After the gate was opened, many of the children felt like they had entered a different world. The mana around the ruins was completely different than what they were used to. Zakai could not tell the difference as he just walked forward while ignoring the others while they stood shocked at what they felt.

Elya just looked at her son and sighed: “If only he would have some friends…” She mumbled under her breath and then also took a step forward.

Zakai was fascinated by the ruins. Such an old place and it was still there. Even though the colors had faded on the pillars and such, it would have been interesting to see what the place looked like all those years ago, when it had been built. The ruins looked like an ancient garden, the plants had overgrown and mostly weeds and different kinds of vines grew all around the place. Zakai did not actually care about the architecture or the plants or flowers or whatever they were. He was just overjoyed to see such a place existed. His mother had talked about traps before… “I wonder what kind of traps there were here…” Zakai mumbled out loud.

“All kinds of traps, but it is probably better that you do not think about the traps… they were terrifying.” A voice came from behind him, he turned and he saw Jerilyn with couple of her friends.

“Really? How do you know?” he asked quickly to hide that the answer startled him.

“Really, Jer? Why did you speak to the zak? Let’s just go and leave that garbage here!” One of the girls said.

“Pfft. Yes, let’s go.” Jerilyn chuckled and turned around to go. She had no idea why she had said anything to him in the first place. Honestly, she still remembered all the times they played when they were younger, but after the affinity test her parents were adamant on stopping her playing with the boy.

Zakai was annoyed, this time he really was annoyed. Normally, he did not care that others mocked him but now for some reason, he really had felt it for the first time in a long time. Zakai thought Jerilyn was better than the others… of course, he had misunderstood, the girl meant no harm when she chuckled earlier.

After taking a moment to calm himself, Zakai remembered that there were different kinds of runes etched to a statue that was supposed to be in the middle of the ruins. He wanted to see them, so he gathered himself again and slowly followed after the girls.

After a moment Zakai caught up with the girls. They were staring at the statue as if the thing was alive. Zakai could not understand what they saw in the statue or in the etchings for that matter, but he still decided to give it a go. Trying his hardest, he looked at the runes, and suddenly he could hear a voice.

“You…”

“Are…”

“Not…”

“Safe here…”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Jolting Zakai awake from the staring, he looked around and kept wondering here did that voice come from. It was impossible to tell whether the voice belonged to a man or woman. It felt like it was just the words that appeared in his head, while he was also quite sure he had heard it. As far as he knew no one had had such an experience here before.

However, to Zakai’s surprise it seemed like the girls also had heard the “voice”. They were terrified, it seemed like they knew what it meant.

“Uh, did you hear that too?” Zakai asked and the girls just ignored him. So, he tried asking again and again until one of them answered.

“You also heard it, trash? Impossible, that was infused with mana, there is no way you could have heard it.” Said a temperamental red-haired girl, and of course, she just blurted it all out.

“Liz, don’t be so mean to him…” Jerilyn smiled.

HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

They heard a maniacal laughter all of a sudden. It felt like it was strengthened by mana so everyone inside the ruins would hear it.

“Maybe we should go see what happened?” One of the girls pondered.

“”Yes, we should.”” Liz and Zakai answered at the same time. Liz turned to glare at Zakai, her face was filled with disgust. Zakai just ignored the disgusted glare and started walking towards the entrance.

The girls looked at Zakai’s back as he walked towards the gate. Shortly after they also followed. Even though that laughter gave them goose bumps. Maybe it was the magic involved, as it seemed like Zakai had no clue what had happened.

Zakai was mostly unaffected by magic, such as mind control and different kinds of curses that used the person’s own mana to either attack or control the person. In fact, he was immune to all the magic that affected someone else’s mana. Of course, someone could for example, move his body physically with magic but they could not make him move it by using mind controlling magic. Of course, both of those types were rare as those born manaless were a lot rarer and everyone could purge those curses, and unshackle them from mind control with a bit of their own mana.

Almost everyone else was gathered at the entrance. There stood a man in black outfit, his skin was dark blueish and he had pointy ears. One of the ancient races… A dark elf. Dark elves did not particularly like staying in the sun for too long. Most of the dark elves lived underground like dwarves.

“Huhu, welcome, humans!” The dark elf chuckled. “It would seem I have hit… What did you humans call it again? Ah! Yes, huhu, a jackpot! And now, I will kill all of you.” The dark elf’s expression turned very serious.

The dark elf had waited for two days for someone to show up at the ruins to test his new magic. He had done these sorts of things before, and he always wanted a test subject who was alive. This time… he would have multiple test subjects. He had chosen the ruins as the place for the test… because if he got caught, he could always use the excuse of a trap that one of them had accidentally triggered a hidden trap. Something like that had happened in the but it was quickly covered up.

The air around the dark elf started to change into something eerie. Blueish swirls appeared around him and the temperate in the air dropped drastically.

For a moment, everything felt like a dream. The children could not comprehend what was happening.

“GET BACK!” It was Godo that yelled at everyone, surprisingly enough he was the first one to react. The children woken up from their stupor started running away from the dark elf. Before most of them managed to hide the cold of the magic had already seeped into some of the children. Whether it was adrenaline or the nature of the magic, they had no realized what was going on.

“AAAAGH!” A scream sounded out while a child saw another one completely frozen.

The dark elf in black looked like a god of death preying on those about to die. Zakai and the girls would be in for a surprise…