Chapter 293: Substitute Calamity

Chapter 293: Chapter 293: Substitute Calamity

In the palm of her left hand, the ring’s cold touch was exceptionally distinct. It felt like clutching a shard of polar ice, the chill seeping through her meridians and into her very bones.

The ring lay quietly in her palm. The rice-grain-sized black stone on its surface had completely lost its luster, turning a dull, matte black.

The violent torrent of resentment and malice from moments before had vanished entirely. The ring felt as if it had been drained of all life, leaving only the heavy, inert sensation of a dead thing.

Seraphina Sinclair gasped for breath as her vision swam with black spots. The combination of her depleted stamina and a Spirit on the verge of collapse nearly made her pass out.

But she clenched her jaw, forcing herself to remain conscious.

’It’s... not over.’

She laboriously shifted her gaze to the edge of the stone platform, where Auric Young lay, its light so dim it was nearly invisible.

The small puddle of golden liquid was perfectly still, as if it had exhausted all its energy.

Seraphina Sinclair wasn’t sure if this was the effect of [Substitute Calamity], nor did she know what would happen to Auric Young if it was.

From the moment she had obtained Auric Young, she had been prepared to one day lose it.

She had thought she had long since built up her defenses, had already factored in the cost of losing it. But as the moment truly arrived, a suffocating, dull ache still bloomed in her chest.

Emotions were a luxury, but it was impossible for a person to be without them.

Especially after Lucky had chosen to retreat, while Auric Young had rushed out at the critical moment to block the fatal blow for her.

"Auric Young..."

Seraphina Sinclair’s throat was dry, and she could barely make a sound.

The golden liquid on the stone platform quivered faintly. It flowed with excruciating slowness a short distance in Seraphina Sinclair’s direction, and then stopped moving entirely.

Seraphina Sinclair stared intently at it. Auric Young’s fluid grace and softness were gone, replaced by a slowly emerging metallic quality.

Just like a real piece of Gold.

Only then did Lucky cautiously approach, nudging her leg with its wet nose and letting out a low whimper, a sound full of lingering fear and a desire to please.

Seraphina Sinclair didn’t have the strength to deal with it. She just braced herself on the stone platform and tried to stand up.

Her legs were sore and weak. It took her two tries to succeed.

She staggered, steadying herself against the stone wall to keep from collapsing back onto the cold ground.

Steadying her breath, she slowly exhaled a foul, blood-tinged breath. Her gaze swept one last time across the stone chamber, a room thick with death and resentment.

The skeletons were silent, the stone platform dim. The faint, flickering light of the oil lamp cast her long, lonely shadow against the wall.

’It’s over.’

She bent down and, with her still-functional right hand, very carefully picked up the piece of Auric Young, which had hardened and lost nearly all its luster.

It felt cold and heavy to the touch, with the distinct hardness and sharp edges of metal—nothing like its former warm, fluid self.

It lay quietly in her palm, like a piece of golden ore that had been melted down and then solidified.

’It was [Substitute Calamity].’

It had traded its life for Seraphina Sinclair’s.

Seraphina Sinclair stared at it in silence, her expression complex and unreadable.

To put it harshly, it was just an item—a tool that could move. Seraphina Sinclair shouldn’t be grieving for it so much.

But human emotions were like that. One felt anger when betrayed, and when protected—even if by a mere item—that searing heat in one’s chest would burn uncontrollably, making one’s throat tighten and vision blur.

She took a deep breath. The cold air stung her lungs, helping her suppress the surging wave of emotion.

’This isn’t the time to be sad.’

She took a smooth cloth from her Silver Moon Earrings and carefully wrapped the solidified Auric Young.

Through the cloth, Seraphina Sinclair’s fingertips could only feel a cold temperature.

She frowned, her eyelashes fluttering, and tried to place Auric Young into her Silver Moon Earrings.

The earrings couldn’t store living things, and indeed, the old Auric Young had never been able to enter.

The solid piece of metal in her hand slipped into the earring’s inner space without any resistance. It came to rest quietly in a corner, surrounded by emptiness, which made Seraphina Sinclair’s heart feel empty as well.

’It really went in.’

This meant that according to the Silver Moon Earrings’ judgment, the current Auric Young was no different from a truly lifeless piece of metallic ore.

Its vitality—or rather, the part of it that was Auric Young—had indeed perished or been annihilated.

Seraphina Sinclair subconsciously raised a hand, her fingertips lightly brushing against the silver moon on her earlobe.

Beneath the cool touch of the metal, in the silent space deep within, lay a solidified piece of gold. ℴ

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the roiling emotions within them had been forcibly suppressed, leaving only calm and exhaustion.

She bent to pick up the long saber that had fallen to the floor. The blade reflected her pale face and the blood staining the corner of her lips.

She didn’t look at anything else in the stone chamber, not the decaying skeletons, nor the strange, now-inactive patterns on the stone platform.

She opened her left hand.

The ring lay quietly in her palm. Aside from its coldness and the lingering sense of dead stillness, there was nothing special about it.

She tried to use Insight again.

[???]

[Description: ???]

Still just six question marks.

The ring was pitch-black and deathly still.

It was like an obdurate stone salvaged from the bottom of an endless abyss, absorbing all surrounding light and heat, leaving only a heavy, unsettling void.

The cataclysmic Spiritual Pollution from before, the venomous howls, the illusions of shattered skulls—it was as if they were all just dust clinging to its surface, now shaken off completely to reveal the cold, hard core beneath.

’Cost...’ Seraphina Sinclair silently chewed on the word.

Lucky’s instinctive retreat, Auric Young’s desperate sacrifice, her own current, utterly depleted state...

’All that, for this thing?’

Reason told her that anything guarded so heavily, to the point of requiring the burning of the skeletons’ very essence as a final defense, could not possibly be simple.

The six question marks from Insight were proof enough.

Emotionally, however, an almost absurd sense of emptiness seized her.

It was like straining with all her might to open a treasure chest of Legend, only to find a featureless black Stone lying inside.

Seraphina Sinclair wasn’t in a hurry to leave, but she didn’t want to linger in the silent stone chamber either. Leaning on her long saber with one hand and steadying herself against the wall with the other, she began to ascend the stairs.

The stone steps were as steep as ever, casting shifting, ghostly shadows in the dim light of the oil lamp.

Seraphina Sinclair took each step with deliberate, forceful slowness. The long saber, dragging behind her, scraped against the stone steps with a soft, grating sound that was unnervingly clear in the silent passage.

Lucky followed close at her heels, its steps silent. Its ears were pricked, swiveling alertly, and its blood-red eyes flicked from time to time toward its master’s tense profile.

The Gloomdrake, whose nature was to seek advantage and avoid harm, understood everything. It knew that its retreat at the critical moment had likely angered its master, so it was acting especially docile now.

After realizing Seraphina Sinclair was ignoring it, it even made a fawning attempt to rub its warm body against her cold leg.