413 Leaving the Dark Forest
After the elf died horribly, Arthur went close to the body and absorbed its essence. That was what he needed to do to complete his technique, allowing him to return to the living world fully.
His aura of a rank-three mage vanished as the elf turned into a mummy, and its essence went directly toward the rune carved on Arthur’s skin.
It was just a temporary level-up, one Arthur lost after completing the technique, but he was not feeling down because of it, as it was a great spell that saved his life.
“There are many corpses in here with blood. I should use them for training,” thought Arthur, sitting cross-legged amidst an ocean of corpses.
Although the level-up was temporary, the environment was still excellent for his training, and as the fight against the elves had not taken long, why not use some of the free time to practice?
Arthur meditated using the chant the Blood Monarch created, a specialized technique for those who had his inheritance. As he did that, all the blood around him flew directly toward his body, entering his mana core to strengthen it.
The feeling of ecstasy ran through his veins, and it was something he could not let go of. A vampire, like he was, could not deny his nature, and blood was a must!
Each time a corpse turned dry, and its blood entered Arthur’s body through his mouth, he felt stronger and stronger and closer to the rank three.
Arthur was already at the peak of rank two before that tough fight, and after experiencing rank three with his avatar, he got even closer to it. It was just a tiny step away from it, yet it would still take him some time…
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Two days had passed since Arthur started his meditation. At first, he did not believe it would take that long, but then his notion of time got messed up, and Arthur did not realize that much time had passed.
The moment he opened his eyes, the three girls waiting outside him stood before him, waiting for Arthur to stop his meditation.
“You? I told you to wait inside the magical formation,” Arthur said as he got up.
He wanted to be mad at them but remembered his accomplishment: rank three! It was impossible for him to feel down or anything of the sort, so no matter what happened, his mood would be unmoved like a mountain.
“We did. We did wait for you for about forty hours. The temple was quiet, so we came here to check. Is it okay?” one of them said, looking down, avoiding Arthur’s gaze.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s alright. I had to recover after the fight, so I did not return that quickly. So come, we have a portal to find.”
The three girls nodded and parted ways, each searching inside a different temple room. They were looking for the portal, and although Arthur had seen many portals, he was not sure if that one would look the same as the other portals he had found in his travels.
“Dust all over this place. Why do these black magician elves don’t clean? ” Arthur could not stop his thought as he sneezed with the dust the temple had collected.
There weren’t many different rooms in that temple, only a few where those elves slept, one where they did their rituals, and a library. Arthur did not care about where they slept, but the library and ritualistic place were interesting.
First, he had no idea what sort of black magic these elves were doing, but it was not that bad.
Why? If it was something that could destroy the world, then the beast Arthur met would have stopped them long ago.
“Maybe the beast does not care? Also, the definition of danger for someone as powerful as that beast is questionable. Perhaps it does not care if this world ends?”
With that thought in mind, Arthur looked around the library the best he could. So he browsed through the shelves, trying to catch an exciting book that might speak about what was happening inside the temple, yet he did not find it.
“Only ordinary magic books… Maybe they did not keep the evidence here, afraid someone would eventually take over this place?”
If that was the case, then whatever was happening with the elves in that temple was way more mysterious and dangerous than Arthur imagined.
They had gone through the trouble of keeping all the evidence away, meaning it was not ordinary, and Arthur should not take that lightly.
“Let me take a look at the ritual area.”
Arthur left the library after finding absolutely nothing and went to the place where the rituals of black magic happened.
There, he saw some runes he did not recognize and some symbols. Then, with deft moves, Arthur grabbed his notebook and copied everything he saw that he believed was necessary.
“I found something.”
A scream made Arthur return to his senses, and after he finished copying, he followed the scream. It was one of the three female elves that he had met inside that place, and one of them had found something uncommon.
She was standing right in front of a table with some chairs, and Arthur looked at it and could not understand what she was doing there.
“What are you seeing that I am not?” Arthur said with a puzzled expression.
No matter where he looked, it was just a standard room where the elves presumably ate. There was nothing more to it — well, Arthur could not realize it.
“It’s okay for you not to see it, but I am a trained assassin for the elves, so I know,” one of the elves said, and then she pointed to the chair legs, “do you see the pattern of the dust? It means they were constantly pushing the chair and the table over for some reason.”
Now that she mentioned it, Arthur realized it! The only reason it was possible to see was because of how dirty the entire temple was, and the dust had accumulated all over it.
“Let’s push the table to the side.”
It was just a standard wooden table with no magic behind it, meaning moving it to the side was easy. The table was close to the wall, and after they pulled it to the side, the stones on the wall moved, and a passage opened.
“What mechanism is this?” Arthur thought.
“Could it be dangerous?” one of the elves asked.
“Well, the portal must be there, so let’s go,” Arthur said and went forward, being the first to go through the secret passage.
p-A- n-d-A-n-0-v-e-1、(c)om It was a narrow passage, but it was enough for them to pass without significant problems. At the end of that passage, there was the portal!
It looked the same as all the other portals Arthur had seen, and he did not notice anything strange around the portal.
“I will go first, and you follow me.”
Arthur went through the portal, his vision blurred, and his head was a fuzz. But nothing else happened, and he was out of the Dark Forest, just like the three female elves.
“I am now a rank three mage, which means I have similar power to the chief of that village. I should look for Jake and Agatha and find out what is happening here!”