Sylas’ gaze swept through the region. He could feel that the location he was looking for was beneath his feet, but how could he get there?
‘Runes…’
When the thought came to him, Sylas stopped using his eyes and relied on his visualization. Soon, he had found exactly what he was looking for.
The inside of the temple, if one ignored all the blood pooling around everywhere now, had quite a minimalistic and earthy vibe to it. The colors were warm, and stone was used pretty much everywhere. There were even some locations where elements of the outside were brought in.
Grassy walkways, walls of greenery, and even some open-air windows that shone the moonlight down from above.
However, when Sylas found a nook in a hidden corner of one of the temple’s libraries, the contrast was immediate.
From minimalistic, wealth was continuously thrown at his face to the point it felt almost gaudy.
The walls of the winding staircase downward were covered in leaves carved from gold, the stairs beneath their feet looked as though they were forged from literal diamond, and gems of various colors and kinds dotted the region everywhere you looked.
Sylas didn’t know why, but looking at this place… he felt sick.
It was almost like he was smelling something too sweet, a fermented fruit that had gone from ripe to nearly rotten.
He couldn’t describe why he was feeling this way immediately until he realized what it was…
There was a power Will here other than his own. One that was colored with this disgusting stench, so much so that even Sylas, whose Will had a poison character, couldn’t stomach it.
“Prepare yourselves,” Sylas said coldly.
Alex and Cole were already on high alert, but when they heard this, they realized that the danger they had been brought here for was likely right around the corner.
Sylas clenched a fist and black scales erupted across his body, his gaze growing more focused as he led the way with a wall of Will surrounding him.
When they made it to the basement floor, the gaudiness only became more extreme.
There were three paths of stone embedded in streaming waters that all led to the same location. The stones were formed of white marble, but they were outlined and bedazzled with rubies.
From the ceiling above, streams of sparkling diamonds and rubies hung from heavy chandeliers, and the walls to the side were lined with what looked like vines and roots once more forged from gold.
If one looked through the water to the bottom beneath, it was possible to find more diamond embroidery that made it almost hard to stare at for too long with the chandeliers beaming down from above.
And then there was the large, circular platform that the three stone paths in the water led to.
It was enormous, and it must have been at least a hundred meters in diameter alone. It was so much larger than the diameter of the temple above that it could only mean that this gaudy underground basement was actually carved out of a large segment of the city that spanned even outside the range of the temple itself.
But even worse than that… the entire platform was carved from gold, intricate Runes that Sylas couldn’t immediately piece together being etched across its outer ring in amethysts.
The clash of colors and the overabundance of wealth only made that sick feeling in Sylas’ stomach grow worse… even when he finally laid eyes on the golems that he had been expecting to be there.
The Great Priest lay dead in the middle of the platform, black veins pulsing across his body as his swollen tongue hung outside of his mouth.
As expected, he had died working on a golem. Even now, the jaws of the golem were hanging open wide, and the Great Priest lay in its mouth as though it was about to eat his corpse.
There were easily a dozen or so golems sprinkled around the region. Presumably, after the Great Priest dealt with the first, he planned to go and deal with the others after the fact. But he never got the chance.
Sylas didn’t move immediately, standing and observing the place in silence. The uneasiness was only growing, so much so that he no longer held back.
He summoned Nosphaleen.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he summoned Nosphaleen now. Within his Hibernation Realm, she would count as his contract and presumably not be an extra entry. But once she was out…
Sylas failed.
‘I see… I can’t summon her.’
He exhaled a breath and his determination became steely.
He gave Alex and Cole a look. They seemed to understand, and the three of them each took separate paths, one to each of the stone walkways.
If they were going to battle, they were going to need their space.
With steady steps, they moved forward as the feeling in Sylas’ chest grew heavier.
And then he stepped onto the central platform.
For a moment, it was like there was a small ripple across his vision, almost as though a thin film had been peeled away. When his sight cleared, he saw something that he hadn’t been able to see before, and it made his pupils constrict into pinholes.
There, sitting on top of the head of the golem that the Great Priest lay dead in, there was a young man.
His skin was especially pale, but it looked as though his face was caked on with white makeup and rouge lipstick as though he was a Geisha of ancient Japan.
But more importantly than that…
He had blackened horns that curved toward the back of his head like braids and a slit right down the middle of his forehead. But unlike the statue on the outside, his seemed to be lined with a bloody red.
The young man was dressed in a flamboyant robe popping with colors and intricate embroidery, and there was a smile on his face that belied the danger he gave off.
But none was more eerie than the creature that lay before him.
