GUARDIAN OF THE END

Jason slowly lifted his head to see two bald monks walking his way. Both of them were twins except for the color of their eyes.

One monk had dark blue eyes while the other had pure white eyes. They were wearing robes matching the color of their eyes and had their entire body hidden from view.

A smile was visible on the face of the white-eyed monk as he extended his hand towards Jason.

"My name is Chronos and I am one of the guardians of the temple. Nice to meet you, Jason Syrward." Chronos greeted. "I hope that the retching sensation wasn't too overwhelming for you."

Jason's jaw twitched when he heard Chronos's comment. However, he didn't say anything quirky in reply.

Jason had sensed that Chronos was way out of his league. In fact, he felt as if the guardian was even stronger than Julian's patron.

"I am Choros, his twin," the other monk said. "You both will be facing us before being able to enter the temple."

"Why exactly do we have to fight you both? Can't you just let us inside the temple so that we can wait there for a few days before praying?" Jason questioned.

"It's because Lord Galirius won't allow that to happen. He has us bound to this place and we have to act as the temple's guardians." Chronos sighed.

"We know that the child is suffering. If we weren't bound by our duties, we would have allowed you to pass inside. After all, we don't want a fellow demi-god to suffer." Choros added.

That was enough to send chills down Jason's spine. The two monks in front of him were demi-gods, meaning that their strength far exceeded those with a normal divinity.

If he were to face them head on, he was sure he would lose within seconds.

"What kind of trial do I have to clear to enter the temple?" Jason asked.

"Let's go somewhere scenic first. We will think about things then." Choros flicked his right hand as the space around Jason suddenly distorted.

He appeared inside a blackhole before appearing in the middle of a flower garden. Jason immediately recognized this as the work of a space mage, making Choros the second space mage he met.

"Don't you think the flowers are a bit wilted?" Choros asked his twin.

"They are. We haven't visited this place for a few years so this was expected." Chronos shrugged before flicking his right hand upwards.

In front of Jason's eyes, the flowers completely changed. It was as though they went back in time and appeared fully bloomed.

"Time magic…" Jason's jaw opened slightly.

"Correct. I'm a time mage while Choros is a space mage. While we were living on Clover, we were quite famous due to our elements." Chronos smiled. "Don't worry, we won't ask you to fight us."

"Your challenge will be something much simpler yet difficult." Choros added.

The twins exchanged a silent glance before looking straight at May.

"To enter the temple, both of you must make a decision,"

"Either one of you shall pass and the other dies,"

"Or both of you die and no one passes,"

"Take your time to think,"

"We will return once you are done."

The twins suddenly vanished without any warning, leaving behind a dumbfounded Jason.

'For some reason, I was expecting them to start talking in rhyming sentences.'

[ I expected that too but I guess they don't have that level of synchronization. It's hard to explain the details of a trial and rhyme at the same time. ]

Jason nodded before sitting cross-legged on the ground. There was no way he was going to die due to such a trial.

Since he had a lot of time at hand, there might be another exit that was kept hidden from his vision.

[ Jason, do you think they will kill us both if we don't choose someone to go ahead? ] May asked in a low tone.

"First of all, don't say that I should go ahead because I am not going to go. Second, this is a stupid thing because we didn't come all the way here to let only one of us proceed. Anything else you wanna ask?" Jason raised an eyebrow.

[ No… How will we leave this place then? ] May shook her head to clear her thoughts.

'Some sort of hidden exit must be located here that we will be able to find if we try hard enough. My bet is that we have to clear some sort of mini trial to unlock that exit.' Jason replied telepathically.

He turned on his divine vision and looked around with his ability. He tried finding a hidden entrance, which obviously didn't pop up.

_{𝑓r𝘦𝘦𝘄eb𝒏𝙤vel.c𝙤𝙢}

Jason stood up and started observing every inch of the place. He tapped the ground with his feet experimentally to see whether it would trigger anything.

? 'System, help me here. Let's run a scan over the entire area.'

[ My range is kind of short here. It's probably due to Choros's space ability but I should still be able to sense some kind of hidden entrance. ]

With the system's help, Jason set out to find the hidden entrance that he believed existed.

May started helping him as well by going in the opposite direction. However, she would have to stop frequently to prevent her divinity from going out of hand.

She didn't want to ask Jason for help since he was trying to find a way to get the two of them out of there.

May promised herself that she would hold herself for as long as she could before finally asking for Jason's help.

'I hope we can get out of this place by finding another exit. If we can't…' May closed her eyes for a few second and took a deep breath.

She already thought of the worst-case scenario and what she would do in case it came true. After finalizing her plan, she set out to help Jason again.

And just like that, days started passing by...