As Riley and Brian were finishing off stone hands and stone goblins left and right much to their delight, Jacob and Aurelius were heading ever deeper into the ruined city. As they walked through the dilapidated city with the 2 moons hanging above bathing them in gentle moonlight, they slowly started seeing skeletons covered in ancient and rusted armour along with weapons laying here and there on the stone streets.
The skeletons had various differences from an ordinary human skeleton, the vast majority of them had red bones instead and the bones in their head was one seamless skull as if there was no eyes,mouth or nose. Only a featureless round red bone were in place of a skull, while a few of the skeletons in the minority while closer to humans had a few key differences, they had 4 openings in their torso armour instead of two. Jacob could only imagine what living life and battling with four arms would be like. Even eating would be vastly different, Jacob could only see three of the remains who were nearly identical to a human skeletons.
Even moss could be seen growing upon the stones as if life was only allowed to exist near the center of the city, however that did not explain the presence of the skeletons wearing ancient armour and wielding weapons of various forms, there were swords some of them had weird shapes. Zigzags, curves and segmented blades were some of the ones that Jacob could identify as they walked through.
There were some types of weapon that Jacob did not recognise amongst the ones scattered along the streets, one of the them were equipped to the feet of someone with blades around the outer part of the soles and another was just a flat sphere attached to a long stick. The viability of those weapons were not apparent to Jacob at all but for Aurelius he carefully studied each of the weapons leaving Jacob to stare at the weapons to figure out what was so interesting. Try as he might he did not figure out Aurelius interest in them so he asked Aurelius directly while casually kicking one of the weapons on the floor.
“Hey Aurelius what's so interesting about these weapons, they aren’t even usable. Look its so fragile, some of them might not even be usable even without the passing of time. They look more decorative than practical.” Aurelius still studying the weapons intently answered without even looking back at Jacob.
“That shows your lack of experience Michael, these weapons speak of the battles they participated and by looking at the various dents and chips I could even deduce what weapons caused it. The variety of weapons means that the users were more uninhibited in creativity, the weapons might look useless to us but they could have hidden functionalities within that allows the users to properly demonstrate their strengths. Whatever we learn now could be useful down the road, if these foreign races used these types of weapons once, they could very well still be using the weapons out in the universe.” Jacob nodded along to Aurelius words as they entered through one ear and out another, why would he need to learn about the differences in weapons that did not matter to him at all. But he left Aurelius to his studying, even if he had no interest in such things he did not need to disturb Aurelius as they were moving quite fast through the city.
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Much faster than Jacob thought he would if he was alone so he could afford to let Aurelius satisfy his curiousity. After Aurelius was able to fully satisfy his own curiousity, the duo sped up their run through the ruined city, finally leading to an area that looked like it was holding a boss battle. The duo travel through the same looking streets ended when the next turn led them to a stadium from what they could see outside.
Although the stadium was around the same height as the surrounding houses, the atmosphere around it felt solemn as if even being around the vicinity of the stadium was a violation. Even looking at it caused shivers to run down Jacobs’ back, he looked to Aurelius to see him unaffected not even a light shake could be from him.
However, going by convention this would be where something important would be happening or at least it would lead to the next clues so if Jacob wanted to grow stronger during this part of the tutorial as mentioned by the Suzerain he could only move forward. Jacob looked to Aurelius and saw that he was looking back at Jacob too, both nodded and began walking towards the stadium, with each step the surrounding only got colder.
By the time Jacob and Aurelius reached the entrance to the inside of the stadium, Jacob was shaking uncontrollably as if someone was holding onto him and constantly shook him from side to side. Jacob and Aurelius took one more step, officially stepping into the stadium and oddly the shakings subsided as if nothing of that sort even happened before, disappearing as suddenly as it came.
Without the shakes Jacob felt much more comfortable than before, however still being cautious of the environment. Both Jacob and Aurelius took things slow and moved through the entrance with care and caution, throughout the walk nothing stood out. Only an eerie silence pervaded the current atmosphere, causing Jacob to constantly dart his eyes at shadows. No matter the amount of darting he did, nothing came rushing out only the silence continued. The silence also affected Aurelius beside him, from what Jacob could see. Aurelius lips were tight and his eyes were unusually red as if he went through 4 sleepless nights in a row. Jacob wordlessly gulped he tried to speak up to break the tension, however as he opened his mouth to speak the corridor that they have been moving through for the last 20 minutes or so finally opened up.
His already opened mouth dropped further, a giant stone statue hunched and peacefully sat in the middle of a wide open ground silently and without movements. The seating were empty and only the moonlight illuminated the stone statue, giving it a look of melancholy as if it was abandoned by everything that mattered.
Suddenly, cheers and fanfare erupted all around the stadium bright lights erupted and shown down from atop the open air stadium. The lights slowly revolved around in a set pattern but nothing was holding them. The seats which were empty were now filled with silhouettes of various humanoids, some too large to even fit into a seat however they all looked to be standing and cheering. Most likely the cause of the cheers, that did not explain the instrumental fanfare that was still playing, Jacob looked around for the cause but nothing could be seen. Aurelius was looking intently at the giant stone statue throughout the influx of spectacles, never taking his eyes off of it. He moved closer to give Jacob a pinch knowing he was distracted by the sights. As Jacob yeowched, the giant stone statue suddenly moved and began unfurling from its hunched position.
The giant stone statue stood up on its leg causing Jacob and even Aurelius to look up, shot out the two wings behind showing itself off. It did not carry any of the looks of disrepair like the other stone statues Jacob saw. Instead it look to be carved of marble, it had a pristine white finish. 4 arms each carrying a different weapon and a pair of wicked looking wings to finish off any who would come. Three angelic looking heads all positioned similar to an Asura rested on its shoulders all six pairs of eyes glinted as the middle one looked at Jacob and Aurelius. A pure white stone statue standing at 4 metres with 4 sharp weapons ready to skewer and equally powerful looking wings to match. Jacob and Aurelius would have their work cut out for them.