Chapter 20: Exploration with Different Outcomes

The rest of the team became alert, Lucky teleported the team back to the entrance trying to distance themselves from the clearly dead man. The exploration had taken a dangerous turn since entering this zombie city, danger seemed to be everywhere.

The square in front of them became illusory, it gave them the feeling of everything turning into bubbles slowly. The dead man suddenly looked in their direction and smirked.

The leader of the team could no longer bear being scoffed at by a dead man, he raised his left hand and pointed it towards the direction of the dead man. A bright golden bird with three legs, burning feathers with sharp talons that were filled with purification symbols flew toward the square, the explosion that occurred when the burning bird hit the square reduced everything in a small radius to rubles.

The members of the team became solemn as they glimpsed at the burning fire that occurred from the explosion, they could feel part of the shackles on their minds loosening but they couldn’t anchor the sprouting thought that came to them at that point.

Gunvor the most cautious in the team did not believe this was just something to be dismissed, he tried to hold on as he thought of the reason why the sun path were special.

Unless an awakened rank far outstrip another awakened, awakened of the sun path have the easiest resistance to negative forces on their minds, sea of consciousness and spirit body. The burning fire in them gave them the ability to resist negative influences.

Gunvor said to the leader with difficulty, “use sun transformation now to buy us time.”

The leader’s expression became peculiar, from the beginning to the end, they seemed to have fallen to a trap, even Gunvor who was usually cautious fell for it.

They seemed to have forgotten the use of their normal path abilities only focusing on using the mutated skills they were provided with for this exploration. From the beginning, they had all secretly planned on using this mutated skills to escape of there was a need to.

The leader was too arrogant, without checking for the possibility of an illusion of external influence, he used the rank 4 sword to escape the room which obviously had a better defence.

Since leaving that room, they all used their skills and other trump cards but everything ended in failure.

As the leader came to this realisation, Gunvor also made the same note. The mental shackles on their minds seemed to be broken at that moment, they all looked at the statue in front of them and the moon hanging at top its head.

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Lucky muttered in a quivering voice, “are we going to die? I really can’t accept this, we were clearly prepared, we had everything we needed to succeed but in the end we were careless.”

He sighed in the dead city in resignation. He awakened at rank 8, he chose the star path because it gave him better chance of escaping even in an abyss dominated area. He felt like sun path awakened were too conspicuous, they would always be noticed wherever they went by the abyss no matter the sequence so he chose the best of both worlds.

At rank 5, star path awakened abilities became even more destructive. He thought he would not be in a disadvantage when fighting other rank 5 awakened.

Shadow was even more sullen, he felt like fate had played pranks on him. How could he chose to learn the shadow tunnel skill when he was told that he would be exploring a zombie city, a placed corroded by the abyss.

The others all had complicated feelings, they all knew there was no way for them to escape this place. If they were the pinnacle of their planes, they would have served as puppets for the abyss but their planes had more than one high ranking awakened and they were sure the abyssal aura on them could not be hiden from him.

Ahead of the team, the statue slowly turned towards the exploration team, the reason the team were feeling melancholic was because of this.

The moon on the statue’s head became brighter, it swept an illusory ice wind across it surrounding.

The team spirit bodies and sea of consciousness were the first to bear the brunt of this ice, it slowly freezer. They tried to resist but it was futile.

In this dead, silent city, the team of five turned into statues that seemed to have experienced the weathering of age.

….

The tyrant exploration team were clear on their objectives, bringing back the energy source and the moon awakening tome. The tyrant team once had everything but one was lost by a former team and careful considerations by different leaders made them chose to be patient until an absolutely safe choice was discovered.

Malicious tomes can be easy to discover but they couldn’t hide their dark nature in the presence of sun path awakened.

Leylah discovered the presence of an awakening tome in this ruin through astrology and it was path of the reason why Xander chose this mission. Tomes that do not realease active signals and are found by chance like this were usually high quality.

The suction force continued to act on his shadow that dragged the lucky compass or treasure compass main body along.

The temple door were engraved with all kinds of moon markings, Xander pressed his hands forward, pushing the double doors open. Ruins and dungeons like this are actually quite common, every mercenary and adventurer knew this could become the fate of dell plane and the other planes if a way to advance to rank 4 safely is not fully explored.

Behind the door, a voodoo doll that looked like it was going to collapse at anytime due to any external pressure hung on a nail opposite the door. The clothes and materials used to make this doll were filled with moon and star markings and patterns.

Leylah did not dare to take any action, repeated training in the maze mirror has given the members of the tyrant team better mental defences than other team members. While it could not defend against higher ranking powers, it could help them make the right decisions when needed.

When exploring ruins, discovering any object living or non living that is closely tied to a member path, the team member should refrain from taking action until the rest of the team were sure there were no abnormalities.

And what better way to do that than to try taking it on in a fight, before Xander and John could take action, Aster raised her right hand, pushing it in the direction of the doll.