Abel could see different symbols on each of these five pillars. It was just like from the game. He could only open the teleportal portal to Tristram if he activated them in the right order. By thinking back to when he read the scroll of Inifuss, he searched for the first pillar that he was supposed to touch.
Once he did, he took out a perfect red stone to put in. As the stone slowly sank into the pillar, the symbol that was correspondent to it began to glow in blue light.
The second. The third. The fourth. Finally, when the last pillar was activated, all the pillars began to glow blue at the same time. The light became so bright. He had to take a few steps back while covering his eyes. Maybe it wasn’t good to use perfect gemstones on these things, after all.
The blue light emitted then started forming a rune pattern which, out of nowhere, created streaks of lightning that attacked the center of the pillars. Abel wasn’t sure what was going on, but he saw like this had caused a disturbance in time and space. He was right. A split in a dimension just appeared at where the lightning struck. When that split was sealed up, a red teleportation portal appeared.
As long as the red gemstones didn’t run out of energy, this portal would at least be there for about a month. Besides, there was a lot of mana that was flowing in the air. Since the gemstones could also recharge themselves, Abel was sure that it’s going to be a while before he would have to replace them.
When he looked at the portal, something told him that it’s going to be extremely dangerous to go in it. It was the first time he felt this way while in the dark world. The dark world was full of dangerous things, but the fear and anxiety he was having were like nothing he had experienced before.
To arm himself up, he decided to equip himself with his most defensive weapons. He had his small crescent shield in his left hand, his Jade of Tan Do in his right hand. He also had his “full recovery potion” in his snake’s self-recovery belt, which he could use to heal himself at any given time.
It was a shame that he couldn’t bring Flying Flame with him. Flying Flame was a flying mount, and flying mounts were not allowed to be in Tristram. He could bring in his other summoned creatures, though. The crows could tag along to help him deflect some of his enemies’ attacks. He could also bring in his five spiritual guardian knights, which had way more health points than the spirit wolves to act as meat shields.
After assembling the creatures that he’d like to bring with him, Abel decided to send the five crows through the portal first. After that, he rode in as he sat on Black Wind’s back. The place he was getting teleported to was somewhere in Tristram, which was full of hell creatures that could annihilate him in just a few seconds.
When he went in, he actually became scared of what he was looking at. There were just so many hell creatures. There were the night clans at the front, the carvers, and carver shamans behind, as well the skeleton archers at the very back. Upon a closer look, he could see a bunch of them that were flashing in golden light.
The ones he had to face first were the night clans, which were powerful creatures armed axes. Since he was teleported right in their camp, he had no time to send out his five spiritual guardian knights. It was probably for the better that he didn’t. There wasn’t a lot of space around him, so if he actually called them out, they’d probably be standing on top of him right now.
Now, six of these night clans were already charging at him. He blocked four of the axes with his crescent small shield, and he deflected the other two with his Jade of Tan Do. Usually, doing something like this should be easy if it was against a bunch of hell creatures. Yet, he felt like the force that was pressing on him was a little too much to handle. They must be in a higher rank than him.
“Back to the portal, Black Wind!” Abel quickly screamed. He knew he had no chance of winning against these night clans, so he didn’t hesitate to give up on the idea of continuing with his exploration.
They were a lot faster than he thought, however. As soon as he let out his voice, a rain of arrows poured over him from over the distance–fireballs immediately followed. His arms were too busy blocking the axes, so he had no choice but to rely on his armor for defense.
When the arrows were only a few meters away from him, his power of the Will suddenly went into overdrive. The arrows looked a lot slower to him, but he couldn’t feel himself moving faster, either. He watched as the arrow pierced through his “frozen armor” in slow-motion. His body couldn’t react to it, so all that he could do was to watch as more frost formed around the hole that was opened. Of course, it was all in slow-motion.
And another arrow. And another one. When he scanned closely with his power of the Will, he realized that the arrows were buffed with ice magic. He started to get really panicked, but the only thing he could do was to watch as they went through his thick layers of armor.
Eventually, one of the arrows pierced through his frozen armor. It was making its way towards his dark-golden combat qi armor, which was his very last line of defense. When the arrow made contact with it, a ripple was created to cancel out its impact. The ice effect of the arrow was also canceled. Actually, the frozen armor had already absorbed most of it.
That didn’t stop more arrows from coming, though. When the fourth arrow hit Abel, the frozen armor shattered as it became nothing but a thin layer of frost. When the fifth arrow hit him, all that was left to guard him was his dark-golden combat qi armor, which also quickly broke as three other arrows hit him.
To make matters worse, the ninth arrow was already flying at his shoulder. He still had his black armor intact, but he knew that it wasn’t going to do him much good. He had no choice. He could only try to tense the muscles around his shoulder. He could also try something else, though. It was something like that he had been saving for a time like this–the ice dragon’s protection necklace. The moment it was activated, a blue barrier appeared around his body. It was fast enough to block the arrows that followed. The tenth. The eleventh. The twelfth.
It couldn’t last forever, though. When the twentieth arrow came at him, his last line of defense shattered to pieces. When the twenty-first arrow pierced through his black armor, he tensed up his muscles for the pain that he was about to feel.
Meanwhile, his power of the Will was still in overdrive. Despite how strong his body was, the pain still hurt a lot when he was experiencing it all in slow-motion. Yes, all in slow-motion. He felt it when it pierced through his skins, muscles, his abdomen, and finally, his internal organs.
