From the smooth walls that were erected from the cave’s ground, and the marble pillars that were built in place to support the various balcony like walkways, the infrastructure that it once had indicated that this place had once been a bustling city.

But all that was now left of this forgotten ruin were only the remains and rubble of those who once inhabited this city. Broken bones, shattered pottery, destroyed facilities.

It looked like a massacre took place the last time anything lived here.