There are other pantheons. Even a goddess like me does not belong to Tuatha De Danann. Remember, not all pantheons follow righteous paths. Some gods are beyond evil. Mortals should listen to my mantra. A prayer that is four words long—the void is vast!
~Syn, Goddess of Observance and Truth
Crow kneeled down and pulled Mara with him. The portal dropped them onto a balcony overlooking a pool of water. The long pillars and fancy tiles made this place the most luxurious bathhouse he’d ever seen. The deepest end of the pool, the side closest to him, was a meter deep, while the other side might reach his knee.
The most astonishing thing was all the women bathing—there were at least a hundred women of all colors, shapes, and races. The only thing consistent among them was the strange semi-glowing marking on their foreheads. The design was elusive, but Crow was sure it was a type of slave marking. Slavers went to a lot of effort to ensure the concubines were unmarred by chains and collars, so a marking like this used to be commonplace. However, it would only work on mortal women and did little except ‘brand’ the woman to show she belonged to someone else.
All that to say, Crow knew these women belonged to someone, so he and Mara were definitely unwelcome. His quick actions prevented anyone from noticing them. The entire balcony was practically a blind spot to those women below. It was strange though, they rarely saw slavery of this level in the tower’s Basement. He’d only ever read about things like this and never thought he’d actually witness it.
“That fucking pervert is unbelievable,” Crow muttered so low that only Mara could hear him.
“How do we get down?” Mara whispered back. Crow turned and looked around the balcony only to realize there were only windows on the backside and no stairs of any kind. Hell, the way they designed the bathhouse, he doubted anyone even realized this perch was here.
“Stop staring!” Mara hissed and twisted his ear until he nearly shouted out.
“Dammit!” Crow whispered fiercely, feeling impotent because he couldn’t shout. “I’m not looking.”
Rubbing his ear, he glared at her while she grinned back.
“You are truly evil. Now we wait. They can’t bathe forever, right?”
Several hours later…
“What the hell?” Crow finally lost his patience. “Something is odd here. First, I’ve seen no one entering, not even guards.”
“You sure this isn’t a formation?”
“If it is, it is way beyond my level—oh? They are finally leaving.”
Almost as if summoned, all the women stood up and walked toward the door. Their bodies were glistening with moisture that reflected the light from the setting sun. The idle gossip that Crow couldn’t quite understand had ended. There was no friendly companionship. They just all stopped what they were doing, stood up, and turned to leave. Within a few breath’s time, the women disappeared.
“Now what?” Mara asked after they waited to see if anything else would happen.
“We jump,” Crow said and leaped over the railing and splashed into the water below. The pool wasn’t deep, so he kept his knees bent and made sure he hit the water butt first. Still, it was a three or four-meter drop into shallow water. At least butt first, the worst outcome was a bruised ass.
The entire time, Crow spread his mana sense out in case his splash alerted anyone. However, not only did no one appear, he didn’t even sense anyone around. This place was odd, but the water was warm and smelled nice.
Waving at his partner, Mara jumped down and joined him. Seeing her shirt clinging to her curves, Crow found it hard to look away. She just grinned and gave him a quick kiss before wading to the shallow side and stepping out of the water.
Crow joined her and then used the heat within his body to dry himself. Steam rose from his skin, hair, and clothes. Not even thirty seconds later, he was mostly dry.
“You need to teach me that trick,” Mara said and swapped out her clothes for dry ones. Crow unashamedly watched. When finished, she twirled her hair in a way that allowed her to wring out a lot of the water. It was a trick he’d never seen anyone do before, and he found the entire process intriguing.
Leaving the bathhouse, he still sensed no one around.
“Strange.”
“There were at least a hundred women bathing, right?” Mara asked.
“There was—wait, that’s a trick question. No way am I answering that.”
Mara sighed and shook her head. “Idiot, look at the ground behind us.”
Crow turned and saw their footprints in the dust. However, it was just their footprints. The barefoot women that had just left didn’t disturb the dust at all. How was that possible?
“Ghosts?” Mara asked.
“I hope not,” Crow said while shivering. “We don’t have any tools to deal with them if they are. Besides, I didn’t sense any Ghost Mana, and because of my techniques, I’m sensitive to it.”
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“That’s true, and even ghosts would stir the dust in their passing.”
There was another type of ghost that was even scarier. However, the more he looked at the bathhouse, the stranger he felt. Another explanation surfaced, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him.
“A warning!” Crow blurted out after remaining silent for several minutes.
“Huh? In what world is watching a bunch of naked women bathing a warning?” Mara asked, wanting to flick Crow on the forehead.
Crow flushed, as he didn’t know how to reply. He was sure that they just experienced a vision, sort of like his prior experiences with his curse and nightmares. It was like the veil between realities had thinned to the point of being transparent. A window to another place—or another time.
Instinctively, he knew the old pervert did not create this. It had an agelessness like the Arena, but Crow did not dare speculate who or what created it beyond that. One thing he was sure, it was not a benevolent place. It wasn’t anything he could particularly say was evil, but he felt it in his bones.
“This temple is not a good place.”
“Temple? It’s a bathhouse…”
“No, it isn’t.” Crow was adamant.
“It’s a trap!” Mara said after thinking about what Crow just said. “Fine, it is a warning. But did we really avoid it?”
Crow wasn’t entirely sure, but they were out of the building, so that was good. Still, it was the kind of trap that old pervert shouldn’t have been able to avoid. Not unless he knew ahead of time what lay sleeping inside. For some unknown reason, he suddenly felt nervous.
“Let’s leave. I think we avoided it, but who knows if it’ll activate again. As long as we don’t go back in there, it should be fine. So let’s—”
“I knew it!” Acco shouted. “You two schemers! You were trying to steal… hello, pretty ladies!”
Mara and Crow heard Acco back in the bathhouse and looked at each other in fear. Outside, when that place lit up, it looked much more sinister than it did while they were inside.
Screams echoed out as the women—no, those were women screaming.
“Nemesis! You are an asshole!” Acco shouted, and then his presence was gone. Not dead, just gone.
Crow frowned and felt wronged. Seeing his face, Mara burst out laughing and then pulled him away from the bathhouse toward a dilapidated house nearby. It definitely didn’t have the elegance or the cold beauty of the bathhouse. Thankfully, whatever was happening inside the bathhouse remained there. Neither of them heard Acco’s voice again, but the wailing sent shivers down their spines.
“You think the pervert set that up? Or did someone set it up to catch the pervert?”
“Wasn’t him. I’m sure that’s a temple to a god, but without knowing which one, it’s best not to meddle.” Crow said.
Creeeaakkk!
The door made a horrible sound when it was pushed open. Inside was a thick layer of dust, and the furniture had long since rotted and collapsed. Other than a few old worthless items, the place.
“Formations? Traps?” Mara asked.
“Nope. Just a regular mundane house.”
“I don’t feel right,” Mara said.
Crow looked over and saw that her face was flushed. Looking toward her chest, he saw her nipples were erect and could smell the scent of the pool oozing out of her pores. “Fuck!”
Mara jumped onto him. Her eyes red with lust, and her tongue forced its way into his mouth. While he’d recovered from his curse, he wasn’t her equal in power. He could contend against her, but in the end, one or both of them would get hurt. Now he understood why he felt uncomfortable. His body was burning off the aphrodisiac in his blood. The safest option was to go with it and control her actions to prevent both of them from getting harmed. He did not know how many times he entered her in the last few hours, but he was left lying on the ground panting by the time the drug wore off. His clothes were so torn that they were rags, his flesh shredded and bitten so many times that he didn’t know where to start cleaning his wounds.
Regardless, he felt satisfied. Looking around the house, almost no furniture and only a few walls remained. They were not in good shape, to begin with, but they thoroughly destroyed everything in their recent coupling.
Looking over, he saw Mara was curled into a ball with the remains of her clothes pulled around her as she slept. Crow sighed and pulled out a blanket to put over her. Uninhibited Mara was quite scary, and the words that came from her mouth over the last few hours made Crow chuckle.
Exploring the building, he found it was relatively small. There was nothing of value. Not even a leftover piece of dinnerware. It was just a big empty husk. He even asked Nin to scan it, and she found nothing, either. It was kind of strange, but with that temple nearby, maybe not that strange. It wasn’t likely that no one had discovered this place over the years.
He waited for Mara to wake before exploring the rest of the valley and finding a way out. This place gave him weird vibes, so he wasn’t comfortable leaving her defenseless like that. He cultivated for the next few hours, trying to replenish his energy. Inside him, he inspected his sacral chakra and found more of that cold yin energy inside. This time he was more sensitive to it, so he immediately recognized that it belonged to the woman lying beside him. He could even sense her through that energy, just as he could now sense Song Lin. It was a vague impression, but since Song Lin wasn’t in this world, he did not perceive her location.
“If that old pervert is alive, I’ll break his pecker,” Mara grumbled as she slowly woke up. Crow snorted as he opened his eyes. “By the way, who were those women? Who could bathe in something like that and remain unaffected—wait, why weren’t you affected?”
“My curse rendered me immune to most toxins. The fire in my veins burns them out of my blood. I only recognized what was happening after you… devoured me.”
Mara glared but crawled onto Crow’s lap and nestled into his chest. He held her without complaint.
“Sorry—if I was too rough.” She said, her face burning.
Crow laughed until he cried and held her tightly to him. Rough was an understatement.
“By the way, those women… I think they might actually be spirits. Or maybe converted into sex demons.” Crow stood up and carried her to a window on the west side of the house. It overlooked a slope that led up to a rocky bluff. There were rows and rows of stones placed in such a way that she recognized it wasn’t natural.
“What am I looking at?”
“A graveyard. And as much as I don’t like it, we need to stay a few more days. A week at most.”
“Why?”
“I can finally train my movement ability to the next stage. It requires me to use a graveyard.”
“What the hell!?” Mara asked, unable to mask her shock.
“It’s a Druid ability that was originally called Stepping Across Tombstones,” Crow explained. “Gavin had me rename it to Ghost Steps. The first stage, which I’ve mastered, is Don’t Wake the Ghosts, which allows me to move fast without creating much of a disturbance. It doesn’t require a graveyard, but the second stage does. I need Ghost Mana to infuse into my body.”
“Two days,” Mara warned. “If something really trapped those spirits, you are going to piss them off. With the way things go around you, I should leave now.”
Crow smirked and rested his chin on her head as they looked out the window. The sun had set a while ago, but the moon was bright and full. It made the graveyard look creepy and sinister.
“I’ll start tomorrow. Before I do, let’s find the way out. Tonight, we can clean up this place a little, and I’ll set a few basic formations that will give us some warning at the very least.” He felt guilty, which was the number one reason he wanted to wait until tomorrow. After what they just did, he thought it was bad manners to just up and leave. So he wanted to spend time with her. He also felt guilty about dragging her along on his journey and did his best to accommodate anything she wanted to do. No matter what or where he ended up going, she stubbornly refused to leave his side. Her strength and conviction… he felt unworthy of it. However, he vowed that he’d become worthy of it. No matter what it took, he wouldn’t let this woman down.
Looking toward that graveyard, he could feel the ghost mana that oozed out of that place. A shiver went down his spine.