Chapter 379

"At first glance, I really thought we'd accidentally wandered into a divine realm," Anser marveled.

Brunhilde had briefly described this place to him before, but without seeing it for himself, it had been difficult to imagine a scene like this.

No wonder Brunhilde and the Thayan lich couldn't stop thinking about this place.

This temple alone was worth a fortune, and that wasn't even counting whatever was inside it.

The two set off together, leaving the crystal array beneath their feet and choosing a direction at random to begin exploring the temple.

It was even larger than the castle outside. The circular plaza alone was more than a hundred meters across.

Crystal walls surrounded the plaza, with crystal doors set into them and corridors leading off to other parts of the temple.

Anser and Stoll started with the first floor and soon discovered something very peculiar about this place. If there was one word to describe it, it would be:

Pure.

Purity taken to the extreme. There was nothing but crystal.

The furniture and decorations were all made of crystal. There wasn't a trace of anything else.

No water, no food, no basic necessities—and no corpses!

"There should have been quite a few people who died here," Anser said quietly.

He was referring to the four-way battle that had taken place here before, between Thay, the Church of Myrkul, the Cowled Wizards, and the adventurers.

"Yeah." Stoll's expression grew somewhat grave.

The place was breathtaking at first glance, but the longer they stayed, the more unsettling it became.

Anser tried contacting Sakkors, but failed.

Unwilling to give up, he tried accessing the Spirit Net, casting Sending, and teleporting back to Holrewen. Every attempt failed.

"This should be some kind of special plane, completely isolated from the outside world."

He stopped and cast Gate on the spot.

A circular portal quickly took shape. Steady, gentle white light shone across their faces, bringing with it an indescribable sense of security.

"That's the ninth-level spell Gate?!" Stoll exclaimed in shock.

"Yes. Even if we can't activate the array in the crystal plaza, we won't be trapped here." Anser waved a hand, dismissing the portal, and continued forward.

Stoll stood there dumbfounded for a moment before hurrying after him.

"How did you reach the peak tier so quickly? When we first met, you were only..." He trailed off halfway through, his face caught somewhere between confusion and disbelief.

Unlike Iris, Stoll couldn't keep things bottled up.

There was far too much curiosity crammed into that little head of his. Holding it all in would drive him crazy.

"Maybe I'm just that talented." What else could Anser say?

Throughout his journey, he had never voluntarily told anyone his true strength. He always tried to keep things vague, but given enough time, everyone could tell.

They could make whatever wild guesses they wanted. No matter how ridiculous those guesses became, it didn't matter. If anything, they only took them further from the truth.

Stoll clearly didn't believe him. He had seen more geniuses than he could count, and none of them were anything like Anser.

"How old are you this year?"

"Twenty-one. You already knew that, didn't you?"

"Oh..."

The exploration itself was exceptionally dull, but Stoll never stopped talking.

"Do you have some kind of revenge plan?" After quite a while, he suddenly blurted out another question.

"No!" Anser rolled his eyes helplessly.

Stoll gave an awkward chuckle and stopped asking.

The two searched floor by floor until they had inspected all nine upper levels of the temple, yet found nothing.

They returned to the first floor and made another circuit before finding a corridor leading underground.

The moment they passed through a black crystal door, both of them sensed the difference.

It was dark and silent here, permeated by an air of decay and decline.

Anser cast True Seeing on Stoll and continued deeper inside.

They turned into an underground chamber and immediately froze.

The space before them was filled with coffins, arranged in neat rows—at least several hundred of them.

Stoll was bold and had no fear of corpses. He walked over to one of the coffins in a few strides and rapped his knuckles against it. The sound was crisp.

"Made of crystal."

Anser, however, found the style of the coffins strangely familiar. The material was different, but after examining them carefully, the image of the Silent Mausoleum immediately surfaced in his mind.

He had found two Artifacts and two Legendary items inside that coffin.

"Inside these..."

Before he could finish, Stoll had already shoved the lid off one of the coffins, revealing a corpse dressed in black robes and wearing a mask.

The corpse hadn't decayed. Even its gruesome wounds remained exactly as they had been.

"Cowled Wizards." Stoll recognized the insignia on one corner of the corpse's mask.

"This should be one of the people who died here back then. I wonder why they ended up inside these coffins?" Anser warily scanned their surroundings.

Everything around them was utterly silent. There was nothing unusual.

"Maybe that Death Knight did it." As he spoke, Stoll pulled open another coffin.

It was completely empty.

Refusing to give up, he continued checking the others.

After quite a while, he discovered that most of the coffins were empty. Only a small number contained corpses or skeletons.

Anser quickly made his way to the center of the burial chamber and discovered that one coffin was missing.

'Maybe the Silent Mausoleum was originally supposed to be placed here.'

He looked around, unsure whether this was where the Death Knight resurrected.

Even if it was, he couldn't bring himself to destroy the place.

The Death Knight could be left alive to farm for experience. It wasn't valuable enough to justify damaging the temple over it.

"Come on. Let's see what's farther down."

The two continued downward. The second underground level was a residential area and finally seemed somewhat normal.

Still, sleeping underneath a bunch of dead people was bound to feel a little uncomfortable.

Yet the darkness here carried a sense of peace and tranquility rather than fear.

"This should be a temple of Sehanine Moonbow," Anser speculated.

Sehanine's divine portfolio was rather complicated, encompassing a little of everything: moonlight, dreams, light, death, night, divination, and travel.

"I don't like this place. It's weird." Stoll curled his lip in distaste. "Why don't we just pry off the crystals and take them outside to sell?"

"Don't even think about it." Anser rejected the idea outright.

He followed the stairs down to the third underground level. After taking only a few steps, however, he realized he could no longer hear Stoll's footsteps.

He turned around.

The door behind him had vanished.

'I knew it wouldn't be that simple!'

Anser's heart jolted. His expression tightened as his gaze rapidly swept across his surroundings.

This level was roughly the same size as the one above, but it was extremely spacious and empty. At its center stood a spherical crystal creation shaped like a full moon, four or five meters in diameter. Flawlessly white, it gave off a faint, silvery moonlight.

The area around the crystal sphere was covered in crystals of every color, all of them magical crystals of exceptional quality.

Anser took a deep breath and slowly approached, keeping his eyes fixed on the crystal sphere.

Light and shadow shifted around him. After he took a certain step, a slender figure suddenly entered his field of vision.

He immediately stopped, only to discover that the person was lying motionless inside the crystal sphere.

'I have a bad feeling about this.'

He moved closer again and finally saw clearly that it was a female half-elf. She wore a simple white dress and had a tall, slender figure and fair skin.

Her beauty was breathtaking, but the most striking impression she gave was one of warmth and purity.

'Who is she?'

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