The group made their way through the tunnels to where Rouna was leading. They had come to a large door that was large enough for the Black Dragon he killed to fit through.

The door had no handles or door knobs and was outlined with a blue mana glow. The door itself was made of metal that seemed to give off an evil aura to everyone around and there were engravings of strangely inscribed words and two images of knights with one greatsword each.

The knights looked like they were wearing full body armor that covered their entire body. Their helms were complete with visors and semi-cylindrical. They wore pauldrons that were layered on top of each other to make three full layers. The chest armor was made of four pieces on the front as they couldn’t see the back. The chest piece was one piece and the armor covering the stomach was made of three. Their legs were just one mound of something that Rune guessed was sand and they were larger than their bodies.

The swords were made of three parts for the blades and the handle was large enough for two hands even though they were holding them in one each.

Rouna took one look at them and scoffed.

“They look weak. Those images are actually what is on the other side of the door. If we can get past them, then there should be a teleportation pentagram leading to the surface. Now, how do we open the door?”

“Huh?! I thought you knew?!”

“No. Of course not! I couldn’t figure out how even with my farsight magic!!”

She did not sound happy and was glaring at the door as if it killed her family, which is to say angrily and frustrated. She crossed her arms and spat on the ground in front of it.

“Why don’t we try to destroy it? Here. Stand back.”

Rune was already taking out some of his special black mines that were now more powerful than ever. He made a setting on them to trigger different enchantments to make them more or less powerful. He took out four and set them to the highest setting which could easily take out an entire company of up to 200 soldiers each.

“Yeah… I recommend standing over there.”

Rune pointed to the tunnel entrance they had come from which was several thousand meters away and he quickly jogged towards it. The rest of them followed suit and he rounded a corner and held the detonator. He developed it so that it could also either detonate on impact or with a controller or both at the same time if one worked and the other didn’t.

In his hand, the small, cylinder had a small, red button with a symbol of a cross with a skull on it, the classic jolly roger flag symbol. The handle itself was very similar to his flash grenade except that it had a golden snake design writhing around it in a spiral.

He counted down in his head from three. When he reached one, time seemed to slow down as his finger moved towards the button. It pushed down and down until… explosion!

The four black mines detonated with such force that those who were not Rune nor Rouna staggered back as the air ripples like powerful waves. There was a large explosion in which the mines let loose shrapnel that dig into the surrounding terrain.

Rune silently cheered in his head as he saw the explosion that he was proud of. It was a large blaze of fire and small pieces of crystals that flew about the large room they had evacuated from. The rest stared in awe as they witnessed the sight of an explosion that could destroy an entire town in a moment.

When they heard Rune chuckling in glee, they were completely frightened of him and his power. They knew that he wouldn’t kill them, but they were fearful of what would happen if he used the bombs again. Such things would surely be the end of all races in Arborea.

The only explosions the current world used was explosion magic that was far inferior to Rune’s black mines. If he wanted to, he could definitely have Jared and Kelly help him develop several different weapons of mass destruction that would even be foreign to Earth. Such things like orbital annihilation cannons, bio bombs that could envelop a country, genetically enhanced soldiers, and probably even magically enhanced versions of atomic and nuclear bombs.

Even so, there was no need for Rune to do such things as he liked to get right down in there and end people by himself instead of killing off a large population with just a press of a button. Also, he wanted to get experience points and things on such a large scale would not be able to give him experience as other people would be needed and it would likely be shared equally instead of mostly to him. After all, he was greedy and no person is not greedy for something as everyone wants wants.

A large screen of smoke covered the room like a curtain of deadly poison as the sand scattered. When it dispersed, everyone could see the effect and Rune was especially disappointed as they looked.

The door was fine, save for a small, black smudge that covered about a foot. This foot was like an ant to the entire door that was like a giant to that ant. Rune swore as he saw that the explosions only made a slight smudge on the door.

He sighed as soon as everything in the air dispersed and walked back towards the door. He scratched his helm, since he was still Cursed Armor, and stared carefully at the door.

“Hey, Rouna. You said you could look in the past, right?”

“...yes?”

“Why don’t you try and see what people did to get past the door?”

“Well, I can certainly try.”

She sat down in front of the door and closed her eyes. She started mumbling incoherently as soon as her eyes were shut. She was in a curled up ball position and was casually sitting in the sand. She kept muttering something about sand and how there was too much of it.

The rest of the group sat behind her, opposite of the door, and started doing their own things. Rune started to work on four more black mines as he basically wasted them and took out some tweezers and gems to work with. The gems were the basic and core material of them and the tweezers were for the fine tuning of the mines.

Rena, Hika, Riika, and Erin started to pull out cards and played blackjack with no stakes. They played several rounds from when Rouna started until she finished looking into the past. Throughout that time, Rena won once, Riika twice, Hika four times, and Erin lost every single round.

Elisa was quite lonely without Rouna talking to her and she pulled out her sword, Excalibur. She started to pull out a whetstone and sharpened the blade. It glowed a white light full of purity as soon as it left the sheath.

Soon, after about one hour of doing barely anything other than playing, working, and eating some food that Rune passed around, Rouna opened her eyes. She looked around and quickly ran over to the right side of the door.

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She felt around the sand and broke off the solid sand around the area. A hole appeared in the wall that was no longer covered by sand. She reached her hand into the hole and stuck out her tongue while doing so. She was reaching for something in that hole and, soon enough, found what she was looking for.

She smiled as the door shook and sand flew about. Everyone shoved their things away and Riika hastily packed up her cards. Rune donned his gauntlets and hooked the hield back on his gauntlets.

The door slowly sunk into the floor and the group could see what lay beyond it. The floor was now just made of a single, large slab of grey stone that had carvings in it. The ceiling was darkness that surrounded a single, solitary light that was as bright as the sun.

There were two sand piles that had armor around them with two swords in the ground near the two sand piles. As Rune picked out his bolt action rifle from his storage and aimed at them, the sand piles stirred and rose up. The sand surged upwards to form a humanesque figure that rose up and armor flowed up with the sand pile as well.

The group just looked in astonishment and slight fear as the sand guards rose from their slumber and reached for their swords. Rune aimed for them as they slid towards them on their sand piles instead of legs.

At the moment they indicated that they were going to swing, Rune fired off his gun and blew a hole in the middle of one’s chest armor. It stumbled back, but kept its position as the hole was filled back in with sand while the metal armor stayed the same it was with the hole in it.

The group scattered as the swinging sword kept heading down towards them. Rune was the only one to move towards the sand pile first and he used his claws to swipe at the sand. With the acid dripping from the gauntlet, he was able to cleave a large chunk that smoked and melted into a puddle of liquid metal.

He kept clawing until he noticed movement to his left. It was another sword. He barely raised up an arm quickly enough to block and was sent flying. The one that just hit him sped up its pace to attack him and swung the sword in its hands once more.

This sword swing was much faster than the other one’s and could almost keep up with Rune’s top speed. Since he was stuck in the stone wall, he could only move an arm and his rifle was slung on his back. He raised his left arm to try and catch it and, as soon as it reached his fingertips, he closed his hand.

He still felt the full brunt of the force, but then found that he made five gouges in the sword where his fingers touched it. Even so, it didn’t smoke and instead decided to shine a radiant light. Rune felt his fingers burn as if someone put his hand in lava and he did not like it.

Since he was the Demon King, he was immune to Darkness damage, but, in turn, was weak against Light attacks. This was how the Demon King’s before him were killed on top of the fact that people were stronger in the past.

Also, the gods just kind of watched the people suffer as they found that it was like watching a cartoon or movie. Only a few helped in the Demon King’s subjugation while the rest laughed and spectated with almost complete addiction. For the gods, it was boring to balance the world and they could take care of that pretty easily. They wanted entertainment which they received from unforeseeable outcomes and such.

Even so, they couldn’t see into the areas of what they didn’t own and they could not watch Rune. The gods all sighed once they realized that Rune left their controlled domains and entered Hell’s Gate. They could only now see him through what Elisa saw as she was religious to most of the gods. Nobody else really was except for Rouna and Erin who worshipped Bahamut, but not very much.

Riika and Rena weren’t worshipping gods as they didn’t do anything to help them out in their lives and Hika wasn’t the religious type. Rune occasionally thanked the gods he knew of, which were only three, and didn’t do much else that was religion related. In his former world, he was an Atheist, but that idea was shattered the moment he died.

He was forced deeper into the wall as the force of the sword threatened to crush his body. His armor already had countless dents and scratches, but was not so harmed to be dented or something akin to it. He tightened his grip on the sword and the pain intensified as he did so.

He managed to crush the metal into a twisted form that looked like a crushed can and he held on so that, when the sand being pulled the sword from the wall, he would come out as well. Sadly, the world was much crueler than that and, when the being pulled the sword form the wall, Rune ended up breaking the sword and stayed in the wall.

The sword that he held was from the last fourth of the blade and he started to transmuted it. It turned into a chain with two grapples, like a grappling hook except two hooks, and trust it forth with his [Gravity Control]. The chain moved and the grapples hooked onto the sides of the walls.

He was about ten to twenty meters in the hole and was sprung forth vis grappling hook. He launched himself at the sand guard that knocked him into the wall. He readied his gauntlets to strike the sand guard in the helm.

As he flew through the air in a not so graceful manner, he was stopped short when the slower guard swung at him. In the air, he barely dodged out of he way using the rifle that was still on his back. He had a rough idea where the trigger was and fired it as he tumbled in the air. The shot went wild and made him soar farther above the slower guard’s sword and he grabbed the rifle as he did so.

He reloaded and the next bullet filled the chamber. There were no bullet casings as he did so as the entire bullet was made to eject from the muzzle. Even so, the bullets were aerodynamic and sped through the air at amazingly high speeds that, in the bolt action rifle, it could break the sound barrier with a speed of Mach 2.

This was more than enough pressure to blast him away and he fired once more, but was now directly overhead the faster guard. The bullet was made of a Fire crystal that had an effect to dispel magic.

It cruised through the air and found its way from the top of the guard’s head into the floor. It embedded itself as the guard was caught on fire. Even with no recoil, the barrier of air that the bullet created as soon as it exited the gun blew him farther upwards into the air.

He shot again, but, this time, towards the darkness above. He flew down with tremendous speed and put away his rifle for his katana. He stabbed into the guard and it crumpled into a pile of sand.

He leaped off of it and started to use [Lightning Grip] to heat up the armor on it until it melted into unusable chunks of metal that kind of looked like partially melted crumpled paper. Then, as an extra precaution, he started to melt the remaining sand in the pile.

He scrambled away as it started to move and he was getting more irritated by the second. He wanted to ask Hela just what it was, but sighed as he knew that he left her at the mansion. Apparently, Kelly and Jared wanted to harness something that was called “Demonic Force” since Rune wasn’t around to let them test it on him as well as the fact that he didn’t like being in the lab for long periods of time.

Hela was absolutely up for being tested on, for some reason, and figured it was much better than being stuck in the amulet. Currently, not that Rune or the others knew about it, but Hela has now been in the lab for over 1,000 years within the span of a week in real life. The “Demonic Force” that they were testing was just the strange magic that they used that allowed them to use some aspects of the Seven Deadly Sins, like the charm magic.

At the moment, the group was scattered about while trying to attack the other sand guard that was not just a pile of sand and some lumps of metal. They were each standing at a distance form it due to it being quite fast and extremely powerful. When it missed a sword swing, the sword ended up in the stone floor and made a small quake all around them that shook the ground and toppled them over.

It seemed that they weren’t hurting it too much with their guns and, what made it worse, was that they only held pistols and submachine gun. These guns were not cursed by Rune for, when he cursed something, it was cursed to only be used by his bloodline, which doesn’t include those who marry into the family nor adopted people. Even so, he had enchanted the guns so that they were more powerful, but they still could not match Rune’s cursed weaponry.

The bullets sunk into the sand, but then popped right back out and fell to the ground with no speed. If they hit the armor, they would bounce off and ricochet off of it and struck randomly about them. Several bullets almost hit Rena, but she was far too agile to be bested by a bullet that was slower than her.

The main problem was that the sand guard they were fighting was also much sturdier and dexterous than the other albeit being slower. Sadly, no one in the group knew that this sand guard was much sturdier than the other one as they only knew that it was much slower.

Rune pointed his rifle at the sand guard and reloaded his gun. Just as he was about to fire, he saw that there were tendrils coming out from its back and he fired immediately as he saw this and fired several more shots until he plopped in a new cartridge of ammunition.

The guard ended up with five new holes in it and destroyed armor. The sand making it up slowly fell to the ground and the armor clanked as it left the sand. Rune sighed as he saw that the two sand guards were killed.

Of course, he just set up a flag with that sigh. The others noticed the sand moving soon after Rune had and they watched in tiredness. It looked like people were getting up and out from the sand piles, but they were just sandmen. To the students, it was horrifying to watch.