Things calmed down a little after all the introductions and explanations were over. It took a long time just to recount the major things that happened on our side, although it appeared that Jae-Hyun and the others had just as hard of a time as we did. We all needed that extra time to regain some of our stamina and strength.

We promised we’d share all the details over a good hearty meal once this was all over. The only major concern we had was the 6-hour time limit on my transformation, but our leader still insisted that we take the necessary time to recover enough to fight further. I wasn't about to argue with more rest.

I wanted to check out how much they’ve improved with my Rookie Arbiter skill but saw that the information displayed was still their classes. It wasn’t that important, so I’ll just ask them once we’re done here. The Regressor had also put away his cool new spear, so I guess I'll have to sneak a peak at its properties later as well.

For now, I took a seat and tried my best to rest my tired mind and body. I wasn’t alone in this thinking, and it turned out that Vadeem and Noel required the most time getting back into fighting shape. The redhead was still mostly slumped over and had started to stuff her face with Vadeem. It seemed like her transformation used up about as many resources as the big man’s.

“Walter,” the Regressor said, waking me from my meditation, “You said your light doesn’t work on you, right?”

I turned to face him and nodded, “Yeah, it’s why my emotions’ going haywire lately. I get agitated easily, and Vadeem’s had to snap me out of random daydreams.”

“Let me see if I can’t do the same thing I did to Yoona on you,” he said and gestured for the lantern back.

I obliged.

He unscrewed the top of the lantern and transferred some of the fire into his fingertip again, “Give me one of your uh, hand tentacles, Walter. I just need to transfer the spark into your body.”

“Does it matter if I’m transformed?” I asked hesitantly.

“Wouldn’t matter,” he answered, “Your lantern’s fire soothes the soul, what form you’re in is irrelevant. Just give me your tentacle.”

I heard Noel chuckle to herself on the side. Vadeem smacked her on the head before she could comment further.

I nodded and shifted a feeler closer to his hand. The Regressor concentrated and brought the flame into my limb, but I felt nothing.

He frowned, “That’s strange…”

“Something wrong?”

“Let me try again, maybe it's the slime,” he muttered, redoing the action of bringing a spark of the flame into my body once more. Once again, nothing seemed to happen.

“Walter," he asked with a frown, "how much mana do you have in your attributes?”

Mana? I hadn’t looked at that stat for a long time, and if I remember correctly, it had always been zero. In fact, I’m pretty sure Q had said that my body couldn’t use it even with the Trash Matrix’s help when we first met.

“None?” I answered honestly, “It’s never gone up even when I level up.”

Jae-Hyun frowned again, “That’s rare, I’ve heard of cases where people have poor mana circulation, but almost never none at all.”

Yoona came over to join us, “Is that a problem, brother?”

“Not necessarily,” he answered slowly, “It means that mana doesn’t flow through him at all, which can be beneficial.”

“It can be?” I asked, a little hopeful.

“Yes…” he continued, “In niche situations. Things like curses, voodoo, and alchemical poisons won’t work on you - which means we can rule out this darkness being magical in nature - but likewise, any beneficial effects are also ineffective. There’s nowhere for any mana, internal or external, to travel in your body, although some magic that affects the system directly might affect you.”

"So I'm not immune to fireballs?"

"No," he answered, "but it also means that spells that speed up your natural healing properties may still work."

“Then the flame’s not helping?” his sister asked for me, “Is Walter going to be ok?”

“The fire will still help.” he answered, “It’s slowing down whatever’s affecting us, but it won’t get rid of it like in your case. He'll still get worse if we don't leave soon.”

Yoona looked concerned, but I quickly calmed her down, “It’s fine, I can slowly recover once we’re all out of here, and it’s not like I need magic or whatever to fight.”

The Regressor nodded, “He’s right, mana can be useful but it’s not the only tool that’s available to use. Most fighters ignore it to focus their growth elsewhere.”

“Exactly,” I added, “I doubt we’ll be seeing Vadeem hurl fireballs anytime soon.”

A loud burp broke the course of our conversation, and Vadeem spoke up, “Who needs to hurl fireballs when I can chuck hammers!”

He chuckled to himself and ate the last of the food in his hands, “Anyway, Noel and I are about set to go.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Yup,” Noel agreed, “I’m ready as I’ll ever be! Let’s get out of this stupid place, I need a hot bath to get all this dirt off me!”

The Regressor nodded and started to pack up himself, “Yoona, you still have your old bow and the backup ones?”

“Yeah,” she answered and took out the weapons in question, “Are we giving them to the twins?”

“Yes, and the enchanted quiver as well.”

She handed the bows to the two, much to their excitement, before taking out a normal-looking quiver and giving it over as well.

“I only have one of those though, brother.”

“They’ll have to share, but it’s better than nothing,” he turned to address me, “Walter, can you use your skill to translate how the quiver works? Let them know that they can freely shoot without conserving ammo.”

I nodded and did so, laughing a little as the two started to pull arrow after arrow out of the quiver in amazement. I guess the two twins do show their age every now and then, but just as quickly as their looks of joy came, it disappeared, and their normal expressions of neutral concentration returned.

“Oh right,” I said, remembering the scroll Patar had given me, “I had almost forgotten, but I got some rough schematics for this place and some info about what happened to this world.”

“Let me take a look,” he said.

“Can you read the thing?” I asked, “It’s not written in English or anything. My innate skill can translate.”

“I have something similar,” he muttered as I handed the scroll over. Of course he could read obscure languages as well. The better question would be what couldn’t our Regressor do? At least he couldn’t also speak it like I could, so I’ll take that as a small win on my end.

He flipped open the scroll and started to quickly read over the contents. By now the rest of our group was huddled together and waited to see what the Regressor had to say.

“So, what can we expect?” Vadeem asked.

“It’s strange…” Jae-Hyun answered, “Some of the information makes sense, it says that the Flames of Creation was originally gifted to them as a means to seal something powerful, that much we already know, and as Walter mentioned, it was extinguished some 25 or so years ago. The rest are irrelevant information about rituals and the Temple hierarchy.”

“We know all that,” I said, “What’s strange about it?”

“It’s how the flames were able to become extinguished in the first place,” he said quickly, “You said that it was due to a prank from one of the junior priests and that there were no protocols in place to prevent such an action, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. According to this, the people here did have multiple systems in place to prevent the fire from going off. There are redundancies for the redundancies in their design. It shouldn't have been possible for one event to shut off the whole system.”

I frowned, “So how unlikely would it be for all of those redundancies and preventative measures to fail all at once?”

“Next to impossible,” he said confidently, “The chances of that happening are practically zero.”

I had a sick feeling when I heard that…

“But not zero?” I asked again.

“No, but like I said, the chances are so small that it wouldn’t happen.”

Shit, what else did I know that allowed seemingly impossible events from happening, regardless of how minuscule the changes of that happening were? If I was right, then there are some major implications to Noe’s abilities, and she, or at least a version of her, was active way before meeting me. Was each of her various shards all able to use a portion of her luck skills? Damn it, let’s just collect this one and hope Noe can answer me when she’s up and about again.

“So someone sabotaged it,” Vadeem said, which would be the most logical conclusion if I didn’t have the Absolute Luck Unit with me, or heard Noe’s pleas to awaken her.

“Exactly my thoughts,” Jae-Hyun said, “I’m not sure why someone or something would sabotage this Earth or the Trials, but if they can manipulate the System then we’re facing something strong.”

“Think whatever’s doing this is after us specifically?” Yoona added in, I could tell she was concerned because she thought that she was the only one who knew about her brother’s unique situation. I don’t doubt that the Regressor’s blaming himself as the cause of all these changes, and I was not about to tell him otherwise.

“Maybe,” he grumbled, “but be ready for anything.”

Everyone nodded.

“Anyway, we’re heading off.” the Regressor said and stashed away the scroll, “I have a good grasp of where we are, and if Walter’s map is right, we should be able to get to the ritual room quickly. Get your things and let’s find the source of this corruption.”

Once everything was finally packed, we left our little camp and the brief moment of respite it gave us. We rested for maybe half an hour at most, but I already felt my spirits rise now that the entire Abyss party was back together. Heck, it even gained two bonus members.

The Temple itself was relatively spacious, all things considered, and it wasn’t difficult for a group of seven to explore it. The place itself was just massive stonework, although the passing of time and the corruption here were really bad. Even my halo had trouble illuminating more than a few feet in front of us, and the black tendrils were getting thicker and thicker as we made our way toward the interior. It seemed to erode the massive stonework, making the whole building appear like the insides of a horrible beast.

Jae-Hyun led the pack, while Vadeem and Noel were sticking a step or two behind him. The three teens were in the center of the group, while I hovered a little behind them covering our rear. This formation occurred naturally, without anyone telling the group to do so, but it seemed like the best use of our talents. It was just like the Regressor said back in the rest area. He, Noel, and Vadeem had the frontline, while I was there to cover for Yoona. Well, this time it was Yoona plus the twins, but the theory was the same.

Yet strangest of all was just how empty the place was. Considering it was a place of worship and gathering just a quarter century ago, I would expect old and decayed furnishings, decorations, or something to be present, yet it was as if all the objects not bolted to the ground had disappeared. What was left were empty chambers, grand archways, and narrow doorways. It was eerily empty and just as creepy, and the echoes that reverberated across these massive halls didn’t help in the slightest. Everything amplified my strained nerves to the max, and I was just waiting for some new monstrosity to come out and attack us.

The layout of the building was a bit strange as well, although I wasn’t exactly an expert on parallel dimension Earth Temples. The place seemed to be a catacomb of interconnected chambers of various sizes, and once again, since all of the furnishings were gone, I couldn’t tell one room apart from another.

It strangely reminded me of how Central HQ was laid out, now that I thought about it. Was that a coincidence, or was Origin making small changes to the environment as well as to the locals? That was concerning information that I had to take into account in the future since I highly doubt I would be seeing the last of the Trash Matrix's interventions.

“It’s awfully empty…” Vadeem said, his voice echoing despite the dampening nature of the darkness, “Where are all the golems and stuff you said would attack us, Jae-Hyun?”

We stepped into another seemingly empty corridor, this one a little larger than the previous one, but otherwise had nothing noteworthy about it. We were about to cross it like the others and enter the only other exit when Jae-Hyun stopped our advance. I felt a faint rumbling, and that was when something on the wall of this new room started to move.

Something huge.

“Man Vadeem,” Noel grumbled as she unsheathed her swords, “You just had to say it.”