Third-Person POV
After killing Mifelias and dismissing the aetheral dagger, Lucius turned his attention to the system.
[God Rune Aroa's Requiem twelfth rank x10 or upgrade to thirteenth rank?]
"Twelfth rank? I see," Lucius muttered in realization within his mind. "This rune is incomplete. It seems Arthur still couldn't fully unlock its potential."
"Still, it doesn't matter," Lucius continued inwardly. "I have the system, so this is fixable. Don't worry, Arthur-even if you yourself can't resurrect your father, Adam, or Sylvia, I'll do it for you. As thanks for giving me these opportunities in the first place."
Since Lucius had already confirmed in Maerin that he could extract God Runes as white stones at any time, he didn't hesitate and chose to upgrade it to the thirteenth rank.
A massive influx of knowledge about the aevum branch of aether flooded his mind, along with the instinctive ability to wield it. Even his control over aether improved slightly due to the acquired understanding.
Lucius lifted his head, tearing his focus away from the system and the sensations of the new God Rune, and surveyed the ruined chamber.
Arthur looked as though he had lost something-something obvious. He himself had seen what this rune could do in its completed state. He could have resurrected everyone he had ever lost… but he hadn't. He hadn't reached that understanding.
Haedrig knelt beside the grotesque remains of Ezra's mutilated body. Ada's body-the sole remaining descendant of the Granbehls, lay on the ground near her mirror, which still remained intact.
The phantom was no longer bound, but she appeared to be unconscious.
Ada inside the mirror-the real Ada-was also lying on the ground, shaking with sobs.
"She must have seen everything that happened," Arthur realized in horror. Painful memories of his own father's death resurfaced.
His thoughts were interrupted as Lucius approached the mirror.
Watching the confident Lucius standing before it, Arthur realized it was obvious-Lucius had received that God Rune as well.
Lucius extended his palm and touched the mirror. Suddenly, he heard her muffled, hysterical sobbing.
"I'm sorry, Ada," Lucius said in a strained tone, though his gaze and earlier inaction said otherwise. Everything had unfolded exactly as he intended.
Reaching into his soul, Lucius activated the new God Rune. Aether was slowly drawn from his core—far more gradually than when activating God Step.
Purple motes scattered from his hand, swirling like a miniature galaxy. Ada lifted her head, confusion and shock briefly replacing despair as she began to fade, turning into a pinkish mist that flowed out of the mirror and returned to her body.
Thick black-violet smoke poured from her pores and was sucked back into the mirror. The phantom was once again imprisoned, pure hatred etched across the distorted copy of Ada's face.
Ada's body twitched at Lucius's feet, and she suddenly opened her eyes. She recoiled away from the mirror, terror widening her gaze. Haedrig knelt and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, causing her to scream.
"Easy, Ada. It's me. Just me. Calm down now," Haedrig said gently.
In a flurry of white fragments, the bracelet on Lucius's arm transformed into a long silver spear. Spinning it to feel its perfect balance, Lucius lightly tapped the tip against Ada's mirror, shattering it completely and destroying the phantom forever.
Ada buried her face in Haedrig's chest. Her small body trembled, and her sobbing echoed painfully through the silent space.
Lucius turned toward the remaining mirrors. Approaching the familiar mirrored prisons, he placed a hand on the surface without a word and once again activated Aroa's Requiem.
The ascender's eyes widened in shock as aether motes swirled around Lucius's hand, sealing the countless cracks that marred the mirror's surface. With a peaceful, exhausted smile, the ascender closed his eyes and vanished in a soft aetheral glow.
Moving through the remaining mirrors, Lucius continued using his newly acquired God Rune to free the trapped souls of the ascenders until the last one disappeared with a disbelieving smile on his weary face.
The cold white hall dimmed slightly, shifting to a warmer hue. In the distance, within one of the empty mirrors, a translucent portal appeared.
Turning to the still-disoriented Arthur, Lucius nodded calmly.
"H-how… how do you feel?" Arthur asked hesitantly, glancing at Ada.
The poor girl barely managed a nod before turning away, her swollen red eyes filled with resentment.
"Let's move, Grey," Lucius said, looking toward the portal.
Ada snapped her head toward him, panic blazing in her eyes. "Y-you're leaving us here?"
Arthur shook his head. "You were dragged into this mess because you were with us. If the two of you pass through the portal alone, it'll lead you to a sanctuary."
"You can't know that," Ada said, her tear-streaked face crumpling.
"One thing I do know," Lucius replied in a restrained but gentle tone, "is that if you come with us into the next zone, it will be even more dangerous than this one."
"I have no intention of returning to the surface," the green-haired ascender said seriously.
"You can't be serious. You nearly died and want to go even deeper?" Arthur let out a short laugh. "Besides, you saw that Lucius is unlikely to help anyone but me, so teamwork is out of the question."
"I nearly died because of you," Haedrig corrected. "As I said before, the Relictombs react differently to different people. I expected something like this."
"You expected this?" Ada asked incredulously. "And you still brought us along? My brothers and my best friend died!"
For the first time, Haedrig's composure shattered, replaced by guilt. "I thought your eldest brother was strong enough to-"
"Oh, so it's Kalon's fault they all died?" Ada screamed, her hands clenching into trembling fists.
"I didn't mean-"
Ada pulled her simulet from a hidden pocket and hurled it at the green-haired ascender before storming toward the portal.
Haedrig followed, trying to catch up, but Arthur grabbed his wrist and pulled him back.
Just before stepping through, Ada looked back over her shoulder, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, her bright green eyes sharp as daggers.
"If the Relictombs don't devour the three of you alive, the blood of Granbehl will."
When the last lock of Ada's pale hair vanished beyond the portal, Arthur released Haedrig's wrist.
"Was it wise to just let her go like that?" Haedrig asked worriedly. "Her family is quite influential, especially for the Unnamed Blood."
"Should I have killed her?" Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Not killed… but at least we could've tried to talk."
"Her best friend and both brothers were killed right in front of her. I doubt anything we could've said would've changed her mind. Besides, it's suspicious regardless-our names are already registered," Lucius said from beside them.
"True," Haedrig said after a pause. "And you're not worried?"
"I'm more concerned about what the next zone will be like. You should head back," Arthur said, turning to Lucius.
Haedrig shook his head. "I want to go with you."
Arthur shook his head, unable to believe his stubbornness.
"Leave him, Grey. If he wants to die, let him," Lucius said, heading toward the portal.
Nodding, Arthur followed. His aether reserves had replenished by about a quarter, and warm lights flickered, urging them to leave quickly. Together, they stepped through the translucent portal—
White.
A milky-white color flooded his vision.
Lucius was already crouched, slowly running his hand across the ground. White was everywhere. Even the soil wasn't soil, but some kind of solid white mineral.
Ignoring the abrupt change in scenery, Arthur turned toward Lucius—but out of the corner of his eye, instead of the scruffy green-haired ascender, he saw a familiar girl with piercing red eyes and dark blue hair.
Arthur recoiled, completely caught off guard, while her eyes darted uncertainly between Arthur and Lucius, who was already standing.
"Caera?"
Caera raised a fragile hand to her face, brushing her cheek before pulling a long strand of hair in front of her eyes to examine it more closely. She visibly paled when her hand moved upward and touched one of the onyx horns growing from the sides of her head.
Each horn split into two main branches—one extending forward and upward, while a smaller fang-like pair jutted backward, framing her head like a dark crown. Thin golden rings adorned each of the smaller branches.
"Grey, I can expla-"
Arthur's hand blurred as he seized Caera by the slender neck and lifted her off the pale ground. A quiet gasp escaped her lips as she struggled, but Arthur's gaze was locked onto the black horns.
"She's a Vritra," Arthur thought, feeling foolish for allowing someone he knew so little about to get close to him. "No… then she wouldn't have been able to enter the Relictombs," he countered, uncertainty gnawing at him. "Or does Vritra blood simply run in her veins?"
"I know you're shocked-so am I-but I don't think we'll get any answers from her if she's dead," Regis interjected, snapping Arthur back to reality. "And look at Lucius. He doesn't seem shocked at all."
Arthur loosened his grip, letting the Alacryan woman fall to the ground, where she immediately began coughing violently, clutching her throat.
"Please… Grey. I won't hurt… anyone," Caera pleaded, her crimson eyes fixed on him.
"Stop," Arthur warned coldly, drawing his black sword from his spatial rune while continuing to study the highborn Alacryan. His gaze then shifted to Lucius, who stood calmly nearby.
"Say something. Did you know about this?" Arthur asked, pushing his turbulent thoughts to the back of his mind.
Caera's gaze shifted to Lucius, who summoned his silver spear once more in a swirl of white fragments.
Instead of answering aloud, Lucius activated mental communication and sent Arthur a three-dimensional projection-models of Haedrig's and Caera's movements in various situations.
"Are you Sherlock or some kind of creepy stalker?" Regis asked suspiciously, glaring at Lucius through Arthur's senses. "Why were you memorizing her movements so closely?"
"Neither," Lucius replied calmly, shaking his head. "I knew Haedrig was Caera from the original storyline. As for why I remembered her movements so clearly-I don't know. It's always been like that. But like I said, she can be trusted. And I'll say this now: this isn't the zone I knew either."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Arthur asked, his tone noticeably colder.
"There was no need. You would've found out anyway," Lucius replied before sharply swinging his spear and hurling it into a white tree thirty meters away.
Crack.
A loud snap echoed through the forest. Lucius extended his hand, and the spear flew back to him. Skewered on its tip was something thrashing wildly. Despite being impaled, not a single drop of blood spilled from it.
It was a bizarre creature-an unsettling fusion of white stone and a monkey-like form.
"We need to focus on survival," Lucius said as he absorbed the creature's aether through the spear. Moments later, he flicked the weapon, and the creature vanished into his inventory. "We'll sort out who's who later."
Swallowing his emotions, Arthur nodded to Caera and moved to stand a meter to Lucius's right, positioning himself so that Caera could only stand to Lucius's left.
"You figured out what this place is?" Arthur asked, regaining his composure within seconds.
"Well… yes," Lucius replied, gesturing with his spear at everything around them-from the ground and clawed white trees to the distant bone monkeys, the scattered spires, and finally a massive formation resembling a volcano. "All of it is bone. Everything you see is made of bone."
"This…" Caera murmured, staring at the ground beneath her feet while rubbing her bruised throat. "It really does look like polished bone."
"As I said," Lucius replied, shifting into a stance Arthur recognized from the djinn, "let's figure out identities after we kill the observers."
"I agree, but first-" Caera's gaze settled on Lucius, her ruby eyes burning with curiosity. "When did you realize it was me?"
Lucius stepped forward into the forest, carving through the hunched, skeleton-like creatures with ease. For anyone else, it would've been overwhelming-but an eighth-rank weapon with extraordinary aether conductivity sliced through the bone monkeys like butter.
After dispatching fifteen of them, Lucius turned back to Caera.
"I knew from the very beginning," he said. "The moment I saw you-not you, your movements-I knew who you were."
"By the way," Lucius added, reaching into his inner cloak pocket and tossing a dagger with a Denoir blood medallion toward Caera, "it's rude to spy on someone without permission."
"I wasn't-" Caera's cheeks flushed faintly as she started to protest, but the moment passed. There would be time to discuss it later. For now, they needed to protect each other from the strange bone monkeys.
Whistle.
A white bone spear shot out from the horde at terrifying speed, aiming straight for Caera. At the last possible moment, Lucius's silver spear intercepted it, stopping the projectile completely.
"Hm?" Lucius's gaze locked onto a particular monkey pointing directly at him.
In the next instant, the creature's finger elongated and thickened. Bone extended outward, vibrating violently. Two breaths later, a white bone spear-shaped like an extension of its finger-launched toward Lucius at immense speed.
"Grey, mind being in charge for a moment?" Lucius asked casually, already moving before receiving an answer.
"Hah, always doing whatever you want," Arthur muttered, subtly adjusting his position to shield Caera in case of an emergency.
Cutting through the bone monkeys, Lucius advanced toward the anomaly among them. What intrigued him wasn't the spear itself-but how it was being formed.
From just a few meters away, he sensed it again-a strange pulse so weak he had initially missed it.
"So… aether?" Lucius murmured.
A faint pulse of aether triggered the formation of the rotating bone spear. It wasn't a direct manifestation like an aetheral dagger. No—it was something else. The amount of aether involved was so small it felt as though there was more of it in the atmosphere itself.
It defied Lucius's understanding.
Whistle.
Another familiar shriek, another bone spear flying toward him at incredible speed.
Crack—crack.
The spear in Lucius's hands seemed to come alive. With surgical precision, he redirected the incoming projectile back into the horde, impaling over ten creatures in a single second.
"Khkh—ooh, aah!" The bone monkey screeched furiously, glaring at Lucius. Because of him, so many of its kin had died.
Suddenly, the creature let out a shrill cry-and from the bone trees themselves, a colossal bone monkey emerged.
It stood over three meters tall. One arm alone was as thick as Lucius's entire body.
But its size wasn't what caught Lucius's attention.
Deep within the creature, where a core should have been, a faint pulse stirred.
Aether.
Crack—crack—crack.
A thunderous sound filled the air as the massive monkey's right arm fractured and reshaped itself, forming a shield as an extension of its limb.
"Graaah!" the enormous bone monkey roared, charging at Lucius like a living battering ram.
"Oh?" Lucius muttered, accelerating straight toward it. "How strange. Even the djinn didn't manipulate aether like this… but whatever."