Chapter 44: First Altar of Blood

The air barely made enough space for him to fall, as the ground only grew closer, feeling like the only way.

Stopping not even a meter above ground completely in his tracks, he stood on the air, walking forward like it was just a staircase.

As his feet touched the ground, he stood still for a moment; some part of him just wanted to return to the cave and live like a student.

But that part of him he couldn’t stand; you can’t just act like somebody to become one. He was a professor, and his mission was clear.

Pushing away his emotional side, Steven stepped forward through the darkness of the forest, barely paying attention to his surroundings.

If anyone wanted to mess with him, they could try; without Merency on his side, he could act much more freely.

But he could already feel something approaching him as he jumped over another tree.

Two golden eyes were staring at him like a predator. Steven scanned the surroundings for any marks of the fingers, but they had all been destroyed by Trevor’s tornadoes.

In the next moment an over four-meter-tall cat with a sapphire symbol jumped from a tree directly towards him.

It flew through the air with incredible speed, but Steven only slowly moved his hand like it had been a sword.

As the cat stopped completely in the air still a dozen meters away, it upped half a foot, separated from the lower one.

Steven didn’t even look down as he jumped over its corpse; it wasn’t even able to make a dying scream before the cold embrace of death got it.

With nobody watching him, there was no reason to act weak or use limited magic.

Reaching the stone pillars in a fraction of the time he needed with Merency, the place looked just as wrecked as before.

With not even half of the pillars standing barely recognizable as a circle.

"She said somewhere below here." He spoke to himself, thinking about pulling out the pillars one by one if necessary.

Until a single reflected bolt of moonlight caught his attention in the middle of the space where the two thunderbolts had crashed.

Inside that crater was something he hadn’t seen before.

Stepping towards it, it was mostly covered by dirt and ash, but at the lowest point there was a single piece of metal.

Raising his hand, the dirt and ash started flying in the air, hovering above them. As a giant metal plate revealed itself.

"A tunnel? Really?" As he grabbed the giant plate with his bare hand, pulling it up, he revealed an entrance big enough for a human to fit inside.

Setting the metal aside, Steven leaped forward into the darkness.

Walking through the darkness, he didn’t even cast a light using his mana where it was blocked as Pathfinder.

Instantly noticing he was descending in circles like a spiral.

"How deep is this going?" He questioned himself while stepping over something that had a similar form to a human skull.

Every few steps seemed to only have another part of the skeleton. And the deeper he went, the less appeared.

There wasn’t even a single trace of mana left in him, which meant he had been dead for a long time, at least a few years.

He had been walking for at least ten minutes now, deep enough that nobody would ever find him.

As the path finally opened in front of him, two things came swinging towards him, probably hidden blades.

But Steven just grabbed both of them with his hand and with a flick broke them into shards.

"How utterly boring." As other waves of blades come towards him, they just shatter at his barrier.

He stood in the entrance of a giant room, letting out a sigh. He opened his hand as a dot of light appeared.

It flew higher and higher and then started radiating more and more, filling up the entire room with light.

He stood in an ancient white marble room with thousands of runes everywhere, perfectly clean as if it had just been built; in the middle was a dark one-meter-tall altar.

Not caring about the use of the room he made, his way was directly to the altar.

It looked like it had been cut from a wild crystal, and only nature had obtained a shape fitting for a fluid on the top.

Staring down at it, he found a dark fluid already inside of it, swimming wildly around as if it were alive.

He could even sense a small taint of mana inside but not a dangerous amount.

Raising his hand while lowering his sleeve, he held it directly over the altar as with his second hand he cast a small wind blade.

Cutting into his own flesh, blood started flowing down directly into the darkness, which seemed to drearily drink it.

As a wave of nausea hit him, feeling like he had drained a great amount of his mana, the darkness grew quiet.

Still disoriented, the runic patterns started glowing on their own, releasing great amounts of mana.

As a sudden force started pressing down on him, Steven understood why he had to destroy this place and why the person before failed.

His bones felt like they were about to shatter, and his barrier seemed to not be able to detect the spell to cancel it, as he could barely gather the power to raise his arm.

Even the light he cast fell from the ceiling as the floor started transforming into some fluid that tried to swallow him.

Shaking off his confusion Steven created a flame in his hand, focusing more and more energy on it until it turned cyan, which started burning the air itself.

And just as his body was about to disappear, he fired it directly towards the altar.

Everything after could only be described as pure destruction.

as the runes tried their hardest to remain standing.

But everything was slowly fanning the flame.