POV: Altair Oberon Lyrius

After I had to give up trying to break the glass cube I looked around the room I was in, quickly finding a set of stairs that led down into a second, slightly larger room that was wider around the floor than around the ceiling, just like the room above. In the middle of it was a large square pillar that seemed just a slight bit wider than the glass cube in the room above.

"Some kind of lift maybe?" I suggested as I walked down the stairs and looked around the room.

At first glance, nothing here stuck out particularly much, which didn't mean much since everything was unusual in here. The angled walls were lined with small pedestals that had strange metal contraptions, in the likeness of what seemed like letters of some Asian languages, they reminded me so much of images I had seen of old Tokyo in my first life, but at the same time they didn't, at the same time they looked different, had their own flare, more circular forms were used as well as triangles.

'Looks like letters,' Ira concluded, same as me.

"Yeah..." I responded as I took a closer look at the letters.

They suddenly began making sense. As I walked around the room each and every letter formed a word. Grass, plain, lake, frog, leaf, twig, branch, year, mud, rain, fire, mountain, snow, wind, forest, desert, clouds, weapons, cliff, ocean, sky, fox, valley, river, boulder, bird, bark, dirt, hail, iron, stone, cave. Thirty-two words in total.

"So... what do we do now?" I asked after I finished reading them all.

All of these words just seemed like they had simply been chosen at random. I took a closer look at the rest of the room. There was nothing else besides the words, pedestals and pillar.

'Well, it's got to have something to do with these words...' Arva stated.

"Obviously," I replied as I once again read all of the words, this time looking for some hidden meaning.

'How can you even read this?' Arva asked.

"I dunno, I just can," I said. "Are you telling me you can't?"

It was now Arva's turn to say 'Obviously.'

Ira now tuned in.

'I can read them as well... it seems that both of us have the ability to comprehend every or at least most languages,' Ira explained. 'I assume it's a blessing of sorts.'

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Interesting, interesting," I responded. "Sadly it doesn't help us, like, at all."

Once again I read each of the words, searching for some hidden meaning. That's when I realised something. All of these things occurred in nature or were part of it. Grass, leaves, twigs, branches, bark, all of those were either plants or parts of a plant. Plains, lakes, mud, mountains, snow, forests, deserts, cliffs, oceans, valleys, rivers, boulders, dirt, iron, stone and caves were all part of the landscape. Rain, clouds, the sky, hail, those are things that are part of the world as well. Of course, frogs, foxes and birds were animals, obviously part of nature as well. The only ones that didn't fit were weapons. Weapons didn't naturally occur... they were made by creatures, whether humans or elves or whatever else first made them in this world didn't matter, weapon didn't naturally occur, right?

After my revelation, I approached the symbol that, in my mind, formed the word weapon. It was a square with a second one inside which was at a slightly different angle, inside was yet another square at yet another, slightly different, angle. In the middle was an X with dots at the ends of the two lines and one in the middle of it.

I reached out for it. The closer my fingers got to it the more I felt it attracted me, like a magnet. When my fingers were mere centimetres away from it they were sucked in and I touched the symbol. The room began shaking and my attention was drawn to the stairs which were currently descending into the ground, opening up a way to another room.

"Uhh, of course, there's more... there's always more," I said as I approached the stairs and went into the room below.

It looked similar to the one above, just larger. The large square pillar was still in the very middle of the room. This time the walls were lined with different weapons and there was a board on one side of the pillar, written on it in the same symbols like the ones in the room above was: I can kill dragons but not rabbits, beasts but not animals, elf but not men, what am I?

"Yay... riddles, how fun," I said with a sigh as I stepped into the room.

POV: Rudolpho Alami

"You fucking bastard!" I yelled as I swung my mace at the figure.

But the strange, cloaked figure simply dodged each and every blow, even when using magic to slow them down they simply seemed to speed up to a speed where they could easily dodge my attacks.

"Oh my, how aggressive, that's not good, no, no, no, not good at all, you will hurt someone, I mean a mace-like that could do a lot of damage," the figure said as they suddenly stopped and my mace hit them right in the side of the head.

I sighed out in relief, relief that was quickly gone when the figure spoke again.

"Or not," they said in a mocking tone.

"Wha-"

Before I could finish what I wanted to say they were gone and I felt something hit the back of my head. It wasn't hard enough for me to fall unconscious or fall over or anything, it felt more like a hard nudge. When I turned around the person suddenly held a staff in their hand, a staff longer than they were tall, which was saying something, since the figure was tall, very tall, maybe even a little taller than the heretic I was currently hunting.

"This on the other hand," the figure said as they whirled around the staff, "will do a lot of damage."

As soon as they said that they hit the ground with the staff. Seconds later I could see a fine line appear on the ground, seconds later everything on the side of the line that the figure wasn't one exploded with a loud boom. All I could do was gulp as I glanced at were part of the mountain had been seconds ago, shaking in my armour, my armour that would in no way protect me.

Who is that fucker?