Armad spent three days in the city with them.
He thought of the things he had seen while walking around the town with Spoon and Ilias, and the main thing he couldn't get out of his mind was the name Bihanzin of the perpetual damage. Since he was currently sitting in a room, he got up and took a pen and a leaf, and put down the name Bihanzin with capital letters of the Aldurish dialect. He spent the night thinking about it.
The next morning, Ilias came to him with the news of the Non-Touch dungeon. The dungeon would be opened that morning, which was three days short of the planned start. The message came last night from the King.
Having no choice, Armad hurriedly put on some clothes and left with Ilias. When they left, the sun hadn't risen, and the morning wind was still present, gently blowing their clothes.
They soon arrived at their destination. A huge building in the distance with the tallest wall Armad had ever seen. It extended in both directions as far as he could see.
Ilias pointed at the building. "What we are looking for is in that building."
When they arrived, they found a small group of people, many of whom glanced at them and looked away when they didn't recognize them. Word had spread about the opening of the Non-Touch dungeon today, so it wasn't surprising that people were already there.
As Armad and Ilias walked past everyone to the ten gates of the building, people turned in their direction.
Ilias presented a signed document, which the guard received and testified, then he opened the gate for them to pass.
From that moment on, people began to talk about them.
"Only the parliament is allowed to enter now. Everyone else would have to wait until nine o'clock.
"So who are those two people?"
The same utterances continued for several minutes even after Armad Ilias had disappeared.
Once inside, Armad continued to frown. What he saw was completely contrary to his expectations. He thought he would see another building or something, but there was nothing, only an empty field of white soil. The ground, the sky, and the walls all around them were the same white color, white as fat. There was also no one there but them.
Ilias quickly explained to Armad what he needed to do.
"This place is a bit special. I know you don't see it now but there's a door in front of you which you need to enter. Once you enter it, you'll leave this land and enter another land. A place no one is allowed to visit except those with Mikironomada bloodline of at least 95% purity. In other words, your body can't go in there."
Ilias reached into his cloak and pulled out a piece of paper with two drawings on it. One was a human painting, and the other was a giant-horned animal.
At first glance, Armad thought the animal had ten horns, but when he looked at it, he realized it was more than ten. When he tried to count it, he failed. It was as if the drawing was constantly changing like living art. The closer he moved to the horns, the more difficult it was to count them. This caused Armad to quickly take his eyes off the paper.
Ilias smiled. ''Good decision. As you know, every human has a soul and a body. The body is nothing but blood and muscle, which can die or be changed. But the soul is something that does not die and can't be changed. As I said, you can't go into the next door, but your soul can."
He clapped his hands together and the paper transformed into a box made of gold.
"You will go into this box. Once inside, your soul will be released from your body. It will come out and show you the way."
"I still don't know what to expect from the dungeon," Armad lamented.
Ilias smiled. "You shouldn't worry too much about that. The dungeon gives quests and rewards. I was thrown into a tunnel full of monsters and asked to defeat them. My reward was fifty years of longevity with a powerful pol and Negrinki. But you can get anything. And I'll be lying if I say I know what will happen to you once you are inside, or the quest and reward you'll get. It's all a game of chance.
"The only problem here is time. When you crossed the entrance gate, the door took your readings, and the guard outside estimated that the shortest time you can get anything here is ten years."
Mouth wide open, eyes full of confusion, and a heart full of doubt, Armad asked, "How long did you say?"
Before Ilias could respond, Armad was already rioting.
"Oh, man, this is not possible ... just show me the way out, please. I have to do something and that's what brought me to this country. If I take too long then it would all be for nothing. I'll look for a way to improve my pol in simpler ways."
Ilias had been trying to stop him but his eyes were closed and he didn't listen. When he finally succeeded in stopping him, he sighed. "Will you wait for me to finish?"
Armad looked at him with narrowed eyes. He shook his head a little and cleared his voice.
"You see, this is a very special place in many respects. For one, time flowed differently here than in the outside world. Every day out there is about 120 days here. Every three days outside is almost a year here. In short, spending a year in this place amounts to less than three days outside. The ten years you have been given will just be about 30 days outside."
Ilias smiled seeing the surprise in Armad's eyes.
"You don't have to worry about anything. Besides, what you may gain in return is worth risking. This is an opportunity you won't get often. I don't know how long your body will be able to withstand coming here again but it won't be soon. You probably don't know but there is a limit to the number of times you can come to this place in your entire lifetime. A lot of people have only one chance, but since you have awakened a Daikirin, I assume you can visit again. Though you should know that even lord Bihanzin was only able to come here four times. The last time he had to wait for nine years before his body would heal."
They made a few notes and Armad finally went into the box and lay down. Soon, a figure that looked just like Armad emerged from the box. If Ilias didn't know, he would never have realized the figure wasn't Armad.
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Seeing the figure left the box, Ilias closed it. The paper, which had transformed into the box, had all the information and directives on the dungeon. And now the soul had that information as it was formed by the workings of the box.
Ignoring Ilias, the soul took seven equal steps forward. In response, a door appeared in front of it. The soul opened the door and went straight in.
Outside, Ilias sat down and prayed. While inside, Armad's soul appeared in another space. The entire place felt old to the soul, too old even. The soul ignored the feeling and closed its eyes. It walked in the southeast direction, each step covering the same distance, for forty steps. Then it stopped walking and opened its eyes for seven seconds before it closed its right eye and turned to the southwest corner and continued walking just like before for twenty steps. Then it stopped and opened its right eyes while closing the left, whereupon it turned to the southeast corner again and continued walking as before. This time around it was twenty steps as well, and it stood and opened its eyes.
With practiced ease, the soul then turned to the southwest again and closed its two eyes to perform another forty equal steps. This time around, the spirit didn't open its eyes, it stood still as if waiting for something.
It remained like that for six days before it opened its eyes and sat on the ground, cross-legged. Nothing special happened. Everything was as quiet as it was before. The soul sat there and waited. Things went on like this for a month and nothing happened. The soul was still facing east.
Two months, three months, four months, five months... one year... And it went on like that for nine and a half years. The soul didn't leave. It remained like that and stared at the vast expanse without even blinking.
On a certain Monday, the fourteenth of Yuri (the third month in the Aldurish calendar), it started raining. Surprisingly the water was red, red as blood. It rained for several days, and then it stopped.
Despite raining nonstop for days, the white soil was still dry and was still white; there was no sign of the red water. The soul remained in its place.
Three days after the rain, the world shook violently. You would think it was an earthquake. This went on for another long time before everything calmed down. Then three doors appeared out of thin air in front of the soul. They opened at the same time to reveal equal-sized boxes.
In the box on the right was a bowl with some water in it. Farkári was written on the bowl. The next box had a book with a red cover. There was something written on the red cover with blood, but it was either poorly written, or it faded due to the passage of time. The book was just the size of an adult palm. In the last box was a spear. A small fireball burned at the tip of the spear. Looking at the fireball, it looked like it had been there for a thousand years, never to be extinguished. Mashìral-Iburish was written on the spear.
For the first time in years, the soul stood and lifted its hand. It kept pointing forward with one hand while it stabbed itself with the other in the chest. When the hand came out of the chest, blood marks were seen on the fingers, which were no more than one or two drops.
Quickly, as if afraid the blood might get lost, the soul squeezed it in its right thumb and pointed it toward the three boxes. The bowl, the spear, and the book shook violently in an attempt to get out of the boxes.
This continued for some time before the book finally flew out of its box and fell on the bloody palm of the soul. As soon as this happened, the bowl and the spear stopped moving. They went back into their boxes and, after the boxes closed, they disappeared.
The book on the soul's palm absorbed the blood on it. Then, slowly, the blurred writings on the cover changed to A R M A D. The world faded and gradually disappeared. Armad's soul reappeared where he had left his body inside the box.
Ilias, who had been waiting, looked up at the soul with narrowed eyes. "It is not supposed to be back yet..." He murmured to himself.
Ilias eyed the book in the soul's hand.
He wanted to talk to the soul but it ignored him and went straight for the box. However, a strong wind blew around the box and forced it back.
"It's not yet time," Ilias said loudly. "You can't return to your body until the energy separating you is exhausted. I'll advise waiting for the next few days."
The soul still didn't look at Ilias, it just moved to one side and looked for a place to sit. Soon after the soul had settled down, the book in its hand began to light up, turning into the shape of a sword with Armad's name written on it.
The sword was made of white steel, and despite everything, the steel looked normal. It had a black hilt with some red dots on it. And then written on the other side of the steel, which didn't have Armad's name on it, was Reflexia.
Ilias stood up in terror, his eyes filled with primal fear. He muttered three words, "The... First Writer's...!"
Some Bends were unique. And every major tribe had its unique Bends. The first writers' Bend belonged to Mikironomada. With it, you could write the name of an object and the object would transform from writing to reality. And you could turn what you already have into a text, that's reality into writing.
For example, you could name a sword, and then write down the conditions under which you want this sword to be real. If you used this Bend then the text would be converted to the sword you needed. Then on the other hand, if you had a sword and you wanted to hide it, you could write the description of the sword, and then used this Bend to convert it into text.
History had it that Miki Abbas, the second king of Mikironomada and the current leader of the House, invented this Bend. He was also historically one of the seven people who invented writing in this era.
Ilias looked at the sword in Armad's hands curiously. It was initially a book and now it was a sword, which meant someone must have used the first writer's Bend to hide the sword. He wanted to know the secret contained in the sword and the person who used the first writer's Bend to hide the sword. Was it the King himself? How important was it?
Ilias kept staring at the sword. It had been almost a decade since Armad entered the box. But if you looked at Ilias, who came in together with him, he looked like the day they came in, his body didn't change at all. You wouldn't believe he'd been there for a week. The difference in time between the dungeon and the outside, as well as the temporary suspension of basic human needs like eating and drinking, allowed Ilias to do so.
A couple of days later, Armad's soul glowed with a blinding light that filled the entire dungeon. Ilias closed his eyes.
Over sixty seconds later, Ilias tried to open his eyes to see what was happening, but he couldn't, the blinding light was still there.
It was several minutes later that the light began to fade slowly and gradually. After a while, it disappeared, and Ilias was able to open his eyes. At that moment, he rolled his eyes in surprise.
The box was opened and Armad was standing right on top of it. Although Ilias was far from where Armad was, he could feel the new pol rising from Armad's body. The miyura on his forehead emitted a red light through the headband tied around his forehead. If the headband hadn't been there, Ilias would have been able to see a new star orbiting the mark on Armad's forehead.
But he felt the great pol rising from Armad's body and saw the new sword hanging around his right shoulder and he knew Armad had succeeded in getting a great Bend in the dungeon.
Armad was already Al'yaya and Heir of Wilberforce, and now this...
Ilias looked at him with newfound respect. The same respect he would give Nusi or Bihanzin. He felt the urge to prostrate on the ground and bow to Armad.
Armad approached him with a kind smile, which caused the pressure to lessen and let him regained his composure. He was still stunned by the sudden feeling of strength he got from Armad.
"Ah... Ilias," Armad said with a smile. "I'm sorry, I feel like we have wasted a lot of time."
Armad was casual but the pol seeping through his voice made it difficult for Ilias to even answer. The man managed to shake his head, his legs shaking as if they couldn't carry him.
He'd already reached one hundred and twenty-one years of pol but one question from Armad had stunned him.
Armad realized this just now. He felt bad despite fully knowing he didn't do it on purpose.
The innate pol from the book had entered his body. He needed to compete with men and gain more experience before he could control it. Otherwise, it could cause serious problems and even overpower him.
"I'm sorry for that," Armad said. It sounded awkward apologizing for something like that especially to someone who was seemingly more powerful than you.
Ilias laughed. "Don't worry about it. I'll be right behind you with my upgrade soon."
They laughed and the tension washed away.