Chapter 37 - 35: The Trial of Blood
"Gather your gear," Victor commanded, turning back to the group. His voice was laced with a gravelly, unyielding edge that cut clean through the heavy, suffocating silence of the ruined hall. "We’re moving deeper."
Lyra blinked, her dark eyes widening in immediate startlement. "Deeper? Victor, Garrick could be"
"Garrick ran down, but he won’t stay down," Victor interrupted, his tone leaving no room for debate. "And if he comes back with help, the entrance will be guarded. Our only path is forward."
He turned away, wincing internally as a sharp, fiery pain shot through his ribcage, and walked toward a section of the northern wall that had completely caved in during the preceding chaos. Garrick’s Tier 7 attacks had acted like a siege machine, shattering an ancient, reinforced stone facade that was clearly meant to remain hidden for eternity. Fractured masonry lay scattered in jagged heaps, exposing a yawning breach into the abyssal dark behind it.
Victor took a slow breath, steeled his nerves, and activated Fate-Shattering Perception.
In an instant, the sensory landscape shifted. Color drained from his sight, replaced by a stark, monochrome grey, crisscrossed by glowing, intricate lines of flowing mana. But as his focused vision swept past the rubble and probed into the newly exposed breach, he froze.
A dense, undulating fog of energy was wafting out from the newly opened passage. It wasn’t standard environmental mana, nor was it the elemental mana radiating from the dungeon’s upper floors. It was thick, ancient, and immensely heavy pulsing against his sensory field with an unsettling, resonant rhythm that vibrated in the soles of his boots.
This energy... Victor’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits. It’s identical to the ambient mana that was powering the Golem Boss in the chamber above.
A sharp, sudden realization struck him like a physical blow. The ruin had been built in meticulously guarded layers, designed specifically to seal something away from the surface world. Garrick’s destructive rampage hadn’t just broken the physical terrain; it had accidentally breached the dungeon’s outer seal, opening a direct shortcut to the hidden sub-levels beneath.
"The dungeon’s structure has altered," Victor noted aloud, deactivating his perception as a sharp, agonizing sting of strain struck his temples. He rubbed his eyes, clearing the lingering grey haze. "Garrick broke open a path the dungeon architects intended to hide."
Stepping carefully over pulverized stone, Victor approached the narrow, jagged fissure in the wall.
"Lyra," Victor said without looking back. "Stay in the middle with Elena and Kael. Guard our rear."
Lyra hesitated, her boots scraping lightly on the debris. She took a swift step toward him, her lips pressing into a tight, anxious line. "Victor... you’re bleeding through your bandages. You can barely Walk. Let me take the front. If another threat appears "
"I need someone I trust behind me to make sure they don’t die," Victor said, his voice dropping to a low, measured tone. He turned his head slightly, his dark eyes meeting hers in the dim blue twilight of the ruined chamber. "I’m trusting you with them, Lyra."
Lyra halted mid-step. The hesitation in her posture melted away, replaced instantly by a sudden, rigid focus. A faint flush crept up her neck, her earlier quiet jealousy toward Elena completely eclipsed by the immense weight of his words.
He trusts me.
She swallowed hard, pushed down her exhaustion, and gave a sharp, resolute nod. With a swift, practiced motion, she drew her Frost blade and Rapier, their cold steel gleaming faintly. "I won’t let anything touch them."
Before they could step through the fissure, Kael stirred again. Pushing himself upright with a heavy, pained groan, he rubbed his pale face with a trembling hand, his breathing ragged as he took in the destroyed chamber in utter confusion.
"What... what happened?" Kael mumbled, his voice hoarse and raw. He stared down at his hands, which were shaking violently. "I remember... that bastard grabbing Elena. I remember... rage. Blood." He looked up, his irises wide with a turbulent mixture of terror and revulsion. "Did I... kill him?"
"You killed the Tier 4 warrior who attacked me, Kael," Elena said softly. She reached out, her own fingers quivering, to gently touch his shoulder. "You saved me."
Kael stared at his trembling palms, visibly disturbed to his core. "I couldn’t control it, Elena. I... I wasn’t in there. Something else was pulling the strings."
Elena offered him a weak, comforting smile, though her eyes remained shadowed with worry. "It’s over now. You’re okay."
A few paces away, Victor stood silently, watching the exchange with an unreadable expression.
He doesn’t remember the full transformation, Victor observed, analyzing the boy’s fragile psychological state with detached precision. The trait acts as a black-box mechanism for his conscious mind, burying the memory under sheer trauma and instinct. But the raw, unrefined power is undeniably there.
His gaze hardened. If he can be brought to a point where he doesn’t black out where he can wield that primal carnage with a calculated, deliberate mind... he won’t just be strong. He’ll be an absolute calamity.
"If you can stand, walk," Victor said coldly, cutting through the heavy emotional air like a blade. "We don’t have the luxury of emotional processing right now."
Kael looked up, caught Victor’s unyielding, icy gaze, and swallowed his lingering terror. He forced himself to his feet, wiped his bruised face, nodded once, and stepped into formation without another word.
One by one, the group squeezed through the narrow, jagged breach and entered the newly exposed passage.
The atmospheric transition was instant and jarring. The warm, damp air of the collapse zone fell away, replaced by air that was bitterly cold, bone-dry, and saturated with the heavy, metallic taste of ancient magic. The rough-hewn stone of the natural cavern quickly gave way to massive, smooth blocks of seamless obsidian, fitted together with such flawless, ancient craftsmanship that not even a stray hair could fit between the seams.
As they pressed deeper into the slope, the strange, thick energy grew progressively stronger, clinging to their skin like heavy moisture and making the air feel viscous, almost difficult to swallow.
After ten long minutes of descending through the dark, sloping corridor, the narrow hall suddenly expanded, opening up into a massive underground space.
It wasn’t a vault. It was a vast, sprawling ceremonial chamber.
In the geometric center of the space stood a colossal, circular altar constructed from a single slab of jet-black stone. Etched deep into the altar’s polished surface were sweeping, glowing crimson runes that continuously expanded and contracted, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic heartbeat that hummed through the floorboards.
Victor approached the altar cautiously, his boots making no sound against the seamless obsidian. He leaned over to inspect the central inscription, his mind rapidly translating the ancient, dead script drawing upon fragments of deep world lore he remembered from his past life.
"The inheritance shall be granted only to those who survive the Trial of Blood."
Victor’s eyes narrowed into tight slivers.
The Trial of Blood...
He realized his mistake immediately. The Golem Boss they had fought in the upper level wasn’t the ultimate guardian of the relic. It was merely the lock on the front door, a crude security measure designed to keep out the unworthy. The true inheritance lay deeper, protected by a structured, ancient trial system designed by whatever lost civilization had constructed this underground labyrinth.
Victor turned his gaze past the pulsing altar toward the far, shadowed end of the vast chamber.
There, embedded directly into the solid stone wall, stood three massive archways, each yawning open into absolute, suffocating darkness.
Victor activated Fate-Shattering Perception once more, wincing as a sharp wave of familiar agony shot behind his temples.
He focused his sight on the first archway. Through his specialized vision, he could see swirling, hyper-concentrated threads of incandescent red mana an intricate, lethal lattice of high-tier fire elemental traps designed to incinerate anything that entered.
He shifted his gaze to the second archway. It was thoroughly saturated with jagged, frozen blue mana a desolate domain of absolute zero temperatures that would freeze a warrior’s blood and shatter their lungs in seconds.
Then, he looked upon the third archway.
Victor’s breath caught sharply in his throat.
Through the lens of Fate-Shattering Perception, the third archway was neither red nor blue. It wasn’t composed of identifiable mana lines at all. It was a complete dead zone a void of incomprehensible, pitch-black energy that violently distorted his vision, actively warping and resisting his perception spell.
It was the exact same impossible phenomenon he had sensed lurking within the core of the Golem Boss.
Another unknown energy source... Victor thought, his expression turning deathly serious as he deactivated his skill, pressing two fingers against his bloodshot eyes to dull the throbbing pain. It’s completely disconnected from standard mana rules.
"Victor?" Lyra asked, her voice dropping to a hushed, tense whisper as she picked up on his sudden, rigid posture. "Which way do we go?"
Before Victor could answer, he froze completely.
Far behind them, echoing from the long, dark obsidian corridor they had just traversed...
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The faint, rhythmic, and unmistakable sound of footsteps struck the smooth stone floor.
Lyra whirled around instantly, her Rapier raised in a high guard, her breath hitching in her chest. Elena let out a quiet, terrified gasp, shrinking back behind Kael, who immediately stepped forward to cover her, his knuckles turning stark white as he tightened his grip on his weapon.
Victor slowly turned back toward the darkness of the corridor.
His eyes were cold, calculated, his mind rapidly sifting through timing and variables.
It’s too soon, Victor reasoned, his thoughts racing at breakneck speed. Garrick was heavily injured, low on reserves, and missing his core team. Even with his high-tier speed, he couldn’t have regrouped, tracked us through the hidden breach, and reached this depth already.
The footsteps drew closer, steady, unhurried, and unnervingly light against the obsidian.
It wasn’t the heavy, thunderous march of Garrick or the clattering armor of his mercenary survivors.
It was something else entirely.
Victor’s fingers tightened into a rigid fist at his side as he stood ground, staring straight into the looming, unbroken shadows.