Chương 198: Halls of Stone

Once we found a camp and set up a campfire, Old Mo proved surprisingly easy to talk to about our desire to leave at nighttime. He gave me a dubious glance, before he looked at Sallia, and then looked at the guns we were carrying with us. He made me check how much ammunition I had brought with me twice, and after that, patted me on the shoulder and told me to stay safe.

I had expected old Mo to put up more resistance against us leaving, but apparently, the fight where Sallia and I had wiped out an entire squad of soldiers on our own had left quite an impression, and we were carting along guns, ammunition, and a good amount of raw steel for Sallia to manipulate if a fight came up. Old Mo didn't seem terribly worried about our safety. He also promised to take care of my mother while I was away, in case she had a seizure at night from withdrawal.

I hesitantly left him a small pouch of fizz, in case my mother needed it. I had already dosed her with an absolutely insane amount of healing after she fell asleep, since it did seem like applying healing in larger doses before one of her fits helped her a lot.

A part of me hesitated to put my mother in any danger at all just to go explore with Anise - but I had thrown healing into my mother's body for years, left behind an emergency pouch of her drug in case the seizure was really impossible to manage, and overhealed my mother far beyond what was reasonable, to make sure that tonight had as few complications as possible.

Not hovering over my mother's side might mean she had a particularly bad night, and might even reset some of the progress towards kicking her fizz addiction. But I also wasn't willing to potentially sacrifice Anise's future for my mother's comfort. Besides, I might have just been being optimistic, but I felt that her shivers and shaking had been getting less bad over the past night or two.

I had been bombarding her with healing magic almost nonstop for two years now, so even though my mother still craved herdrug, fizz shouldn't have seriously impacted her body or physical health. I had thrown enough healing magic into her to regenerate her entire body, probably multiple times. While my mother had never been willing to use that to stop her fizz addiction, it had definitely reduced the impact of the drug on her system drastically.

Old Mo gave the pouch of powdered drugs a look of disgust, but promised to hold on to it in case it was needed. He also said that it would be an absolute last resort - which I agreed with. After that, I gave everyone's parents one last shot of healing magic, just to make sure they were as healthy as possible before we left. Then, once the fire was started and everyone was warm and safe in the cave, we left. We started out by following Anise's orb.

Since it grew hotter when we walked in some directions, and grew colder when we walked in other directions, we just kept walking in the direction the orb grew hotter. It took nearly an hour of walking before Anise finally moved the orb out of its metal casing - before wincing and nearly dropping the orb.

"It's really hot," she said. I frowned, and then reached out to touch the orb with my hand, before pulling my hand back. Anise was right. It was very hot"I'll take it," said Sallia, as she bent down to pick up the orb.

"I have grade 7 Fortitude just from my runes, and it's not particularly hard for me to just pour some extra essence into my body if I want it to get healthier. I should be able to handle the heat better." With Sallia working as the new orb carrier, our group continued onwards. After nearly an hour of walking, Anise's orb stopped merely growing hotter, and started started to glow like a miniature lighthouse.

Moments later, a beam of light shot out of the orb, creating a thin but easily visible trail of light for us to follow. It was a small pillar of light - barely the thickness of my arm, but even without me and Anise using our night-related perception to point out the way forward, it was to see what direction we needed to head in. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

We continued following the beam of light, until we came upon a completely and utterly ordinary slab of stone. It looked kind of like a boulder had fallen off of the sheer edges of the mountainside, and had simply fallen onto a random patch of land. I wouldn't have thought much about it, except for the fact that whenever we started walking away from the stone slab, the beam of light emitted from the orb kept insistently pointing at the stone wall.

Even when we climbed a little bit above it with the orb, the light still kept pointing directly at the stone - not at something behind it, or underneath it. the orb pointed directly at the stone. It also felt a little… odd to me. I had now manipulated space in some way, shape, or form for three lifetimes in a row. While they had all been short lifetimes, I was still starting to build enough experience with space to at least have some instinct and understanding for it.

Somehow, space was being manipulated in the area. It was incredibly subtle, and I nearly missed it at first, but the longer we spent investigating the seemingly ordinary stone slab, the more I realized that something was off about it. But it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was being done, simply because I had never encountered a similar type of spatial manipulation before. It didn't feel quite like the teleportation I had mastered in our first life, or the spatial attacks that had happened during our second life.

It was new to me. Out of curiosity, I touched the stone wall in front of us, and shrugged. It felt exactly like regular stone. It didn't have a speck of essence in it, either. The fact that I was so sure that space was being manipulated somehow, but couldn't find any evidence of essence being used, was intriguing. Either the creator of the stone slab had disguised the essence usage, or they had somehow bent space without using essence. I wasn't sure yet.

"The stone slab is manipulating space somehow," I said. The other three started inspecting the stone slab more carefully, but none of us could figure out what exactly was being changed, or how it was being changed.

"Maybe try touching the stone wall with the orb? It could be some kind of advanced… door or something," said Anise, sounding hopeful.

"Maybe there's a big spatial palace, or a big spatial wizard tower or something!" Sallia seemed to think it sounded reasonable, so she poked the pile of stone with the orb a few times. The pile of stone in front of us shifted. It wasn't as if the stone had opened or moved, like a door. Instead, it was more like reality bent to reveal a completely open passage in front of us. I blinked in surprise. The stone wall that had been in our way earlier now seemed almost like an optical illusion.

I hadn't seen or felt any essence move in our surroundings. I still hadn't felt anything that felt like magic. The stone wall was just there, and the next moment, it was gone.

"That's a neat trick," I said, as I felt my curiosity deepen. I didn't actually know how the ancient Zelyr had pulled that trick off, but it was quite interesting. I felt that my sense for essence was usually keen enough to notice more obvious essence usage. The more I thought about the extremely well-disguised wall, the more I realized how vast the multiverse was, and how much more there was to learn. Sallia and Felix gave our surroundings uneasy looks, while Anise seemed torn between excitement and worry.

"Is it safe to go in?" asked Anise. I shrugged.

"I still think we can handle whatever is inside… probably," I said.

"But we should be more cautious than before. Since I can't easily detect whatever is messing with space here, it's clearly something I haven't seen before. We should be more cautious than expected." Just in case, I also double-checked every combat method I had available. Some of the abilities I had hadn't really been used much in this world, since they simply weren't necessary so far.

I hadn't had a single need to use my {Tarot Deck} in this world, because there weren't any individual enemies that could actually threaten me so far. Tarot deck was useful against one strong enemy, but rather useless against hordes of weaker enemies. Similarly, I hadn't needed to use my {Breath of the Storm} for anything. The only time I had used my magic umbrella was as a shield, since I hadn't had any reason to fly around or shoot wildly inefficient lightning bolts in this world.

I still had a bunch of lightning bolts packed into my storage pack from the base we had raided while rescuing Felix as consumable weapons. We also had guns and ammunition. Finally, I had my two magic systems - both of which I felt I had already been making decent use of. I had a lot of different abilities and weapons to respond to an emergency, and I knew my friends were also armed to the teeth with weapons, items, and abilities.

"I'm ready," I said, after a moment.

"I'm also ready," said Sallia, after a moment's notice. Felix also hesitated for a moment, before he nodded. Anise also stared into the darkness that lay behind the now-gone rock wall, before she double checked the gun she was carrying, and then nodded.

"I'm also ready," she said. With that, the four of us stepped into the passage.