Chapter 718 Curtain of Mana

The following day, the entire group was traveling south, Rina and the remaining second-years included.

With their injuries treated and the prospect of finally leaving the desert ahead of them, they maintained a quicker pace than they had managed in quite some time.

The terrain gradually became more uneven as they retraced Elion’s route. Long stretches of sand gave way to barren shelves of stone, their surfaces scoured smooth by the wind, while deep cracks spread through the earth beneath their feet.

Occasionally, they passed a lonely outcropping leaning at an unnatural angle, its base half buried beneath drifts of pale dust.

For a while now, they had been walking toward a rising wall of smoke, stretching for miles on end, and the closer they got to it, they quicker the group walked, curious to see what could possibly be the source.

There was little conversation by the time they reached the final rise.

A strange sound had begun reaching them from somewhere beyond it, a low, ceaseless murmur that seemed to come through the ground as much as the air.

Rina slowed, her gaze moving toward Elion, but he was already looking ahead with a slight crease between his brows.

The land fell away before them, and she was forced to stop dead in her tracks.

An immense rift cleaved through the desert, its jagged banks separated by a gulf that spanned at least a hundred meters.

From where they stood, its length was impossible to judge. It stretched away in both directions, following an irregular course until distance and drifting haze swallowed its farthest reaches.

The opposite bank rose beyond the abyss as a fractured wall of stone, its exposed layers arranged in somber bands of ochre, rust, and black.

Great slabs projected over the emptiness, some broad enough to support an entire building, while others hung precariously from narrow seams that looked as though a single careless footstep might send them plunging.

Below those broken ledges, the light gradually failed.

Rina could make out narrow shelves descending along the walls, along with pale streaks of mineral deposits tracing their surfaces.

Farther down, even those details disappeared, leaving an impenetrable darkness that gave no hint of how deeply the wound extended into the world. A cold draught rose from within it.

"Wow..." Cody murmured in awe.

None of his fellow second years answered him; all of them were stunned into silence as they stared into the chasm.

Mira approached beside Tessa, stopping well short of the crumbling edge as a deep, distant bellow rolled upward from the darkness.

The sound seemed to swell beneath their feet before escaping into the open air. It lingered for several moments, reverberating between the vast stone walls until the echoes overlapped in a mournful chorus.

Rina felt the hair rise along the back of her neck.

"What is down there?" she asked.

"We didn’t stay to find out," Cole replied.

She could hardly blame them. The rift possessed a terrible magnificence, its sheer scale drawing her gaze even as every sensible instinct urged her to step back.

It was difficult to imagine that something so enormous had remained hidden beyond the ordinary rise they had just crossed.

Yet the abyss itself was only part of the sight before them.

A vast curtain of mana ascended from its depths.

It rose along the length of the fissure in slow, billowing folds, resembling ghastly smoke pouring from some unseen conflagration beneath the earth.

Pale violet light wandered through its translucent breadth, occasionally deepening into bruised shades of blue before fading into a sickly silver.

Near the edge, individual wisps curled around the projecting rocks, slipping through their cracks before being drawn upward to join the greater mass.

Higher still, the curtain broadened, its immense folds rippling beneath a wind that none of them could feel.

It reached so far into the heavens that Rina had to tilt her head back to follow it. Beneath the bright afternoon sky, its wavering surface gave the opposite bank a distorted appearance, making the distant stone seem to bend and shudder behind it.

She had seen powerful spells before, but nothing quite like this: If it was even a spell. This was the wall of smoke they had been seeing from afar this whole time.

For a while, she simply stared, caught between wonder and the increasingly unpleasant sensation settling in her stomach. Then she noticed that Elion wasn’t sharing their astonishment.

She assumed that was because he had already seen this sight before. However, his expression had grown severe.

Maya stood a few steps beside him, her eyes traveling slowly along the rising veil. Cole had moved away from the edge, while Mayumi rested a hand on her sword. Even Yaana’s usual smile had faded as she looked between the mana curtain and her companions.

Rina glanced at them, her own fascination giving way to unease.

"What is it?"

Elion didn’t answer immediately. He studied the place where the drifting mana emerged from the darkness, trying to see past the luminous folds gathering above it.

The last time they had crossed, there had been nothing obstructing their route. The rift had been unsettling enough, certainly, with those incessant sounds rising from below, but the air above it had been clear.

Now, that immense curtain stood between them and the central landmass.

"Odd," Elion said at last, his brows drawing together in a light frown. "That wasn’t here before."

"What do you mean?" Rina asked.

"This phenomenon," Elion explained. "That there is a curtain of pure mana, and it wasn’t here before. All this mana... it has to be coming from somewhere. It’s so thick and pure that it’s actually manifesting as tangible smoke."

The others turned back toward the billowing mana, understanding gradually dawning on their faces.

Elion watched another thick fold curl above the edge, its pale glow drifting across the broken stone before being drawn upward. There was so much of it that he could hardly imagine what might be producing it all.

’There could be something valuable down there.’

Once the thought appeared, he found it difficult to put aside. A treasure capable of releasing such an immense quantity of pure mana could hardly be ordinary.

Perhaps it was something ancient, and so unbelievably valuable that even kings would go to war for the chance to claim it.

Of course, he had no proof that there was a treasure at all, but simply imagining the possibility was enough to make him curious.

"Maybe we should go down and take a look," he said.

Several heads turned toward him, looking at him as if he were a madman.

"You want to go down there?" Tessa asked.

"There could be a treasure," Elion replied. "Something has to be releasing all that mana."

"And there could be something down there waiting to eat us," Mayumi pointed out.

Elion waved a hand at them. "I don’t mean everyone, of course. Most of you would stay up here."

That did little to improve their expressions.

Kali was the obvious choice to venture into the tenebrous, dark abyss.

She had already suggested investigating its depths before, but then Elion had been far more interested in finding Mira and the others than satisfying her curiosity. Now that they were all together, he could afford to consider it a little more.

"What about you?" he asked, turning toward her. "Still feeling adventurous?"

Kali looked back at him, a slow smile forming on her lips.

"As long as I’m compensated well for my services, I wouldn’t mind venturing down there."

Elion’s brow twitched. "We’re bonded partners. You could try being a little more generous."

"And you could try being a little more appreciative."

He sighed, while Kali folded her arms, looking quite satisfied with her own response.

"Elion," Maya interrupted. "It isn’t simply a matter of finding someone who can fly you down there. What if there’s some catastrophic being sleeping beneath us? For all we know, that mana could be coming from it."

Another distant bellow rose from the darkness, seeming almost determined to support her argument. A few of the second-years shifted away from the edge, while Elion glanced downward again.

"Kali is a Saint," he said with a shrug. "If whatever is down there turns out to be too much for her, then, well... that would be our terrible luck."

Maya gave him a flat look.

"You understand how little comfort that offers, right?"

"I’m not saying we should charge straight to the bottom and attack the first thing we see. We could take a look, find out where the mana is coming from, and decide from there."

"And come back if it looks troublesome," Mira added firmly.

Elion smiled at her. "Naturally."

Maya rubbed her forehead, then turned toward Kali, intending to ask what she could sense from below.

The reason they were even here was to find resources and treasures. If they turned away from this opportunity simply because they were afraid of some great monster that may or may not exist, then what would be the point.