An hour passed.

Drake took a deep breath and exhaled, before slowly opening his eyes. He had completely recovered his strength and energy and was back to his peak again. Calmly, he looked around. The dust storm on the outside appeared to be slowly waning.

‘That’s good,’ he thought to himself, before standing up and stretching. After a few seconds, he started looking around the village.

Although there weren’t a lot of buildings present, Drake took his time to search through every nook and cranny, not wanting to miss even the slightest sign of a treasure. He spent a few hours searching through the entire place and found all manner of old tools used for everyday life from cooking, gardening, cleaning, and more.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find any treasures.

Drake returned to the centre of the village and sighed while brushing off a sweat from his brow.

‘Was I wrong?’ he wondered.

Looking around, he noticed that the dust storm had decreased in strength quite a lot, making the surroundings much clearer. Drake spotted a tall, wooden watchtower near the village gate and had an idea. Quickly, Drake jogged to the watchtower and climbed on top to get a clear view of the inheritance grounds.

“Woah!” Drake gasped.

Massive, plains stretched in every direction with no end in sight. The ground was barren, occasionally carrying cracks here and there. Various demons were wandering the vast plains, some on their own, and others in massive hordes. There were also villages similar to the one he was in, randomly scattered across the plains. As Drake focused on the horizon, he could make out the silhouette of a tall, black structure. It stood out the most in these plains.

Could that be where the inheritance is? Drake wondered. If so, it would take a long time and effort to get there.

‘I wonder where they are,’ Drake thought, as he scanned the plains once. He could occasionally spot some fights here and there, but he couldn’t find anyone from his party.

Drake sighed. He knew that Blaze would definitely be fine. Sylvia, despite being primarily a long-distance fighter, with her powerful artifacts and spirits, would probably be fine too.

“But Helen…” he mumbled to himself, “Please be safe.”

With that silent prayer, Drake jumped off the watchtower and returned to the ground. Drake was about to make his way back to the centre of the village when he noticed something.

There was a large, diagonal crack just behind the watchtower. He didn’t think much of it before as the dry earth often carried cracks, but looking closely now, he noticed a small light coming from inside the crack.

‘Could it be?’

Drake clenched his fist leaving just his index and middle fingers open. He poured all of his mana into them till they started burning searing hot.

“Finger thrust!” he exclaimed as he bashed his fingers forcefully against the ground, causing numerous additional cracks to form. The echoes from his attack spread across the village.

Drake poured mana into his fingers and swept his arm across the air.

“Crescent slash!” Drake yelled, and a crescent-shaped blade rapidly flew out and hit the ground again, causing it to shake dangerously.

With a smile, Drake jumped into the air and activated crescent slash repeatedly, shooting out numerous blades one after another to attack the ground.

The ground could no longer bear the assault and started breaking apart. Drake twisted in midair and landed elegantly on his feet just as the last piece of earth broke apart and fell, leaving behind a medium-sized hole, enough for a few people to jump through.

With a smile, Drake looked over the edge to see that the fall wasn’t very deep, perhaps a few dozen feet at most. As a steel body martial artist, a fall like that couldn’t hurt him.

Drake became excited.

‘This must be it!’

Without hesitating, Drake jumped and landed on the ground with a heavy thud, raising a mini dust cloud. Standing up, Drake found himself in a small, dimly lit passageway. The image of a similar passageway covered with cobwebs flashed through his mind.

‘Hope there’s no arachne here,’ Drake thought to himself as he started walking through.

The passageway was short and ended in a rectangular clearing. At the end of the clearing was a large door, but its face was implanted with various mechanical gears.

Curious, Drake tried to open the door but it didn’t budge. His eyes then glanced over the various gears, chains, and poles sticking out of the door and realised what he had to do.

Strength is second only to courage and wit…

‘Was the outside supposed to be the test of strength, and inside, the test of wit?’ Drake wondered as he started thinking about how he could solve the mechanism.

Another hour later.

“This is impossible!” Drake cursed out loud. Frustrated, Drake wanted to break open the door with a solar barrage, but thought better of it. He might accidentally destroy the mechanism, making it impossible to reach inside.

Sighing, Drake sat down. He had tried every combination he could think of, but nothing seemed to work. It felt as if he had been given incorrect gears that just always messed things up.

Wait… maybe that’s it!

Previously when exploring the village, Drake spotted a couple of gears lying around. ‘Could they be part of this mechanism?’

Drake had a strong feeling that he was onto something and stood up. With renewed vigour, Drake jumped back up and ran across the village, picking up all the gears he remembered seeing. After collecting everything, Drake returned underground and placed the gears on the floor, in front of the door.

His eyes scanned the entire mechanism again, and he moved his head back and forth between looking at the mechanism, and the new gears he had collected. Soon, he started realising how it might all fit together.

After half an hour, Drake placed the last gear on the door and stood back with a smile. His eyes focused on the handle and his hands automatically went to grab it once again.

‘This is it,’ he thought excitedly as he pushed the handle down.

Click! Click! Click!

The gears moved like clockwork as loud, mechanical sounds echoed across the tunnel. Drake pushed and the door opened loudly, revealing a chamber lit by numerous torches, making it brighter than the passageway. Right in the centre of the chamber was a pedestal, with a large treasure chest placed on top.

Excited, Drake walked up to the chest and opened it. A bright light suddenly assaulted Drake from the inside, making him turn his head and cover his eyes reflexively. After a few moments, Drake turned back to the chest and his eyes widened.

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Contained within was more wealth than he had ever seen. Thousands of gold coins, and several dozen mana stones! That wasn’t all though, there was also a light green, tube-like object which caught Drake’s eye. He picked it up and realised it was rank one artifact, which could shoot out concentrated bursts of wind – wind darts.

There was also a scroll. Drake picked it up and scanned through its contents. It was a simple martial arts cultivation technique. Drake had no intention of switching his martial arts cultivation technique, so he just decided to take it into his storage pouch for now. Drake quickly started taking the remaining gold and mana stones into his storage pouch.

Once the treasure chest was empty, Drake heaved a sigh of relief.

‘That’s a lot of money,’ he thought. ‘I wonder if the other village ruins also contain treasures like this one…’

Before he could ponder the situation longer, the ground suddenly started shaking. A piece of the chamber’s ceiling fell, missing Drake by an inch.

‘What the hell?’ Drake thought, as more parts of the ceiling kept falling. He turned around and dashed out of the chamber as parts of the ceiling kept falling behind him. Just as he jumped out of the underground passage, the watchtower collapsed and fell into the tunnel.

Phew! Drake exhaled as he safely exited the collapsing tunnel.

‘Did taking the treasure cause the tunnel to collapse for some reason? Or maybe it had to do with the mechanism?’ Drake wasn’t sure, but to his surprise, the shaking didn’t stop after he left the tunnel. It started quickly again, and the entire village ruins began shaking. Soon, a few buildings started collapsing.

‘Oh no!’ Drake yelled in his mind and dashed out of the gates. After reaching a safe distance away, he turned back to face the village as the last few buildings and walls collapsed in on themselves, raising a large dust cloud.

‘What’s going on? Why did it collapse?’ Drake wondered, but he wasn’t sure. Given the timing, his best guess was that it had something to do with him taking the treasure.

‘Maybe as soon as the inheritance is taken from within a safe zone, it collapses?’ Drake began wondering, but something felt off. ‘Hang on a minute, something’s missing…’

Just before Drake entered the village, he was ambushed by a large demon scorpion which he defeated. It was supposed to be just outside the village but, for some reason, its corpse was gone!

Drake became wary.

Acute sense!

His senses greatly enhanced and began picking up on every movement in his surroundings.

Swoosh!

Something was approaching him quietly, but very rapidly from behind. He might have missed it without acute sense but now, he jumped to the side just in time as a massive paw crashed down upon the place he was just standing in.

Drake regained his footing and stared coldly at his ambusher.

It was a giant demon leopard, several times bigger than Drake. The leopard stared viciously at Drake as saliva dripped down its fangs.

However, Drake breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Still just a servant class demon,’ he thought.

The leopard charged at Drake. It was incredibly quick, but Drake faced it calmly and raised his left hand.

“Water bullets!”

Bursts of concentrated water sharply shot out of his glove. The leopard was taken by surprise and dodged sideways, but Drake anticipated this.

“Chain lightning!”

A bolt of lightning shot out of his other glove directly to the place the leopard was moving to.

It didn’t have time to react and was hit directly. Upon making contact, the lightning increased in strength and released several lightning streaks. Some of them twisted and attacked the leopard further, while the others struck the surrounding air and ground.

The demon howled in pain but Drake wasn’t done. He slammed his left hand against the ground and a pillar of water shot out of the ground exactly underneath the leopard and crashed into it.

Not only was the leopard hurt by the force of the impact, but the water combined with the lightning bolt and became electrically charged, zapping the poor leopard all over its body.

Within a few seconds, its entire body was charred with lightning and it fell limply to the floor. Its body randomly twitched as the residual lightning caused its muscles to randomly contract and relax. Drake could sense that it was completely dead now.

‘Finally!’ Drake sighed, exhaling deeply.

It was only now that he noticed his surroundings, or rather, the temperature. Unlike in the morning, it was now quickly becoming dark, and very cold. Drake looked into the distance and could see clearly as the dust storm was almost completely gone. The sun was slowly falling behind the horizon, and a bright red moon began rising from the other side. Once the sun finished setting, the temperature would drop even further, and it would become even darker.

‘Lucky that I still engraved the light rune into my amulet,’ Drake thought, instinctively touching his amulet to make sure it was still there. It was now a rank two artifact with both the light and healing runes engraved onto it. He would need some light at least to be able to navigate and fight any demons that were approaching him.

Drake thought for a moment about where he should go. He remembered the tall black structure. It was the most distinctive feature in this landscape and he was sure the main inheritance would be there. However, there were many smaller ruins scattered throughout the plains which, from experience, he thought were likely to contain smaller pieces of inheritance too.

Hence, he decided to make his way to the black structure while getting as many inheritances as he could from the village ruins.

He thought it was likely for everyone else, including his party, to have also realised that this was the most effective thing to do. Hence, as long as he kept walking towards the black structure, it should only be a matter of time before he encountered the rest of his party.

‘Hopefully, it’ll be sooner rather than later,’ he sighed. He wasn’t thrilled about going through this entire inheritance on his own.

Drake recollected the village ruins he saw from the watchtower, got a rough idea of where the closest one was and started walking in that direction.

A few hours pass.

Blaze had worked with a bunch of martial artists who had been teleported next to each other as well. However, most of them were now dead, apart from two. A steel body martial artist and late stage true mage from the Blackthorne family, Cyrus, and a lone cultivator also in the steel body realm. However, the lone cultivator was suffering from several major injuries. They had barely managed to patch it up with some emergency healing pills, however, he would need the help of a healing mage to fully cure it.

Hence, they were all glad to have finally found a safe zone – another village ruins. After relaxing and recovering for a while, the group were now standing in front of a stone statue located at the centre of the village. It was the statue of an elderly man, and engraved at the bottom, was a metal plate. If one looked closely, they could read out words inscribed into the plate.

“Within a world confined, vast landscapes lie, where mountains rise, yet feel no winter's sting, and rivers flow, where no fish take wing.

Roads unfurl, for journeys yet unseen, but hold no carriage, nor the wheels that glean. I guide the lost with secrets I unfold, a world of stories, waiting to be told.

What am I?”

Similarly to Drake, they also guessed that the village ruins would likely contain some treasure. So, when they found this statue, they thought that answering this riddle might help them unlock whatever treasure was hidden in this village.

Hence, they had been spending some time, trying to figure out the answer to the riddle.

“A painting! A book!” yelled the lone cultivator, but nothing happened.

“A dream?” Cyrus said questioningly, but again, there was no change.

“Why is this so hard?” Blaze scratched his scruffy, red hair in frustration before sighing exasperatedly and sitting down, leaning against the wall of a building.

“I’m sure we can figure it out,” said the lone cultivator as he held his chin and began thinking deeply.

Cyrus was also leaning against another building and staring at the statue deeply, arms crossed. After a few moments, he exclaimed, “I think I got it!”

Blaze and the lone cultivator turned to him curiously.

“It’s a map!”

Immediately, the ground started reverberating and a black vortex appeared just before the statue. Blaze stood up immediately and the lone cultivator was brought back from his thoughts.

A large scythe and a bracelet started rising from the black vortex. With their keen senses, the group noticed them to be rank two artifacts. After a few moments, the artifacts exited the vortex and started hovering a few millimetres above ground. The vortex disappeared and they landed on the ground with a clang.

“Wow! You did it!” Blaze exclaimed as he jogged towards Cyrus and patted him on his back. Given the relative rarity of maps in this world, they had all completely forgotten about that possibility.

However, they weren’t sure how they could split these two artifacts between the three of them. They were just about to discuss when they suddenly felt intense bloodlust rapidly approaching them.

Instinctively, Blaze and Cyrus jumped back. However, the lone cultivator was slower to react due to his injuries.

“AAAHHHHH!” he screamed as he felt something pierce through his chest. His body instantly became weak and he could feel warm blood flowing down his body. Using the last of his strength, he tilted his head to look at his wound and his eyes widened with terror. A spiked, iron chain glowing bright red was sticking out of his chest.

The lone cultivator felt a force pull on the chains and his body was helplessly dragged along. After a few feet, he felt a hand on his neck forcibly holding him in place.

“ARRGHH!” he gasped as the chain was mercilessly pulled from his body. The lone cultivator wanted to turn around to see who his attacker was, but the last of his strength was quickly draining away. Soon, his eyes dimmed and he fell limply on the floor.

Blaze and Cyrus watched in shock as their companion was murdered before their eyes within a few seconds. As the lone cultivator fell, the figure of a young man was revealed.

He was dressed in a light red overcoat, covering thick, dark-red leather armour underneath. His right hand was holding a long sword, and his left hand was wrapped in chains which dragged across the floor, now covered in blood.

“Did you miss me?” he smirked, licking his lips.

Blaze’s expression became dark and he screamed.

“THEOOOOOOOO!”