A dark tunnel that seemingly never ended, a tube leading down to the deepest parts of the earth. Lucas had no idea how long he had been falling down. He wondered why he didn't have any issues breathing, since it should've been impossible.
'Now would be a good time for you to also have figured out how to fly.'
'You think I had the time to learn that while you were running away like a scaredy-cat?'
'Well, how do you suppose we will land?'
Lucas talked to himself as he kept falling, he could see down the large hole as a few insects lit up some parts of it. The bottom was still far off, giving him enough time to figure something out. Still, he didn't feel that comfortable falling down.
He wouldn't be able to learn how to fly, no matter smart he was, there was an unknown amount of time, but Lucas couldn't believe it would last much longer. Still, he slowed his descent by pushing out wind from his hands. The beams of air held him up, not by much, but it would make his landing a bit safer.
His preparations were useless as his falling speed suddenly slowed down, and he gently landed on the ground. Lucas looked around a bit and was a bit annoyed he got scared for nothing.
The floor was made of hard stone yet made perfectly flat. Runes were carved in the stone, Lucas didn't understand a single one. Without knowing if he had a lot of time before his pursuers would find him, he quickly memorized them and moved on. At the bottom of the massive shaft, a small tunnel was leading him somewhere.
Without any other choice, Lucas moved on. The tunnel he walked through was just large enough to fit him. Having some time to himself, he started to think of Elam. Their farewell was a bit rough and hurried, leaving Lucas with a bad feeling. Would his teacher be alright?
'I wonder if he'll be okay.'
'Pff, he's probably already sleeping. Even if someone is after us, Elam could just say we ran to someplace far away. He has no reason to help us anymore, he got the winning slate and even the special token, his wish can be granted. If he wanted that reward so bad, would he start risking his life for someone who's running away and has no further ties with him?'
'I guess... he knows that if we run away, he'll have to slow whoever down.'
'He knew about this... hole? Pit? He just has to talk a bit, and we would've already reached this place. They wouldn't just think of barging into someone's home and destroy their bookcase, would they?'
'...'
'Are you that worried? Don't be, he's as harmless as a fly, why bother fighting him. It would just be a waste of energy. Rather than focussing on him, we should figure out how to get rid of this beacon.'
Lucas had some experience removing runes that were inside his body, he took risks others would rather avoid. With his strange body structure, magic had the capabilities to move to every single part of his body. Inspecting the beacon, he didn't know what to think of it. He didn't understand how it worked, and that would most likely stay like that for a long time.
The beacon was a small ball of Light energy below his heart. Normal magical contracts constrained the heart to make sure the holder of the contract would fulfill it, but this wasn't meant to harm, simply exist. His Dark Magic wasn't strong enough to damage it, leaving him with not much left. If Dark Magic was useless, what else could he use?
He had an idea to boost his strength through his aura, but then his magic control wouldn't be so good. He took risks, but only calculated ones. Using his Scarlet Moon Aura while trying to precisely use magic was just stupid.
Moving further through the tunnel, it started to get wider, the ground lost its flat surface and became more jagged, natural. The ceiling started to go higher, grass was starting to appear.
Lucas crouched down and stared at the grass. There wasn't a lot of light, around the same as when the moon shone brightly. Not enough to light up everything, yet enough to navigate himself.
'This, this is new, isn't it?'
'Huh... I don't remember this in any of those books, hold on, let's check again. What the hell is this?'
Inside his dome, memories started to flood the place, tons of images of different books and pages appeared. The further he went back, the foggier the memories were, only the ones from when he reached Rank 1 were quite clear.
Yet no matter how much he searched, nothing came up. The grass in front of him was tinted purple, not a speck of green was visible.
'Plants need sunlight to survive, or that's what this books says, the green parts are what absorb light. So what exactly is this?'
'Evolution?'
Lucas didn't take any of the grass, simply moving on. If what he thought was correct, there would be plenty of strange sights for him to find. Eventually he could see the entrance of the cave, or in his case, the exit.
"Wow.", letting his emotions take over, he gasped at the scene in front of him. A beautiful world spanned in front of him, he could see forests and mountains in the distance. There were rivers and lakes, birds were flying about, none of which he recognized.
But the weirdest thing of all was the sky, or the lack of it. Lucas didn't know what it was, since it should've been a stone ceiling, yet there was an ocean of stars all shining bright. The pale light from a single star wouldn't mean much, but the blanket of stars lit up the world in front of him.
Lucas knew that it had to be a trick of the eye since stars couldn't appear underground, yet even with that rationale, his heart had different ideas. He couldn't see any rocks in the sky, only the incandescent sparkles. This was the sky, or ceiling, or ceiling disguised as the sky.
'So it's night?'
'Or is there no day?'
The stars were all scattered around, but there was a single line where they were stuck together. The river of stars started above him and ended somewhere far away. Using his magic, he tried to see how large this place was, yet he couldn't estimate it. The horizon was so far away and the world didn't end there, leaving Lucas with many questions. If he went down so much in the earth, how large could this layer be?
He was so amazed by the scenery in front of him, he almost forgot about the people chasing him. Shaking himself awake, Lucas looked for a way down. Standing at the edge of a cliff, a forest stood strong at the bottom. The trees now purplish and twisting in its growth, Lucas didn't know what to think of it. He wasn't a biologist, although he was very interested in the topic, he never had time to research it.
All this time he focussed on monsters and magic, nothing else mattered. Economics were interesting enough to dabble in a bit, sadly, his time was limited.
Just as Lucas was about to jump down, he thought of something.
'Hold on, before you jump. Do you remember when we reached Rank 1?'
'Yes? That wasn't the most pleasant experience.'
'Pff, you can say that, but I worry.'
'What about this time?'
'Don't act like I'm constantly nagging, you know I do this for our safety. We slept for a long time when we broke through Rank 1, who's to say it wouldn't happen when reaching Rank 2?'
Lucas stepped away from the edge and investigated his own core. It felt bloated, ready to compress and evolve, yet it had been like that since he absorbed the Dark Pool.
'Who knows how long we still have to wait.'
'So? Just stay here and wait it out.'
'And let our pursuers catch up? You do realize they could've already found this place, right?', for once, the more cynical parts of Lucas had to agree with that rationale, leaving him between a rock and a hard place.
'So either we risk getting caught or being unconscious in this unknown place... what great fortune, this Goddess must be blessing us, huh?'
'C'mon, think with me. Can we hold the evolution of our Core back? Or do we have to face whatever got through Elam... Okay, can we stop its transformation?'
Lucas knew right away that a certain choice would result in death or worse.
'I guess if we limit our magic usage and stimulate the magic in the core as much as we can, we could hold it off, but for how long? I've no clue.'
'So be it, you focus on the core, I'll attempt to find someone here and get them to our side.'
'What?! You're going to try and find someone out here?'
'Just do as I say, please?'
Lucas ran towards the edge and jumped off without any hesitation. Landing in the trees, his clothes didn't take kind to all the prickly branches. It didn't look like an acacia tree, yet it definitely shared its amount of spikes.
It was as if a bunch of nettles grew like a tree, each branch had a bunch of spikes on them. His landing was a lot worse than expected, not that it slowed him down. The spikes didn't quite pierce his skin, mostly scratches that were left untouched.
Saving his mana, Lucas ventured on, using his willpower to scout ahead. The forest or nature in general was always something he was fascinated by, and his heart hurt when he had to ignore all the new insects and mammals that were living in the woods.
From strange insects that appeared to have human eyeballs, to a bird that had two heads eating a green worm that seemed to have tiny arms. Lucas ignored all of it as he tried to find something that at least appeared human.
Continuing his search, it didn't take long before he found someone. Lucas got closer and observed from afar.
'What the hell is he doing?', Lucas could see a young man who had nothing but some bandages around his fingers and palm face off with a large bear-like being. The bear had streaks of dark blue run across its hide, while it had what looked like a turtle shell on its back.
The claws, absolute killing weapons, as the tips of the claws were tinted blue, tiny crackles of lightning came out of it with every swing. Attempting to fight this beast unprepared would be a fool's errand.
Yet the reason why Lucas was so perplexed was that the young man wasn't actually using spells but his own body to fight against the monstrosity.
His Magic Vision activated suddenly, 'Hey, didn't you say that we need to limit our mana usage?'
'Hah! Limit doesn't mean nothing dumbass!', part of Lucas was quite invested in the scene, the young man smoothly dodged and weaved his way around the bear's arms. He was clearly a trained expert to so easily predict the beast's movements.
'He's not using any magic, this is all physical. How incredible.'
'Oh, so now you're interested in the humans that live here? The moment they have a new technique to fight you get excited, huh?', part of Lucas knew now how to bribe his other half, while the other half was truly fascinated.
'He doesn't exactly look like a normal human to me.', his skin was a bit grayer, as if stone had fused with it, giving it a strange color. He would definitely attract looks with his own pretty pale skin. Not that he could change his own skin color at will, but now he felt annoyed he didn't study camouflage magic.
While Lucas was impressed, he also didn't think the man would survive the fight, he looked trained, but he was against something that stood high in the hierarchy of nature. For now, he was only avoiding the attacks, not dishing out any himself.
'When he's dead, I want to study his body, can we?', Lucas could tell the man wasn't using magic actively, but it wasn't as if there was no magic at all. His body lit up in strange colors, giving Lucas the impression the man fused magic with his flesh, something akin to the martial class back in the Blue Fire Academy.
'Since when do you ask for permission to do anything? Plus, I'm not going to let him die, we need him on our side.'
'Oh...'