Lith's predecessors hadn't left all that goodies out of the goodness of their hearts. Finding something valuable inside Huryole required luck, plus one had to fight not only against powerful monsters, but also against time.
The lost city was a living labyrinth that would periodically rearrange itself, making any old map useless. To make matters worse, its walls couldn't be affected by earth magic, dimensional magic was sealed, and destroying the walls to make haste only made the cursed item that ruled Huryole angry.
Normally, the problem with the inhabitants of a lost city was that they would grow in power and numbers over time. It was a Ranger's duty to cull them and reset their power before they became too strong.
In Huryole's case, however, the number of creatures that spawned and their power was fixed. Even the monsters had a hard time finding their way out of the city and Lith only had to kill those who managed to reach the external barrier before they could breach it.
From the outside, the lost city looked like a giant stone dome. The only entrances were located at the ground level and breaking the dome would make the cursed object who 'protected' the city turn the whole Huryole into a rampaging golem.
Flight was useless as well, making many wonder what lay at the center of the city and for what purpose it had been built. Lith couldn't stop thinking how odd it was that Rangers were allowed to take for themselves whatever they recovered from it.
Huryole was also nicknamed "The Cursed Training Ground".
Lith used his badge to bypass the magical barrier isolating the city and checked the reset counter. The labyrinth would randomize itself at fixed intervals, so he had to make sure that it wouldn't happen any soon.
Otherwise, if a combat lasted for too long or if he managed to get deep into Huryole, Lith would risk becoming trapped inside the city. According to the counter, the next reset was in half a day, so Lith went directly inside.
'I swear, this place is oddly familiar. The rooms are always different, but the vibe here is something I already experienced somewhere else.' Lith thought while crossing a small courtyard, where several training dummies and weapons were orderly lined up.
A quick check with Life Vision confirmed to him that there was nothing valuable. The only magical aura in the room belonged to the walls encasing the courtyard. Solus used her spirit magic to pick up the weapons and use them to strike down the dummies.
"Why did you do that?" Lith asked as the last strawman was cut into half.
'Cursed training ground, training dummies, I thought maybe there was a reward for clearing the task.' She replied.
"Yeah, if this was a video game, you might be right. Real life is a bit different, though. No one rewards you for completing menial tasks." Lith's voice oozed with sarcasm.
The following room looked like a warehouse of some kind. Wooden cupboards and shelves where lined against the wall, while multiple vases filled with food lay around, enchanted with an unknown spell that prevented it from rotting.
'Jackpot!' Lith thought. 'I've never seen this kind of pseudo core before. I wonder if I'm the first to…' A quick use of Invigoration made him lose interest.
'Damn, the pseudo core it's too complex compared to a dimensional item. This thing is worthless to me.' Lith still copied it down to the smallest detail, just to be safe.
Fake mages couldn't scan magical items as he had just done and even if such a spell was of no use to Lith, the Kingdom might have been interested in buying it from him. The shelves in the room had several books, but after a quick glance, they turned out to be either inventory or account books.
Lith opened the door leading to the next room, surprised that he had yet to find a crossroad or a monster. Up to that point, his path had only one way in and one way out, making a map pointless.
'The outer layers have always been easy, but never this simple. If it keeps like this, I could get really deep into Huryole. Why is my paranoia sense tingling, though?' Lith thought.
'Well, maybe because if it's easy to get in then it's also easy to get out? It's not like this place is inhabit…'
'Thanks, Solus. Way to jinx it!' Lith said as he stepped inside what looked like a dorm, running into a Mage Slayer and a White Lady. They were two kinds of undead who were able to stay awake during the day, as long as they avoided direct sunlight.
Unfortunately for Lith, all the light inside Huryole was artificial, so that his enemies could move without problems. A Mage Slayer was usually born from the dying body of a powerful swordsman.
In their new form, they would be unable to use fake magic, but their undead nature combined with their skills allowed them to channel the elemental energy into their swordplay.
They weren't true mages, but they were able to cast spells without any chant or hand signs. They just needed to perform a series of attacks to unleash all kinds of elemental attacks up to tier three.
On top of that, magic was their source of nourishment, making all kinds of direct spells useless against them, no matter their tier. Both fake and true mages had a hard time facing someone with infinite stamina that could use magic by simply swinging their blades in close combat.
The Mage Slayer in front of Lith looked like a featureless humanoid mass of orange gas wielding a longsword covered in runes of power. Its red eyes were fixated on him, seething with hunger.
Inside the borders of Huryole, all the creatures the labyrinth spawned couldn't die, but that didn't mean that they would be freed from their needs.
'Why is its sword covered in runes? Aren't they supposed to disappear after the Forgemastering process ends?' Solus thought, glad to have the opportunity to share part of her memories without giving out her secret.
"Why is your sword covered in runes?" Lith asked with a sarcastic voice, talking to Solus more than to the Mage Slayer. The creature rushed at Lith, its blade slashing the air in front of itself to unleash a fireball.
'Sorry, Solus. It says it doesn't feel ready to share on a first date.' Lith thought while clapping his hands. It conjured a spinning air dome that sucked the fireball and deflected it against the White Lady.
Born from the corpse of a woman who had killed her own children, White Ladies were capable of using only two elements, water and darkness. They needed to feed on the life force of children and they extracted it by drowning them.
The undead was wearing a tattered wedding gown. The pristine white of the dress emphasized her grey necrotic flesh. Due to the prolonged lack of food, the White Lady was unable to retain her humanoid physical appearance and was reduced to a zombie-like creature.
Yet her hunger didn't diminish her magical powers one bit. She hurled a powerful stream of water that enveloped the fireball and snuffed it out like it was a candle. The White Lady shrieked in anger while looking at her companion with so much anger that Lith hoped she would attack the Mage Slayer.
