"Let's go!"
Roger's simple sentence put people under pressure.
Ordinary people would probably be scared out of their wits upon stepping on so many corpses and bones.
It would take quite a courage to do it, but he and Rayleigh were definitely the right men for the job.
They had already witnessed countless deaths. They were even prepared to lay their own lives on the line the moment when they set out to sea. Why would they care about a mere corpse?
"Following the rules, huh? That is not like you at all." Rayleigh could not help but smile. He also stepped on the corpses and bones with Roger.
"Ah... After all, it is possible that it is a relic of a millennia-old civilization. We can't be too rough with it." Roger said as he walked to the altar. It seemed like he didn't care, but he actually didn't like to step on other people's bones to advance.
The central area was also very large. A huge altar occupied the central area, but there were also some pillars standing around it. Especially the place where Roger came now was more like an entrance. Two pillars lined up on both sides in an orderly manner.
"Altar of Ascension..."
At the end of the columns, they saw a line of profound words engraved on a door-like thing. Rayleigh didn't understand it, but Roger understood what it meant when he saw it.
"Altar?" "This place doesn't look like a Altar, it's simply a demon's lair."
That was right. There wasn't even a shred of divinity coming from the altar. To put it bluntly, there was a bit of gold on the disk, but the gold part was barely noticeable.
"Maybe something happened." Roger said, "We must be in the right place. This place should be related to the darkness we saw earlier. Let's explore this place carefully. Maybe we can find some clues."
Roger was actually quite anxious. After all, he did not know what the source of darkness was!
He then took a step forward, and now he was inside of the huge altar. In the outer wall that was as tall as a city wall, there was a huge disc. The gold and black pattern intertwined, forming a sacred and strangely beautiful pattern.
On the inside of the outer wall, there were many random painting, which were connected together, as if they were telling a story.
There were some words in it, but they did not understand the language. They had no choice but to draw conclusions from the pictures, but fortunately, the painting was easy to understand.
The first picture was a group of people offering sacrifices and praying to the sun, and the second picture was a messenger descending from the sun, who seemed to be talking to people.
Roger and Rayleigh were not in a hurry to climb up the altar. They first walked around the inside of the outer wall, as if they were going to make a decision after seeing the whole painting.
On the third picture, the messenger from the sun seemed to be ordering the humans to build something.
On the fourth picture, there was nothing except for a huge altar with a golden disc resonating with the sun above.
The next picture showed many people climbing up the altar and turned into some sort of monster. The monster had some animal characteristics, such as dogs, crocodiles, turtles, or snakes...
Some of them still retained their human parts, but they no longer looked like what they used to be.
Most importantly, regardless of whether they retained their human characteristics, they were really huge, just like giants.
A giant with power...
Roger also saw that an old or sick person entering the altar in the last picture and came out as a giant. This cycle kept repeating itself.
The huge disk is called the sun disk, because it is powered by the energy of the sun. It was originally golden, but now it has become black, like a demon...
"It looks like a story of people who pray to the gods. After the gods responded to their calls, they turned the people who were about to die into powerful warriors." Rayleigh said in a deep voice as he finished looking at the paintings.
"Is it related with the demons of this country?"
"Maybe these warriors are demons." Roger said, "Their body undergo strange changes. They look like a Zoan user. However, among the demons that have appeared, Nine-Tailed Fox and Kraken are also animals. Maybe this is what turns them into demons."
Humans turning into demons… This reminded Roger and Rayleigh of Toguro. Both of them had fought with Toguro, especially Roger, who had heard Toguro's lifelong wish.
Toguro said that the human's life was too fragile. Once they were old and sick, they would get weaker. He wanted to become the demon, who could fight forever.
The people who climbed the altar in the painting were the old, weak, sick, and disabled people - which also fit Toguro's words, which meant that this was the so-called 'demonization '?
Like Toguro, it was not a complete demon transformation, so they still retained human features, and only some parts of them turned into a monster.
Roger felt that his theory was very close to reality. After all, this was a place related to monsters and demons.
"Will that also happen to us if we enter the altar?" Roger touched his chin and said,
"It has been abandoned for so many years. Besides, if it's still working, do you think we will be able to enter this place this easily? Zero's kin should have found this place, but in the end, they abandoned a pile of corpses and left."
"Maybe they obtained such a change from this place. Let's go in and take a look."
Perhaps it was correct to come here. This place kept a lot of truths hidden, the truth that can help them win the inevitable battle in the future...
When they really walked into the Altar of Ascension, Roger and Rayleigh suddenly felt a chill, as if the black part on the disc was about to be released.
Roger observed the huge, vertical disc at close range. It was a huge black disc with a diameter of more than 50 meters or even 100 meters. On the position of the disc, Jewel of Four Souls' Fragments was embedded.
Roger jumped up, as if he was going to touch the piece of Jewel of Four Souls' Fragment that contained magical power.