Chương 12: The Desert of Forgotten Kings

Ch 12: The Desert of Forgotten Kings Three suns hung low over an ocean of gold sand, and the heat came off it in waves thick enough to bend the horizon out of shape. I'd fought orcs. I'd fought a lich in a tomb full of her own puppeted dead. Nothing had quite prepared me for a floor that just wanted to boil me alive before anything got the chance to kill me properly. Third Floor: The Desert of Forgotten Kings"Straight to the point," I muttered, and reached for the Divine God's Eye out of pure habit.

WARNING Authority Detected — Eye Activation Denied.

I blinked at the empty air where a golden trail should have been unspooling.

"... Excuse me?" No answer. No trail. Just heat, and sand, and something enormous shifting beneath the dunes far off to my left, close enough that I felt the tremor of it through my boots. I'd leaned on those eyes since the moment I'd woken up in this body through the labyrinth, through the graveyard, through a lich who'd tried to make an army out of my corpse. Now, on the one floor made of nothing but empty directions, they'd gone dark. Whatever guarded this place clearly had its own opinion about being watched.

"Fine," I said, mostly to convince myself.

"I've navigated worse with less." That had been a lie the moment it left my mouth. I hadn't. Not like this. The map the Patriarch had given me was a small, stubborn thing a few crimson lines against blank parchment, offering no scale, no landmarks, nothing but a single mark somewhere near its center that might have meant a day's walk or a week's. I picked a direction and started walking, because standing still in a desert accomplished exactly nothing. The first day passed in heat and silence.

The second brought company. Sand shifted behind me, then in front, then on both sides at once, and three long shapes broke the surface in a spray of gold worms as thick as barrels, segmented plates grinding against each other with a sound like a mountain clearing its throat. Enemy Identified: Sand Serpent Cultivation: Mortal Realm — Seventh Leaf Seventh Leaf. Three leaf above where I stood.

I didn't have the luxury of the Eye picking out their weak points for me this time, so I did the only thing that made sense, I ran, cutting whatever got close enough to matter, and let Cosmic-Wave pull whatever Qi it could out of every desperate step. By the time the last worm gave up the chase and slid back beneath the dunes, my water was gone, my supplies were gone, and the sun had come up on what I was fairly sure was my third day inside. I didn't remember much of the last stretch.

Only that the ground under my knees had gone from sand to something harder, and that when I lifted my head, a shape had risen out of the heat haze in front of me stone, angled, unmistakable. A pyramid. Exactly where the map's crimson mark had promised it would be.

"... Finally," I rasped, and dragged myself the rest of the way on legs that didn't feel like they belonged to me anymore. The moment I crossed the threshold, the desert's heat cut off like someone had closed a door behind it. Cool stone air. Old dust. Silence with weight to it. I ate the last scraps still clinging to the bottom of my supply pouch, sat against the wall for exactly as long as I could afford to, and made myself stand back up. Authority Restored. Divine God's Eye — Reactivated.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Gold spread across my vision, and this time it caught two things at once a familiar mist trail curling deeper into the pyramid, and something on my own wrist responding to it. The scrap bracelet Mother had pressed into my hand before I'd ever left the sect had gone warm against my skin, a thin gold light tracing its cracked links like something inside it had just opened its eyes. I stared at it.

"... You've been quiet a long time." It didn't answer. It didn't need to. I followed the mist deeper in, one hand resting instinctively over the bracelet the whole way, until the passage opened into a wide chamber lit by torches that caught flame on their own as I entered. A figure was already waiting in the center of it, easily eight feet tall, skin the color of old bronze, robes marking him as something between soldier and monk.

He turned toward me before I'd finished crossing the threshold, and the air itself seemed to lean away from him. Entity Identified: Onbu Cultivation: Divine Realm — Fourth Leaf Divine Realm. I was staring, without question, at the single strongest thing I'd ever stood in front of.

"Child," he said, voice like stone grinding against stone, "you should not be here. Just die." I didn't have time to do anything about that sentence before he was in front of me not beside me, not near me, simply there, the way distance apparently meant nothing to something that far above me. I braced for whatever came next and found, instead, that nothing did. His eyes had already dropped to my wrist.

"... How," he said slowly, "how do you have this fragment?" I held very still.

"It was my father's. Before that, I don't know." Onbu didn't move for a long moment, staring at the cracked bracelet like it had personally offended three centuries of his patience. Then, unbelievably, he stepped back and inclined his head not far, not humble, but enough that every instinct in me went quiet in confusion.

"I am the guardian of this floor," he said.

"Onbu. With your current strength, I could end you in a single motion, and it would not even qualify as a fight worth remembering. So I will not. Not today." He reached into the folds of his robe and produced a small token, dark stone etched with a symbol I didn't recognize, and pressed it into my hand before I could ask what it meant.

"This marks you as recognized by the third floor. Come back when you are worth killing properly." I turned the token over once.

"That's... oddly kind, for a guardian."

"It is not kindness." Something that might have been amusement crossed his face, gone before I could be sure of it.

"It is patience. I have guarded sand and silence for longer than your bloodline has existed. I would like, before I am done, to see what that fragment eventually becomes." He folded his arms.

"I have seven hours before your authority here expires. Spar with me. Show me something worth the wait." I looked down at my sword, at the bracelet still glowing faint gold against my wrist, and let myself smile despite everything my body was telling me about the last three days.

"You're going to regret offering that." He didn't. Not exactly. But by the second hour, the amusement on his face had gone somewhere quieter, more focused, as Cosmic-Wave dragged fresh Qi into me with every exchange and Dragon Slayer's First Verse started answering faster than it had any right to at my age. By the fourth hour, Berserk caught fire in my blood and I stopped counting how many times he'd knocked me flat, because I kept getting back up faster than the last time.

"How," he said, somewhere past the sixth hour, blocking a strike that should have taken his arm off at a level far below where he actually stood, "are you still climbing? You are not even cultivating. You are only fighting."

"That's the secret," I said, breathing hard, sword shaking in both hands.

"I'll tell you properly. Next time." He laughed an actual laugh, rough and startled out of him and didn't press the point again. By the time the seventh hour ran out and the chamber's light began to fade around us, something in my chest had shifted loose and clicked back into place, steadier than it had been that morning.

Congratulations: Cultivation Increased Level: Mortal Realm — Fifth Leaf I stared at the notification, then at Onbu, then laughed myself, half out of disbelief and half because there wasn't anything else left in me to do with the feeling.

"I'll be back," I told him.

"Whatever's sealed behind whatever you're guarding I intend to earn it properly."

"See that you do." He stepped aside, and the passage back toward the pyramid's entrance opened where solid stone had stood a moment before.

"Go, child. Something else is waiting for you outside this floor. I can feel its impatience from here." I didn't need to ask what he meant. Three days had shrunk down to hours while I wasn't looking, and Kalio wasn't going to wait politely for me to catch my breath. I tucked the token beside the jade pendant at my throat, closed my hand once around the bracelet to feel the last of its warmth fade, and walked back out toward the light.