A heaven-defying treasure, huh? I wonder if it’ll strengthen me as much as the broken sword in Lucia’s interspatial ring did. After eating it, my strength surged by leaps and bounds. I’m not sure if weapon spirits abide by the same cultivation rules as living people, but I don’t think we do. My physical abilities have increased, and I’m sure my weapon body has become sharper and more durable. As for controlling spiritual energy, I’m still a complete novice at that. I have to exit my weapon body to practice, but if I do, who knows what Lucia will do to me?
If it weren’t for the ruler sticking so close to Lucia’s side, I’d sneak off and explore Atlantis on my own. The ruler is Lucia’s mentor, and recently, I’ve seen the extent of the things she’d do to improve Lucia’s strength. The ruler shot a stranger full of holes, fed his soul to blue maggots, and robbed him of his dignity to help Lucia learn an evasive technique. If I make an appearance, I’ll be captured and used as a form of reward for Lucia to encourage her while she’s learning math. Even worse, if I’m not used as a form of reward, the ruler would use me as encouragement through torture. Every time Lucia fails to answer a question correctly, I wouldn’t put it past the ruler to grievously injure me as a form of punishment. If there’s anything I learned from my years spent around Lucia, it’s that squirrels are amoral creatures driven by their base desires. The ruler, being the squirrel above all squirrels, has already shown she’s even more unreasonable than Lucia.
“Oh, wow,” Lucia said while turning her head to observe her surroundings. Despite her ability to see everything within a certain range through her divine sense, she still relies on her eyes when she wants to look at things. “This place looks pretty fancy. Were all the other buildings in Atlantis like this?”
Rather than being made of wood and stone like the majority of the buildings in the Immortal Continent and the small pocket realm we came from, the building we were currently in was made of metal. The walls were glossy but not reflective, and there were glass symbols decorating the ceiling. The floor was made of a substance similar to obsidian, but without touching it, I couldn’t be sure of what it felt like.
“It looks even better when the power’s on,” the ruler said and raised her hand. A beam of spiritual energy flickered out of her finger and flew towards the glass symbols on the ceiling, causing them to glow with a whitish-gold light similar to the rays of the sun. The whole floor was lit up, but it was completely empty. Evidently, everything—mundane or of value—was taken away by the group of demons Mrs. Mu had detected while still on the flying jet. Either that or there was nothing here in the first place.
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“Why’d you—err, why’d the ruler destroy all the buildings?” Lucia asked, giving away the ruler’s identity but thinking no one would notice if she backtracked. “I bet if she took all these buildings with her, she could’ve sold them for a lot, or at the very least, she could’ve given them to her cute and adorable disciple as a present!”
The ruler shrugged. “Maybe the White-furred Tyrant loves destroying beautiful things,” she said and patted Lucia’s head. “It’s like seeing a field covered by a layer of fresh, white snow. Doesn’t it just make you want to step on it? Sure, other people won’t be able to enjoy the beauty of it later, but who cares about other people when you get what you want? It could be the same way for the buildings here.”
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you said the ruler didn’t destroy Atlantis because of her rule of fun.”
“She might’ve had fun doing it, but like I said before, it’s not the main reason she came here in the first place,” the ruler said and pointed at the entranceway leading deeper into the building. With my divine sense, I could only see the first few steps of a flight of stairs leading downwards. Beyond that, I couldn’t detect anything. “If you don’t hurry up, those demons will get the heaven-defying treasure before you do. You don’t want to disappoint all the squirrels back home, right?”
Lucia rolled her eyes before marching forward, Mrs. Mu walking alongside at the same pace. “If the ruler had done a better job at ransacking the place after destroying it, the squirrels would’ve already had the heaven-defying treasure.”
Yes, criticize your teacher. That’s a great way to make your next training session more painful. I thought Lucia would’ve learned something as simple as that when I was still the one teaching her—not that I ever purposely made her training more difficult because of a petty reason like that. The intensity of the training I put her through was always at an appropriate level … for someone with her attitude.
Mrs. Mu stopped at the entranceway and frowned. “The arrays on this door aren’t something that can be opened by just any demon,” she said. “There’s a bloodline requirement. If I’m not mistaken, the demons inside are descendants of the Atlantis clan of demons. The formation arrays deeper in won’t target them because of that relationship, but I can’t say the same for us.”
“Mm? Those demons ahead of us have a home field advantage?” Lucia furrowed her brow. “That’s not very fair, is it?” She patted her the bag on her waist. “If only I had some of Ilya’s blood with me. Why does she have mine, but I don’t have any of hers?” Lucia glanced at Mrs. Mu. “So, what’s the plan? Do we wait here and ambush them when they come out?”
“No,” Mrs. Mu said and narrowed her eyes, peering into the darkness beyond the stairs. “There’s likely a teleportation array located near the treasure; they won’t exit the same way they entered. We’ll have to barge through.”