"Agh! Forget it for now, this art is too profound for us to study on the time table we're on right now," Zhen Yue proclaimed in frustration, "Let's just stow it for now and get moving."
"Aye...," Zhen Hai readily agreed while rubbing his temples.
The thing about any aether arts above the Ethereal class is that while they're incredibly powerful to the point of nature defying, they're incredibly hard to comprehend from just reading, unless one happens to have genius level mental prowess or a really good teacher. That being said, the trade-off of physical effort and mental anguish for power was usually well worth the cost.
"Hey, what are you two doing over there? What's with those jars?"
Once he heard the voice of his cousins, Zhen Liu immediately stopped his mental gripping to provide a quick explanation.
"Oh this? We're just burning bodies and storing the ashes."
"Okay...why?"
"Honoring the dead."
"Why?"
"It's the right thing to do."
"...You are a weird guy."
"Yes. Yes I am. Now, we gonna move on or what?"
"Yeah...let's go."
With that semi-awkward conversation out of the way, the Zhen Clan team proceeded to exit the room and go in the other direction of the fork they had come to earlier.
With not much to do, Zhen Liu began to ruminate on his "core" situation.
'Okay, so the [Core of Regret] now has an expiration date, fun. On the plus side, I'm still inside a crazy wandering ruin so maybe I can find some grade A materials to make this kaijin soon. I know we hadn't found anything yet, but it can't be that hard, right?'
_________________________________________________
'Foreshadowing, thou art a craven whore,' Zhen Liu thought to himself as he stared through the entrance of possibly the most ominous/obvious looking boss battle room he had ever seen.
The group had barely left the previous room, only for them to come across what they assumed to be the last room in this crazy place...well, what Zhen Liu assumed to be the last room, judging from it's appearance.
For starters, the doorway to the room was in the shape of a screaming humanoid monster, which is always a good sign and not at all indicative of the horrors that lay beyond it.
As for the room interior itself, there were several islets, made of a smooth black stone, floating in a pool of lava...magma.
'I'm technically underground, right?,' Zhen Liu idly wondered in an attempt to not think about the massive red flag in front of him. He also wondered how he didn't feel any heat radiating from that doorway, but he attributed that to magic or aether works, or whatever rules governed this crazy world.
On top of all that, there was a bear-sized glowing red and black crystal in the center of the room, sitting on a single platform. Zhen Liu was all set to just ignore it as being part of the decoration, until Sullivan explained that it was a type of crystal ore known as "Ifrit's Fire Heart Crystal".
"Are you serious?! Isn't that stuff-"
"Composed of very dense Ignati aether and rare destruction aether? Yes."
"The same ore that-"
"The Scorching Conquistador once used to make his infamous saber and conquer half of the Dozing Salamander continent, yes, that infamous ore."
The moment Sullivan said those magic words, Zhen Liu could practically see the money symbols form in his cousins' eyes. He also had the distinct feeling of deja vu building up in his gut.
"So what are we waiting for?," Zhen Hai asked as he began to walk towards the door, "That thing is more than enough to win this competition, so let's just-"
[Nepherage?]
[Yes, milord.]
But before Zhen Hai could rush in, Zhen Liu had Nepherage lift him up by his collar like a cat. (Un)surprisingly, Sullivan also moved to prevent Zhen Hai from entering, but stopped once he saw Nepherage lift Zhen Hai up. It made for a mildly humorous sight.
"Hey! What gives?! Put me down this instant!"
"Yeah...no," Zhen Liu rejected, "That 'easy treasure' is probably booby trapped or protected by something way nastier than anything we can deal with by ourselves. Or did you forget...about the last few rooms?" Zhen Liu made a gesture with his head towards Sullivan.
Zhen Hai looked at Sullivan for a moment before it dawned on what Zhen Liu was getting at.
"Oh. Oh...right."
Both the Zhen Clan young masters began to stare at Sullivan once they got on the same mental wavelength. Sullivan began to awkwardly shuffle a bit from all of the attention. He knew the reason why they were staring, he just didn't want to admit it.
"Sullivan," Zhen Yue began to say, "It's a bit of an open secret that you had traversed this wandering ruins before...do you know what else is beyond this door? What's guarding that crystal?"
Sullivan looked hesitant for a moment before letting out a deep sigh.
"Okay, the thing about that room is-"
"HEY GUYS! I THINK WE'RE APPROACHING THE LAST ROOM!"
The Zhen Clan team looked behind them to see who, or possibly what, that voice belonged to. While they couldn't make out faces, they could see a group of at least eight different shadows.
Evidently, Zhen Hai was a bit excited at the prospect of an upcoming fight.
"Finally! Someone I can actually-"
"SHHHH!," Zhen Liu, Zhen Yue and Sullivan all shushed at the same time. Unfortunately, they weren't much quieter than Zhen Hai.
"Huh? What was that?"
"It sounded like another team! Come on, let's go rob them of their stuff too!"
The sound of footsteps grew faster and louder as the group of shadows suddenly began to move forward a lot quicker, once the prospect of even more loot got involved.
"Shit! What are we gonna do?!," Zhen Yue hissed, "I barely have enough aether stored up to take down one person, let alone two."
'Oh joy, we're outnumbered, they're bloodthirsty and we're still pretty tired from the last fight with the corpses,' Zhen Liu lamented, 'time to do something sneaky.'