Chapter 25 | Out!

Theo released another arcane net from his palm. The centipede skidded across the ground, slamming its back against a thick tree trunk. The others didn’t need to be told what to do. Quickly, a flurry of strikes was released onto the thing.

Punches, sword strikes, dagger slashes, and arrows slammed against the entity’s carapace. It cracked, split open, and then its purple, sinewy flesh quickly gave way.

Theo circled it. Seeing its painful writhings, he slid on the ground using his momentum and found the correct angle. Then, he released an arcane shot into the thing’s mouth.

The silver goop of mana blew up and splattered, searing its insides. A couple more, and whatever inner mechanism held together this semi-ethereal abomination became ineffective. It dissolved into purple smoke and was reabsorbed by the soil.

The immediate situation granted him mercy from the guilt he felt for Nicole’s… disappearance. He felt that he had a strange knack for fighting, especially so for a long-time professional shut-in.

He quickly calculated his mana reserves—about a quarter left. They had a couple of kilometers until the exit, and the number of centipedes they were encountering kept increasing.

At one point, Leila had disappeared from her spot in the sky. Theo decided that if he could survive outside the tower for long enough, get as strong as he wished to, he would come back here and find out more about The Eternal Night, scour the tower. He hadn’t even explored a percent of it, after all.

All his journey had been in the outer perimeters of the tower and on the exact same floor. As far as he understood, this place was unimaginably big and non-Euclidean in geometry. Some people said that all the floors of the tower combined were as big as a continent.

And Theo couldn’t help but wonder. What were those inscriptions? How did Leila relate to this place? The tower had appeared a year ago out of nowhere, after a big earthquake—how?

Let’s focus on the matter at hand.

“The surroundings of the tower are a clearing of five hundred meters,” Satou said. “Once outside, we will have to dash for the forest, away from the mountains. There will be military forces around the tower, and we don’t know what they might be doing as we exit.”

“Mhm.” Theo and Long Tian nodded. The adventurer party usually kept to themselves, grouped slightly farther away.

By now, it had already been two hours since their escape started. The tide would be over soon. Fortunately, no one here got tired easily. They didn’t have to rest on the way, and would probably be one of the first groups to reach the exit.

Finally, in the distance, they heard noises. Explosions and screams. It seemed the way out was blocked, and some people were trying to break through.

Once they reached a small clearing around the exit, they saw the situation.

There were about ten more people, two Captains and eight adventurers, from what Theo could deduce. Then, where the walls of the dome met the floor was a bundle of centipedes. They had formed an eighth of a sphere around where the door was supposed to be, more than ten of them entangled in a disgusting chain.

The other ten were locked in a stalemate. The centipedes didn’t leave the wall to attack, but they also didn’t move about. It seemed that they were intentionally blocking the door.

“These things…” Satou muttered with a frown. He and the others quickly joined the other ten. The people noticed their arrival and rejoiced at seeing Satou.

As they discussed what to do, Theo and Long Tian were left to the side, with the unconscious Tanaka on the floor. Theo quickly turned around and kept his attention outward, in case they were ambushed from behind. In the meantime, he decided he could take a little look at Long Tian’s loot.

He loosened the mouth of the bag and peeked inside. Immediately, he noticed. Long Tian had chosen to get a lot of currency, most being silver coins. That was smart, as they would need funds once outside the tower.

He dipped his hand inside and started touching around. Some jewelry, a bracer that carried a faint trace of aura, some sort of antique coin… Theo couldn’t quite figure out the bracer’s usage.

Then, his hand touched something. It was metallic, its edges ever so slightly sharp. With a few attempts, he managed to grab it and pull it out.

It was the ring, the flamestone ring, as Nicole had called it. Theo frowned and suppressed the nausea as he inspected the thing. He was, for the first time, seeing a conventional magical item. Maybe he could use it somehow.

First, he started by putting on the ring. Its cold bit into his skin, making him hyper-aware of its presence. He probed against the red gemstone slotted in it with his mana sense first, sensing the energy inside. Sure, it was mana, but again it was different. It was a highly artificial and very potent sort of mana he was seeing for the first time.

He released a little bit of mana from his thumb into the gemstone. The gemstone quickly devoured his mana and started shining. When Theo realized what was happening, he turned around and held his hand out in a fist, the ring pointing outward. A fireball left his hand, crashing against a nearby tree and charring its surface. The firestone dimmed ever so slightly as Theo felt the mana inside it diminish.

He quickly looked around, noticing that the main group hadn’t realized the commotion. They were too busy deciding on what to do, so the only person who could see was Long Tian, who looked at him with awe in his eyes.

Theo was the same. He was incredibly excited that he was finally getting to cast an actual, physical spell. But it also made him want more. He didn’t just want to utilize a tool. He wanted to figure it out. Understand it. Bend it to his will, and produce more, maybe. Or figure out its mechanisms and implement it in his mind palace.

When he touched the firestone with the tip of his finger to probe in more detail, however, something miraculous happened. The firestone shone once again and dematerialized into a cloud of red light motes. Then they traveled into his fingertips and palm, entering his mana circulation. They traveled through, journeyed up through his arm, then through his throat, finally into his mind palace.

Theo’s heart skipped a beat. Worried that he might have fucked something up, he quickly followed along. He was worried that the energy might blow up inside him, so he dove deep into his mindscape.

The red energy motes gathered together in front of the palace, tightened, shone once again, and formed back into the gem they were.

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Theo’s eyes widened. Once again, he realized. Something material had gone into his mindscape.

He thought of many ideas about exactly what was happening.

Is this really how you use it? But then, why was it socketed into a ring? Couldn’t it just be placed in a bag? It seems a bit redundant, he thought as he put on the now-empty ring.

“Whoa. Did you absorb that energy stone?” Long Tian asked, snapping Theo out of his thinking state.

“Yeah. I think so,” Theo said. Ah, right. This guy is a cultivator, isn’t he? Absorbing energy from stones must be a familiar concept.

Slightly farther away, the group of fifteen was finally moving. They fanned out, with the ranged builds slightly behind while the melees were in the front. It seemed they would finally start moving. After all, it was only a matter of time before more centipedes appeared out of the forest to either clamp shut around the exit or just eat them outright.

For now, Theo didn’t provide any benefit for them whatsoever. Unless the centipedes decided to move, his arcane net didn’t do any real damage. Its only use was in restraining.

So Theo decided to see whether or not this flamestone could be utilized somehow.

He first ran some mana through the gemstone. Like before, it shone. But then it puked out about half of that mana with changed color. Blazing red.

It was familiar; in fact, it was the exact same look as the one inside that arcane barrier. Theo rejoiced. He was slowly getting an idea.

He let go of the fiery mana through his fingers. He didn’t know what would happen if he let it back into his mana stream, so he chose not to. He let the gemstone be for a moment. He floated closer to an empty wall of his mind palace and brought his finger forward.

He wrote, then held his chin for a moment before continuing.

[Ball Shape]

[Package]