When the while flash of light finally faded, Daimon rubbed his eyes to adapt to the change of illumination, of course he didn’t lower his guard, but contrary to what he expected nothing tried to attack him.
“What kind of welcome is that damn it”, he mumbled.
Once his vision returned to normal, he evaluated his surroundings, besides the obvious fact that he was separated from the others, he also he was in a hall with zero sources of light.
The first thing he did was trying to reach Aisha through the mental connection, but she was too far away from him, still he could feel she was okay, which made him let out a sigh of relief.
Luckily his eyes functioned better in light reduced places, so he was like a fish in water perfectly being able to see.
According to the how this ruin was discovered, the guys who entered all died due to the traps, also the badges were found by the sage way after that and no one used them since they were a one-time type of item, so he was the first one to be within this hall for who knows how many years.
‘Another language which isn’t known off in modern days’, he thought as he injected mana into his eyes, only after using about the same amount of mana he used to decipher the inscription outside of Dimas’s castle, a couple of words became readable.
Daimon raised an eyebrow before he jumped sidewards, dodging an arm with spikes all over it.
The arm again aimed at Daimon but this time he didn’t dodge and instead he grabbed it with his hand from the wrist, in an up-close view it was an arm with a gray skin tone, it had some places where the bones were visible, but it didn’t reek of death, helping Daimon reach the conclusion that somehow whatever it was, it was alive.
“Hsss!”, Daimon’s hand lit up with white flames creating a loud burning sound, the arm which was burning in a black smoke tried to break free but Daimon’s grip was like a steel claw, and a second later the arm was consumed by the flames leaving behind black bones which then turned into dust on the ground.
A broadsword appeared on the air and with it as the core a vague white feminine figure manifested, making Daimon smile.
The darkness of the room was suddenly overwhelmed by the warm light radiated by the figure, revealing that the walls, floor and roof were all made out of black stone and had tons of different inscriptions engraved on them.
“That was a real arm you know, I would have freaked out if I had to touch it”, while the vague light figure had no face, Narasha’s voice could be heard coming from it, this was the spell she developed to be able to fight alongside Daimon.
“Embodiment of light”, using Gram’s form as the core, she condensed light mana to form a body, in this form Daimon couldn’t use Gram, but Narasha could manipulate mana on her own, in other words she could cast spells, it was a temporary solution for her lack of a body, normally she didn’t use it as she has been polishing the spell until she more or less managed to give it a decent shape.
“It was just an arm with genetic damage, similar to that chimera thing I killed back at the prison, it’s me who terrorizes others not the other way around”.
“The fact that you could see it from the very beginning, didn’t help you remain brave at all, of course”, added Evangeline.
Daimon chuckled as he tried to decipher more of the inscriptions on the walls.
“So, our dear “Eve” has honored us with her presence, you didn’t say anything for the past three days, I was starting to think you somehow escaped or something”.
Narasha which was standing on guard using her light to dispel the dark element mana which kept trying to flood the hall, giggled.
“Eve said you and the others were too noisy so she isolated her senses”.
“Nasha, what’s the point on telling you to keep quiet about if you don’t pay attention”.
Daimon laughed at how close those two got to the point that they used shortened versions of their names, originally Evangeline kept some distance from them, but over the time she became good friends with Narasha and then the other girls, as well as him of course.
Although she still teased him from time to time, it was different to when they met.
Anyway, this wasn’t the place nor the time for that, Daimon focused his attention on the part of the wall from which that arm originated, besides the corroded state of the black stone probably due to the aging, some of the inscriptions were destroyed by something.
As the progenitor of Demon Light, of course he could recognize its burning marks, and so he could tell this wasn’t done by him, unfortunately no matter how much mana he injected into his eyes besides a few words he got nothing else.
“This is getting annoying, I need to expand my knowledge”, mumbled Daimon.
The words he managed to grasp could be translated as “Dormant”, “Drakolevia”, “Danger” and “War”.
Things didn’t look exactly positive for Daimon, of course there were unknown dangers inside a ruin, poisonous areas, magic beasts who no one has seen before as well as other creatures, but most of the time there is a reason for those things to be inside of the ruin.
The worst-case scenario would be a ruin filled with things whose purpose was to kill outsiders… and with this small interaction that was the most probable answer, but then what was the purpose of the badges then.
Ultimately Daimon shrugged, he took out a notebook from his inventory and drew the original inscriptions and the deciphered versions of them on it, before he continued walking followed by Narasha.
The hall extended for quite a bit and it was dismal to say the less, as other things kept sprouting out of the walls and trying to attack Daimon, arms, legs, some kind of insect limbs, and even weirdly shaped eyes popped out of the inscriptions, but all of them were burned to a crisp by Demon Light.
The whole place was like a haunted house, it’s not like Daimon was emotionless, but the darkness which lingered in this place was apparently radiated by the walls and had an effect on the mind, which was rendered useless by Overlord’s pride.
In other words, while trying to affect Daimon, the fear-oriented inscriptions nullified themselves, for him at least, even a strong-minded person would probably feel anxious in this completely closed space filled with things that kept popping out of the walls, floor and roof.
On the way he even saw a mirror which reflected a pretty decayed version of himself, which he totally ignored, once he was out of reach Daimon shot a small lightning towards it, destroying the mirror which triggered a trap behind it.
Making bone darts to be shot from the wall as a trap door opened on the ground, others would have probably destroyed the mirror on the spot, which would make them fall on the trap door to their death, or if they dodged the trap, their attention would be on the floor which would make the darts become the last thing they would see.
“What kind of idiot designed this place”, mumbled Narasha as Daimon kept destroying trap after trap, while fending off against the horrible manifestations from the inscriptions.
After about thirty minutes which seemed to last more than what they should, Daimon reached the hand of the hall, but instead of a “light at the end of the tunnel”, there was a deeper darkness lying ahead.
Daimon rubbed his chin as he got an interesting idea, he dispelled Demon Light and instead let out his darkness element mana, then under the surprised “eyes” of Narasha and Evangeline, the condensation of darkness which was blocking the path parted ways revealing a black gate with a socket with the shape of the badge.
But that wasn’t all that darkness actually flowed towards Daimon and swirled around him, before it was absorbed by his magic core.
“I guess darkness affinity plus the passive “Lover of darkness” can have that effect… damn, you even managed to seduce an element, I fear for other people’s wives”, said Evangeline with an exaggerated dramatic voice.
Daimon shook his head, he didn’t expect that condensation of darkness to be suddenly absorbed by his magic core, he only supposed that since the badge was black, it was meant to be used by a darkness element mage so to leave this hall, he had to demonstrate he was skilled in that element, and the result was better than what he expected.
Still, he didn’t miss the chance to get back at Evangeline.
“You should worry about yourself instead of others, who knows, someday I might be allowed to punish the administrator of the system”, he said with a smirk on his face.
“Uhhh”, Evangeline’s laugh stopped in cold, she mumbled some things Daimon couldn’t hear and then remained silent.
Daimon walked towards the black gate and stopped five meters away from it before he threw the badge making it land on the socket, the whole place suddenly trembled making some dust fall from the roof as the gate slowly opened.
The first thing Daimon saw as the heavy door opened was… a head, a head made out of some kind of black mineral bricks.
The hollowed spaces which represented the eyes of the head, suddenly lit up in black flames and the head spoke in a slow robotic voice.
“Welcome to the Drakolevia ruin badge bearer, do you wish to receive your reward right no… aghhhh!”.
Before the head could finish its speech, Daimon condensed a sword with Demon Light and stabbed it on the face, the bricks melted revealing a mass of gray meat below of it, in other words this head was another of the things which popped out of the inscriptions, but it was disguised to look like an automatic golem.
No matter how loud the head screamed or asker Daimon to stop, he only did it when half of the head was gone, the white flames then retraced into Daimon’s body, without moving into the area about five or so meters, to the displease of the now half head.
“Now, since you can feel pain, then you are sentient, tell me what is this place and who are you”, said Daimon with a calm yet cold voice.
“How the hell did you know I wasn’t a golem, my disguise has helped me devour you greedy humans all the time!”, blabbered the half head head, making Daimon realize he might have damaged it a bit too much.
Something he also noticed was that while it was in a “afraid” state, the notification for his terror contractor skill wasn’t appearing, which added to the mystery of this whole place.
The head kept blabbering about its disguise for another whole ten minutes, until Daimon burned it down with Demon Light, a whole layer of rocks fell from the gate revealing a skeleton which ended in the head, whatever that thing was it was only bones without anything else, besides the head.
Also, the badge didn’t fulfill its function, meaning this skeleton head monster as Daimon named it, only imitated the true place where it should be used.
This time once the “corpse” of the monster fell from the wall, a gate appeared but without Daimon doing anything it opened and then light filled the hall, making Daimon raise an eyebrow.
‘What the hell is wrong with this place’, he thought as he looked at the place to which the door led.