The cottage in the middle of the forest where I spent my last week had a total of four rooms. At least, not counting the Arican kitchen at the entrance to it.
Tom and Chris slept in one room, while the other three rooms were given to Claire, Matthew, and . Apart from these rooms... it was a rather simple place, with nothing else inside.
However, when Chris Laergas went into the room where he slept with his youngest son, approached one of the walls, and simply placed his hand on it to transfer his mana... That's when I realized this cottage wasn't such a simple place after all.
That small section of the wall, upon recognizing Chris Laergas' mana, swayed slightly before pulling back to form a doorway. It then slid sideways, settling into the rest of the wall, creating a passage.
The stairs leading down seed to go on forever. The area beyond the secret door was pitch black.
"Follow ."
I had examined the cottage many tis. I had even used my mana occasionally to check for anything abnormal. My goal was both security and to find the answer to the question of whether I could find sothing secret like this.
Ultimately, I hadn't found anything. I had assud Chris had chosen this place simply because it was secluded and private property.
But apparently, I was wrong.
There were secret things, even if I hadn't found them. And they seed important...
I couldn't help but swallow hard as I followed Chris Laergas deeper into the depths of this... basent-like thing.
"Don't create any light source."
It was difficult to see anything without even a single light source, but it wasn't hard to keep track of my direction, both from the flow of mana around and from the footsteps of the man walking ahead of . Besides, the stairs didn't turn in any other direction...
At one point, I reflexively looked back. But when I did, all I saw was pitch black again. Shortly after we passed through, the passage had closed itself completely, silently.
It was starting to feel a bit... unsettling. But I kept going anyway.
And so we reached the first minute of our descent.
"From this point on, don't let the distance between us exceed two ters. We'll only be going down for about three more minutes, that's all. But still, be careful."
He wants to pay an unsettling amount of attention to a descent that will only take three more minutes...
I'm starting to feel really uncomfortable about this place.
Anyway, two ters…
So this wasn't just a simple stairway going down, like I thought. There was also a safety chanism…
He hadn't said anything else besides telling to follow him. So, as we continued descending, I wanted to use my mana to check if there was anything abnormal.
And... what I noticed was not so much an 'abnormality' as it was Chris Laergas' mana, which surrounded both of us, yet for so reason could not be perceived unless I focused on it.
When I looked at what this mana was doing exactly, I saw the first abnormality.
As we descended the stairs in pitch darkness... we were being scanned constantly, without stopping. Sothing I couldn't quite understand was examining us relentlessly, without wasting a single second, conducting a search similar to the one I had just done, looking for an abnormality.
Chris's mana suppressed this search, allowing us to bypass the security systems, even though nothing could be seen from the outside.
Interesting, I was thinking to myself when...
"H- huh?"
Suddenly, sothing I never expected happened.
"Stay calm, keep following ."
It was still dark around us. I couldn't see anything.
Still, I felt it.
It was sothing I had felt before, sothing familiar.
A slight warmth, a small and easily manageable headache...
A feeling as if I were moving even though I was standing still.
As if... I had passed through a gate.
"It's part of the security chanism. It teleports the people it identifies to the right path, while diverting the variables it cannot identify to the wrong ones."
Wrong ones...? So these stairs lead to other places besides down...
Or maybe it's all an illusion?
I was struggling to understand, to grasp what was happening around . Still, what I was told wasn't to try to understand, but to follow. So no matter how strange it felt, I continued to follow behind Chris Laergas.
Then... suddenly, sothing changed in the sound of the footsteps ahead of .
It was as if the material of the floor had changed, and also...
Instead of going down, it was going straight ahead now?
Since I was keeping a distance of less than two ters between us, I too soon reached the end of the stairs and ca out onto the sa flat surface.
"Stop."
I stopped imdiately. I had no intention of finding out what would happen to if I did sothing I shouldn't.
"Wait a mont."
And I waited obediently.
Seconds passed.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty...
Exactly half a minute later, Chris's entire mana filled the room at once. A separate mana, one that felt like it belonged to soone else, anwhile, accompanied him from outside, slowly suppressing his.
Then…
~click!
"Huh?"
After that single click sound I heard but couldn't understand… everything suddenly turned pure white.
"A- ahh!"
Following the sound that involuntarily escaped my mouth, I closed my eyes against the intense light.
That wasn't enough; I had to use my hands too. The light… was too dazzling.
Then another change occurred, and all the sounds I could perceive seed to disappear. Instead, there was only...
~beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
A simple but intense ringing sound ca, making feel like my brain was going to explode.
All of this lasted only a short ti, though.
First, the intense, white glow slowly faded away. Then the ringing beca difficult to hear, as if it were being pulled into the depths of my mind.
When I was finally able to open my eyes... the first thing I saw was that I was no longer in pitch darkness.
My eyes, slightly watering from the sudden light, made everything blurry. However... I was now in a dimly lit room.
A large room lit by torches.
"U- ugh..."
"Welco, Adrian."
I finally saw the figure of the man standing just to the left of my vision, Chris Laergas.
"You're the first person who isn't from the Laergas Family to enter here. You should be proud."
As the blurriness in my vision slowly faded, what I saw following Chris's figure was a... table. It was large, almost two ters long and about a ter wide.
No, it wasn't a table...?
More like...
"You might feel a bit damp, but there's nothing you can do about it. However, since you'll be staying here for a while, it's best to get used to it quickly."
Is that thing... a coffin?
"Hm?"
Chris Laergas looked at , then at the coffin-like thing I was staring at.
"Ah, it looks like a coffin because of its shape, but it's not. Let's just say my elders had so peculiar tastes. It's a stone altar, that's all."
Well... I wasn't satisfied, to be honest. Why would anyone shape an altar like a coffin in the first place?
...
Wait.
Altar?
Shaped like a coffin?
...
Oh.
No, wait...
Are they killing people on it...?!
I felt myself freeze instantly. Every cell in my body seed to be telling to stay away from that thing. All my hairs stood on end.
Does he seriously want to lie down on that thing?!
"I'm not going to sacrifice you or anything. I already said I'd keep my word and not kill you. Just lie down on the altar."
Why does it feel like he's lying?
No, it doesn't feel like that...
I'm sure he's lying.
This guy is going to kill ...
But what else can I do now that I've co this far?
After these thoughts, I swallowed hard and examined the room a little more.
Except for the altar in the middle of it, the room was relatively empty. There were torches around the room that lit it up and whose warmth I could feel. The bare walls, although cracked in places, were strangely solid.
The room was too simple, and at the sa ti, suspicious...
Still, I finally took the first step and approached the altar. I could feel Chris Laergas getting more and more irritated with every passing second. He seed to want to get our business here over with quickly.
When I reached the stone altar, I placed my hand on it. The coldness of the stone instantly penetrated my skin, making my body shiver.
Wasn't it a little... too cold?
"Co on, Adrian. We don't have all the ti."
I was startled by his sudden voice, but I finally stepped onto the altar. First, I stretched out my legs, then took a deep breath and lay down on my back.
That's when I saw sothing interesting that I hadn't noticed before, located on the ceiling directly above the altar.
"Place your hands on your stomach, focus on what you see on the ceiling, and wait."
It resembled a symbol. It was the only decorative thing in the room with its gray walls. There were runes around a darkness that seed to be migrating inward, and I didn't know what they were.
"Now..."
Chris Laergas' voice echoed in the room again, and then I saw him approach one of the walls out of the corner of my eye. He was placing his hand on the wall, just like he did in the cabin.
Then his mana slightly rippled and flowed into the wall.
After that, this simple room made of gray stones... suddenly changed.
The first change was on the wall where Chris had placed his hand. Those cracks that caught my attention when I first examined it... had begun to glow faintly.
~click! ~click! ~click!
~fwooosh!
Then, strange runes began to erge from these cracks and envelop the room.
"W- what's happening...?!"
"Stay calm, keep looking up."
This situation... it was starting to feel worse and worse. With every passing second, I began to regret coming here.
Then...
"...?"
Another change occurred.
The runes that had erged from the cracks in the walls and enveloped the entire room finally reached the dent right above , and...
The darkness seed to ripple.
~drip!
I felt warmth on my forehead along with the sound echoing in my ear.
Contradicting the cold air in the room, it belonged to a... drop.
A warm drop that I could feel trickling down my forehead, passing over my eyebrow, and leaving an itchy sensation above my ear.
Then another one. This ti on my cheek.
A frighteningly familiar feeling...
Like blood.
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