Chapter 106: A Kobold Temple? 1

Because they were so far away, Kent could only make out the movements of the kobold priests below. He could not hear a single word of whatever they were chanting.

He glanced at Daphne beside him.

Her face had gone pale.

Kent let out a faint sigh, then reached over and took her cold little hand in his own. Without saying anything else, he raised his night-vision binoculars and continued observing the scene below.

Perhaps fate had been looking out for him in some strange way.

Kent had lost almost everything during their desperate escape, yet both his night-vision goggles and his night-vision binoculars had somehow survived.

Daphne’s equipment, on the other hand, had been completely lost.

Fortunately, the place where they were standing was several hundred meters above the floor of the enormous cavern.

They were hidden behind a protruding shelf of rock, making it extremely difficult for the kobolds below to notice them.

Looking down at the vast gathering, Kent finally understood something else.

With so many powerful kobolds living in the Underdark, it was no wonder that the dwarves, gnomes, dark elves, and humans down here had learned to coexist relatively peacefully.

“Don’t be afraid. Let’s watch a little longer.”

Kent felt Daphne tighten both hands around his.

He turned and saw how pale she still looked, so he quietly tried to reassure her.

Hearing his words, Daphne managed a faint smile.

Kent continued watching.

The longer he observed, however, the stranger the ceremony seemed.

It was clearly some kind of sacrificial ritual.

And the sacrifices were alive.

Dwarves.

Gnomes.

Dark elves.

There were even a small number of humans among them.

The captives were carried toward the temple by several powerful kobold priests.

Kent did not need to see what happened inside to guess their fate.

One after another, the sacrifices disappeared through the enormous temple entrance.

By the time the procession finally began to slow, nearly a hundred living people had been taken inside.

Kent was suddenly very grateful that Daphne did not have his binoculars.

At least she could not clearly see what was happening below.

But something about the ritual continued to puzzle him.

The kobold priests who carried the sacrifices inside always emerged again shortly afterward.

Yet the elderly kobold mages who were obviously the leaders of the priesthood never entered the temple at all.

Was there some special rule behind that?

Kent continued to observe carefully.

Each time a sacrifice was carried toward the temple, one of the kobold mages would release a ray of green light.

The light would strike the captive before they were taken inside.

And whenever this happened, the atmosphere among the gathered kobolds became extraordinarily solemn.

The armored kobold warriors remained prostrate on the ground.

The priests conducting the ritual behaved with equal reverence.

There was none of the chaos or savagery Kent normally associated with kobolds.

Instead, the entire gathering seemed immersed in an almost oppressive sense of devotion.

Even stranger, as more and more sacrifices were carried into the temple, the glow surrounding the enormous statue gradually became brighter.

“Could this really be a divine miracle?”

Kent stared at the scene in astonishment.

He did not know much about religion, but he understood at least a little about the difference between an ordinary statue of a god and one that truly carried divine power.

A statue by itself was nothing more than a lifeless object.

Stone.

Metal.

Wood.

Whatever material it happened to be made from.

But if divine power actually resided within it—if the deity it represented could respond to the prayers and offerings of its followers—then it was no longer considered merely an ordinary idol.

It had become a true vessel of divine presence.

And that would mean the god worshiped by these kobolds truly existed.

More importantly, it was capable of answering its believers.

There were not many deities in this world known to give direct responses to their followers.

Even among those that did, such responses usually appeared only during major annual ceremonies.

When a deity revealed its power in such a manner, people called it a divine miracle.

Kent stared at the increasingly brilliant statue.

For a moment, even he was shaken.

Then his expression suddenly changed.

“No...”

He narrowed his eyes.

“This isn’t a divine miracle.”

Once the initial shock passed, Kent quickly rejected his own conclusion.

A genuine miracle should carry overwhelming divine pressure.

If the god itself were truly responding to the ceremony below, then both Kent and Daphne should have been able to feel its presence even from this distance.

But the growing light radiating from the statue gave him no sensation whatsoever.

No pressure.

No awe forced upon the soul.

No elemental disturbance.

Nothing.

It reminded Kent more of an ordinary lamp back on Earth than any manifestation of divine power.

In fact, it did not even resemble magical light.

If a spell were producing illumination powerful enough to fill such an enormous cavern, the magical fluctuations should have been tremendous.

Yet Kent could sense nothing of the sort.

There was another reason he was certain.

Within the area illuminated by a true divine manifestation, the power belonging to that particular deity would completely dominate the surroundings.

Kent had experienced this before.

In the City of Angels within the Empire of Light, the region extending several kilometers around the statue of the God of Light was saturated almost entirely with light-element magical energy.

The same principle applied to the temple of the Earth Goddess in Alliance City.

The moment Kent had stepped inside that temple, he had sensed almost nothing except earth-element magical energy.

The other elements had been suppressed so completely that they were practically nonexistent.

That was also why priests who were allowed to cultivate inside such temples could become terrifyingly powerful.

But becoming a priest required far more than magical talent.

A person also needed absolute sincerity and devotion toward the deity they served.

And between the two...

devotion was far more important.

Kent narrowed his eyes slightly.

The colossal statue and the enormous temple before him were enough to prove that the deity represented here was no ordinary god.

A divine statue was not something that could simply be built however one pleased.

There were rules governing such things.

Kent had heard that even gods were divided into many different ranks and categories, though he had never bothered to study the subject closely enough to understand the details.

But one question immediately came to mind.

Who had built such an enormous temple?

The kobolds below?

“No... impossible.”

Kent studied the kobold warriors lying prostrate on the ground.

The armor they wore was obviously made from iron plates crudely pieced together.

The craftsmanship was primitive.

Worse still, many of those iron plates clearly bore the distinctive characteristics of dwarven forging.

If these kobolds could not even manufacture their own armor properly, how could they possibly have constructed a temple and statue of such astonishing scale?

Kent immediately ruled them out.

While he was still lost in thought, the radiance surrounding the divine statue finally reached its brightest point.

The entire cavern was flooded with hazy light.

At the same moment, the kobold warriors below suddenly erupted into wild howls.

Kent had no idea what they were shouting.

No matter how hard he listened, the harsh cries meant absolutely nothing to him.

For a moment, he could not understand why they were reacting with such overwhelming excitement.

Then he turned his head and noticed the astonishment on Daphne’s face.

Kent paused.

A second later, he understood.

“Ah...”

To Kent, this glowing statue was not even as impressive as a high-powered searchlight back on Earth.

But he had almost forgotten where he was.

This was the Underdark.

A world buried in eternal darkness.

In a place where most people spent their entire lives surrounded by black stone and dimly glowing plants, an enormous source of light capable of illuminating such a vast area would naturally seem miraculous.

What else could people call it but a divine miracle?

In fact, even on the surface, something like this might still be regarded as a miracle.

After all, producing light over such an enormous area without causing even the slightest magical fluctuation was already an extraordinary phenomenon.

That only made Kent even more curious.

“Daphne, let’s go down and take a closer look.”

A long time passed.

Kent and Daphne ate a meal and even managed to get some sleep.

Eventually, the thousands of kobold warriors below began leaving one group after another.

Before long, only a few dozen kobold priests remained.

Kent continued observing them carefully.

He soon discovered something else that struck him as strange.

The priests did not live inside the temple.

Their quarters were located in a cavern some distance away.

Why?

If this was truly their sacred temple, why would the priests choose to live so far from it?

Could it be that there was something about the temple’s environment they could not tolerate?

Kent spent a long time watching the area and gradually pieced together the layout.

There appeared to be roughly six passages leading into the cavern around the temple.

He reached that conclusion by observing the kobold guards changing shifts.

Each passage seemed to be guarded by four kobold warriors.

During one shift change, Kent counted twenty-four guards in total.

Only four passage entrances were visible from his current position.

The remaining two were presumably hidden on the far side of the temple.

More importantly, aside from the guards stationed at those distant passageways, there were no kobolds anywhere near the temple itself.

And by an incredible stroke of luck, the rocky ledge where Kent and Daphne were hiding lay several hundred meters from the nearest guarded passage.

After considering everything carefully, Kent made his decision.

He wanted to go down and investigate.

He turned toward Daphne.

“Come on. Let’s take a look.”

Daphne’s mouth fell open in shock.

She looked at the temple.

Then at Kent.

Then back at the temple again.

“That’s too dangerous!”

She answered anxiously.

“That’s a divine miracle!”

“Heh.”

Kent looked toward the distant temple and gave a quiet laugh.

“A divine miracle?”

“More like a trick.”

If another mage had been standing here, they would probably have thought Daphne was right.

After all, a colossal statue radiating enough light to illuminate several square kilometers without producing any detectable magical fluctuations truly did resemble a miracle.

But Kent was different.

He had grown up in another world.

A world of brilliantly illuminated cities, electric lights, searchlights, and entire streets glowing through the night.

To someone accustomed to that kind of brightness, light itself was hardly sacred.

And because of that—

what everyone else saw as a miracle...

Kent saw as a mystery waiting to be uncovered.