Capítulo 139: Book 6, chapter 30
The narrow corridors seemingly stretched for miles, with no end in sight. Aside from Raina, who seemed to be growing like a weed, Zee was alone.
Without Zul or Dern in her mind, things were quite dull. After several months alone, she actually kind of missed their constant bickering. She could still feel her link to both of them, albeit distantly. She missed her friends. It would have still sucked if they were here, but misery was often better when endured with friends. She hoped Bas and the others were doing alright.
Having them here would have been nice, but knowing her friends were safe was a weight off her mind. Even after a full week in here, Zee still had no idea how to escape this labyrinth. The place was nonsensical; the tunnels turning without rhyme or reason.
Even the junction's with their weird symbols didn't make sense, with many being unique, or repeating at random.
While she explored, something had been nagging at her for a while, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Nothing to do with the symbols at the junction's but instead it was related to energy flow.
It was incredibly odd how the world river flowed through these tunnels, almost as if they were the channels of an array or ritual diagram.
It couldn't be that simple an answer could it?
Who in their right mind would create a ritual diagram this massive?
Zee glanced up at the symbol carved above the door in front of her. It was that of a feathered monster with curved horns riding a bug from the depths of her nightmares. Her brows furrowed.
Perhaps she was giving the creators of this place too much credit.
The creator was very likely out of their mind. That was the only logical reason for creating this mind bending space. The realization was not comforting.
For all she knew, the insane entity who created this place might not have made a way out.
Once she had that thought, it just wouldn't go away.
This place wasn't a trial, no, it was a death trap. The thought started as a whisper, and grew to near certainty with each passage she walked down.
The more she studied them, the more the ritual markings on the walls made sense. They channeled energy from the world river, but also collected something else. Something ominous. It was like fear or despair. It was as if someone created the place to collect negative emotions from those trapped inside.
The whole place was a trap, to lure people in and harvest their suffering. The realization was not a comforting one. She roamed the halls, carefully studying the symbols, desperate to prove herself wrong.
Even after a month, her initial theory was the same. To make things more of a downer, she still had no idea how to get out.
She tried brute force, but when that didn't pan out, she switched to using her head. She had a suppository of knowledge at hand, in the form of Raina, and the living book. Why not use it?
With no other choices, she poured over Tarnival's not, and compared them with the markings on the walls. After her time at the academy under master Garg, she had a solid foundation, though it felt incredibly lacking compared to this monolithic ritual.
Even after another week of wandering the tunnels and observing the patterns, she hardly understood a fraction of its workings. Even with a library's worth of knowledge stored in Raina's pages, she wasn't making much headway.
Simply observing wasn't getting her anywhere. She needed to start trying different rituals to see how they would react. A basic ritual to get things started. That led her down a different rabbit hole, with timing passing in a blur of activity.
Using the incredibly sharp and durable edge of her sword, Zee scratched away at the corridor wall, adding another piece to her latest ritual diagram.
She wasn't sure how long she had been working at it, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was adding the next piece. This maze really did screw with her sense of time, with no barring on just how long she had been here.
All that she knew for certain was that half a years worth of her rations were gone.
She only ate when she was hungry, and that wasn't very often. Peak E grade cultivators relied a lot more on energy than food, and could almost solely rely on energy as sustenance.
That made this whole scenario quite troubling. Just how long had Igla, a D grade cultivator, been stuck in this damned Labrinth to die of starvation?
Shaking away that thought, she focused back on her previous task. Zee carved the stone with her blade, the sword cutting grooves into the stone.
When her latest mark was done, she took a step back. Her excitement quickly fell as nothing happened.
Beside her, Raina appeared, bobbing in the air. With auburn hair and dazzling green eyes, she looked surprisingly healthy. The kid, despite still being an ethereal ghost, had filled out, no longer looking starved skinny as a twig. The moment she appeared, Raina's face scrunched up in disappointment.
"Sorry aunty, I thought that one would work. I can try to find another ritual in my book?" Raina suggested.
Zee sighed. "No, it's fine. What are we doing wrong? I could swear that one should mess with this interference," Zee said.
Whirling in midair, the ghostly child who looked maybe nine years old shrugged.
"I don't know aunty. You are supposed to be the expert," Raina replied.
"I never said I was an expert," Zee grumbled.
"Well, you pretend to be an expert sometimes," Raina muttered.
Zee sighed again. She still couldn't believe how quickly Raina was growing up. It seemed only yesterday that she was just a terrified kid, and now she was giving Zee some sass. How was that even possible? Raina was a ghost inside of a book.. Growing up shouldn't be possible. And yet, she seemed to be growing at the same pace as a normal child.
That derailed her train of thought. If that was true, then her estimation might be more than a little off. Could it be? Had she been down here for years, instead of months.
Zee turned to her left and started walking. The walls were covered in markings, failed rituals that she had painstakingly carved into the stone. The book Raina's soul was in, had a whole library of rituals in its pages, and Zee had done her best to carve them all onto the stone.
Some of the more advanced ones were tricky, while others were not. By now, she was getting pretty dang good at drawing them. If only the labyrinth wasn't interfering with her work. Zee followed the tunnel that just kept going. Each turn, she thought it would stop, but one ritual turned into a dozen, then hundreds.
Had she really drawn all of these? There were so many, far more than she remembered carving into the stone. And yet, she recognized her own handy work. The further back ones were far cruder than her recent work, but they were her work.
It was quite disconcerting. After at least an hour's walk, she even ran into a scorched hole in the wall.
That memory came back to her as well. A ritual empowered avatar of dominion had certainly done a number on this tunnel, almost collapsing it. Almost. Even reality slash wasn't enough to do more than cut a deep gash into the tunnel. Much of her effort was already gone now, with the stone having already repaired itself.
Though a failure, it was worth the effort to at least try. On the bright side, the repair function was working far slower on the rituals she carved into the wall. That alone gave her some confidence, she was on the right track, she just needed to find the right ritual.
If only she could destabilize the effect from the ritual markings in the walls enough to open a gate.
She had a few other ideas on how to do that, but didn't dare try them while she had other options.
For now she stuck to her original goal, destabilizing this massive ritual. She felt like she could figure it out eventually, but it was proving troublesome.
Her train of thought came to a halt as the deathly quiet of the labyrinth that she had grown accustomed to was finally broken. Zee paused, cocking her head as a distant scrape echoed to her ears.
Her heart skipped a beat. She wanted to go check it out, but that sound was ominous.. Cautious, she walked down the hall and peered around the corner, where another junction lay.
Her caution paid off. The same monster that lived above in the forest stepped out into the junction. In the form of a giant bear, it sniffed at the air, the sound like a bellows. Zee held her breath, holding perfectly still, so as not to draw its attention.
She had almost forgotten that thing was even here, but now was reminded.
She licked her suddenly dry lips, worried it would turn down the path that led to her.
Thankfully, it didn't, choosing a different corridor than her own.
She let out a sigh of relief, slowly backing away.
That was far too close. She was going to need to be a lot quieter from now on. She couldn't exactly break this gigantic ritual embedded in the walls if she was running for her life.
Or…. Could she kill that thing? Surely it wasn't immortal. What if it was, though? Attempting to kill it would be extremely risky. On the other hand, hoping it didn't find her had its own share of risks. Maybe she was approaching this the wrong way. Why did she need to kill it? Why not trap it? Who's to say it needed to be dead? Wasn't that monster a spiritual creature?
What if she contracted with it? After all, she was a Spirit Sorceress. It was an extremely dangerous, and also tempting, course of action.
Adding another creature to her repertoire would be nice. Dern, Raina and Zul were extremely helpful, but no one said three was her limit.
The major problem with that was, how do you trap a monster that absorbs all energy thrown at it? Another equally important issue was, how was she going to form a contract with a monster trying to kill her?
She hummed thoughtfully. Those were just a few minor problems that she could figure out on the fly.
"Raina, what rituals do you have on spirit contracts? Something that might work on that monster that just walked by," Zee said..
The living book slipped from its case at her hip and flew up, opening in front of her. Partially transparent, Raina appeared above and behind the book, gesturing down at the pages.
"There are a few here. I don't know if any will work on that thing. Most spiritual contracts require both parties to accept.." She paused for a second. " There is a soul contract that could work. It does mention it is heretical to use it though," Raina replied hesitantly.
"Can you show it to me?" Zee asked.
Raina nodded, and the ritual in question appeared on the pages.
Zee read over the first couple lines of notes on the ritual carefully, noting that yes, this thing was a soul related ritual.
The diagram itself was the most advanced one she had run into in the living book, a twelfth tier ritual. Before it would have been impossible, but with her recent practice on ritual's it might be possible.
As you can expect from a heretical ritual, it required and offering of her blood, soul offerings, and a catalyst.
Zee had quite the stock of things inside her spatial storage, some of which she could probably use. They weren't ideal reagents for the ritual, but it could work.
All she had to do was set it up, and lure the monster in. What could go wrong?
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