Novel Full Chapter 1612 1612: A Third Floor?
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Shade spread the Spiritual Specters through the entire hall, finding nothing else but rubble and corals, he harvested a few as he found they could be good ingredients and materials for potions and equipment, but nothing else than that though.
“Seems the area is clear; except that pool I haven’t checked…” He thought, rubbing his chin. “Go and look for anything else in the rest of the dungeon.”
The specters moved swiftly, leaving the hall and spreading into the rest of the dungeon, flying at lightning speed through the rest of the corridor.
There were two unexplored rooms which seemed to have monsters of some kind, and then a dead end. His specters infiltrated the two rooms, finding more statues.
These statues of snail people had different shapes though, unlike the previous ones, they weren’t wielding tridents, but staffs made out of marine animals’ shells.
The two rooms were the same, with the exact same golem statues inside, which were currently dormant. Unlike Smilkas, Shade’s specters were silent and undetectable.
“Those rooms could have some tablet fragments… Okay, Reaper, you’re up. Go destroy them and bring me what’s inside. Tarantula, accompany him.”
He summoned two more Spirits, a huge skeletal reaper encompassed by robes made of shadows, and also a giant black spider made of abyssal shadows, with an abdomen covered with hundreds of tiny ghostly spiders.
“…”
“…”
The two spirits didn’t even talk, rushing where he had ordered them. Unlike the other spirits which were so talkative, the spirits Shade had contracted were far from that. They were either Ghosts, Specters, or Darkness and Shadow beings, things that embodied the worst fears out there.
Only a few ever talked, and they always preferred to just not say a word either way. They were the most compatible beings to become the Familiar of a Hero of Abyssal Shadows like him, although they were quite scary to most people.
“I’m done with this…” Shade crossed his arms. “I should go check how is Nepheline going…”
He appeared right by the side of the pool, teleporting into the shadows of a large coral tree, and quickly encompassed his head with a bubble of air, leaping into the water.
SPLASH!
.
.
.
“The hell is this?”
Nepheline started at the huge thing in front of her, it wasn’t a living being or a monster or something of that matter, but it was enormous, and it felt like her daughter hadn’t even seen it before.
It was either not there when she came, or had been ignored completely somehow… Although knowing how Aquarina was, Nepheline was sure it was the former. Her daughter wouldn’t have easily missed something this big underwater.
“Some sort of castle…? And ruins…”
What was in front of her were the ruins of an ancient city, houses, large towers, walls, everything now turned to underwater rubble, covered with algae and corals, and fish swimming everywhere.
She swam towards the place, slowly glancing around the underwater utopia, perhaps once a beautiful place filled with life and its inhabitants, but now, merely a memory of a forgotten past.
At the center of this forgotten city, there was a huge castle, with a golden-colored gate.
“Is this door made of Orichalcum?”
She gently caressed the door, feeling it was incredibly tough by merely touching it.
“It’s only on the door though, maybe I could break it open and move somewhere else… Wait, didn’t my daughter find the third fragment of that spirit’s ornament in here? No, it was Khepri!” Nepheline finally remembered well. “Right, it was the spirit that went to find it, my daughter never actually visited this place and assumed there wasn’t anything else…”
That only meant that either Khepri didn’t tell them because she wanted to keep this place hidden, or just didn’t seem to care at all about it as she didn’t even see it.
Probably the latter, Khepri didn’t seem to be a malicious being, and she was nothing but just someone trying to find themselves.
“Well, I better explore some more while I’m here…”
She swam around, entering the ruined houses and finding some shells here and there. They were huge and made completely out of spirit crystals.
“Shells? Where did these come from?”
She found several of them around the ruined city, most of them buried under the rubble. There wasn’t any vestige of other life though, bones and the like were completely gone.
She tried to look for something else, books, tablets, or something else than that, but could only find broken basins, and what seemed to be alchemy cauldrons.
“Nothing of value to be honest, except the shells…”
She quickly moved towards the castle again, looking around it. Among the entire city, the castle was the only thing that remained stable.
The city’s buildings all were made of colorful corals, but as they were covered with algae, they slowly lost their color.
Except for the castle, which remained beautiful even after all this time.
She quickly tried to break through the walls and the ceiling first.
BAAM! BAAM! BAAM!
However, she quickly discovered there was some sort of Orichalcum infusing into them, as the walls came down, she noticed the golden metal beneath.
“This probably needs some kind of key, huh? Maybe the tablets could work?” Nepheline wondered. “Though, do I need to do it the normal way?”
She crackled her knuckles, infusing her Aura into her hands, Nepheline then harnessed something developing within her Physique and her Magic Circle, their powers unifying into a single power within her.
Her heart, which had been crystalized into a heart made of diamonds and other metals, rapidly started beating faster and faster.
BA DUM!
BA DUM!
BA DUM!
And then, her eyes opened again.
FLAAASH!
She infused this powerful energy that went beyond Mana into the orichalcum gate, spreading her powers into it and then…
FLUOSH!
The orichalcum started bubbling, slowly beginning to move aside, opening the way for her to step through.
“It worked, good.”
She had manipulated the metal itself, opening the gate without needing any damned keys.
Nepheline glanced at her own hands, feeling the sparkling power from within her.
“It’s developing smoothly…”
Her Divinity Aspect was rapidly developing.
“Now, where does this- Oh.”
Nepheline was surprised, finding a long staircase leading even deeper from the interior of the castle.
“There’s… a third floor?”
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