The silence was not complete; there were still voices whispering at the edges of his perception, a chorus of ghosts he could never fully escape as long as he held the Echo Stone, but the screaming had stopped, and he could think again.
Elias gasped as his eyes widened at what he had just accomplished. The Passenger was a presence he could not shake off, and he could only ignore it; he did not have any way to control or suppress it, but now, he may have just found a thod to push through its noise.
The Passenger seed to be growing in strength, and it was no longer just a voice; now it was giving him mories of the dead. Who knew what else it might be able to do as he grew stronger, and the Passenger, who was also leeching off his strength, grew stronger as well.
Commander Yseult had told him that she could not directly tell him the truth, but she could point him towards the right path.
He looked at the Echo Stone in his hand. It was still humming, but the torrent of voices had receded to a murmur.
There was a rumble inside his Lumina Space, and it ca from the massive, cracked moon that represented his Elder Talent. Red light was shining through the cracks, signifying that his Talent had grown from the experience he had just undergone. Did this an that his Will would grow stronger if he absorbed the change from his Extre Adaptation?
Elias smiled, and he tucked the stone through the gap he made in his armor, placed it into one of the leather vest’s hidden pockets, the whispers at the edge of his consciousness vanished, and he turned to leave.
The entrance to the chamber was gone. The walls had shifted while he was on his knees, struggling with the voices in his head, the crystals rearranging themselves into a solid barrier.
He was trapped; however, he was not panicked because Elias believed he might be able to punch through the crystals, but that would depend on whether the crystal walls were not too thick.
Elias closed his eyes to focus his senses on the heat signatures of the creatures he had t while moving through the passage, and he felt them still moving in the maze beyond, now he knew where he had to punch towards and the Art of Stone, even while suppressed was even a better sensory tool in this situation as it was telling him that part of the walls he was seeing were not solid.
Then Elias felt a slight draft of air touching his face, and he realized that the crystals had bent light to create the illusion of a barrier, but the passage he had passed through was still there.
There were two passages, one leading from the place he had erged from and another heading deeper into this unknown place, and Elias chose to proceed deeper.
He walked toward the wall and paused for a mont before he walked through it.
The crystals did not stop him, even when they appeared extrely real. The passage had been spaced widely enough to pass between if you knew where to step. The illusion had made them seem continuous, but his Perception had found the gaps.
Elias moved through the maze one last ti, the creatures avoiding him as if they could sense sothing had changed, but it was most likely because the echoes had ended, and because they hunted with this sound, they should be quite confused.
He had killed nine of these things, and if he killed another eleven, he would gain a single point in his Vitality, but Elias felt that this was too much ti wasted for such a weak benefit.
These creatures were peak-level Wisps, and there were few Fury Forge among them, and their Vitality was enhanced as they were beasts, but they were nothing when Elias’s health points were placed into the picture. Wasting his ti here was not ideal; there would be better places to hunt for Vitality in the future.
Before long, he left the passage and reached the shore of another underground lake. Elias looked back at the glittering tunnel, and he moved on and stood before the lake.
Elias noted that this one was smaller and its surface unbroken by any ripple, and he almost thought he was looking at a mirror.
On the far shore, Elias could see the entrance to another tunnel, but between him and that tunnel stretched a forest. It appeared to be growing from the cavern floor without soil, its roots plunging directly into stone.
The trees were pale, almost white, with their bark smooth as bone. Bioluminescent fungi grew on their branches, casting the whole forest in a soft, otherworldly glow, and Elias could see how so people would find this forest to be intensely beautiful, but to him, the forest resembled a field of bones, and the bioluminescence was just a way to disguise its nature.
Elias checked his Status before entering.
Vitality: 4510/ 4517
Stamina: 834 / 973
He had not taken too much damage when he claid the Echo Stone, and he was still near peak health. Elias humped into the small lake and swam across it. He could feel nothing through his armor. So there was no Ice Poison inside the lake, but even though he was swimming through the water, the ripples from his act did not spread out from his body.
It was as if he was not swimming through a body of water, but sothing else, and Elias was glad he did not remain inside it for long because there was sothing incredibly wrong about this lake that was giving him goosebumps.
Finally, he stepped onto the forest floor and imdiately felt the ground shift beneath him. He leaped backward, landing on the shore, and watched as pale roots erupted from where he had stood, thrashing in the air for a mont before retreating into the stone.
Elias could sll and sense the blood pumping through the root of these pale trees. "Oh wow, I have read of carnivorous plants, but I never knew that a whole forest could be a field of butchery."
Taking a few monts to observe the ground and the forest, he noted that the trees’ roots sensed movent and pulled prey underground. So how was he going to cross when he could not walk on the ground? Elias could not fly, but he still had to cross sohow.
Elias studied the forest. The trees grew close together, their branches interweaving to form a canopy perhaps twenty feet above the floor. If he could reach the branches, he could move through the canopy instead of across the ground.
Confirming his thoughts, Elias jumped, and his Agility and Strength, his jump carried him tens of ters into the air, and he caught a branch, pulled himself up, and found himself in a world of pale wood and soft light. The branches were thick enough to support his weight, even in armor, and he began to move.
He had not moved through the branches for long before the whole forest seed to co alive as they finally responded to his presence. The branches around him began to wiggle and swing at him like clubs.
Smaller limbs wrapped around his ankles, trying to pull him down to the waiting roots below, as the canopy of the forest beca a battlefield.
"Now I have to survive even trees, there is nothing sacred in this world, is there?"
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