Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Lily’s Doggoblast punctured the ruins and mountains, shocking everyone including herself. She never expected to cough up a laser beam. It reminded her about the first time she roared out the same laser beam and shocked herself like a bolt from the blue. Today was the same.
She even thought that the Doggoblast would make her jump out of her skin every time she was in combat.
Compared with the husky maiden who had scared herself to death, the others reacted quicker. Vivian had descended from mid-air, and she was looking in awe at the big hole that was punctured by the laser beam. She even began to feel that the husky’s combat strength had become over the top. Lily, who was already invincible in close-quarters combat, had become a perfect short and long-range, super DPS-class fighter. If not for the light cannon’s high energy consumption, Lily could do it a dozen times after a meal.
Vivian began to carefully check the scene for traces of the flame monster. The monster’s form of existence was too strange, and she was not sure if the Doggoblast could kill it just like that.
With her jaw dropped to the ground, Becky looked at Lily, whose mouth was still billowing with smoke. The mercenary girl had never expected Lily’s combat strength to increase such rapidly. Becky still remembered the melee in the Beinz diocese where both of them, barely had any skills, were fighting the monsters together. It was only two years later that the husky had become a drinking god who spat laser beams. But Becky did not have to be self-abased; her enhancement in combat strength was already of a monster-class in the eyes of Hollettans. After all, the mercenary girl had eaten those ‘divine food’ while staying in Hao Ren’s house.
The pungent burnt smell was still lingering in the air. The chill air that surrounded Vivian had cooled down the surrounding hot air heated up the laser beam earlier. Hao Ren looked at the trail of the laser beam. He suddenly spotted something.
On the scorched ground, a cluster of bright-white flames suddenly popped out and rose higher and higher!
“Holy moly! That thing is not dead yet!” Hao Ren shouted. He wondered what kind of monster that the mage emperors had created here back then. Meanwhile, the flame had soared to nearly a person’s height and quickly twisted and trembled before forming into a human form. The knights and apprentice mages were shocked and awed.
However, the worse was yet to come. The body of Sacred Flames materialized, trembled, and disintegrated into groups of smaller fires. The same thing happened several times until it stabilized. But the figure had weakened so much that she was feebler than the apprentice mages, and the flames seemed to die out very soon. Hao Ren knew what was going on. After suffering several heavy blows, the monster had exhausted its energy reserve. She had lost her combat ability at the moment.
Hao Ren, Vivian, Becky, Hymer, and Lily, who had just calmed down, slowly and cautiously inched up and surrounded the Sacred Flame Incarnate, who struggled but could never get up. The flame continued to subside and finally went out in the gaze of everyone. The scattered sparks whirled to form a mercury-like body. When the metallic luster of mercury faded, it became a petite woman in flesh and blood.
The woman kept a long silver hair that could almost wrap herself in it. The phosphorus light on her hair seemed like a glowing ember. She was so remarkably beautiful that it was impossible to relate her to the monster earlier. A pair of slightly pointed ears stuck out from under her long hair; Master Hymer could not help but mumble, “She’s an elf?”
Hao Ren noticed the clothes that they woman wore; it was a white dress that could be deemed luxurious. There were no jewelry pendants on her dress, but at a glance, the mono-color fabric exuded a sense of exquisiteness and beauty. She wore an emerald green belt, which was made of a string of green jades that glittered, making her look more slender.
It did not look like attire in combat, not an experiment subject or a newborn demon hunter.
No biochemical lab would let its specimen in the culture tank wear such a gorgeous dress.
Vivian had noticed the anomaly that the dress revealed. She frowned and said, “I have never worn such gorgeous dress in my life.”
Okay, she did not find any anomaly.
“She’s passed out,” the MDT said after flying around the elf and scanning her head. “She suffers mental damage, physical exhaustion, hemorrhage of her organs, and bodily dysfunction. Besides, the Doggoblast had also wounded her soul. Other than these, she has no serious injury.”
As if her injury was not severe enough—Hao Ren thought to himself.
“Is she an Ancient?” Lily came up and asked. Her golden eyes were full of curiosity. “An experimental subject created by the mage emperor 10,000 years ago?”
“She doesn’t look like one. Not quite like, the experiment subject will not wear this kind of clothes.” Hao Ren shook his head, but he still looked happy. “Anyway, she must have come from the past—sealed inside the ruins where time had stood still for 10,000 years. We have found a treasure. She must know a lot of things of 10,000 years ago!”
“Only if she is communicable,” Vivian said, pouring cold water on Hao Ren’s excitement. “Don’t forget how violent she was. She is probably a specimen that has lost control. Most likely, she is mad.”
“In any case, we should tie her up first. I will study her once she wakes up. She needs medical attention. At least treat her mental and soul damages. She may be communicable after the that.”
While saying, Hao Ren took out his equipment—non-explosive—from the dimensional pocket. First, he tied the unconscious elf up with a restraint device and then let the portable medical instrument treat her. After noticing her condition gradually stabilized, and knowing that she would not be able to break free from the restraint, only Hao Ren breathed a sigh of relief. He then turned his attention to the second door.
The mysterious elven woman had rushed out from that place earlier. What happened behind the second door must be the reason why the experimental base was locked down urgently.
A few senior knights were taking care of the ‘captive,’ while Hao Ren and the rest walked toward the door.
When they stepped inside, they saw a scene of devastation.
“It seems that this is the reason for the urgent evacuation,” Vivian said in a whisper when she saw the scene.
The space behind the second door was completely ‘defaced.’ It had not only suffered severe physical damage but also been baptized by powerful magic energy. The entire space had become distorted. In the nearly circular chamber, nothing was intact. There was a circle of semi-melted black substance around the chamber, as though some crystal had melted and then solidified. Cracks had formed in the ground across the chamber, with dark-blue light floating in those cracks. Sometimes, there were flashes of light in the cracks. At the top of the chamber was a dome that was deformed. The dome was black with light purple cracks spreading all over it. Space around the spots with the most cracks was distorted and had collapsed; where strange light and shadows converged, the sights outside the Gloom Mountains were visible.
Burnt corpses—or rather body pieces and torn clothes—were scattered around. Finding any clues from these mutilated bodies was impossible. Hao Ren could only speculate that they were the lab personnel, and the cause of death was mostly from high temperature, possibly caused by an energy storm.
“What a wretch.” Master Hymer’s brows knit together as he slowly walked in the chamber. The air was filled with a pungent smell, and even the residual magic energy had not wholly dissipated as if the disaster had only happened not long ago. After all, the time had stood still here for 10,000 years.
Hao Ren’s eyes landed on the center of the chamber, where the disaster first broke out. All the radial cracks on the ground and the most severe distortion on the dome pointed to the center of the chamber as the place of origin of the event. There, the structure had melted, and a pile of strange black substance still emitted a residual heat. It could be the base of some equipment as some burnt, and shrunk tubes and cables were routed around the pedestal and then out into all directions. All this evidence pointed to the fact that the base was the core of the various experimental equipment in the chamber.
Hao Ren guessed that the out-of-control Sacred Flame Incarnate must have broken out from this pedestal.
The damage to the chamber was shocking, to say the least. So a question came to Hao Ren’s mind: why the outer chamber was intact?
Driven by this question, Hao Ren turned his eyes on the surrounding walls. And sure enough, something was hidden in the walls.
Hao Ren scrapped the black substance off the wall, revealing the solid wall beneath. It was densely engraved with runes that gleamed under the light of the MDT.
They were not Letta runes or any known runes on this planet. Even a great mage like Hymer did not recognize them.
However, Hao Ren did. He recognized them because he had seen the same thing in another place: on the battlefield at the Gate of Solenne. The same symbols of divine power were engraved on the inner layer of the treacherous children’s vehicle armor.
