socalfunplaces Page 543
Page 543
"...I understand. Thanks."
"No need to thank me." Graf rolled his eyes. "Alright, time's tight, isn't it? Get lost."
He waved his hand, as if shooing away flies.
But no one believed that it was just stubbornness anymore.
Furu stood there for a while, and finally whispered, "...Don't die so soon, old man."
"Nobody on the ground should remember my face anymore." Graf grinned, revealing a few yellowed teeth. "You unlucky bastards, at least don't come back with that sour face."
Furu didn't turn around, but simply raised his arm.
It was a clenched, strong hand.
Before leaving, Matou Ike and Yvette nodded slightly to the old man, as if conveying some unspoken agreement.
Even after the group had walked quite a distance, a voice still echoed on the wind:
"You all come back safe and sound! It's okay if you don't come to see me! But—you must come back from Albion!!"
The wind howled across the wasteland, as if etching an echo of that sentence.
The astrologer didn't turn around, but instead raised his strong arm.
Following behind Furu, the terrain gradually transitions from plains to undulating hills.
The land remained dry and lifeless, with no sign of any trees or herbaceous plants growing.
Instead, there are rows of abruptly erected cylindrical rock formations, their surfaces covered with cracks, staggered and connected to each other, like a broken circular stone array.
At first glance, they appear to be some kind of ancient sacrificial relics, but neither their texture nor their structure resembles products of human processing. Rather, they are more like landforms naturally distorted after millions of years of wind erosion and magical erosion.
The old man in the distance still stood in the same spot, his gaze fixed on the direction they had left. His figure was blurred in the yellow-gray dust, like a stone statue left behind in the wilderness, not belonging to this era.
After walking for a while, Furu suddenly stopped.
As you enter the hilly area, the stone pillars become increasingly dense, and this place is even more so—the earth is piled with an astonishing number of strangely shaped rocks.
Sphere-shaped, triangular pyramid-shaped, star-shaped with sharp protrusions—they are like clay toys haphazardly stacked by the childlike minds of giants, crudely placed on the edge of the world.
Some of these structures clearly defy gravity, resembling bizarre buildings that have lost their rational support yet haven't collapsed.
The top of the megalithic tower bulges out to one side like a tumor, tilting in the air at an extremely unnatural angle, as if it would collapse at any moment, yet it steadily maintains its twisted balance, sending chills down one's spine.
All of this seems neither to be a product of nature nor a structure that human civilization could create.
That sense of disharmony, loss of balance, yet forced existence, makes one feel as if they have stumbled into the nightmare of a surrealist painter—or rather, as if this place is a graveyard sculpted by the magic of a dead dragon, a wasteland that distorts reality.
In this wild yet silent rocky forest, Furu spoke again:
“That’s it.” He raised his chin and pointed to a slightly darker-toned hilly depression in front of him.
"The main labyrinth of the Spirit Tomb Albion, also known as the 'Great Magic Circuit'—the Vein Corridor—starts from there. It's not a proper entrance or exit, but there are plenty of these things in the labyrinth."
Chapter 592 Ideals and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (4k)
"Lead me."
As soon as he finished speaking, the plain-looking knife flew out of his hand, tracing a smooth and perfect arc in the air. The blade suddenly froze as it approached the rock tower, as if nailed to mid-air by some invisible force, then shuddered violently and pierced straight into the surface of the stone tower.
A moment of silence followed—
A pitch-black crack, like a torn curtain, slowly opened from where the knife tip pierced, outlining a dark entrance just wide enough for one person to pass through.
Darkness seemed to seep from within the rock, swallowing the surrounding light. The space around the cave entrance appeared subtly distorted, as if the air itself was avoiding its presence.
"...It's still there." Furu glanced at the still slightly shimmering hilt of the sword and confirmed in a low voice, "This entrance still works."
“I remember that the structure of Albion was constantly changing.”
Matou Ike, standing at the back, spoke calmly, his gaze still fixed on the entrance that seemed to lead directly to another world.
Is it possible that this road will disappear completely when we reach the halfway point?
"Of course there is." Furu shrugged, his tone devoid of any comfort.
"It depends on how bad our luck is. You know, if we take the proper route, it's impossible to reach the location marked on the old man's map within 24 hours."
“Hmm.” Matou Ike nodded gently, accepting the fact that this uncertainty itself was a premise.
"Don't bump your head," Furu whispered a reminder, then bent down slightly and crawled into the hole first.
Yvette followed closely behind, the hem of her dress brushing against the rocks at the edge of the cave entrance, making a very faint rubbing sound.
She didn't turn around, but just as she was about to enter the darkness, she glanced back at Matou Ike, a glance filled with suppressed expectation and caution.
The third to enter was Matou Pond. He stretched out a finger to touch the edge of the cave entrance, and only after feeling a layer of magical energy fluctuation as thin as a spider web did he step in, as if stepping into a layer of reality that had been peeled away.
The sounds around me quickly faded away, leaving only the sound of my footsteps echoing repeatedly in the narrow passage as I stepped into the empty space.
The stone wall quickly swallowed the light behind them.
The three of them moved side by side through a narrow passageway that allowed only one person to pass at a time. Occasionally, dull thuds came from above, like the earth's veins churning or the echo of some enormous creature slowly crawling in the distance.
“Then,” Furu’s voice rang out from ahead, seemingly deliberately lowered, yet exceptionally clear in the deathly silence of the darkness.
"We are officially infiltrating—the Grand Magic Circuit."
In the darkness, a silent magic, like a thick fog, swirled, settled, and writhed around them.
The entrance to the vein corridor has been closed, leaving only a gradually fading knife mark, like a door that will never be opened again.
......
The light wriggled and lingered in the darkness, as if drawn by some will, dancing in the underground cavity.
It wasn't the glow that a normal light source could produce, but rather like sparks that suddenly exploded just before fireworks burned out, swirling and leaping in the void, like flames burning out their life, or like sparklers streaking across the night.
But these "lights" are essentially closer to an explosion.
Countless channels converge here, each flowing with subtle differences in magic, irreconcilable with one another, like sound waves of different frequencies interfering with each other.
The result is that the repulsive forces stack up and twist, causing the magic to break out along the gaps and burst out with dazzling flames.
This is one of the "convergence points" in the middle layer of Albion, where the pulses of the Great Magic Circuit intertwine and clash, igniting this magical phenomenon that is both dazzling and dangerous.
The terrain of this layer resembles the ocean.
The entire space seemed to be submerged in a densely colored coral reef.
Vibrant, eye-catching branches cling to the steps, pillars, and dome, spreading layer upon layer like dreamlike plants growing in the deep sea. But they are not real coral—
It was an intermediate existence, neither mineral nor biological, a life form that should have inhabited the pure sea.
Now, however, it is deeply rooted in Albion's thick, almost suffocating magic, twisting and growing, revealing a color that is so vivid it is eerie.
They breathe the scent of the dead dragon, using its remains as soil and magic as water, parasitizing the body of this mythical being who has died.
This is a dragon that died in a crevice leading to the "Fairy Land," its body becoming the foundation of a spirit tomb. Magic still flows slowly, blending the originally incompatible reality and fantasy into a huge labyrinth.
The dead dragon brought not only immense dragon magic power, but also an aura never recorded in history, identical to that of the Age of Gods, a phase sandwiched between the present world and the other world, almost impossible to reproduce.
Therefore, Albion, who was devoured and fused with this dragon skeleton, embarked on an evolutionary path completely different from all other spiritual lands in the world.
This is why Albion is the Clock Tower's most prized resource. It can even be ranked alongside Atlas Academy and the Wandering Sea as one of the three great secret realms of the magic world.
There is no absolutely stable space here.
Even at this seemingly empty convergence point, shimmering with mysterious bursts of light, order could collapse at any moment.
At that moment, an alien figure stepped into this chaos.
A deafening roar suddenly erupted. The lion was roaring.
—To be precise, it is a strange and fantastical species with two lion heads but vulture wings.
Its massive, ivory-like forelimbs slammed into the ground like warhammers, dripping a thick, asphalt-like venom from its giant claws that corroded the rocks, leaving hissing, deep craters.
The two heads roared simultaneously, their voices like rolling thunder, resonating in the space where magic intertwined, shaking the walls.
That was not a monster that appeared in any mythology on Earth.
It is a strange being born from Albion, a wild product born from the intertwining of this dragon's tomb and the spirit world.
It is nameless, formless in books, and cannot even be categorized—which is why it exists here.
However, the "outcast" does not refer to this monster.
Rather, it was another figure it was confronting.
That was a human.
The burst of light trembled around him, as if resisting, or perhaps trying to avoid.
He stood motionless, facing the two-headed lion, draped only in a somber black robe. His face was blurred like a mirror reflection, with only his eyes reflecting the light of coral.
The next moment, a roar came—
The roar of a wild beast, or "Beast Roar," has been a mysterious phenomenon since ancient times, and is regarded by many cultures as a divine revelation or a harbinger of disaster.
In the chaotic and deformed land of Albion, any creature directly affected by this roar suffered a mental breakdown and a collapse of consciousness, and some even became prey for this monster before they could even struggle.
"Ah, this is the tragedy of beasts."
The figure murmured a sigh, the voice sounding like a eulogy for the dead, yet also like a cold laugh at the present world.
"In the moment when you can't subdue your opponent with instinct, you will appear... clumsy and slow."
After speaking, he slowly drew his sword.
The movement was unhurried, almost polite—yet it was precisely this composure that made it all the more deadly. The blade made almost no sound, slicing straight through the air as if severing sound and time along with it.
"──Forged iron (Hephaistos)."
He murmured softly. Whether he was speaking to the demonic beast was impossible to say. It seemed more like a spell cast upon this sacred land itself.
That was a call from the age of mythology, a hymn to the god of fire and hammer.
The sword emitted a restrained light, its blade's outline appearing as if forged from molten iron, yet also as if slowly cooling in intense heat. An invisible sharpness then burst forth.
—In the next instant, the lion's two heads were already flying high into the air.
They tumbled and fell into the shimmering coral reef, their eyes still filled with stunned disbelief, their venom turning into choking white smoke in the air.
"What a pleasant land!"