Monster Integration

“Why aren’t you opening it; it is clear this thing has something good,” said Rhea in excitement; even after finding so many things, her excitement about the new things did not wane; it might be due to it being a box which is likely containing treasure inside.

“I can’t; there is an exceedingly complex formation covering this thing,” I said and shook my head while the violet light bloomed in my hand, showing them the dense, complex runes covering the box.

A second later, I placed the box inside my storage and resumed walking, only to stop a minute later to take another thing out of the ground before resuming walking again.

Little more than two hours passed as such, and I became even more tired, but I did not see the end to this place, much less find the door.

This place is big, and we are walking at a pace that even a common person overtakes us. If this place hadn’t been so dangerous, even with such dark, it wouldn’t have taken us more than a few minutes to explore the whole place and find the exit.

Hun

I was thinking those thoughts when suddenly, I saw something in the distance which was shining faintly. It is not the thing that surprised me, as this place is littered with those, but it is what is behind the thing.

Seeing it, my whole face lighted up like a bulb, and I wanted to flash up there, but if I were to do that, I would die by ten times reaching there. So, I continued with my regular place, even though my body was shaking with excitement.

I moved through the traps, guiding those behind me while picking up the treasures from the ground that seemed to be everywhere.

Hun!

“Is that?” called out Lady Yui as she finally noticed it, “Yes,” I said and resumed walking, and a few minutes later, we had reached close enough to conform; it was really a wall behind the skeleton, but the thing that had surprised me the most is the skeleton itself.

I thought it was one of the common skeletons we have found in the first hall and the last hall, but I was grossly wrong; this skeleton is no common skeleton, and that black greatsword in its chest is proof of that.

“Don’t go near it, its dangerous,” I said and stopped.

There is still around a hundred and fifty-meter distance between me and the skeleton, and I begin to iffy about it. There is extremly faint energy releasing from it, so faint that, if my sensors were not in the hyper mode, I wouldn’t have been able to sense it.

This energy is trying to sneakily enter inside me but is stopped by my defenses, and thankfully, the defensive formation I had placed on them has also been effective.

If this energy had been regular energy, I wouldn’t have been so cautious; many things in this place have produced the energies; some of it was dangerous, but one coming from the skeleton was most dangerous, and it is the same, that formed the base of the destructive energies that had attacked Lady Yui, the moment she entered this place.

“Both of you, wait here a little,” I said and even gave a look to Rhea before walking cautiously toward the skeleton.

I did not have any interest in the skeleton; I have seen enough skeletons for a year that I wouldn’t be too interested in them for a little while, but this skeleton is different, and I am seeing something on it that I have to investigate it before I follow the wall toward the exit.

Upping my defenses, I got closer and closer to the skeleton before stopping at around fifty meters before it; I could not get any closer without the chance of energy seeping inside me, which had now become a lot denser and more powerful.

It is fine; I can now see what I want to see.

As I stopped, I activated my ocular power at their full power, and the things I saw shocked me.

The skeleton is a humanoid; it is slightly taller than humans and has a single horn on its head and tail. Its bones are different than other bones; they are white like normal bones but have a steely quality in them; I am very sure the bones of this are stronger than those of the same level

This skeleton had all its bones preserved, which is no surprise; there was no single one that seemed to be missing, even those that were broken by a strike in its heart by the black sword.

It had been killed by that sword, and I don’t think it would have anything but a simple death. There are unknown black scripts coming from the sword, covering its whole body, and when I stared at the script for a long, I felt as if my soul was burning.

It was not a feeling; it was really trying to burn my soul, and if I had not stopped on time and hadn’t been circulating the soul cleansing method which protected me, it would have really harmed my soul.

‘It seemed this skeleton might be the owner of this place,’ I said, and I am not assuming it out of the air. The copper ring it is wearing on its middle finger had a signet of bone lily, the same signet I have seen in the bone art pieces and even above the doors.

So, there are only two assumptions, whether it is the staff of this place or the owner, and I am betting my money on the owner, considering how it had been killed.

It is a simple kill, the one who killed it wanted it to suffer, and I felt no pity for it. I am sure this one had sufficient blood on its hands collecting all these skeletons it had proudly showing, and something or someone related to the skeleton might have come back to bite it in the ass.

I also got an answer to a question on resources that are lying everywhere; the signet ring was also its spatial storage, and it had exploded with damaged, sending everything contained inside everywhere.

I would have really liked to get my hands on that sword and the signet right, which would have made opening the door extremly easy, but I am not powerful enough to get such close to it, and they are not worth it for me to go all out for them.

Seeing that, I turned back and returned to the ladies.

“Let’s go; now that we have found the wall, it wouldn’t be hard to find the door,” I said to them, and we began to follow the wall.

This place is huge, and even with us finding the wall, the door did not seem to close to use, which is scaring me a little as energies are rapidly expanding that I begin to slightly ration them; I did not want to do it, but I have no other choice.

I don’t know how long it will take us to find the door, so I want to preserve as much energy as possible in case it takes longer.

We found th door, and it took us nearly three hours to do it; by that time, my expenditures had turned really low. Though, on the way, we have found really good things that few times have brought me out of the numb state.

“I will solve the door,” I said and but unlike before, I did not sit down; this place was too dangerous for me to sit down with floating traps.

‘Success,’

It took two hours and forty minutes for my clone to solve the door, and by that, I had become so tired that I just was to sleep, but I did not fall down and instead consumed a herb which cleared my mind, which instantly made my mind clear and all the tiredness vanish.

“That thing had a price,” said Lady Yui simply; I smiled at her and turned to the door. Yes, the herb had some side effects, but I need to be at most alert right now; a single mistake in a complicated puzzle and I would be vaporized from the face of the earth.

I don’t want that; there are still many things that I want to do before I leave this world.