Chapter 69: Blood Crystals
With a small flash, he closed the interface.
The notifications disappeared one after another, but he did not allow the temporary euphoria to envelop him. Adopting an unchanging expression.
There were still too many unknowns he needed to answer, but he set those questions aside for now.
Humidity still lingered in the air. The ancient altar remained destroyed in front of them and the surface of the portal rippled magnetically attracting them.
They had come out alive from all the dungeon’s challenges.
Bella remained standing a few meters away.
Her expression still maintained an evident displeasure for the latest events.
But she had to break the silence, so as not to extend the awkward scene.
"What kind of potion did you give me?... The blue one."
Bella raised an eyebrow.
"What?" she said with a confused expression. Then she began to laugh.
A hilarious laugh filled the huge room.
"You took it?! You impress me, damn white-hair," she said between laughs.
Gabriel kept his face expressionless, not understanding. He simply waited patiently for her to finish.
Little by little the laughter disappeared, sinking into a carefree air.
Bella breathed deeply while wiping a small tear caused by so much laughing.
"Sometimes I think you really can’t smile... But answering your question... that potion was a rather special object."
Her tone finally recovered seriousness.
"They entrusted it to me only as a last resort. It violently stimulates the user’s lineage."
Those words finally captured his interest. For the first time he leaned toward her, willing to hear more.
"They grant an enormous increase in power for a short period of time... but the price is very severe mental sequelae and extreme exhaustion."
Gabriel, for an instant, went back to that moment. The sensations that had assailed and blinded him.
The hunger.
It had been a frantic possession.
A primitive will that had awakened, to possess him with an irresistible frenzy. Blinding his reason and only feeding his desire, until consuming him.
He could remember the splashes of blue blood. The fire burning his skin, breaking his hair into blackened strands.
He remembered the degrading desire to continue devouring like an animal.
His body, although it had recovered, still could not recover from the trauma of the memory. A severe shiver ran through him.
"Incredible..." he replied with absolute calm.
At no moment did he abandon his mask of expressionlessness. His experiences were only his.
Bella observed him at all times.
"So that’s how you sent that damn mass of muscles to hell?"
He reflected for a few instants, going back to when he finally finished with the Tyrant.
"Falling into hell is simple... Especially if I am the judge." He replied, slightly raising his gaze.
Bella did not react immediately. It took her, exactly, two seconds to understand the phrase she had heard.
Finally, she burst into loud laughter again. She held her stomach while trying to breathe normally.
"I never thought I would hear such pompous words coming out of your mouth!"
He ignored her reaction, opening his interface, while she was still laughing.
This time he carefully observed all the rewards obtained.
His journey in the dungeon had allowed him to ascend four levels. It was a meteoric growth.
His physical statistics had increased disproportionately, with Leviathan’s Gluttony collecting a large part of the essence that made it possible.
It had been one of the biggest leaps he had taken since the beginning. But nothing could compare to discovering the secret of the blood crystals.
His gaze returned inevitably to that notification. Officially they were ten out of a hundred.
The distance was still enormous, but it was no longer an impossible goal. The path was practically in front of him, waiting to be illuminated.
"I suppose we should divide the rewards," he said serenely.
Gabriel closed the interface.
"How do you want to divide them?"
She answered without even thinking.
"Seventy and thirty. I’ll take the smaller part."
"Thirty for you?" he asked, massaging his chin.
Bella nodded.
"I would love to be shameless... But if it hadn’t been because I knew this dungeon, I probably wouldn’t even deserve that much." She said shrugging calmly.
Then she smiled with a certain self-criticism.
"And even so I feel like I’m taking quite an advantage."
At that statement, Gabriel immediately shook his head.
Throughout the expedition Bella had fought to the limit. She had managed to share the information with prudence and astuteness.
She had probably used very expensive items, being willing to die at any moment.
A service of that nature was difficult to find. It was a testimony of greatness.
"I’ll accept it... And no one is forcing me."
Bella smiled satisfied.
Both immediately began to review each of the objects obtained. The deteriorated weapons were quickly discarded as useless.
The monstrous materials were easily divided. Some minerals ended up in Bella’s inventory, while Gabriel kept different pieces useful for future sales.
The process took several minutes.
When they finally finished, only two objects remained that were impossible to divide at that moment and place.
The Tyrant’s blood.
And an advanced grade evolution core.
Both observed the invaluable and coveted objects, with doubts in their eyes.
"It would be stupid to divide them here. Keep them for now and we’ll do it another time."
Gabriel quickly agreed, believing it was the best option.
They had achieved a certain trust difficult to exemplify with words.
After all, they had gone through too many situations together.
Finally both walked toward the portal. Its silver ripples faintly illuminated the room’s floor.
Gabriel gave one last look at the destroyed altar.
At no moment had he forgotten the illusion, what he experienced and the city.
Above all, the strange presence of the invisible bow. Thinking about his blurred figure caused him a headache.
He did not remember his last words...
But he had heard about transcendence.
Without looking back, he crossed the portal. Someday he would manage to find answers to his questions.
***
A fresh breeze immediately caressed his face. The humid smell of vegetation replaced the concentrated humidity in a closed space.
The song of birds resonated among the trees. The blue sky momentarily mixed with faint rays of light.
They could finally breathe freely and without restrictions.
Behind them, the cave entrance remained silent. They had completed the dungeon.
______________
[Congratulations! You have completed the Forgotten Tunnels Dungeon!]
[You have had a great success rate, so you have been greatly rewarded!]
[Your effort will be recorded and enduring]
______________
It was a different announcement from the usual one. It granted him the responsibility that it was his first dungeon since Bérsaic.
Bella slowly stretched her arms.
"What a great announcement! But I missed this even more."
Gabriel simply walked without expressing his thoughts.
The return path turned out to be much more exhausting than expected. Although both had recovered a large part of their strength, the mental fatigue continued to accumulate without solution.
They had to invest a lot of time to cross forests, small hills and ancient stone paths.
They spoke very little during the journey. Both were occupied with their own thoughts, too tired from their mutual experiences.
But who remained even more concentrated was him, constantly returning to the same point.
The blood crystals.
Although he tried, he could not remove them from his mind. Previously he had preferred to ignore them during his stay in the dungeon.
But during the journey numerous ideas kept reproducing in his head.
What exactly were they? What did they really mean for his class? Why had he obtained them after conquering the dungeon?
They were questions that required investigation, but of which he still had no answers.
When they finally sighted the huge walls of Bérsaic, the sun was already beginning to descend.
"I suppose here we must separate."
Gabriel directed his gaze at her, nodding serenely.
She in turn gave him a small smile.
"Thank you for everything in there."
After observing her, he raised a hand and gave her a small friendly tap on the shoulder.
"You were also very valuable. Don’t disappoint me."
At his response, she smiled. She understood that those words, coming from people like Gabriel, usually equated to the greatest recognition they were capable of.
"I’ll do my best. I can swear it."
The guards superficially checked their credentials before allowing them to enter.
Once inside Bérsaic, both continued walking and took different directions.
He did not need to look back.
***
Blood crystals...
That fundamental element could not leave his mind.
He crossed several streets until he found a discreet inn. He immediately paid for a room.
He had no time to eat or drink.
He went straight up to the second floor. Locking the door.
Then he carefully took out that old notebook he had obtained from The Despots again.
He opened it from the beginning, sharing a small reflective instant, reading it repeatedly. His eyes ran through every line with almost devotion.
The words, their annotations and, sometimes, drawings.
An idea began to form in his mind.
Blood crystals possess enormous value for lineages and different experiments.
He turned the page.
One of their main uses, as I have seen, are in Tyrants.
He continued reading.
He read an interesting annotation. Where it was explained that blood crystals passed to confirm part of the Tyrant in a metaphysical aspect.
He meditated on those words, until he finally returned to the butchery at the end of his battle.
He had been deprived of all rationality. Savagely biting the beast’s neck.
And his body, stimulated by the desire for blood, had instinctively activated Leviathan’s Gluttony.
He had consumed his rationality, at the same time as he devoured the Tyrant.
The connections began to take shape in his mind. Finally all the pieces had their own place.
It was barely perceptible, a coincidence that had changed everything. He then understood.
The blood crystals had not been a system reward. He had ripped them directly from the Tyrant’s body.
If his hypothesis was correct, his path of evolution lay in devouring more Tyrants.
He closed the notebook, remaining still on the inn’s bed. The candlelight faded.
It was the most probable path to evolve his unique class.