'Woahhh' was his reaction after entering the ruins. Its walls were covered in vines, and wild plants grew in irregular places.
There was only one way to enter, which looked like a massive pathway, but the ground, which was covered in numerous thick plants, didn't seem safe to cross.
Most of the plants were black in color, while the rest of them were blue and green. It looked like somebody had burnt the surfaces of the grass and bushes without harming them.
'I need to play it safe, or who knows what might come out and bite me next.'
He hadn't forgotten when the villagers had told him that there were different species present on this planet, but what he wasn't sure of was that he was still on the same planet after he had fallen through that dark miasma.
So it was completely his luck that had allowed him to fall on the exact spot where he was able to see the small source of light when he was falling through, or else who knows what might have happened to him when he fell through that miasma.
'There were also three Void Creatures behind me on the bridge, but they hadn't fallen through that hole, or else I might have already taken one of their cores and assimilated it with it.'
And sadly, the drog was not a Void beast but a common beast present on this planet, due to which it didn't contain a Void Core.
He silently moved through the overgrown plants and bushes while being alert, but just as he reached the end of the massive open grassy paths, a spear came and struck him in the ribs.
"Aahhhhhhhhhhhh....." The pain spread in his body, but with everything he had experienced and the spear, which wasn't able to completely embed itself in his body, he wasn't going to go down with just this.
He ducked quickly. Bushes swallowed him completely, their grasses brushing his face.
The grass and bushes reached above his knees when he was standing, so hiding in it wasn't a problem.
'Ahh, this is going to hurt badly.' His vision started getting darker as he pulled the spear free, every nerve of his body screaming, but he couldn't afford to collapse. Not now. Not yet.
Just as he was going to tie his wound, he heard footsteps in front of him.
'What? Somebody is already present here? But I thought that the spear was from a trap' He tried to calm himself down from panicking due to the unknown entity he was going to face.
As he peeked through the gaps of the plants with a slightly racing heart, he was astonished to see a creature that looked like it belonged to the sea.
It was standing on two legs and was holding another spear in its human or padded hands?
He didn't know, as it wasn't visible from this distance. Its whole body was dark blue in color, while its belly part was white in color.
It had three gills on both sides of his cheeks and a disgusting mouth full of canine-like teeth. 'It still has one more spear; I need to divert its attention.'
He quickly searched in the bushes in his hands and quickly found a stone. Then, he simply waited for the creature to come close.
There was very little chance that it could accurately hit him with its other spear due to the height of the plants and bushes and the fact that Asterion could have simply moved a little in the bushes to avoid another hit.
As soon as the creature came closer to him, he threw the stone towards one of the walls, and upon impact, the creature turned its head towards that direction as Asterion lunged from behind the creature and slid his knife in its throat.
The creature puked a mouthful of blood and fell down with wide eyes and a shocked face.
Asterion scanned his surroundings for another creature while tearing what remained from his tattered clothes to close the wound on his ribs.
After some time, he quickly got up and started moving through the ruins. In the path he encountered those same beasts multiple times, and sometimes they were even in a group of two, due to which he had to make quite the effort to finish them.
'What is this place? And how much deeper would I have to go?' Asterion was thinking when he suddenly found blue patches on his skin.
'Wait, don't tell me that everyone who came here in the past became the same as those sea creatures through mutation and I am also going to turn into one of them?'
He was horrified by his conclusion, so he quickly darted back towards the entrance of the ruins but found the doors to the ruins were closed.
'Noo, no, no, no, now I can't even drink the water or submerge in that pond to heal myself from whatever I am suffering.' His thoughts raced as he started panicking and started pacing back and forth to think of something.
Clearly, climbing the wall was not an option, as it wasn't a wall built with bricks that had slight gaps in between them; this wall was as smooth as skin but as tough as steel.
Even after multiple hours he couldn't think of anything, so he moved to a side and sat in a corner to avoid the sea-like creatures. He now had multiple patches formed around his body.
The effects of these patches started showing as he now had trouble breathing and couldn't see more than some meters away from him.
His vision started going black, but he knew that this would be his end if he lost consciousness. 'I need to hold on till my body adapts to whatever has entered me.'
His will to live was still alive, his eyes were bloodshot, and he started scraping his fingers against the walls of the ruins with all his strength.
Blood started dripping from his fingers, but he bit his teeth and didn't scream so as not to attract those creatures.
After countless hours, his whole palm was bloodied, and he was now scraping his face directly against the wall with sheer will just so as not to lose his consciousness.
His whole body turned blue in color due to the poison from the plants and bushes he was moving through.
But what he didn't know was that the aftereffects of the pond water allowed his body to adapt to the poison a lot faster, and just as he felt he was going to lose consciousness, he started feeling his sight and breathing becoming clearer.
'Yes, my body finally adapted to it.' He smiled with his bloodied and torn face. But he hadn't lost enough blood to die, as he had simply just torn off his upper layers of skin.
After some hours, he started feeling hungry, as now a lot of time had passed since he had eaten anything.
He wrapped his bloodied hands with the lower hem of his pants, and now all he was wearing was underwear with a pair of pants of the same length above it.
He gritted his teeth, got up, and started moving again towards the depth of the ruins.
On the way, he quickly found one of the creatures he killed, used his knife to slice open its thigh, and stared at the bloodied muscle in front of him.
He didn't have something to produce fire, and neither did he have the luxury for it; if the whole area were covered in fire, then he would be able to hide anywhere.
'I have to eat this; it's just raw meat, just raw meat,' he thought as he tried to not be repulsed by it, but just as he took the first bite, he vomited all of it.
'No, it's simply inedible. I need to create fire, or else I will have no choice but to remain hungry.'
It wasn't like he didn't have a way to create only a small fire, but there were chances it would attract a lot of these creatures, and upon seeing the scene, obviously no one would like to see his own kin getting eaten in front of them, so he could guess the outcome.
He quickly took out his knife and cleared a circular area in the middle of the grass, using a stone and his knife to ignite a small spark of fire, which ignited upon coming in touch with the grass he had cut down and thrown in the center of the area he created.
He cut off the other thigh of the creature, burned it down, and cooked it. After eating his meal, he got up and started moving through the ruins, and after some minutes, he again reached the place from where he had run off after seeing the blue patches on his skin.
At the thought of this, he once again saw his arms, and there were again some patches of blue, but this time, he wasn't having trouble breathing, and the patches didn't spread with time, which was good news for him.
'Alright, looks like that poison or whatever isn't a problem for my body now.'
He once again started moving forward, and after moving for some time, he quickly found the end of it as he saw the massive pavilion-like structure in front of him.
'Finally, my efforts paid off. I just hope there will be a Void Core inside the Pavilion, or I don't think I would ever be able to return back.'
His eyes filled with tears upon remembering that he might not be able to see his mom again; obviously he was a 16-year-old child and still had too much affection for his mother.
After some minutes, he controlled himself, and just as he started moving towards the pavilion,
The ground beneath him shifted, and for the second time in his life, he fell and vanished into absolute darkness. But this time, would he be able to survive? Or were all his efforts till now just nothing but futile struggle?