“So, how is it? Anything dangerous?” Tabitha asks me as soon as I open my eyes after using Sense Mana to scan the area ahead of us.
“None that I can sense,” I tell her. “But it’s weird.”
“How so?" Tabitha leans in, hanging on my every word.
Scratching the back of my head, I try to put what I sensed into words. "It's like the mana up ahead is similar to what it should be but different. If that makes any sense.”
“It doesn’t,” Tabitha frowns in confusion.
“The mana in the atmosphere is moving slower, and it has something weird added to it,” I try to explain.
“Weird, dangerous?” Tabitha asks for clarification.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I sheepishly offer my best guess.
Tabitha’s eyes narrow as she stares toward the dead zone. "None of my skills are reacting," she says aloud. “Did you sense any magic beasts nearby?”
“No, not a one,” I answer. In truth, I sensed very little life around us. We were still quite deep in the Endless Forest, only a few miles from its center, which made the lack of wildlife odd. On our way here, I sensed multiple relatively strong magic beasts living in the forest, but the closer we got to the dead zone, the fewer signals I sensed. But that was good; we could explore at our leisure with no magic beasts to worry about.
“Then I suppose we can move closer,” Tabitha leads us forward. She was watching our surroundings but looked relaxed, far more so than when we were in the crater. I suppose that was understandable, considering what we encountered there. Compared to the tentacled beast we saw at the crater's center, ordinary magical beasts just didn't elicit the same fear they used to.
As we near the dead zone, the forest slowly peels back, and we're again exposed to direct sunlight. The trees feel more spread out from one another, and by the time we reach the edge of the dead zone, there are only a few sparse branches overhead. This meant we could clearly see our way going forward, and the random name I assigned turned out to be more accurate than I initially thought.
The patch of forest stretched out before us was almost entirely devoid of life. There were trees still standing tall, but all of them were a pale grey, and I couldn’t see a single leaf on any of them. Considering there was no canopy to block the sunlight, the forest floor should’ve been a carpet of greenery, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The ground shared the trees’ sickly color, and unlike the rest of the forest, it was dry and compacted to the point it looked like stone rather than something you'd find in a forest. I didn’t see so much as a blade of grass, let alone anything bigger. It was eerily quiet, with no sound coming from the area in front of us, and yet, I felt my pulse slowly beating faster. Something about the land in front of us called out to me.
I move to take a step into the dead zone, only to have Tabitha stop me with a hand on my shoulder. “Hold up, scan further in,” she instructs me.
“Are your skills warning you about something?” I ask.
Tabitha shakes her head. "No, nothing like that. My skills say nothing is wrong, but it never hurts to be sure and have a second opinion.”
I couldn’t argue with that. And though I wanted to jump in and explore the dead zone, we still needed to be careful.
Tabitha watches over me as I sink into a meditative state. I stretch my senses to the limit, but I don't find anything dangerous about the patch of forest in front of us. On the other hand, though, I do sense something of note.
“Holy crap!” I exclaim as I drop my skills. Tabitha flinches at my outburst, but strangely her hand doesn’t drop to her sword. Weird.
“What did you find?” Tabitha’s eyes drill into me. “A strong magic beast?” Her eyes gleam at the possibility of there being a challenge.
“Better,” I smile. “There are massive ruins up ahead.”
Tabitha’s grin falters. “Oh,” she visibly deflates and loses interest.
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“You don’t get it,” I add before she starts tuning me out. "There are giant ruins in there," I point into the dead zone. "I couldn't even see everything; they were so big."
Tabitha shows some interest in that but isn't as excited as I am. "And you think these may contain something?” She gives me a quizzical look.
“It’s possible,” I explain excitedly. “The ruins go deep underground but stretch up to the surface. So maybe we'll find a clue as to how the crater was formed."
“You’re still thinking about that?” Tabitha lets out a tired sigh. “The secrets of the past are just that, the past. You should focus more on the present than what happened thousands of years ago."
I didn’t fault Tabitha for her opinions; we had two entirely different outlooks on life, after all. We both wanted to get stronger, but while that's all Tabitha cared about, I wished to enjoy my second life and experience all this world had to offer. And that meant I was curious about everything, including how the Endless Forest came about. If I could find a single clue as to how the Endless Forrest was formed, I would consider it a huge win, and the astonishingly intact ruins up ahead offered the best chance at that.
“Pity that there isn’t anything to fight, but I suppose since we're already here, it wouldn't hurt to take a closer look." Surprisingly, Tabitha doesn't sound opposed to exploring like I thought she might be. Instead, she rolls her shoulders before taking her first step into the dead zone. I follow her in and immediately feel a difference in the ambient mana.
Most of the surrounding mana was still water-attuned, but black flakes of another type of mana were mixed in. The flakes made the ambient mana feel sticky, almost like tar or another adhesive. It stuck to Mana Skin’s barrier like glue, and I had to flare my skill and shed small amounts of mana to dislodge the excess.
I still had extra ambient mana contained between Mana Skin’s barriers from my training earlier in the day, so I didn’t need to worry about accidentally absorbing any of this tainted mana, but could Tabitha do the same? For a brief second, I wonder if we should be here. I really wanted to see the ruins up ahead; in fact, I felt even more drawn to them after entering the dead zone.
However, Tabitha’s safety far outweighed my desire to see the ruins. “Are you okay, being here?” I turn and ask Tabitha.
"This mana is foul but less dangerous than what we faced inside the crater,” Tabitha waves off my concern like it was nothing. And honestly, that’s all I need to hear to put my worries behind me.
Tabitha and I travel deeper into the dead zone, and it isn’t long before we come across our first ruin. The building stuck 40 feet out of the ground and was a tower of some kind with a viewing platform at the top.
Thanks to Sense Mana, I could see that most of the tower was buried underground and that it was over 500 feet tall. It looked like, at one point, the tower was connected to a larger building, which made sense because not far away, I sensed another chunk of the building buried deep down. The two pieces looked like they were once connected, which suggested whatever building I was looking at used to be quite extensive.
“Is this one you want to explore?” Tabitha playfully nudges me and gestures to the tower.
“Maybe later,” I try to prod her back, but she easily sidesteps me. “We should look at everything up here first before we go down. There are many intact buildings, and I'd like to look at how they relate to one another." Plus, something was telling me I should explore deeper into the dead zone.
“You sound like my old tutor,” Tabitha's remark distracts me from my thoughts.
"Thank you," I grin, knowing she isn't complimenting me.
Tabitha rolls her eyes and leads us past the tower. In the distance, I spotted multiple other structures sticking out of the ground, but I was more interested in what was beneath us. After walking past the tower, a massive structure slowly takes shape below us.
Sense Mana’s range isn’t enough to see everything at once, but after piecing a few segments together in my mind, I think I have an idea of what I’m sensing. “It’s an arena,” I say excitingly after ten minutes of walking deeper into the dead zone while scanning the ground.
“Really?” Tabitha looks around at the various stone structures sticking out of the ground with a skeptical look. She doesn’t see everything that I do. The arena is broken into multiple sections, each buried to different degrees, but when viewed as a whole, it was indeed a stadium of massive scale. The structure rivaled professional football stadiums back on Earth, and depending on how many sections there are, it might even dwarf that.
As we walk around, I spot multiple places we could punch through and enter the structure below, but I ignore them for now as we continue to move deeper into the dead zone.
Wait; why are we still heading to the center of the dead zone when we have perfectly good ruins to explore here? The more I think about it, the more confused I become.
Something’s not right, but what is it? Nothing is showing up in Sense Mana, and without vegetation, we had an almost perfect 360-degree view of our surroundings. Tabitha’s skills weren’t alerting her to anything, so what was bugging me?
“This feels familiar,” I mumble to myself.
“What does?” Tabitha asks next to me.
“Nothing much, just the time I ran into the," I begin to answer without thinking but freeze in place as the haunting form of the soul devourer appears in my head.
“Ran into the what?” Tabitha prods, but I’m too busy hyperventilating to answer her.
As my pulse spicks, my mind clears, and I realize the horror movie-like scenery around us. Although everything still looked the same, I realized everything was unnatural, especially my weird desire to go to the center of the dead zone. Thinking back, every time I glanced at this place from the crater's edge, I felt we needed to come here!
Tabitha was now frowning and looking around in concern, but again, her hand never dropped to her sword like usual.
Focusing inward, I use Sense Soul and pale at what I find there. Gently wrapped around my soul were the whisps of a powerful skill. It felt like it wasn't even there, yet it was strong enough to urge me forward without thinking anything was wrong with that desire. For how long has this skill been affecting me?
"Tabitha, we're under the effects of a skill!" I panic.
“What are you talking about?” Tabitha doesn’t immediately react to my revelation, which worries me even more.
How strong was this skill if it could easily fool someone as strong and prepared as Tabitha?
“A skill is drawing us to the center of this place," I reach out and grasp Tabitha by her armor and give her a good shake, hoping it would snap her out of it. "Think about it; doesn't this place set off any alarms? Your hand isn't even resting on your sword,” I point out to her.
My last statement about her sword finally gets a reaction out of Tabitha. She glances around us like she’s lost, but her expression slowly darkens. “Hit me,” she demands.
I don’t second guess Tabitha’s order; I immediately pull back my hand and slap Tabitha across her helmeted face. My hand stings from doing so, but that’s because I didn’t hold back.
Tabitha reels back from the blow and blinks rapidly. She then brings her hand to her chest and mimes, grasping her heart. "We need to get out of here, now!" Tabitha yells as soon as she gathers herself.
The two of us turn around and bolt back the way we came.
“What’s happening,” I manage to ask as we sprint like the devil is chasing us.
“I’ll tell you later,” Tabitha growls, pushing herself even harder.
"Then how bad is..." Unfortunately, I don't get to finish my question before a wave of killing intent washes over me. I almost stumble over myself, but thankfully Tabitha Flash Steps next to me and catches me before I fall over.
“Keep running,” she tells me in a frantic voice.
Biting my lower lip until I taste blood, I use the pain to push past the paralyzing effects of the killing intent. It was several times stronger than anything Tabitha had ever directed at me, and unlike her, it was full of murderous maliciousness.
Something truly dangerous was on our heels.
We barely make it a hundred feet further before a dark shadow passes over us.
Then, death descended upon us, and we could do nothing to stop it.