Kain saw visions of an ancient period.
A man with tan skin and brown hair and eyes was saying something indiscernible to four others: A regal-looking man with gold and eyes and hair, a large burly man with red eyes and black hair, a frigid-looking man with piercing blue eyes and silver hair, and the only woman who had hair that faded from grey at the roots to a light violet at the bottom and strangely had both of her eyes covered by a black blindfold.
They were all dressed in attire from centuries ago, leading Kain to believe that these event s must have taken place not long after the Empire’s founding.
Kain was unable to understand what was being, but it seems as though the brown-eyed man was able to convince the others of something as they all nodded in agreement.
Quickly scenes of the relics construction flashed by. Kain had wondered how such a large object had managed to be carved with so many sigils. It definitely utilized advanced techniques that had been long lost and would be difficult to find among anyone today. However, it seems as though humans weren’t used.
Flying all around the relic on the backs of red hawk-like birds were hundreds of small muscular-looking men with pointed ears—dwarves? Kain had heard rumours about non-human civilizations, such as the elves and dwarves, but majority of them had long disappeared with no contact with humans. Therefore, this was the very first time Kain was seeing them.
Kain then saw the scene of the original 5 individuals at the beginning of the vision having an intense fight with what appeared to be a black dragon.
The dragon was perched atop a massive hill, but upon closer inspection, Kain could see that the ‘hill’ was made up of corpses. Corpses that were in various states of rot and gradually turning black. Some of those corpses had reanimated to resemble the black rotting creatures present within the relic that Kain and the others would occasionally come across.
However, unlike the modern ones, the ones in the vision were on a completely different level in terms of strength. Based on the colour of their spiritual power, Kain concluded that the weakest of them were indigo-grade, equivalent to a 7-star beast tamer, and many of them were even stronger than that. Even more terrifying was the fact that there were hundreds of creatures at that level.
The group of 5 were made up completely of 9-star beast tamers, but even they struggled against the dragon and its underlings.
Finally, at the cost of the blind-folded woman dying, they managed to defeat the dragon.
However, terrifyingly it seems as though it was unable to be killed. It wasn’t a dragon in the truest sense, Kain suspected that the dragon may have just been a host for something much more terrifying.
They destroyed and burned all of its underlings, however the body of the actual dragon was completely immune to burning despite their best efforts, and they could sense that what possessed the dragon was not truly dead. All they could do was divide up the body of the infected dragon and apply many seals to each piece. Each piece was then transported to a different location.
The vision then changed to a glass box covered in sigils containing one of the pieces, a large dragon tail, being carried into this relic where the strength of all creatures within had been restricted to yellow-grade, the lowest they could weaken the creature, due to the intricate sigils carved into the relic.
However, since they were unable to definitively kill whatever it was previously, and only sealed it, it appears as though the creature living inside of the dragon had even managed to outlive the sigils powering its cage, and occasionally some of its aura had managed to leak outside to infect passing spiritual creatures within the relic, and even occasionally outside of the relic—explaining the rotting egg and completely dead colony of spiritual creatures the egg had been found in.
Kain blinked his eyes as he came back to his senses and saw the others around him doing something similar.
More than ever Kain was struck by the importance of their mission to find the core of this relic so that they could better control what comes in and out, and also use resources to refuel and repair the sigils.
Fortunately, it appears as though the core of the relic was located just beyond this cavern behind the sealed doors.
Unfortunately, the core was in the same room as the extremely terrifying spiritual creature that could probably easily kill all of them since that was the area with the strongest sigils to restrict it within the relic, even if it was weakened to yellow-grade and was only a single body part, it was still probably a more dangerous enemy than any other Kain had previously faced.
However, it was a definite fact that the sigils of this relic were weakening, and in order to repair them the core was needed. If they just closed their eyes to this enemy already at their doorstep, it’d be only a matter of time before it and many of the other more dangerous microorganisms escaped and caused havoc.
Kain stared long and hard at the golem. “I’m sure you showed us this so that we could have a better understanding of what we are going to face. Also, based on your actions so far, can I assume that you are a kind of guardian placed within this relic? Would you be willing to help us?”
It didn’t give any kind of reply to Kain, but instead made a gesture at the sealed door behind it, which then opened to reveal a dark passageway. It then lumbered slowly towards the passage while bending its body forward awkwardly due to its immense size being restricted by the slightly lower ceiling of the tunnel.
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“I guess that means we should follow it…” Kain said before glancing at the others still waiting around awkwardly. He then led the way just behind the golem into the tunnel.