The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

The sounds of his labored breathing echoed through the caverns. With a face full of sweat, Oscar leaned on the paved portion of the walls, the smoothness of these polished works reaching only a bit taller than his height. Erden stood beside him, watching their surroundings, ready to pounce on anything that could appear.

His lungs burned, straining and complaining for every ounce of air, and Oscar couldn't help it fast enough. His breathing didn't improve. It only got worse. Something choked him, and Oscar needed to find out what. The chamber he currently stood in had only a few tables and chairs. The fact nothing seemed out of place merely heightened his sense of danger.

'Calm down!' Oscar pounded his chest with enough power to force his lungs to contract. The air rushed out of his lungs, except it was a cloud of dust. Looking at the flakes that once sat in his chest, Oscar realized the problem. It was the cavern's air. The entire place was suffocated with dust and dirt. Not wanting to waste his Ein to breathe in purified air, Oscar put on his fabricator helmet, newly fixed.

The helmet had been a useful thing for so long. Oscar breathed the filtered air and exhaled, finally bringing his lungs to a quiet, calm state. His immediate breathing problem went away, so he turned his attention elsewhere to the collapsed passageway. Purple flames burned between the rocks, which glowed like hot coals.

Oscar's eyes moved to his clenched fist, to the purple flame, and back to his fist. Desperation nearly overwhelmed him to act and destroy this obstruction, but he forcibly quelled it. The flames gave off an eerie feeling as if it wasn't something he should touch without preparation.

Instead, he took out a morsel of raw meat he kept and tossed it into the purple flames. The meat landed on the hot coals, and Oscar shuddered when the meat started to dissolve rather than burn to a char. Next, he pulled his arm back and punched with all the might of a normal Shattering Wave.

The hot coals cracked and crumbled apart into burning pieces of rubble, and a dent formed in the collapsed pile. Right after, the purple flames burned fiercely and filled the dent. Oscar frowned behind his helmet. These rocks were fueling the flames. These purple flames were burning through the tunnel regardless of the rocks.

He considered going in with an Ein Shroud to protect himself and use Ripple Shroud in intervals. But he shook his head and remembered how far he descended from the start. Truly, no options remained other than to venture forward. However, his one concern was Avril. Though she said she was getting over her past as a slave and doing well, he knew that was only a first step. He worried something in here might set her off and derail all the progress she made.

'Strange. As soon as we entered the tunnel, the ground caved in, and we fell. It seemed like Avril slipped off, but what if that was deliberate? In no way would I have let her go during a fall.' Oscar gripped his hands. Even though he had her secure before him, he lost her. Fuming with a gnashing of his teeth, Oscar nodded to Erden. The stamping of crystal hooves pounded on the floor, reverberating across the silent cavern. Nothing stirred in response, a strange quietness persisting in what should have been an important location.

'Maybe they already evacuated. Were we too late? Hmmm.' The headquarters of the New Dawn in the Burning Valley lacked traces of anything having been here. Dust covered the furniture and objects, though he could infer it might have been because of the dense flakes floating around in the cavern.

Oh? Oscar ran ahead to small smudges near the doorway leading deeper within. Picking up the muddy substance and rubbing it between his fingers, Oscar determined it was blood and not too old. The wet texture was proof of it, as it hadn't had the time to dry fully.

His path was obvious, and Oscar went further below, his feet clanking on the polished stairs. Crystal lanterns illuminated the caverns, though barely. Oscar jumped and pulled out a crystal lantern, needing a more secure light. He pointed it forward, and the stairways before him revealed more of themselves. It wasn't dust covering them. Oscar swiped a finger across and gazed at it under the close light.

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'Ashes.' Oscar wiped off the ash and ventured deeper. His eyes worked overtime, darting everywhere, hoping to catch a glimpse of Avril and Adam. His impatience turned into action as his feet rushed down the stairs, and Oscar landed in a knee-depth desert of ash.

'Oscar. What the hell is that?' Erden said, his eyes lifted and wide in horror.

Turning to see what Erden saw, Oscar fell silent, his raised buckler lowered as his arm fell limp. The grotesque and horrible scene surpassed anything he had experienced, and a nauseous feeling drowned his lungs. Through his rushed breaths, he drew closer to the picture of suffering.

Multiple columns and pillars extended from the floor to the rocky ceiling. Inside them were several ash-covered sculptures of strange humanoid creatures, reaching out of the pillars as if trying to escape being swallowed into them. Their hands pushed against the pillars, tried to drag others with them, or reached out in a desperate attempt to cling on. Their faces had wide, stretched mouths, warped by agony and desperation.

The sculptures seemed so real that Oscar could imagine their screams, wails, and pleas for mercy. But just how many were there? This chamber stretched far, hundreds of feet long and wide, around the size of a mansion. Pillars populated almost every spot with a few inches to walk in between.

'If all of these were once people, then how many were sacrificed here?' Cold sweat drenched his back, and Oscar's feet froze, planted in the pool of ash. The corpses surrounded the pillars, up to the ceiling and down to the ash. Oscar wanted nothing more than to get out of here as soon as possible, dragging his legs through the dense ash.

After passing by several pillars, avoiding being touched by the outstretched gnarled hands, Oscar paused and leaned, squinting to see farther. A section of the room was void of pillars, and a single sitting figure floated atop the ash. Wary of the figure, Oscar entered Adamasreis, raised his shield, and preemptively melded with Erden. At a closer look, the figure had ash-covered, craggily skin with rocky protrusions from its joints. The face resembled a person if that person had the sharpest chin ever recorded and rocks spiking from its head like hair. There was no mouth and nose, only an ash-covered rocky exterior.

'This thing is made entirely of stone and ash….' Oscar was reminded of a bad memory. Images of the Grovekeepers and Lucus popped up. As he thought about those horrifying things, he heard a loud crack. His eyes snapped at the seated figure, noticing its yellow eyes had opened. Cracks formed across its face like a mouth, and it opened up with a scream.

'It's alive?! And it's a Greater Knight Exalt!' Entering the Pseudo-Guise, he kicked along with Erden's transformed antlers, which condensed into a singular branch. Without hesitation, his Eirin Omnireus flowed out at twenty percent from his golden drill.

The ash humanoid burst from its seated position, glowing yellow cracks appearing all over its body. Two hands clasped above its head and swung down. It collected ashes from around and became gigantic. Oscar directed the Eirin Omnireus up and retreated from the time it bought before the hands slammed down and blasted all the ash to the walls. The unveiled floors were clean and marbled black.

Lanterns turned on all around the room, leaving no shadow in the large room. Oscar could not tear his eyes away from the creature. He clenched his teeth, grinding it like a whetstone. This ash humanoid was, without a doubt, a former human or maybe an amalgamation similar to Lucus, judging from all the sacrificed people in the pillars.

'I never expected to meet something like a Grovekeeper again. Gol-4 mentioned it might have been due to the effects of the changing environment and emergence of the forest, but what if they were also created?' The red root, the Grovekeepers, and now this creature. Suspicion rose in the back of his mind as Oscar dodged with all his might.

He felt heavier, as did Erden. His knees were trembling from trying to stay standing. Using his Prinstyct, he couldn't see through the beast's eidolon, but he could see the Ein once it was finished doing its job, suffusing an area around the creature.

'A gravity field similar to Emily's. As a Greater Knight Exalt, it already has a good advantage, but this is worse.' Oscar lowered his stance, realizing running would only waste his Ein and stamina. He avoided fighting against Greater Knight Exalts directly other than Adam. His subordinates usually took care of the job, or he attacked from the sidelines to help.

This battle was his first true one against a Greater Knight Exalt. Oscar looked around for an exit. There was none. The only way was to defeat this creature. Releasing a heavy breath, Oscar roused his Ein further and waited.

They stared each other down, Erden and Oscar against the ash humanoid. The creature stomped, cracking the marbled floor, and started its charge. Ash collected into dense orbs, which rotated around the creature fiercely. One misstep into those would spell ruin for him. Oscar leaped on Erden and fired several Eirin Golden Rain, the spell Edd used to fire many golden rods like rainfall.

As the fight intensified between Oscar and the creature, Avril wandered around in another section of the caverns.

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