Different from the time Athelei experienced with Irene, these goblins had camped at a junction instead. They all set their huts and shacks up in front of a pair of beautiful double doors.
'Another hall...' Athelei saw those double doors and observed how similar it was to the ones that Irene had blasted open. It just lacked signs of the passage of time. No holes could be seen in its structure, nor was there any sign of rust.
Such a trait made the angel narrow his eyes. Every story he heard was always different in some way or another while the core scenario stayed the same. Cammille and her party simply fought and then they had their mark. Thallium Yan and her knights focused only on what they needed to do to descend. Irene was simply sniffing for treasure as she bombarded her way through everything.
Those were the stories, and the small details always changed. One group went through an abandoned hall, another waded through a hall filled with junk, and then the last one fought through a hall filled with goblins.
Only a few things did not change despite those minor variations.
There were goblins and then a hall.
A trial and a tattoo.
'Hmmm,' Athelei hummed as he pondered on things more.
Wisps of fog separated from him and flitted in and out of the goblin camp. A more detailed account of the situation appeared before the angel's eyes.
'This place has no treasures in hiding. It's bland... It's seemingly new.'
The shine of a Mystic Pattern was drawn through his Tangible Will. Doppelganger was activated. Athelei's skin turned green, his soft face turned horrid, his teeth became fangs, and the silky hair on his head receded and greyed.
A goblin was what he became. One quite heavily armed, but a goblin nonetheless.
Dissolution was the next process to be applied, as those heavy arms turned into fog. All that remained was the Needle of Motionlessness by his waist, as well as the rag he found lying at the side of the corridor to cover up his goblin privates.
And so, Athelei simply advanced as he mimicked goblin behaviour. A cloud of grey fog drifted metres above his head, moving only when he moved.
A few grunts here and there, as well as a few snarls, allowed him passage. The goblins didn't seem to identify his unfamiliar presence, or perhaps it was because he copied a goblin they did find familiar.
Athelei thus waltzed through the encampment with not a single disturbance. A few notes were being scribbled down in his mental library as he stood in front of the proud double doors. He added his observations of the goblins, the way they built their camps, and the manner in which they responded to Doppelganger's effects.
As for the double doors...
=o=o=o=o=
"All ye who tread the path of coloured stars shall be shunned and domesticated."
=o=o=o=o=
'Cryptic.' Athelei attached such a description to the Acivis text and thought, 'This might just be the same message that Cammille and her party could not read...'
He then pushed the doors open and walked in. The goblins continued to mind their own business as he slipped inside and closed the door behind him. Doppelganger faded as his physical form dissolved into a grey fog now that his little test had been completed.
Athelei then continued to advance, as the works of art hiding within the Shadow Veil awaited his supposed presence. No being of flesh and blood appeared before their abstract forms though. There were only incorporeal particles.
Every monster had a cheerful name, from Rainbow Puppy to Lovelock and Inspect yielded an [Intent of Creation] that lined up perfectly with such names.
'Ai'slkr Viarchsbound, if this is still your doing, were you a genius among your people?' Athelei couldn't help but ask. No sarcasm was laced in his question, for it was genuine curiosity.
He was currently staring at a worm with a snakehead as its tail, a thousand humanoid hands for scales, and swords for eyes. It was an artwork entitled, "Proud Traitor."
A shudder shook his nonexistent spine as he read the description displayed by the Cosmic Interface.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Proud Traitor
- "This is the child of the one who stabbed me in the back. I mixed her with the blood of two vile creatures and stitched the same swords her father used against me. The scales were crafted through the hands of every being that had come into contact with my old friend, including my own. A token of my kindness."
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Every monster was turning out to be a glimpse into their creator's life. An image of the Oxhorian Spawn artist was forming in Athelei's mind. One that he kept in a special book that he would study in the future for he now approached the end of the hall.
There, he saw the same painting he once saw before, but this time, it was beautifully lit by torchlight. The fires of every torch were absolutely motionless with the lack of a breeze.
It was only when Athelei's physical body reformed did they dance ever so slightly.
But...
As Athelei gazed at the painting once more, he felt his eyes get drawn to it. No exertion of strength allowed him to pry his eyes off of the blue-skinned demon in the painting.
Panic welled inside him. And just as he realised the blunder he had inadvertently made...
...The world around him was suddenly different. No more painting locked his gaze down and no pressure weighed immensely on his shoulders.
A small doorway had now appeared in front of him as if that was where he should've been after making it to the end of the hall.
This was where he was supposed to be after "making it through" the monsters that loomed in the darkness.
'Yes... this is what I've been staring at for the past five minutes.' Athelei thought to himself as he suddenly felt his mind stir. That line of thought felt... wrong.
His face crumpled in confusion as his obsidian irises shone with a hint of rage. A heavy emptiness he never felt before consumed him and tore at his heart.
'My theories...' Athelei called out in his mind. And from the shelves of his mental library came a thin book. It flew out and onto a table for him to read. Pages were rapidly flipped through as the relevant memory surfaced in his mind.
Repeatedly did he read through every single of its pages, reviewing the flow of his experiments and confirming the results through the records he should have written down.
'Yes...' A human's sense of stability returned to him.
'I wanted to confirm if Irene experienced the same Shrouded Hall that the others did. I also wanted to see if not killing the monsters would affect the outcome of the trial...' Athelei nodded to himself as he glanced at his right wrist.
A tattoo of a giant-horned ram had indeed appeared on his skin. That meant the trial was complete and that he had passed, right?
'Then... what about the painting that I once saw before?' Athelei glanced around him, but there was only a door in front of him and giant double doors a great distance behind him.
'Wait... the painting?' A jolt ran through Athelei's mind as an immense pain coursed through his body. 'The halls are nearly identical. The monsters are all similarly the artworks crafted by the same artist. Suspiciously, even the Shadow Veil is literally identical. If all those things were the same or similar, then... where is the supposed painting of the artist himself?'
'And why do I have this weird feeling?' Athelei dove into the recesses of his mind until he came across something that he knew was foreign. With narrowed eyes, he brought such a foreign entity under the microscope.
The immense pain grew even further, and he felt his mind being torn apart.
'Hmph,' Athelei grunted as he analysed his situation.
In the blink of an eye, his physical body assumed its incorporeal form. The pain instantly ceased. Athelei was now free from its shackles as he forcefully peered into memories that had somehow been silenced without him noticing.
Those memories had manifested as a cursed book inside his mental library. And only now that he was in his fog-body was he able to hold it in his hands and tear it open. A flurry of wild energies erupted and Mystic Pattern circles shone in defiance to his actions.
'Concentric circles!' Athelei noted the dizzying complexity of the array of Mystic Patterns that surfaced. 'The work of a Rank 3 Artist!'
All the pain that seared his brain and threatened to shatter his mind and soul seemed to have been born from these circles. But now that Athelei's composition had changed, so did the influence exerted by these berserk energies.
The mental library suddenly shook as a glimpse of infinity leaked out from its pillars and shelves. The mind of a former Denizen of Infinity poured its entire focus into four glowing circles. The raging concentric circles were suddenly dwarfed by his psychic uniqueness.
Athelei then exerted pressure in the same way he devoured rampaging minds or absorbed the energies in the world around him. His four wings seemed to materialise themselves inside his mind instead of in the outside world.
Ravenously, he made those berserk energies his as he began breaking the lock on that cursed book. He devoured whatever defiance it wished to achieve and consumed all that composed its existence inside his mind.
Waves upon waves of energy surged and were nullified as a battle of attrition occurred.
Crack!
After what seemed like forever, Athelei watched that metaphoric lock finally snap and disintegrate. But not even its ashes were going to escape as he partook of those too, invoking a swirl of [Mana] to form around him in reality.
Athelei then returned to his physical form as he felt the strain he had put himself through. Despite his overflowing [Mana], he felt drained.
"I now understand why only Irene claimed that anyone under Rank 3 would suffer."
It was not because the risk could only be avoided once one reached that point, but because the foe was likely a Rank 3 elite entity themselves.
Athelei glanced at the tattoo that was still showing itself on his wrist.
'It's still here...'
With a perspective change, he then peaked into the cursed book inside his mental library. What he saw elicited him to let out a wry laugh. Athelei took hold of the memories he had been deprived of.
"A trial isn't a trial if one is overqualified, now is it? Haha..."
The contents of the cursed book could be interpreted in many ways. To Athelei though, it was a boon that Irene was deprived of due to her strength and instead given to him because of his seemingly weaker state of existence.
"How curious,"
Although to the angel it was a gift, it wouldn't be a gift for those who had yet to shatter the locks in their own 'cursed books.'