Although the pressure the old man emitted was very strong, Red didn’t feel the same sense of danger when he looked at the elder compared to the snake from earlier. He stared at his companions. They were likewise shifting in their feet because of the pressure, but mostly unbothered by the soul’s threatening display.

Eiwin looked at him and nodded, as if to reassure the boy. She then glared at the old man. “If you can hurt us, why bother asking for our help?”

The elder smile, this time with a more deranged expression. “If I kill you, who is going to free me? Of course, if I know you are going to leave without helping me, then I won’t hesitate to attack.”

“What about these people?” she pointed at the surrounding crypts. “Did you kill them?”

The old man scoffed in disdain. “How would I know? I never bothered to commit to memory the name of every cultivator I killed, much less the mortals.”

Eiwin frowned. “Don’t you feel any remorse for it?”

He laughed. “Remorse? Why would I? The path of a cultivator is carved over a mountain of corpses - if I had stopped to cry over them or regret my actions, I would never have reached the level I did.”

“Perhaps - but you wouldn’t have ended here either, would you?”

Her words made the old man silent.

“Is anything you told us true?” Red asked. “Are you really a member of a sect?”

The old man frowned. “I would never lie about that, brat. My sect was one of the most powerful ones in my era, and I was the one leading it towards greatness.”

Reinhart smiled. “If you were so powerful, how did you end up being destroyed?”

The elder’s expression twisted in anger. “I had enough of your questions! Either you help me out of this place or your lives will be forfeit!”

His voice boomed over the crypt, echoing around its walls.

Eiwin seemed unshaken by it, though. “You cannot harm us, lost soul. You put on a confident front, but your actions speak louder than your words. You are desperate. You are not in control, and you will remain here to pay for the sins you’ve committed.”

“Do you know who I am, you insignificant insect?!” the old man got even louder. “My name inspired fear and respect in the hearts of mortals like you! People lined up at my gate to pay their respects! I ruled this world!”

The younger woman didn’t respond to him, turning around to look at her companions. “We should move.”

Narcha, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for a good few minutes, nodded in response. Even Reinhart sighed and seemed to offer his silent agreement. Red, in the meantime, was still looking at the raging man, noticing the fact he never stepped past the central circle of the room.

The elder stared at the group with increasing madness in his eyes. “Where are you going?! Do you hear me?! If you turn your backs to me, all of you will pay!”

Eiwin ignored him, and immediately turned around to move towards another corridor. The others followed behind her.

The old man continued to throw insults at them. “You bastards! Idiots! If I ever get out of here, all of you are going to pay!”

No one responded.

The elder’s anger seemed to be quickly replaced by desperation. “I wasn’t lying about my treasury, you know?! If you let me out, I can take you there!”

Still no response.

“What I can offer you is more valuable than anything that fiend could possibly give you! I can take you on as my disciples! We can restore my sect together!”

The group finally reached the other side of the chamber, about to enter the connecting corridor.

Once the old man saw his pleas fall into deaf ears, he seemed to give up on convincing them. “You do not know what you are doing… I admit I was never a good person, but the master of this place was much, much worse.”

His words finally seemed to give the group some pause. Narcha, in particular, stopped walking and turned around to stare at the old man with a frown.

The elder smiled once he saw he had caught their attention again. “I wasn’t lying about his name earlier, either. The Dread Viper. He was a devilish cultivator, and not only that, but he was the most hated man in the world.”

Narcha scoffed. “You expect us to take your word on other people’s morals?”

“Miss Valt…” Eiwin frowned once she saw her companion interacting with the old man again.

The elder laughed. “You may think what you want from my words. The Dread Viper made an enemy of the entire cultivation world - so much so that according to you they wiped any mention of him from history. Yet, do you think that he has been forgotten? The damage he caused, the people he killed - I wasn’t there to see the end of it all, but I can assure you that is something the sects will never forget… Tell me, is the Crystal Sky Sect still alive?”

Narcha’s expression changed.

This seemed to be all the confirmation the old man needed. “Haha, of course they are! That sect survived all the biggest hurdles humanity has ever faced. From the Beast Wars, to the demon invasions, and to the very Queen of the Dead herself! Yet, do you know at whose hands they suffered their biggest loss?”

This time, it wasn’t just Narcha’s expression that worsened.

The old man laughed. “That’s right! It was to this damned fiend! Tell me, what do you think will happen to you if they ever learn that you came into contact with his inheritance?! You are doomed! All of you are doomed!”

Narcha seemed to be about to speak back to the elder before Eiwin put a hand on her shoulder.

The younger woman shook her head. “Miss Valt, let’s leave.”

The warrior gritted her teeth and nodded.

Soon the group was walking out of the chamber, while the old man’s maddened laughter got fainter.

…

Only once they couldn’t hear the old man anymore, did the whole weight of the interaction dawn on the rest of them.

Reinhart sighed. “Fuck, what an experience! That old man must have been someone really strong in the past to be imprisoned here!”

No one responded to him, contemplating in silence.

The knight seemed oblivious to that, though. He looked over at Red. “So, do you think he was telling the truth?”

The boy frowned. “I don’t know. This whole forgotten history seems too convenient of an excuse, since there is no way to verify his words for certain.”

Reinhart smiled. “And yet, if he is telling the truth, looking into it might get us killed.”

Red nodded. “I suppose he wanted us to suffer with the uncertainty since he couldn’t harm us physically.”

The knight shrugged. “I’m not too worried myself. As long as no one goes snooping around, no one’s at risk, are they?”

The boy supposed he was right.

“His words were troubling, but there is something else that is bothering me.” Eiwin said.

Red stared at her. “Are you wondering why the owner of this trial put something like this here?”

The woman smiled. “Exactly. If this man is at all who he claims to be, then running the risk of letting him free seems absurd.”

Narcha scoffed. “Was there even a way to set him free? I examined the whole room there, and I saw no signs of a formation. Unless it was hidden in the dark or something, I don’t know how we would have done it.” she looked over at Red and Reinhart.

Both of them shook their heads, showing they hadn’t seen any such thing with their dark vision.

Eiwin nodded. “This still doesn’t explain what he was doing here.”

“It’s a trial, isn’t it?” Reinhart asked. “Maybe they were just testing us to see if we were going to release this evil spirit or not.”

Narcha frowned. “You’d have to be stupid to take his words at face value! No one with a brain would ever release that man!”

“You’re right.” Eiwin said. “So maybe it wasn’t about whether or not we would release him, but more about judging our interaction with him.”

“That’s good and all, but if this really was a test, shouldn’t we have a reward for passing it?” the knight asked.

The younger woman shook her head. “I think we should be thankful we escaped with our lives from those birds for now.”

The man grumbled to himself.

…

The group continued to walk along this corridor for a fair distance, still baffled by the strange spatial properties of this mausoleum. At some point, they expected to arrive at the other exit of the building, but instead they came across a small room.

Reinhart’s eyes widened once he saw what was waiting ahead for them. “Spirit Stones!”

“Wait, what?!” Narcha, who couldn’t see in the darkness by far, was surprised by his words. “Don’t think of rushing ahead, you bastard!”

After some arguing, the group eventually reached the room. It was a small square chamber, no bigger than five meters across. On the back wall stood a stone desk decorated with unlit candles and all sorts of jewelry, urns, and gold coins. What took their attention, though, were the copious amounts of spirit stones gathered on top of some silver plates on the table.

There were about thirty of them.

Reinhart laughed. “Haha, we’re rich!”

Narcha also couldn’t hide her good spirits. “We have enough stones to exchange for Rog’s pill with this!”

Eiwin smiled. “Indeed. But be careful, we don’t know if there are any traps in this place.”

“Right, right!” Narcha nodded. She looked at Red. “Do you sense anything, kid?”

Red shook his head.

The warrior smiled. “There, we’re safe!”

Both she and Reinhart then went about uncovering the desk and gathering its valuables. It took them no more than two minutes to set everything apart. What they had gotten was 33 spirit stones, three strange purple arrows, and a large amount of jewelry which, while still valuable, paled compared to the spirit stones.

“Look, we got some special arrows for you, kid!” Reinhart said.

Red frowned. “How do you know they are special?”

The knight smiled. “I mean, look at them! They’re purple! They have to be special, right?”

The boy supposed he had a point. He grabbed the arrow and tested their sharpness. They seemed to be made of a slightly coarse metal, and Red couldn’t really feel any Spiritual Energy flowing through it. In fact, the arrows didn’t seem any sharper than common ones, but the boy still decided to keep them in hand. He knew some magical items had more to them than met the eye, so Red could use these in a pinch and hope for some explosion or something of the sort.

Other than that, the group divided the Spirit Stones four-way, this time with Reinhart taking 9 of them instead of eight. When all was said and done, Red’s group had 36 spirit stones total, 16 more than they needed to exchange for Rog’s pill.

It immediately put Narcha and Eiwin in a good mood.

Now that they were done looting the place, though, the group found themselves at a dead-end, as there were no other passages in the room other than the one they came from.

Narcha looked around. “So, what do we do now? Do we just go ba…”

She trailed off. Red noticed the strangeness of her behavior and looked over to see what had caught her attention.

The corridor they had just come from had disappeared, and in front of them now stood a door, similar to the ones they had used to come in. The surrounding space had shifted and transformed, with none of them even noticing as it happened.

Reinhart smiled. “Well, I guess that’s our cue to leave, right?”