“Are all of these, human?” the professor mumbled, already aware of the answer to his own question after he gulped in fear. As they had descended further they had discovered bones of perished humans littering the stairs, the amount increasing the further down they went.

“What is this? Some kind of a cemetery?” Helik asked looking at the large piles of ancient human bones sprawled over the floor in front of him.

At the bottom of the stairs lied a massive circular hall, illuminated by a golden light emanating from an object in the center of the room. The room was quite similar to one above with numerous columns supporting it but was round instead of rectangular, and the ceiling was a bit higher.

A golden chalice lay on top off a raised pedestal in the middle of a strange mushroom garden, and within it laid stone benches arrayed at regular intervals. The light of the chalice also highlighted the horror of this place, showcasing the human remains in their hundreds, blanketing the entire floor of this grand hall.

“Something terrible happened in this place. All these people slaughtered… Ripped apart, crushed… consumed. I’d say a very hungry and extremely powerful creature,” Rok explained, studying the remains. He stood up from his crouched position and looked at Liara, who was herself quite shocked at the carnage on display.

“My lady, we should leave. The thing that did this might still be around. This is starting to feel like a trap,” Rok warned.

Liara turned her gaze away from the pile of bones and looked at Rok, her face of shock morphing into one of determination. “No, we have come too far to give up now. I will have what I came for,” she stated before heading straight for the pedestal, walking over the pile of bones and past the mushroom garden. Without hesitation, she lifted the chalice with her right hand and started examining it thoroughly.

“This… This isn’t it… I can feel some power within it but it isn’t enough. I can still feel the presence of a greater power here,” She looked around before her gaze finally rested on the professor who as always was studying the carvings etched on the walls surrounding the hall. “What do you make of them, professor?” she asked, walking towards the man.

“Hmm… This place is some sort of a ritual hall. From these hieroglyphs, I can ascertain that much quite clearly. This one, down here. It has people bowing at the feet of a man holding the chalice; I assume it is a man. And here, this one depicts the same man raising the chalice towards the rising sun…” The professor abruptly stopped speaking and stared at a portion of the wall for a moment, “What? What is all this?” The professor sounded alarmed.

“What’s wrong, professor?” Liara asked, now standing beside the old man with the chalice in her hand. While the two of them were engaged in conversation, Helik and Rok were conducting their own investigations of the hall but staying alert for any signs of danger. Roan, on the other hand, was the last person to enter the great hall and seemed to struggle as he walked towards the pedestal.

‘Looks like the potion is wearing off,’ Roan thought as he struggled to retain his consciousness. The potion was able to suppress his exhaustion and temporarily accelerate the healing process, but it came with a price and now he was paying for it.

The exhaustion had reclaimed his body with a vengeance and the jump from earlier had made things worse, reopening the wounds from earlier which the potion had managed to barely seal.

The blood leaking out of the open wounds was now streaming along his arms inside his armor and dripping off the tip of his fingers, spilling over the mushrooms and seeping into the ground below as he walked by the garden.

He had slowly made his way towards one of the stone benches, delighted at the thought of resting on its smooth surface. Just a moment, he needed just a moment of reprieve and he was convinced he could recover some of his strength. Every step forward was a lesson in torture, his vision blurring as he trudged along.

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I am pathetic.

He was truly ashamed of his own shortcomings when he had promised himself that he would never show any weakness. He knew that a brother never showed weakness and he was supposed to be one of their best, the one they called ‘The Slayer’.

I swear on the Great Mother, I will get stronger. I will never suffer such humiliation ever again.

His mind replayed all the years of training, all the countless battles he had fought and emerged victorious. He had been through worse and survived, he was determined to make through this trial as well but in the end, he never would.

As he walked through the garden the surface below his feet started vibrating and something erupted out off the ground beside him, sounding like an explosion and creating a cloud of dirt and dust around him.

It happened fast enough to not even be registered by his already superhuman senses to respond in time, even if they weren’t being dulled by the exhaustion. His eyes darted towards the ground and the first thing he noticed was his missing left leg, followed by a feeling of losing his balance. It had been ripped clean off, bone and all, as the blood gushed out of the stump that remained.

“I am telling you, this is unlike anything I have ever seen. If what depicted here is true then, the empire, no, the entire world will change. Our entire history will be…” the professor was explaining, excitedly sharing his discovery before Liara cut him off. “Just tell me what you have learned?” She asked, getting frustrated.

“Alright. I…” the professor was going to explain further, when the explosive sound of the eruption rang out in the hall, forcing everyone to stop their activities and turn to look in the direction of its source, which was the cloud of dirt and dust settling over the mushroom garden surrounding the pedestal.

Helik and Rok immediately drew their swords and cautiously walked towards the garden as dirt and rubble rained over them from above, but after hearing Roan’s terrible scream they threw caution to the side and rushed towards the source of its origin. They found him writhing in pain, his left leg a bloody stump as he lied on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

“Roan? Brother Roan? What the… Who did this?” Helik asked in desperation, crouching beside the bleeding man.

“What the fuck! What made that?” Rok asked after noticing the massive hole in the ground beside Roan. He received the answer to his question unexpectedly when he noticed a human-shaped silhouette appearing behind Helik.

“Behind you!!” Rok shouted.

Helik reacted instantly, and with the sword in his hand, he turned around, and without hesitation thrust his sword in the direction of the person’s heart, missing it by inches in panic but piercing through its chest with ease before withdrawing the blade, but he quickly realised the futility of that action as his intended target did not even flinch after receiving that blow, and remained unperturbed.

When the dust settled some more, the enemies visage became visible. A walking corpse, that's the only word that could describe it properly with all its flesh decayed to its bone. Its pin like sharp teeth coated red in blood, visible in their entirety due to the lack of flesh around its mouth, the only thing remaining intact as a whole were its petrifying eyes, glowing a bewitching bright silver.

Helik had heard about vampires who went without blood for too long eventually starting to decay, but the creature in front of him wasn’t like any vampire he had ever seen.

Vampires had animal-like dual fangs, but this thing had sharp, long, pin-like teeth filling its entire mouth and even if that wasn’t crazy enough, the white of its eyes was a pitch black and the irides were a surreal silver-white, rather than the usual dark green.

The creature's appearance surprised Helik for an instant but he recovered and struck it again, this time staying true to his aim and driving his blessed blade through the vampire’s heart. But nothing happened, it barely fazed the creature.

Panic and fear consumed Helik’s mind and he tried dislodging the blade to strike again and go for the head this time, but the sword did not budge. The vampire had gripped the blade of the weapon with his left hand and no matter how much strength Helik exerted it refused to move an inch.

The creature cocked its rotten head, while it contemplated something, and then it smiled or so it appeared to be, its distorted appearance making it difficult to ascertain. It was taking delight in watching Helik struggle to move his sword.

The vampire exerted some pressure on the blade in its grip and it instantly crumbled into pieces, making it appear to be constructed using fragile glass, rather than hardened steel. The sudden release of the blade from the vampire’s grasp caused Helik to stagger backward, still holding the sword of which only the hilt and a piece of broken steel remained.

Before Helik could even completely collect himself, the vampire seemingly disappeared and reappeared directly in front of him, just inches away, the creature moving so fast as to appear to have just teleported, before it sank its vicious teeth in Helik’s neck, biting hard enough to rip open flesh and crush bone.