Chapter 80 Syphon

With the help of the floating wisp Zoroth, Suta was swiftly escorted out of the spacious area. At this moment, he cautiously walked through a narrow hallway with that familiar man-made iron floor while strange black rock with glowing blue minerals covered the walls. The further they moved through these spaces, the glaring truth about this place began to unfold.

‘It reminds me of some research lab. It’s baffling to think of why this is even here. But the evidence is hard to ignore.’

Zoroth was rather choosey when he spoke to him. Although Suta didn't mind, he was glad the strange mist could navigate them.

“So this place, what is it? And why were you trapped down here for so long?” He finally asked some questions, sitting on the edge of his thoughts. He was curious to know, but also fearful the answers would leave him regretting letting this out.

“Oh-ho? Well, it isn’t very easy to explain without delving into another matter entirely. But to understand it, you should understand the history of this place. A history scarred with wars, betrayal, and deception kukuku. The cliche matters of our days."

Suta kept a side eye against the floating wisp. That cackle was almost grating his soul.

“Before, I was stripped of my very being and left to waste away into this pitiful smog. My kin and I thrived for many moons on the surface. Our way of life was somewhat cordial. A simpler time when every inch of land in this realm belonged to us. But one day, a visitor appeared from the fabric of nothing. A strange creature of light, no bigger than my fingernail. And yet filled with such divinity, even our strongest folk were made to revere in its presence.”

Suta thumbed his hairless chin in deep thought. If he could piece together the fractured things, he had heard about this place. There was only one likely answer to his question.

He steered his curious gaze towards the floating wisp and asked.

“Fairies? The fairy appeared.”

He sensed by the change of tone that he was right.

“You are familiar with their kind kukuku. Indeed, bright essence proved to be a natural enemy against our power.” The wisp explained.

“Hm? And why is that?”

“Kukuku, it's simply just how things went. Besides that, the king of those divine creatures wasn’t a direct threat to my kin. In actuality, their disposition was one of peace and naivety.”

Suta remembered those large-eyed tiny sprites and could understand what that must’ve looked like.

‘I can’t imagine them being less than playfully unaware of everything.’ He remembered what that whimsical blue forest looked like.

“Then h-how did you end up…stuck there?” he gestured towards the fading hall behind them

“Kukuku, I was naïve. And fell for the sweet song from a being we all thought was fashioned in perfection. I admit that it was a crude and out-of-character mistake by myself. Years later, I found myself playing the role of livestock to the whims of a deranged God.”

Suta thought deeply about those words, caressing a distressed heart as he tried to depict what sort of creature could do such a thing.

“Aha, we’ve arrived.”

The ghostly voice snapped him out of his thinking. Raising his head slightly, he found himself in another spacious cavernous room. It was almost identical to the previous one except for the countless life-sized empty chambers glued to the fleshy walls. In the centre of this strange room was a circular stoned ring with strange metallic flooring. He scanned the room further and noticed a small area where strange, unfamiliar machines were kept like a base station with buttons and dials. Suta thought about a laboratory observing this place. He felt chills running down his spine when he started to piece things together.

‘An abandoned laboratory and cages? With weird creatures and dead bodies .’

The single answer sat at the end of his thoughts. But the question of why this existed here was a growing concern.

“So this is the way out?” He asked, a little sceptical

“Indeed, I can still vaguely recall the layout of this place, kukuku, they thought, because they sealed my body. My mind was still intact.”

Suta paused briefly and stared thoughtfully into the smokey cloud covered in stars floating beside him. Whichever way he looked, this mysterious cloud carried too many secrets to be considered one of the clique's good guys. Not even Suta was that naïve.

“Just up ahead, look, that closed door- go on, let’s see if it still opens,” Zoroth spoke

Suta nodded, gingerly corrected his footing, and walked towards the large ring. His soles pressed over the ground and echoed through the empty air, stirring an uncomfortable sound clomping against the spacious air. Keeping a watchful eye on the countless empty pods against the wall, Suta only hoped whatever broke free from them was long dead. A very eerie sense of abandonment mixed with the air, as though the people here were hurried into leaving this place.

His gaze brushed over the base station: several buttons and twisting dials. Many weeds had also broken free from the inside. He searched the tall ceilings. The corners of the cave were covered in thick moss, and more silver pipes intertwined with one another. Suta soon stood in front of the towering oval-shaped door. The crack between the flat spheres told him how this door was supposed to open. Only…

‘How am I supposed to get in?’

He scratched the back of his head, still not seeing anything noticeably close to a lever or a button. His patience was eventually exhausted, and Suta quickly twisted his head towards the floating cloud for support.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Kukuku, power. You see those suspicious-looking cylinders hugging the walls? You’ll need to figure out a way to run the power through it. The doors should open on their own.”

‘Running power?’ Suta thought to himself, he only needed a brief glance against the walls to know power had not ran through this place in a very long time.

‘So how am I supposed to find power?’

Suta strolled around the hall, paying close attention to the silver box containing all the dials and buttons. Several different-coloured buttons were aligned against the left side, and the three dials were framed in hollow glassed cases to the right. He aimlessly pressed a few buttons in hope, but as expected, there was no reaction.

‘Okay, let me think. The pipes are aligned against the walls, which means the power source is likely elsewhere. In fact, didn’t I see them in that other wider room, too?’

Suta thumbed his chin before he recognised there was no avoiding going back into that hall filled with those cages.

This time, he moved with a little bit of urgency, quickly reemerging into the other hall. His first thoughts immediately moved towards that gigantic upside-down flower bud. Suta swallowed his gathered spit and cautiously approached the glowing flower bud.

“H-hey-eh, wh-what is that exac-“

Before Sutas's words could leave his mouth, the floating cloud brushed past him and hovered closer to the cyan-coloured flower bud docked in the middle of the hall.

“Yes-yes…this is it kukuku to think something like this still existed. Boy! Come- this is what you’ll do.”

Suta listened with renewed intrigue to the plan. According to Zoroth, this imposing bud waiting to bloom was actually some kind of failed experiment, supposedly made with the intent of becoming a power source to fuel the complex machinery built across this underground civilisation. They called these creatures ‘Dormah, ' made from the shells and blood of falling creatures.

The only slightly troubling aspect of this plan was his role in waking that thing up.

“So let me get this straight. You want me to absorb somehow all the aged man trapped inside that thing whilst also, somehow! Controlling the flow of mana running through its body, despite the real possibility of it waking up, deeming us both hostile and trying to kill us?”

At first, the cloud didn’t respond, hovering around him in an over-drawn silence.

“Well, yes, precisely.”

“You’re insane." Suta declared without restraint

"First of all, my mana core isn’t like everyone else, and let's say I could somehow weave mana. I don’t know any spells to draw out such power.”

Suta thought his protest was more than reasonable; it was better to reveal his constraints now than to be roped into anything beyond his capabilities later on. He felt he was already overcompensating his shortcomings with the dagger he carried.

And trying to bite off more than he could chew sounded like more recipes for disaster. Suta was expecting a little compromise after explaining himself; instead, he was greeted with the rolling heckles of the deep-voiced cloud.

“Kukuku, you thought I couldn’t tell how weak you were? Fear not, mortal, for it’s your lucky day. I know of a fascinating room not too far away from here. A room where we’ll acquire everything we need.”

Suta arched one of his brows in distrust. ‘A room filled with everything I need,’ it sounded more like an elaborate trap than anything else. And yet, there wasn’t any real desire to oppose the plan. It felt a lot more proactive than idling around this place.

He followed Zoroth's lead. Their walk wrapped around the large blue flower bud and placed them both on the other end of the cave. Suta observed the walls framed peculiarly, like sandy footsteps crawling towards the ceiling. There was a statue of a boy's face almost melded with the fleshy wall. He needed to blink twice to refrain from missing it—the boy with long flowing hair and almond-shaped eyes. Suta could sense familiarity from it. Strangely, a single name drifted in his thoughts: ‘Lysann.’

Below the wall, he traced two arch-shaped entryways. Zoroth hovered towards the left side, and Suta cautiously closed the gap between them, watching the smokey trail move away.

“What is it?” His voice sounded concerned. His intent was closer towards caution more than anything.

“Kukuku, it’s here. Follow mee-er mortal.” Zoroth delightfully whizzed further into the left-sided arch-shaped doorway. Suta followed with a strange intrigue. He walked through the tunnel, and a wave of cold air rushed past him. The tunnelled entrance walls looked weird—like a glassed mosaic melded into a mirror. The compulsion to run his fingers over it was irresistible. And amidst his childlike marvel against the strange pattern walls, a thought birthed into his ever-revolving mind, ticking without end.

‘Runes? These look just like those things called runes trapped inside a mirror.’

The further Suta walked along this road, the more its interior presented itself, almost like the inside of a celestial body. The gold and cyan patterned runes strewn against the tunnelled walls were like veins and muscle tissues.

‘Why are the walls covered in runes?’ As far as Suta could recall, runes were usually drawn to contain stored power in a shapeless form, almost like a padlock to a room filled with expensive treasures. Runes had a uniqueness; they were a signature of the caster's power, contained by the maker’s intent and pieced together by intricate mana shards.

In short, there was always a reason for Runes, which birthed a question on Suta's lips.

‘Whats the purpose of these runes within the walls.’

Once they arrived at the end of the tunnel, Suta found himself enclosed within a small but brightly lit stone-walled room fashioned out of soft topaz gemstones, giving off the impression that the room was covered in glowing amber. For example, a few out-of-place items caught his attention: the two steel shelves. They Sat adjacently across from one another. Suta scanned them intently, most empty, with a few scrolls and thin books placed on shelves.

Against the four corners, Suta saw four large chests. Two were sitting glaringly open with nothing inside, and the other two were closed shut.

“Is that what you-“ he pointed towards one of the chests in the corner. Suspecting some weird weapon was inside.

But much to his surprise Zoroth floated towards the almost barren shelves.

“Yes-yes, it's still here. Come mortal- come and see.”

An aura of doubt hung over Suta, but he remained poised and gently walked into the room. There was a small book framed in dark leather. Its pages looked brown, hardened with age and time. He thought it looked a little burned, too.

The book was no bigger than a notepad in his hands. He flicked through the pages, which contained scribbles in an unknown language. The moment Suta attempted to read the script, he felt an immediate wave of nausea, closely followed by a throbbing pain in the space between his brows.

‘This pain.’ He thought to himself, swiftly closing the book. It was the same pain he caressed the first time he attempted to read magic back on Granny's farm.

Suta glanced at Zoroth before observing the notepad in his grasp again. He felt he understood what he was supposed to do.

“How much time do I have…to learn this spell?”

A hoarse chuckle echoed through the glowing cloud formless mouth.

“You have an age in truth mortal. But I'd advise you to do it quickly, kukuku, lest you enjoy being a prisoner in this domain.”

Suta nodded in understanding. From the little he did understand, learning incantations wasn’t an overnight process. As daunting as that was to remember, he wasn’t sure why he was confident he could do this within a reasonable timeframe. A second thought appeared in his mind.

“Hey, so I'm supposed to learn this spell. What is it?”

Silence surrounded Zoroth before he spoke in a stiffened tone.

“It’s not a spell you’re learning per se, but a unique skill which only a select few can understand. My clan once called it ‘Sourno.’ But to the language of mortals.

You call it…Syphon.”