Chapter 439 (1/2)

Contrary to what Randidly had thought earlier when he went to the staircase, he walked up to them in silence, letting the quiet sound of his footsteps on the wood echo. The bodies remained where they were laying, hacked to pieces by Randidly’s monstrous spear. As he was ascending the fire below just around, gathering up a howling momentum that would soon consume the bodies to feed its bottomless need.

So filled with violence that he was completely still, Randidly walked up to the next floor, his face twisted. He had… been tricked. But he couldn’t understand the nature of the trick at all. The Creature had clearly created that bit of Aether on the System translator function, keeping them from being able to communicate with the Death Cultists. But why? What secret were they keeping?

And if the same sort of traces were on Aratta-

The Aratta who had told him to kill all of the Death Cultists as soon as possible-

Randidly’s expression became grave. He sent a message to the group, telling them to disengage and fall back, making sure to capture Aratta. After all, it was possible that someone else, specifically the Creature, was using Aratta as a mouthpiece. The Aether wisps were just the Creature using the translation function of the System to translate the language into whatever it wanted to say.

Which meant that it clearly wanted Randidly to come here and kill the Death Cultists. Which, it turned out, was exactly what they wanted as well. That Grey Death Cultist had even called him Messiah… Randidly’s lips tightened into a firm line.

What the fuck was going on…?

When he reached the top of the staircase, Randidly looked around. He was in a small wooden chapel, and at the far end, the light grey Death Cultist was standing in front of an altar. IT was muttering, and moving its hands, and Mana was thick in the air. Slowly, that Mana was condensing, and it seemed that Randidly had already missed quite a bit of the ritual because the condensation was almost complete.

Resigning himself to wait, Randidly simply watched the rhythmic, deep movements of the Death Cultist as he controlled the energy. If nothing else, Randidly could learn much about the manipulation of Mana from him; based on the proficiency that Randidly was seeing, this Death Cultist would be able to Engrave the Shadow III rune without much difficulty at all.

The difference was in the treatment; whereas Randidly has always considered Mana a liquid, the Death Cultist’s ritual was making it clear that it shared quite a few similarities with gas, too, except instead of expanding to fill a space, it expanded… to fill a meaning.

Which made sense, because everything in this world responded to life and meaning, why would Mana be any different? But it wasn’t a perspective that Randidly had encountered before. He filed away that information, content to wait until he had a proper opportunity to experiment with the consequences of this realization.

Within 10 minutes, the Mana had concentrated in a point, and with a pop, formed into a solid black item. Reverently, the Death Cultist took it. Then, equally reverently, it turned, falling to his knees and holding it up, towards Randidly.

“I believe this is what you seek, Messiah.”

Randidly frowned. His steps were once again the only noise as he walked across the ground of the wooden chapel, his bare feet slapping, to stand before the Death Cultist. Gingerly, still somewhat suspicious, he took the item from the creature’s hand, which was shaped like a plus sign with a circle around it.

Key of Death Lvl 50: A special key, condensed from the secret methods of the Death Cultists, rather than forming naturally after an individual slays enough monsters. Inserting this Key of Death into the lock will result in a successful completion of the Raid Dungeon. Afterward, the energies of the Key of Death will sweep outwards, ending all life in the Raid Dungeon, transforming it into a regular Lvl 50 Dungeon.

“What the fuck.” Randidly hissed. This… Was the creature pointing him towards the end of the Raid Dungeon? But why-

And afterward, the energies would run wild and kill everything in the Raid Dungeon? Randidly wasn’t sure what the Creature was up to, but he sure as hell didn’t think it would waste its time in here, warping the Aether ecosystem in such specific ways if it was just going to let everything die at the end of it. Was it trying to create something specific then? That it would take with it when it escaped?

Randidly didn’t doubt that the Creature itself would have ways around the death energies, but-

Could it perhaps be even now laying a trap back at the giant cathedral they had spawned in? That didn’t seem right, however, because the Creature was not a being that ever gave up the initiative. It always moved only at the end, when its plan had completely come to fruition. That was why Randidly had struggled against it so much in the past. He hadn’t known that anything strange was going on at all, until the very end.

Perhaps then, the Creature’s plan was to have him kill the Death Cultists before they could condense a key, thereby trapping Randidly and the group here? But that was just stalling, and flukey at best. Besides, according to the tooltip, it would condense naturally after a certain number of enemies had been killed.