“What a domineering temple,” Damien muttered as he observed the Inheritance site in front of him.
The temple didn’t look big from the outside, with a stature befitting any normal temple one would see in the outside world. The material used to build it couldn’t be identified, but it had clearly been worn down with time. It didn’t have any shine or luster like it should have.
The temple overall looked dilapidated, but those two massive stone doors that signified its entrance were still as majestic as ever. On those doors, there were carvings in a language Damien didn’t understand, but they seemed to contain a profound aura that couldn’t be hidden.
“But even with those characters, if it wasn’t for the aura this temple is radiating, I probably wouldn’t even consider it as an inheritance site.”
The aura of ancientness and desolation had already corroded a 10-kilometer radius around the temple, and it was still continuing to spread.
“With this kind of commotion, it’d be a miracle if nobody noticed it. Weren’t inheritance sites supposed to be discreet?”
Although he wondered about it, he knew he didn’t have much time to dally. He was already many days behind the rest of the competitors that entered the temple grounds. And within these days, some people might have already reached the most central area of the temple.
“Hm?”
Damien’s attention sharply turned to the ancient characters on the door. His eyes narrowed as he glared at a certain spot.
‘Am I mistaken? I could’ve sworn I felt a gaze observing me just then.’
Damien furrowed his brows, but in the end, he ignored the feeling.
Well, no time to think it over. I should stop delaying and head inside.’
The stone doors were still swung open as if the temple hadn’t finished accepting guests yet. Damien poured mana into his eyes and scanned the entrance for traps, but after finding nothing, he immediately shot forward.
When he entered, he found himself inside of a seemingly endless corridor with hundreds of doors lining both sides of the hallway.
Each door had a different set of inscriptions or patterns on them, but with Damien’s lack of knowledge on the history of the Trial World, he had no way of discerning them.
‘Let’s continue walking for now instead of rashly picking the door. Either way, something tells me that I’ll have to pick at random later on anyway.’
Damien continued down the corridor while observing the surroundings. The experience reminded him of the ancient temple back on Apeiron where he had first learned about and met the Nox.
‘That guy was way different than the ones I’ve met recently. Where does the inconsistency come from, though?’
In reality, the only pure-blooded Nox Damien had met since that day was the Demon God overseeing the Primordial Undying Realm. Everyone else was simply corrupted by them to be used as lackeys.
The thing Damien didn’t understand, though, was more related to intelligence.
‘The fact that he had been sealed for thousands of years can be used to somewhat justify his feral state, but I don’t think it’s that simple. He was in stasis, so his mind shouldn’t have been worn down too much. But if the Nox were really so unintelligent, how could they scheme so much and corrupt these high-level people that I’ve met?’
Combined with the fact that the Demon God didn’t seem to be unintelligent at all, Damien couldn’t understand why he felt such a discrepancy. By all rights, with the information he currently held, it should be easy to conclude that the Nox he met in the ancient temple was an outlier. But his instincts told him otherwise.
‘I seriously need to become more informed about them. Fighting an unknown enemy is damn annoying.’
As he thought, Damien had traveled a few hundred meters down the endless corridor, but the doors on each side didn’t lessen at all. Even the patterns on each door were still unique, never once overlapping.
“Haa…if I continue being indecisive, I’ll just end up walking down this corridor forever. Let’s speed up and see if there’s any door that feels special. If not, I’ll just choose a random one.”
Damien increased his speed, using lightning to boost his movement. He kept his awareness concentrated on a 30-meter radius around him to watch out for traps.
He wanted to teleport instead, but thinking that he might miss something important if he was skipping space, he decided against it.
He kept up his pace for another half an hour without pause, using his spread awareness to inspect the doors as he passed. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anything special among them even with the amount of time that passed.
“Fuck it, we ball.”
Damien took a sharp turn to the left and charged into the nearest door. He had no interest in staying within the corridor until someone else claimed the inheritance.
He pushed open the door and proceeded to enter the room behind it. When he scanned the area, his jaw almost dropped.
The walls were lined with treasures of various kinds. SSS rank and Chaos rank artifacts weren’t even rare. In one corner, there was a bookshelf filled with hundreds of pill bottles.
‘If I was an appraiser, I’d be able to find something of true worth within this room, but I can’t, so I’ll just take it all!’
As Damien moved to collect all the treasures in the room, he felt a ringing sensation in the back of his mind.
“This is…”
During the past three months while he laid comatose, the only thing he did was improve his mental power drastically. Because of this, his perception was far greater than it was in the past.
In fact, even his All-Seeing Eyes had seen a jump in quality due to his improvement. When he felt the ringing sensation, he didn’t hesitate to pour mana into his eyes to scan the room once again.
“No wonder I felt like that. This whole setup is a trap.”
The room Damien saw now didn’t contain any treasures along the walls, nor were there pills or other valuables. The room was empty besides a single book that sat in the center of an indiscreet wooden box.
“If I had chosen any of the treasures on the wall, I probably would’ve been transported out or killed. Regardless of what would’ve happened, I would’ve gained nothing and instead missed out on the true treasure in the room.”
Damien walked towards that indiscreet wooden box that was hidden amongst the illusion he once saw and picked up the book that sat on its surface.
“What is this, though? It’s so worn down and doesn’t even have a title…”
Damien opened the book and flipped through its pages, disheartened to see that they were also empty.
He tried many different methods to see if words would show up on the pages, including infusing mana into the book, but it was all for naught.
“Whatever. Even if I can’t activate it, it’s still a treasure. Maybe I just don’t have an affinity with whatever this book is for.”
Thinking so, he stored the book away in his subspace and glanced around the room again.
“Ah, there it is.”
Finding a hidden mechanism on the wall, he quickly went over and pulled the lever. In the next instant, the floor below his feet disappeared, leaving room for a dark abyss that didn’t seem to have a bottom.
“Welp. Guess I’ll just fall then.” Damien muttered.
His body soon fell prey to the laws of gravity as he plummeted into the abyss.