Chương 299: (293) 4.72. Old Flames

The last time they'd broken out of the citadel, the guards had all been more than a little distracted by the massive explosion and all the colorful smoke pouring out of the center of the holy district. Even if Vin and the team didn't have anything to fear from low level guards yelling at their backs as they hopped the wall and ran off, Vin preferred not being the cause of any sort of incident.

With that in mind, and a few hours to kill until midnight for safety, Vin decided to take advantage of their current location to check on something he'd wondered about for some time. The current status of the holy district and the Relic Guardian contained within.

"You don't seriously think there's any chance he actually survived that, right?" Scule asked, looking hesitant as Vin covered him with Concealment and stepped through the magic gate into the holy district.

"Come on, you saw the size of that explosion. We were hundreds of feet away and protected by the colosseum walls and it still sent us ragdolling down the street!" Ironically, Scule was one of only two members of their current party who couldn't just walk through the gate to the holy district normally. The gate was set to detect whether a soul contained divine energy or not, and Vin, Shia, and even Reginald all had their own divine boons.

They weren't entirely certain if the gate would work on Alka or not, so he'd used Concealment on her as well rather than take any chances. Lumel would have been forced to either teleport through or also accept a cast of Concealment, if she had still been with them. To Vin's surprise, the pulmon had stated she wanted to remain behind and have a brief discussion with Copi and Nute while the rest of the team checked out the holy district.

Having heard that Scule's younger siblings were threatening to up and leave their parents behind in defense of Scule, it seemed she'd decided she wanted to have a one-on-one discussion with them to make sure they knew what they were truly threatening. Vin knew despite the brave face she put on, Lumel missed her mother and father far more than she let on.

"If the Relic Guardian were anyone else, I'd say he was dead for sure," Vin said, nodding as the last of them crossed through the gate before he took the lead and began heading toward the center of the holy district.

"But don't forget, he had to have been level 60 at an absolute minimum. Perhaps even higher. There's no telling what abilities he had or how tough he was. We should be careful."

"Why are we even doing this again?" Shia asked, pausing to admire a mildly overgrown bush that had initially been grown into the shape of a majestic griffin.

"You and Scule just got all giddy all of a sudden and said you wanted to take a look."

"Isn't it obvious?" Alka drawled.

"They're hoping some of the artifacts survived the explosion. I can practically see Scule drooling from here."

"Come on, you can't tell me you aren't wondering the same!" Scule whined, flapping his cloak behind him.

"We managed to take a grand total of one of the artifacts out from under that guy's nose, and think about how useful it's been. There were dozens of artifacts he was guarding! If even only a handful survived, that would be the score of the century!"

"I'm with Scule on this. It's risky, but the potential payout is too large not to at least check," Vin admitted.

"With my Artifact Extraordinaire passive, I should be able to detect them from a decent distance away. Maybe even from outside the divine sanctum walls."

"Let's wait and see if the sanctum is even still up in the first place," Shia pointed out. Though sure enough, after their lengthy walk through the holy district, it wasn't long before the central colosseum came into view. Its many pillars, each one constructed out of an entirely different metal than the last, gleamed in the early moonlight as they walked up. Vin had no idea how much constructing something like this must have cost, but it had to be exorbitant at the time.

And just like before, a familiar, soft golden bubble popped into existence as they approached. Laying a hand on the nearly invisible barrier prompted the same, chilling message as always. Warning. You are about to enter a Divine Sanctum. While inside the Divine Sanctum, access to the System interface will be temporarily lost.

"Alright… So what does this mean?" Scule asked, presumably reading over his own tiny, golden notification.

"Do you guys think the sanctum would have vanished after the guy died?"

"I don't know…" Shia said slowly, peering at the colosseum exterior beyond the sanctum walls.

"We know the Gods did something unique to these spaces to allow the high level people within to survive, despite being in a world with a totally new System. Maybe what they did was permanent?"

"Only one way to find out," Alka shrugged, stepping through the bubble before anyone could stop her.

"If that guy is still alive, I've got a bone to pick with him anyway. I wasn't able to do anything against him back when he chopped off Vin's arm, but things are different this time around. Let's see if he can cut through me."

"I appreciate the thought, Alka, but maybe we should be just a little bit more cautious," Vin warned, quickly chasing after her into the divine sanctum.

"Don't forget, this guy could somehow attack from range with a sword, as if he were a legitimate video game character or something. If there was any one person other than the divine warrior capable of potentially cutting through whatever your new body is made of, it would probably be him." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on just standing there and taking his blows anyway," Alka snorted as Shia finally joined them as well, preemptively transforming her staff into Blossom while Scule and Reginald hopped through.

"Now come on. I'm not one to wait around worrying." No you are not, Vin thought, wisely choosing not to say the words out loud as they all fell in line behind the supposedly indestructible golem. Despite how far they'd come since the last time they were here and how much stronger they'd grown, Vin's heart pounded in his chest as he desperately tried to look in all directions at once. The Relic Guardian hadn't seemed like the type to try launching a sneak attack, but it wasn't as if they'd really known the man.

The large, metal doors leading into the colosseum had been blown off their hinges and now lay in a twisted heap at the base of the structure. Stepping over them, the team entered the colosseum once more, each one of them with weapons and spells primed and at the ready. Once, the interior of the colosseum had contained countless rows of pedestals stretching out across the wide-open floor, many of them supporting powerful artifacts just ripe for the taking.

There had been a ridiculously powerful artifact called the Grand Artifact of Qiatha, floating above it all like a miniature sun, capable of redirecting monster spawns from miles away to one singular location. Now, the scene was a little different. All that remained of the pedestals were tiny bits and pieces of rubble here and there, scattered about the scorched colosseum floor. The Grand Artifact of Qiatha was naturally no more, seeing as it had already been heavily damaged by the time they'd arrived.

The artifact's condition had allowed Vin to push it over the edge with a focused stream of mana, saving all their lives by causing it to overload and detonate. The vast colosseum was completely free of artifacts as far as he could tell, but there was one thing that caught the eye almost immediately. A naked, bedraggled man sitting cross-legged in the very center of the room. His dirty white robe was nowhere to be seen, and his short sword was presumably the mangled clump of half-melted metal resting beside him.

But even with the new look, there was no mistaking that long, knotted grey hair and scraggly beard that desperately needed a shave. Despite the incredible force of the explosion, the insane Relic Guardian who had taken Vin's arm and plotted to kill them all was still alive. It took Vin a few seconds to realize Shia was shaking him, and he flinched as he realized he'd zoned out for a moment.

Once his eyes had landed on the meditating warrior who had nearly killed him, it was as if everything else had proceeded to fade away.

"What?" he muttered, blinking and trying to focus.

"Look at him," Shia repeated, turning to stare at the man again.

"Notice anything different?" Unsure what she was getting at, Vin followed her gaze and stared at the man more carefully. The shock of seeing him still alive and breathing had been too much for him to pay attention to detail, but one thing jumped out at him immediately. The Relic Guardian looked like he'd all but wasted away. The man had already looked rather scraggly and thin the last time they'd seen him, but now, nearly two months later, he looked positively gaunt and malnourished.

His lack of robes made it quite easy to see just how thin his body was, and Vin blinked as he realized what must have happened.

"The Goddess said he refused to eat the food they offered him," Vin said slowly, watching the man's chest slowly rise and fall as he continued meditating.

"He'd been subsisting entirely off of monster meat for three months by the time we found him, which not only drove him mad, but already couldn't have been all that healthy. But once the Grand Artifact of Qiatha was destroyed…"

"He had no way of summoning more monsters to feast upon," Shia finished, nodding as she narrowed her eyes at the distant guardian.

"He hasn't had anything to eat in two months. You don't think the Gods wouldn't have tried again?"

"He seemed pretty adamant about refusing their help the last time we were here," Vin drawled, continuing to carefully watch the man. Even if the guardian's sword had been turned into little more than metal slag from the force of the grand artifact detonating, the guardian had to have ridiculous attributes and abilities to be able to move as quickly as he did, let alone survive that explosion point-blank. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell Vin was letting his guard down while still within the divine sanctum.

"Whatever the case, it doesn't look like he's noticed us just yet," Scule hissed, searching around the room with his eyes.

"I don't see any artifacts lying around anywhere. Can you sense them?"

"Yeah… from what I can tell, there are one or two artifacts that survived the explosion," Vin confirmed, seeing the excitement ignite in Scule's eyes.

"Where? Just point me at them and we can get the hell out of here before he wakes up!"

"Right about there," Vin said, pointing directly at the relic guardian sitting in the center of the room.

"They're either in his lap, behind him, or he's literally sitting on them. I can sense them, but I can't see them."

"Of course," Scule sighed, deflating like an old balloon.

"You couldn't have just led with that, huh? Had to get my hopes up and what not?"

"He's weak and without his sword," Alka argued, her green eyes narrowed to points as she stared down the guardian, no doubt analyzing their odds of winning.

"We can take him."

"He survived the most powerful explosion any of us have ever seen!" Vin snapped, shaking his head at the thought of willingly going toe-to-toe with the guardian, even with the condition he was currently in.

"You really think any of us can launch an attack more powerful than what we saw back then? I think we should cut out losses and retreat. Maybe he'll have died from starvation in another month and we can just leisurely push his corpse aside and take the artifacts from him."

"I think Vin is right," Shia said slowly, clearly on the fence between trying to gather the artifacts and risking their lives to do so.

"It would be one thing if we found him lying on the ground half-dead, but he's actively meditating right now. He looks weakened, but I don't think it's to the point we can actually take him."

"A wise judgement," the Relic Guardian spoke without opening his eyes, his soft voice somehow traveling all the way across the colosseum and causing all of them but Alka to flinch as one. Readying themselves once more, they waited for the guardian to launch some sort of attack, but the man merely sat there, doing little more than breathing in and out.

Finally, after a few more long, deep breaths that seemed to drag on unnaturally long, he slowly opened his eyes, blinking as if it was the first time he'd done so in weeks. Looking at them, he spoke, his voice cracking and gravelly.

"Come back for my artifacts again, have you?"