Chereads / Volition / Chapter 181 - Stare Into It

Chapter 181 - Stare Into It

Nilrem looked into the gigantic pit, in which liters upon liters of blood where flowing at any given time, deep into the darkness of the pit, he could make out what appeared to be a shine.

Right on cue, more and more shines started making their presences known, up until what was at the bottom of the pit was as clear as day, some sort of enormous box-shaped building was picking out from the many, different colored shines, which appeared to be magic stones of various elements.

Looking up at the humongous crystal, Nilrem could guess how it had formed.

This place certainly seemed to be special, if an exit could be found anywhere, it might be there.

The young mage floated down, on the ground, there didn't appear to be any craving ones around.

Setting foot on the carpet of magic stones, he felt like he was stepping on jelly, the number of stones made for a good footing but the majority of what filled the pit was proably still the blood, resulting in an unsteady platform of magic stones.

The building seemed half-buried into the magic stones, perhaps it went much deeper than it seemed.

It had appeared to be made from monotonous grey stone bricks from up there but taking a closer look, it seemed to not be a consumed building like the rest, it was made from multiple buildings patched together, even the stone bricks seemed to all come from different buildings, they had different composition and sizes.

'This pit seem to be meant to build a magic stone from all of those, but was is the point of the building then?' he wondered as he noticed one of the magic stones, one of the fire element suddenly fly up and be merged with the large crystal.

He searched for an entrance, circling around the place multiple times, there was no door or spaces for him to get through, so he tried looking for a mechanism.

'Now, that is suspicious' he thought to himself as after turning around the place for multiple minutes, an entrance had suddenly appeared, he was certain to not have done anything that could have opened it.

The inside was pitch black, despite the light from the magic stones, none of the light was getting in.

Nilrem didn't step inside immediately and stayed just out of it as he tried to assess the situation inside, he had yet to encounter any actual trap in here, only the hungry residents and an old man, they could hardly count as traps.

This place had never seemed to be protected much, as if Gluttony didn't believe it was necessary, so encountering a trap now seemed improbable.

Nilrem wasn't given more time to think about it, as long arms suddenly appeared from the darkness, grabbing him by the ankles and pulling him inside in an instant.

As he was dragged into the lightless building, the entrance closed itself behind him, leaving him completely blind.

Nilrem tried to break free by slashing at the hands but despite feeling flesh being cut, more came to replace the severed ones, they dragged him for about ten whole minutes before he felt their grasp vanish and felt himself falling.

He managed to break his fall with some wind magic and also by conjuring some soft dirt beneath him with earth magic.

The darkness permeating the space around him was dispelled as torches on the walls lit up, letting him see in what sort of place he was after his eyes adapted to the sudden brightness.

He was on one end of a bridge, on each side, enormous pits that didn't seem to have a bottom, the ceiling was high was covered in spikes, just like the walls, which were only visibly thanks to the fact that the torches were hung to them.

Just like the box-shaped building, everything seemed to be built out of various materials, which only held together due to the nature of this subspace.

Most importantly, on the other end of the impossibly long bridge, which seemed to be bleeding to add to the charm of this place, a figure stood in the distance.

By all means, it seemed like Nilrem was supposed to have a duel with this thing.

The being on the other side didn't appear to be a craving one, as it had no maws, much like the building, it seemed to have created from putting random things together.

This monster had the bottom half of what appeared to be a dark, cow-sized wolf, whilst having two chests and two heads but only one arm for each of the chest, despite the two being clearly separate.

One side was a well built man whose face was wrapped in burlap and the other was only a skeleton.

The two-headed monster started charging forward, probably aiming to ram into Nilrem head on.

Not panicked as the distance to travel in between them was large and the monster wasn't fast beyond comprehension, being as fast as the lower half suggested.

Nilrem pointed his wand at a portion of the bridge further ahead of himself and blasted it, leaving a gap in it.

The monster was impressed by this and didn't even slow down at all, either not realising it had happened or believing that jumping over it would be easy.

In its rush, the monster didn't pay much attention to what Nilrem had been doing and jumped over the hole without fear, clearly aiming to land right on the mage and crush him to death.

As it was in the air, a circle suddenly appeared in front of it as it activated, causing a strong gust of wind to befall it, stopping its momentum and causing to fall like a bag of bricks right into the endless darkness.

Nilrem waited over five minutes before the sound of something smashing against the ground was heard.

The wall on the other side, suddenly opened up.

Getting over there calmly, Nilrem saw that it was another bridge, seemingly identical to the first one and another opponent on the other side.

This time, it was clearly a craving one but unlike usual, it was a beast, what it had been before its transformation was impossible to tell, its neck had a huge maw, which made it seem as if its head was holding on to a sliver of flesh.

An impressive beast but seeing that its attack plan was the same as the previous one, Nilrem simply blasted off part of the bridge again.

'Let's see if its smarter...' he thought, also wondering how many times he was going to have to fight.