Karl steered himself awkwardly toward the ledge, slowly getting the hang of manoeuvring in free-fall with his adapted armour.
He could likely achieve the same effect with a cloak or cape if he tied it to his ankles, so he wanted to remember this skill for later.
As they approached the cliff, Karl could see that there was a cave at the back, but he could also see that there was something alive in there.
“There’s something in there. I can see the aura of its soul.” Karl informed Nacht as he steadied himself on his feet and refreshed his armour so it would spawn a more practical design.
Then he dimmed the light of [Flaming Body] so that it didn’t draw the attention of whatever he had seen.
“You have the Soul Sight as well? How did you manage that?” Nacht asked.
“It’s a benefit of being bonded with Hawk, who has evolved into a Ghostfire Thunderbird. I gain the sensory specialties of my beasts, but most of them are duplicated, or inferior to a version I already have.
But I have thermal vision, echolocation and soul sight to work with, which ironically makes it even more disorienting to be high in the air in the dark.”
Nacht nodded towards the entrance to the cave. “Shall we? If we’re in a trial, standing around out here isn’t going to do us any good. But we might have an advantage on some of the others, as we found something living the moment that we landed.”
He had a point. He had forgotten that he should be seeing anything living, if there was something alive in the trial, but Karl hadn’t seen anything else living beneath them, only the ground and the mountains.
Nacht moved toward the cavern entrance, shifting into human form so he would fit within the confined space. The ceiling was over five metres tall, but in his adult dragon form, he was still far too large to fit within the available space.
Karl also ended the [Brutality] skill and let himself shrink back to his normal size, which suddenly felt very short compared to the height that he had gotten used to on his travels through the Newbon Empire.
“So you’re not an exceptionally tall human. You just keep a skill active all the time to be taller. That’s an odd choice.” Nacht noted.
“It also increases my strength by fifty percent. When there is heavy lifting or fighting to be done, it is much better to have it in effect, but if we’re headed down into the tunnels, it pays to be a bit shorter than average.”
Nacht laughed. His own human form was quite large, but Karl’s was roughly one hundred eighty centimetres tall. Taller than most women, but not particularly tall for a man. However, he was broad and muscular.
The tunnel was gently sloping and carefully carved, not a natural formation in the stone. Karl used [Silent Movement] to reduce noise to the point that echolocation was only a faint image, and he was relying almost exclusively on thermal imaging to navigate the darkness. Nacht didn’t appear to be suffering from the low lighting situation at all, so Karl took the lead and followed the winding passage down into the mountain.
As they descended, Karl picked out patterns on the walls, and motioned for Nacht to stop.
A tap of his knuckles on the stone to give him an echo image of the hallway clarified the situation for Karl. There were Dwarven runes carved all over the walls around them in two lines. One at just over waist height, and one near the ceiling.
“Can you read those?” He asked Nacht, once he realized the extent of the carvings.
The dragon created a small light, and began to mumble to himself. The system was translating, but it was just random words. Stone, forge, Ale, Deep, Hammer.
Then Karl realized what they were reading. It was a recounting of the names of the rulers of this place. “We are in the Legendary City of Graska. Or more correctly, a replica of it. This place was home to a population of Dark Iron Dwarves, and perhaps in a trial it still is.” Nacht explained.
“It isn’t populated anymore in reality?” Karl asked.
The dragon smiled at him. “Most likely not, but it was never a real place in our world in the first place.
If we go by when the legends were first recorded, the actual city’s mines would be hundreds of thousands of years old by now, and surely played out.
The dwarves wouldn’t remain forever if there was nothing but stone, they would have rebuilt the city on another nearby mountain. But when Dwarves move a city, they give it a new name, and the upper line of runes clearly says that this is Graska, and that we are coming in from the Southern entrance.
What I’m more interested in is what is causing that soul glow. Something is alive down there, and powerful enough that we could both see its aura from the entrance.”
Karl shrugged and used [Flaming Body] to bring back the light.
“We might as well walk proudly into the city. Perhaps it’s an ancient guardian left behind. This is a trial, and there is no reason to think that they are trying to play mind games with us.” He explained.
The black dragon chuckled. The young human had many things left to learn about the true nature of the gods, and the non-draconic members of the Pantheon. That was a common oversight of the humans’ nations. They taught about the Dragon Gods, but they tended to overlook the others. This place reeked of ancient power, and ancient power meant the Laughing God, an ancient Demon God who had once operated a system for the humans, separate from the one that the World Dragon operated on the worlds that he protected.
Nacht had heard rumours that this human with him had encountered remnants of that system in the past, so it wasn’t impossible that his luck and affinity for fate had dragged them both into another Laughing God aligned trial. frёewebηovel.cѳm
“What do you know of the Laughing God?” Nacht asked as they walked through the ancient corridor.
“The God of Pranks and Ascension? Not a lot. He’s supposed to be the God you turn to when you have reached your limits, and you need divine favour to survive. But according to my parents, his sense of justice is questionable, and the favours are often granted in the most unlikely ways. Personally, I think he’s the scapegoat God. When things don’t quite work out, and you don’t want to say that another God’s decision caused you hardship, you say that it’s the favour of the Laughing God.”
Nacht chuckled. “In a way, yes. The random choice options in the System selection, the ones that can change your gender and species? Those are almost certainly his additions. But you are right about his aspect, he is known to help humans reach the status of Demigods, even during times when no other God was willing.
This place we are in, it might be a Relic left by the Laughing God, or the Ancient System he implemented. It doesn’t feel like dragon energy, so I don’t think that what is here is a Relic of the World Dragon.”
Karl nodded. “If Prince Corbin is right, this might be the resting place of a Titan Demigod. I should have asked him more questions, but I was expecting to travel here with him.”