The Lazarus Pit had been protected for a century by twelve handpicked guardians, each chosen personally by Ra's al Ghul. They were men and women who had been trained in the ancient art of killing, drilled until their bodies became weapons and their wills unbreakable. Although none of them had ever been directly immersed in the life-giving waters, a lifetime spent in proximity to that mystical vein had granted them unnatural durability and strength beyond mortal limits. For anyone else, facing them even one at a time would have been suicide. Yet Alex Reath had accomplished the unthinkable. Not only had he fought the guardians of the Demon's Head—he had annihilated them, single-handedly.
I moved through the silent battlefield, studying the heavy toll left in his wake. Broken ribs, shattered limbs, fractured skulls… the signs of overwhelming savagery were everywhere. Several still breathed weakly, though none would rise again for battle. Some had endured blows so brutal the bones were visible through their ruined flesh. It was staggering, not just for the sheer brutality but for the fact that this outcome had happened so quickly. There were no signs of a long duel. No drawn-out struggle. Just swift, efficient carnage.
What kind of strength could mutilate the bodies of Ra's chosen warriors to such a degree? Even thinking about it sent a gnawing chill down my spine.
I activated my comm-link. "Talia," I said, eyes still taking in the scene. "Alex Reath has reached the Lazarus Pit."
"What?" A female voice snapped back through static, its tone a mix of fury and disbelief. "What are you doing? Deal with him immediately! We can't let the League's greatest treasure fall into the hands of a boy!"
"Circumstances have… changed," I admitted grimly. "He concealed his true strength until now. I don't even know if I can predict what he is capable of."
There was a pause, followed by the sharp, clipped voice of the Demon's Daughter. "Understood. I'm already descending. Delay him, at any cost. Do not—under any circumstances—let him touch the waters."
The transmission cut off. I lowered my wrist, a pit sinking into my stomach, and started moving.
The deeper I descended, the more the stench of death clung to the air. Ten more guardians lay crumpled in grotesque heaps, like discarded dolls. Limbs twisted wrong, bodies cold and lifeless. And above them, standing with a smug shadow across his face, was Alex Reath—the boy who should have been chained, powerless. Now he towered above the corpses, a grim smirk carved across his lips.
"You…" I demanded, unwilling to break eye contact with the grin that radiated insolence. "Who are you?"
He tilted his head, his expression sharpening with amusement. "It doesn't matter who I am," he replied, his grin lingering. "What matters is what my plan is."
......
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[Alex's POV]
"He who is nimble and cunning is not caught and is not called a thief," I muttered half to myself as I approached yet another sealed door.
I pressed my palm onto its steel surface, channeling my ability. In a blink, the barrier vanished into my inventory. The passage opened with a hollow groan.
"Well, well," I whispered as I stepped inside, looking around at the emptied chamber. "There's so much of… nothing here!" I laughed. "Ra's, my good man, always so stingy. But it's fine. No need to be selfish—I've already taken more than my fair share of compensation for your rude behavior. And besides… the real feast is still ahead."
The hairs on my neck bristled. I could feel it. The Lazarus Pit—it was close.
Stone steps appeared before me, plunging deep into the earth like the throat of some ancient beast. Steep, endless, and choking with shadows. My intuition pulsed sharply. My destination was down there.
"Alright then…" I breathed, and started my descent.
It was maddening. Step after step after step. Three thousand eight hundred and five of them. Yes, I counted. How could I not? The monotonous echo of leather against stone was the only sound in that suffocating abyss. Each meter down stretched my patience thinner until sweat clung to my temples.
"For the love of comfort…" I exhaled as I staggered into the light at the bottom. "Would it kill them to build an elevator? I swear, I'll never understand Ra's and his obsession with stone staircases. A man can be immortal but still stingy about convenience."
Yet the bitter humor fled me as soon as I saw them.
They waited before the narrow archway—two men dressed like assassins, yet intimidating in ways the others had not been. Unlike Ra's usual pawns, their presence radiated refinement. They were calm, cold statues. My instincts screamed a warning.
"Well, hello, friends," I said with forced cheer, raising a hand. "How are we this fine day? What? Oh, don't glare at me like that. I only want to talk—"
The first darted forward. The sharp slice of steel cut the air, narrowly missing where my head had just been.
And suddenly I was dodging, flipping backward as blades came from every direction, faster, sharper than the others before them. These weren't pawns. They were predators.
I seized one assassin's arm, wrenching it until the bone twisted cruelly under the strain. He snarled but didn't even scream. His partner's shin met my boot with a thunderous crack, yet the man didn't fall. Instead, the one whose arm I had twisted—who should have been crippled—ripped free with impossible strength and slammed his fist into my ribs.
Pain exploded in my side, stronger than anything I had felt so far. I staggered back with clenched teeth.
"What the… hell was that?" I hissed, rubbing the spot. The other blows from Ra's soldiers hadn't even slowed me. But these two? Their strikes had weight, like something coursed through them, something unnatural.
They were different. They were stronger.
"Of course," I muttered, piecing it together. "That's why they were stationed here, before the Pit. Guardians of the Gate."
But if Ra's had hoped they would be enough, he had miscalculated.
The serum in my veins burned with electric life. Wisdom accelerated into instinct. My reflexes surged, and with new momentum, I turned the fight. I slipped past a deadly thrust, smashing my fist across a jaw. Momentum stole their precision. With both heads within my grip, I slammed them together until the cave walls themselves echoed the dull knock of bone.
Their limp bodies sprawled at my feet. It was… unsettling. They had been faster, stronger, like men dosed with an unstable attempt at Erskine's serum. But they weren't the original. That honor was mine.
Stepping over the unconscious bodies, I moved further down the passage, and stopped.
I had finally arrived.
The cavern stretched open with cathedral-like magnificence, and in its center lay a pool that radiated with unnatural light.
The Lazarus Pit.
The air burned thick with heat, though no fire danced in torches and no electricity hummed through bulbs. The invisible hand of the Pit itself filled the cavern with vibrating green glow. Molten steam rolled like veils over the water's surface, rising in waves until each breath scalded my lungs with heat.
The Pit boiled and shifted like a living thing. It glowed, pulsed with raw light as if alive. Looking into it was like staring into a vein of the planet itself, a wound torn open to reveal the unearthly ichor that coursed through the Earth's body.
Who could have known something so grotesque in appearance was revered as sacred? Its green sludge could be mistaken for poison, a venomous concoction fit to kill all life. Yet here it was—the fountain of longevity, the cauldron of rebirth, that which rendered death itself negotiable. This grotesque mystery was Ra's al Ghul's immortality.
I crouched beside the pool. Reaching out, I touched the surface. My fingers burned from its searing warmth, ripples spreading across the bubbling cauldron in waves.
"The waters of resurrection," I whispered. "So this is the source of his life."
The system's interface flickered. A notification appeared across my vision.
[You have discovered one of the sources of life-force on Earth. For this great discovery, you gain +1 Wisdom.]
"What?" I froze. "You're telling me this… this green mire is a source of the planet's life itself?"
I stared at the foaming waters, chest tightening. If the system said it was true, then it must be. But the revelation shook me to my core. The Lazarus Pit was not just an accident of alchemy. It was something primal, fundamental. A leak of the Earth's essence, surfacing only on ley lines at crucial points across the globe.
This… this meant Ra's controlled fragments of the Earth's soul itself. And if there was more than one—as I knew there was—this was but a piece of a vast puzzle.
I was still absorbing the thought when a sudden awareness struck me.
Someone was near.
I turned as the air sharpened. And stepped from the shadows—Shiva.
Her eyes locked onto me, sharper than the katana still in her scabbard.
"You," she hissed, voice like steel bending. "Who are you?"
I smiled, echoing the same words I had spoken before, a grin curling across my lips.
"It doesn't matter who I am," I said with deliberate calm. "What matters is my plan."
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