Chapter 112: The Blood-Refined Divine Artifact 3

“Come on. Let’s go see what that thing was.”

Ever since that terrible scream had echoed through the temple, all the strange noises around them had vanished at once.

Kent had also discovered something unusual about the Illumination spell floating above their heads.

He could control it.

As long as he continued feeding mana into the glowing orb, it would remain suspended above him and Daphne indefinitely, following them wherever they went.

Kent could not understand how he was doing it.

Normally, this sort of spell control was something only high-level mages could accomplish.

Maintaining a spell after it had already been released placed extremely strict demands on both spiritual control and the stability of mana output.

Magic of this kind was known as channeled magic.

Still, this was hardly the time to investigate the phenomenon.

Kent strongly suspected that the strange effect had something to do with the staff in his hand.

Daphne knew far less about such technical details.

And despite the brilliant Illumination spell hovering overhead, she did not relax in the slightest.

If anything, she clung even more tightly to Kent’s arm.

Every so often, she would secretly glance up at him.

Truthfully, by human standards, Kent’s appearance could only be considered somewhat above average.

Compared with the famously beautiful dark elves, he was hardly impressive at all.

Yet Daphne could not understand why she kept wanting to look at him.

So as the two walked through the temple, she repeatedly stole glances at Kent.

Sometimes she smiled to herself.

Sometimes her cheeks inexplicably turned red.

“Daphne, be careful.”

Kent suddenly lowered his voice.

“I felt that thing disappear somewhere around here.”

The two of them had reached an enormous stone door at the rear of the temple’s first-floor hall.

A thick layer of dust covered its surface, enough to show that the door had stood untouched for an extremely long time.

Kent found himself wondering why the kobolds had never bothered cleaning this place.

Of course, he conveniently forgot one important detail.

Kobolds were terrified of water.

Cleaning was hardly likely to be one of their favorite activities.

Besides, the temple had never belonged to them in the first place.

“Damn it!”

Far beneath the temple, atop an enormous altar, a mist-like figure twisted violently as it howled in rage.

“How can there be a light-element mage in the Underdark?!”

“This is fucking ridiculous! That alone is practically a miracle!”

“I’ll kill that brat!”

“I’ll devour his soul!”

“I finally managed to recover some of my strength, and now that damned light magic has wounded me again!”

“Damn it!”

“Damn it!”

The shapeless creature continued roaring furiously above the altar.

“A divine artifact!”

“That belongs to me!”

“I’m going underground!”

Far away on the surface, inside the materials warehouse of the Grand Mages’ Guild in Alliance City, something very different was happening.

A huge, fat rat was busily gnawing on precious magical metals stored within the warehouse.

Beside it, a tiny humanoid figure with transparent wings was tossing high-grade magic cores into a pitch-black hole one after another.

They were Niuniu and Big Nose.

Suddenly, Niuniu froze.

The fist-sized magic core in her hands dropped to the ground.

“A divine artifact!”

She shrieked excitedly.

“I’m going underground!”

The moment Big Nose heard the words divine artifact, his tiny eyes began shining as well.

Then Niuniu’s expression abruptly changed.

“Move, Big Nose! We’ve been discovered!”

She immediately landed on the giant rat’s back.

Big Nose needed no further encouragement.

He shot away like an arrow.

Strangely, not a single magical formation engraved into the surrounding walls activated.

With Niuniu riding on his back, Big Nose raced up toward the ceiling and disappeared through a hole in one of the overhead beams.

The Grand Mages’ Guild’s warehouse had been constructed almost entirely from refined iron.

Its walls were nearly half a meter thick.

Countless magical formations had also been engraved across them using extremely valuable magical metals.

The defenses were said to be so powerful that even a Forbidden Spell could not destroy the warehouse.

Yet somehow—

Big Nose had simply chewed a hole straight through it.

“AH!”

A Level Eight Mage responsible for guarding the materials warehouse finally entered.

He took one look inside.

Then he froze.

For several long moments, he could only stare at the devastated storage room in stunned silence.

When he finally recovered, every trace of his usual elegance vanished.

“Quick!”

He screamed at the top of his lungs.

“Report this to the Grand Elder immediately!”

“Sound the magical alarm bell!”

Kent drew a deep breath and slowly approached the massive stone door.

The door was grayish brown, and traces of ancient murals could still be seen across its surface. Unfortunately, the images had faded so badly with age that it was impossible to make out what they had once depicted.

Kent carefully swept the entire door with his spiritual perception.

Nothing.

There was not the slightest trace of magical fluctuation.

Even so, he did not lower his guard.

Instead, Kent backed away until he was standing at a safe distance, then raised one hand.

“Fireball!”

A blazing sphere of flame shot forward.

At the same time, the Illumination spell continued hovering steadily above him and Daphne.

Kent had already gained a rudimentary ability to divide his attention between two tasks, so maintaining the flow of mana into Illumination while casting another spell felt perfectly natural to him.

Daphne, however, did not understand just how extraordinary that actually was.

For an ordinary mage, simultaneously controlling two different spells was something that usually became possible only after reaching at least Level Five and entering the ranks of intermediate mages.

In fact, the ability to divide one’s attention so precisely was also one of the defining talents required of an alchemist.

Ultimately, it depended on possessing sufficiently powerful spiritual strength.

Kent had an unusual advantage in that regard.

His soul had originally belonged to an adult, while his current body was still that of a youth.

Relative to others his age, his spiritual power was therefore several times stronger.

And spiritual power itself was, in essence, merely one manifestation of the soul—

just as light was simply another manifestation of electrical energy.

“Puff!”

The Fireball struck the stone door with a muffled burst.

Flames scattered across its surface.

Yet when the fire faded, the stone remained completely undamaged.

Kent had never expected a simple Fireball to blast open such an enormous door.

The attack had only been a test.

He wanted to see whether striking the door would trigger some hidden magical trap.

When nothing happened, Kent raised his hand again.

“Earth Spike!”

A short spike of stone shot forward.

Earth Spike was a low-level earth-element spell.

The spike it created was only a little over thirty centimeters long and merely a few centimeters thick.

It was very different from the more powerful Ground Spikes spell.

Ground Spikes summoned enormous stone spears from beneath the earth, each roughly two meters tall and dozens of centimeters thick, and it was designed to attack an entire area at once.

Kent watched carefully.

Still nothing happened.

Only then did he relax slightly.

The Fireball had been an energy-based attack.

The Earth Spike, by contrast, was essentially a physical attack.

Since neither had triggered any reaction, there was probably no obvious magical trap attached to the door.

Kent stepped closer and examined the enormous stone structure again.

There was no keyhole.

No lever.

No visible mechanism of any kind.

“How are we supposed to get through something this big?”

Daphne had also begun searching around the doorway.

She checked one side, then the other, but found nothing.

Eventually, she placed both hands against the stone door and gave it a tentative push.

“This thing is enormous...”

“Ah!”

A sudden cry rang out.

Kent, who had been running his fingers inch by inch along the stone wall beside the doorway, spun around instantly.

His expression changed.

Daphne was gone.

Half of the enormous stone door now stood open.

“Damn it!”

Kent’s heart sank.

He immediately rushed toward the doorway.

“Daphne!”

“Daphne!”

“Hey, little girl!”

He shouted her name as he approached, but he did not charge blindly inside.

Unknown places were often the most dangerous.

Kent stopped at the entrance and carefully surveyed everything illuminated by the glowing orb above his head.

There was no sign of Daphne anywhere.

Behind the stone door was a passageway sloping gradually downward.

No—

not one passageway.

Three.

Kent’s unease immediately deepened.

The central passage was much wider than the two on either side.

The left and right passages were narrower, almost like subsidiary corridors branching away from the main route.

Kent had reached the doorway only a few seconds after hearing Daphne cry out.

How could she have disappeared so completely in such a short time?

The entrance itself was more than ten meters away from where the three passages actually began.

Even if Daphne had immediately started running, he should still have caught at least a glimpse of her.

But there was nothing.

Not a shadow.

Not a sound.

Kent tightened his grip on the staff.

That uncomfortable sensation returned once again.

He could not see anyone.

His spiritual perception detected nothing.

And yet—

he could not shake the feeling that somewhere in the darkness, someone was watching him.

“Something’s definitely wrong here.”

Kent examined the area again with painstaking care.

The floor was made of solid stone.

There was not so much as a crack between the slabs.

He inspected the walls, the floor, and every corner he could reach, but found no hidden mechanism, no loose stones, and no trace of any secret passage.

As far as he could tell, this was nothing more than an ordinary corridor carved entirely from stone.

But Kent refused to believe it.

When Daphne had vanished, he had sensed no magical fluctuation.

He had heard no strange noise either.

No footsteps.

No grinding stone.

No sudden rush of air.

Nothing.

So how could a living, breathing person simply disappear?

The more Kent thought about it, the more anxious he became.

But he also knew that this was exactly when he could not afford to panic.

One wrong step could lead to another.

And once he made the first mistake, everything that followed might go wrong as well.

“Illumination!”

Kent cast the spell once more.

Another brilliant orb of light appeared, flooding the entire stretch of corridor with radiance.

The dozen or so meters before the three passageways were now illuminated so clearly that even the smallest details stood out.

Kent searched the area again.

Slowly.

Methodically.

He inspected every inch.

Still nothing.

He even began tapping along the stone floor and walls, listening carefully for any hollow sound that might reveal a hidden chamber.

But every response was the same.

Solid stone.

Nothing more.

“Damn it...”

Kent’s frustration finally boiled over.

“What the hell is going on here? Did she just vanish into thin air?”

He cursed loudly, both anxious and furious with himself.

Then he walked toward the entrance to the three passages.

Just before stepping inside, however, Kent stopped.

He turned around and looked back one more time.

It was not because he expected to see anything new.

He simply could not accept it.

He could not accept that Daphne had disappeared right in front of him—

without leaving behind even the slightest trace.