"Think it through?""We managed a win there, however, who knows what we will have to fight next?""I understand"Following this response, Aiden sat on the ground with his back to the wall and closed his eyes."What are you doing?"Before he could even sort through his thoughts, she interrupted him."I memorized it... I'm trying to think of the best solution"As soon as he gave his response, he looked away and closed his eyes. Diving into his subconscious, his destination was the library replica. He planned to find anything that was related to the organization Zarek told him about. The ones who used these symbols for communication.The saving grace here was the library's quick search feature that could find all materials relating to a particular topic.Keyword: Secret organization—The number of aged scrolls he got this time was more than the normal books. Still, there were a lot of them he'd have to go through, enough to bury him in reading for weeks."That's a lot more than I expect
The hall was long, something they found when the light from the torches lit it up completely.The spot where the floor fell in was at one end of the hall, and off in the distance, they saw what looked like a round table with high chairs surrounding it.Slowly, the two walked down the hall toward the round table.It was a round table that looked so ancient that it felt like it would fall apart at any moment.Surprisingly, it was clean, dust free despite the weathered look.The chairs had regal looks to them. In their time, they were crafted to be luxurious, and this fact was still evident from a single look at them.This round table had twelve chairs around it. Each had a symbol engraved on the chair."What do you think it is—""What do you think it is—"These questions were directed in the order: Princess Diane asked Aiden the question while Aiden asked Zarek the same question at that exact moment.["It's a round table"], Zarek responded after a startled pause."I know that it's a rou
"What is insight?", Aiden asked Zarek in his thoughts.["You have work to do, but thankfully, you have experienced what insight can be"]"What are you talking about?"["You told me about your experience in a chaotic space. You mentioned that at the end of the experience, you could predict things without thinking. Your ability to go through that minefield became instinctual, that was the effect of insight"]"Oh... So that's all I have to do to leave this place? I just need to get in that state again?"["Yes, but I wouldn't advise that you just brute force your way through like that"]"What do you mean?"["I mean that the feeling you experienced then is only the first step in gaining insight.Insight in itself is more of a measure of how well you understand your element. It quantifies how much control you have over it.Do you remember that stat most Arcanas forget?"]Aiden tried to think of some metric he heard of for grading Arcanas that ended up not being used for anything.As he went
"Orla... Go get them some soup", she said to her daughter."You can sit, for now, sir. The farm belongs to my daughter and me. No one will disturb you", she said to Aiden who was grimacing.Aiden listened to her and with her help, he sat on the ground.It did not take long for the girl to come out with some soup in two plates... She placed them on the ground in front of Aiden."Thank you", he said to her.He moved over to Princess Diane and raised her to a sitting position.She still couldn't move, so he had to support her in that position. He planned to feed her first before eating, however, she kept her mouth shut.The situation quickly became awkward. A situation where a woman and her child watched two strangers act like a brother and his bratty little sister.Aiden noticed this quickly, and the woman also felt the awkwardness, so she held her daughter and they walked away, heading back to the small building not too far away."Your Highness, we have no idea where we are, what day i
The prince sat back and crossed his legs. As he did this, he kept his eyes on Adrian who stood waiting for a response.He eventually nodded and Prince Adrian sat down. Princess Caitlyn was right beside him to deal with whatever he was feeling at that moment."I called you all here today to inform you that Master Harisinh will be making an appearance at The Selection"From the moment, he said Master Harisinh, murmurs had started. The reason the party was called had finally come to light."I am sure you all know Lord Ajax. He was named The Keeper of Time, the head of all keepers..."Many heads were nodding in response to this statement."I believe you also know a rumor that Lord Ajax was a student of Master Harisinh before he left on his journey?"Another round of affirmative nods appeared. However, what the Prince said next sent a wake of silence through all of them."I believed it as well... But, father told me the story of how Lord Ajax, in his younger years was corrected on a single
"What?!"She was baffled by his statement for a moment. At that moment, she was the typical example of a person who would ask for the truth with no intention to hear it."Oh my dear Princess, if only you would calm yourself down when a problem arises, like earlier today..."Her face scrunched up immediately after she heard that. Aiden paused for a moment when he saw that expression before clearing his throat and continuing his statement."...like earlier today when I invaded your privacy. I did not mean to do it and I was only here to call you. Dinner was ready and you'd been here since morning"Her expression eased up a tiny bit in that instant while Aiden drew a deep breath. "You could have hurt Mrs. Smith and her daughter. I know I made a mistake, adding it to the list of my punishment is not too hard I presume"She gave a wicked smirk before saying in a low voice, "oh, you are definitely getting punished"Aiden heard this but he wasn't bothered by it. All he did was ask the quest
"So the tunnel led out to a waterfall?" "It did... He did not warn or even catch me when I came sliding up to him" As Aiden listened, he thought the conversation was somewhat hilarious in how bizarre it was. For one, everything sounded like her fault even though she stated categorically that it was his. "Hmm" "..." "So, which of the noble families are you related to?" "The story is not finished, because we are extremely far from home. Do you know the Nation of Sur?" "Sur? In the south?" "That's how far we were carried away from home" "But there are no rivers that stretch that far between the west and the south of the empire" Andrew was a lot more knowledgeable than Aiden expected, and this gave Aiden a bit of tolerance for him. "I'm guessing that's why we have not been found", Diane responded. "Hmm... Well, I am glad that I agreed to let you ride with us. There will be no pesky stops along the way. We'll be in The Great Capital in two days at most, enough time to find your
"Insight?!!""Yes"The surprise he felt was evident on his face. He took another look at both of them and then at Andrew."I thought insights were almost impossible to learn at the apprentice level?", he asked as soon as the guard turned to look at him."That's true young master, however, in noble and royal families, it is not as impossible as one will think", he answered."Sometimes, normal people with a high enough affinity rating don't need to do anything to use insights, it usually comes naturally", the second continued."I was wondering what the affinity rating was used for", Andrew muttered to himself, while his friends spoke into his ears on both sides."They truly must be from a noble family in Sur...If the young master received the same training as they did, I believe you would do better than they doing"One after the other, the two boys tried to cheer him up but they soon stopped speaking after Andrew raised his hand to shut them up.And so, silence ensued, as they waited for
The crowd was pulled from the tragedy that the nobles caused, and some people started to point to the group suspended above them, whispering and murmuring various pieces of gossip.This was a topic that excited them all, however, the ones who were most excited for the revelation were the nobles who finally knew the people who beat them to occupy the highest floor of the tower.They did not hide the wicked grins on their faces and Aiden saw these grins on their faces. He also saw that the group were starting to descend from the sky into the midst of the crowd. That was bad and was quickly made worse when he noticed the nobles setting their hounds on the group.He could guess their thoughts. Even if the group was stronger than they were, given the position they occupied, they did not believe it and wanted to know for themselves how powerful they were.This gave Aiden a headache and his mind began to spin quickly, looking for a big enough distraction that would give the group a chance to
None could ask the other for help because each had someone attacking them, however, they were not noble scions for nothing. Despite being overpowered by the golems, they dealt some damage over time.It was not immediately obvious, but they managed to hold their own, and avoid grievous injuries even though there were several close calls.It took them each about an hour to circumvent their respective golems and deal enough damage to break through their chests.Hadrian was the first followed by Oscar shortly after with Tristan clocking in third, a few seconds behind Oscar. He was unhappy with this but he had no time to be unhappy because his face soon changed into a somber look. Oscar who had just tried to pick up the glowing multi-coloured orb was surprised to find the orb roll away from him and float up to meet the orb that came from Tristan’s golem. This also meant that the orb in Hadrian’s hand was the only one that remained.Oscar and Tristan noticed this, but they could do nothin
No one cared who had said that word because they all ran. The sight of the gray tentacles rising like pillars from the depths of the abyss was enough to scare every one of them.At the same moment, there was a rumble that spread across the skies of the city at that moment. Everyone heard it. Aiden, sitting in the restaurant was jolted from his thoughts and joined everyone else as they looked up at the ruin.He witnessed a few of the tentacles of the beast appear on the edge of the ruin as he had seen before they entered the ruin.‘That bridge, huh? They might be lucky enough to escape'.He did not care much if these people beat the ruin and made it to the temple. He had gotten his rewards and he was happy with that.Tristan and his group had immediately dashed off the bridge, but the tentacles came down on the bridge at a lightning-fast speed.This attack ripped the bridge apart, leaving just three people from Tristan’s group unscathed.Tristan’s face was painted with horror like ever
Aiden was dumbfounded. How was this a reward? It simply contradicted itself. The problem it caused was having him be a prime target for the Zaltyr, but it would also save him from them once.Then, is the mark erased once the life-saving opportunity is used?[Yes, everything returns to normal after that]This made him heave a sigh of relief. He tried to look at this from a positive perspective. This meant the mark was not meant to specifically protect him from the Zaltyr, its main purpose was to protect him from every other thing that tried to kill him.Thinking about it this way made it easier to accept the fact that he was going to be in trouble with the Zaltyr sooner or later, albeit only slightly.Elder Zarek watched Aiden go through his thoughts for a few minutes while he thought of the command he had received from The World Seed.Aiden had recovered his thoughts at this point and decided to check on his elemental seed. He was elated to see the changes to his elemental seed.The mu
None of the thirty remaining survivors was stupid and they took things as calmly as they could. There was no visible harm to resting till a problem was identified and this was something they unanimously agreed on.As they expected, there was something that was out of the ordinary and it was found after two hours of waiting.The quiet rumble that came from the depths of the chasm was enough of a wake-up call.Theo of the Arco twins was the one who made the first comment, breaking the silence. None of them believed that crossing the bridge would be easy from the start, however, the realization that some unknown danger lurked beneath was enough to bring them flashbacks of their time in the maze.“There’s something down there as well? Why is this trial so difficult?”“Good thing we were patient…”“Patient? What does that do for us?”“Theo is not completely wrong. Every stage of the trials had been harder than the last”, Oscar took a deep breath.“Indeed… Something that can cause such a ru
“You just had to jinx it?”Raven rolled her eyes in response.The orb glowed and the rubble spread across the hall was drawn to it. One piece after the other, they mashed together and barely a moment later, a statue had formed.This statue looked the same as the ones they fought before, save for a few important differences. One, this new statue was massive, at least three times as tall. Two, the statue now had a weapon – A halberd which it swung around. Three, most importantly, it had lines running all over its body. Looking close enough these lines were runes just like the ones Aiden and the rest had, but these were very close to being complete, easily dwarfing the ones they had.Their expressions turned grave as the glowing eyes of the massive statue locked onto them.It was a golem, and it wasted no time. With a roar that sounded like thunder, it wielded its halberd and charged at them.There was no running from it, because, a sweep of its halberd made the hall feel claustrophobi
Raven who had suggested was the first to move, and the moment she did, everyone else followed her one after the other. They got to the stone coffin amidst their careful creeping without any problems. The unnerving feeling that they felt from the statues kept them on their toes as they expected everything to go wrong at any moment. "Now what", Raven asked. Aiden and Connor stepped here, and as he instructed; "Keep an eye out", the two of them pushed the lid off the stone coffin. They were right to be worried, because the moment the stone coffin opened slightly, light burst out of the opening. They were taken aback by this absurd light show, however, the light was like a tonic, one that breathed life into the surrounding. Life into the several warrior statues that lined the walls. Each of their eyes opened with a snap, glowing a bright orange, followed by cracks that came from the loosening of the joints on the statues. Gadiel was the first to speak regret about the situation, but
With Aiden and Connor leading the way, they stepped onto the rope bridge. The silence that fell on them at that was quite unnerving, but it helped them keep their focus. This meant that their reactions were spot on as they responded immediately to Aiden making any signals.This was the moment that they finally understood the danger that lay in the chasm beneath them. Apart from the scary chasm that looked like a bottomless pit, a sight that already promised them death should they fall into it, there was something else living in the chasm, and the dreadful atmosphere it brought with evidence of its existence sent chills running their spines. The conclusion here was very simple, there was trouble and they needed to be careful.Listening carefully, they heard the silent rumbles gradually fade away, taking with it the tense atmosphere they felt. You would expect Aiden to make a sudden dash to get across as quickly as possible, but he didn't. He was taking no chances, so continued steadily
"Three days?!", Raven started."Oh, don't get worked up, it was more like two and a half days", Princess Eleanor chipped in.Unfortunately, this did not change the reaction Raven had; in fact, her reaction got worse at that moment as she got frantic and almost lost her mind as she looked around."Calm down, Raven. Things are not as bad as you think. We are out of the grassland maze; of course, we had to wait for everyone to de-petrify before we continued…", Deirdre explained."So, what trial do we have now?", Raven asked and immediately got a response."Oh, the long rope bridge, strung across the chasm that has a tentacled beast living in it", Deirdre responded like that piece of information was of no consequence.Raven was silent as she stared off into space for a moment. When she got her mind back, she asked almost immediately… "Are we crossing now that I am awake?"A question to which Princess Eleanor answered in a snarky and sarcastic tone… "Hopefully". Her comment got a few gazes