Lucian and Rhein exchanged a glance, each seeing the surprise on the other's face. Was Saer de deliberately revealing himself? Where was he trying to lure the two of them?
Though Rhein's injuries prevented him from summoning the Silver Moon Etana, he felt that aside from that limitation, he was close to peak condition. Lucian, with his equipment intact, was equally confident in his strength. The two split up, advancing one behind the other, cautiously approaching the corridor where Saer de's aura emanated.
Saer de's aura began to move, threading ceaselessly through the passages before finally slipping into an unremarkable, easily overlooked gray room.
The door was left ajar, allowing Lucian and Rhein to see the interior clearly from the corridor. At its center yawned a deep pit, its bottom and surrounding walls covered with countless arcane patterns of bewildering complexity, interspersed with Divine Art symbols from time to time.
These patterns and symbols were not confined to flat surfaces. They extended downward beneath the gray floor tiles, crept across the surrounding walls, and reached out into the void beyond, spreading ceaselessly in every direction. The entire room felt as though it were enshrouded within a spell model — a sacred yet deeply unsettling sensation.
At the bottom of the pit, hazy, translucent gray fragments had been stretched into a vaguely humanoid shape, twisting as they lurched toward the center.
"This is the most complex, most incomprehensible spell model I have ever seen." Lucian himself had mastered the "Eternal Blazing Sun," a spell that required third-tier Legendary ability to learn, and the "Uncertain Hand," which exceeded the imagination of current Archanists. He had witnessed the Alinja Labyrinth. Yet this Magic Circle dwarfed all of them in intricacy — and what he was seeing was only the portion on display. Lucian was certain that the patterns spreading outward into the void, the floor tiles, and the walls had not truly vanished. Rather, they connected in some fashion to the entire World of Doors and the Netherworld, forming structures of their own!
Of this, Lucian could speak with the authority of a Grand Archanist.
Rhein's expression had grown peculiar, as though something from the past had surfaced in his memory. At last, he murmured, "I once saw part of those patterns on Thanos. I never imagined he had been researching something like this even back then."
Saer de walked slowly across the pit floor, nothing like the swift figure he had been before. This gave Lucian time both to contemplate whether to intervene and to ask out of curiosity, "Mr. Rhein, were you and Thanos good friends?"
"I enjoy getting to know promising young people and watching them grow. Those I'm especially fond of, I sometimes turn into vampires. So I have many friends — Thanos happened to be one of them. Of course, he was the most brilliant and most monstrous of the lot." Rhein chuckled. "And you've already surpassed him in the arcane arts."
Lucian considered this, then remarked with a sigh, "As expected of the Observer. Open any history book, point at some illustrious figure, and you can say you knew them, that you watched them grow up. That must be a rather special — and rather superior — feeling."
"I've nothing left but these few hobbies," Rhein said with a smile. "The pity is that I never witnessed Douglas's rise. He is a figure worthy of comparison with Thanos — perhaps even greater. After all, he carved out an entire path for arcane arts from the most desperate circumstances, saved Arcane Magic, and in a mere four centuries developed it to a level that the early ancient magical empires had needed thousands of years to achieve. The number of peak Legendaries he cultivated equals that of the empire at its zenith."
"That surprises me," Lucian said, bewildered. "The first time I heard the Council Chairman's earth-shaking question, I was deeply impressed and knew he was a great man. Surely even you could see that?"
Rhein shook his head. "During the final years of the ancient magical empire and the early days of the Dawn War, Douglas was nothing extraordinary. Perhaps his habit of 'asking a hundred thousand why's' and his unconventional thinking made him out of step with every other mage in Antifler. He was ill-regarded, and since his strength at the time was nothing remarkable — he was advancing steadily but unspectacularly — he was easily overshadowed by the many geniuses of that era. That's why I missed him entirely. I never bothered to learn a thing about him."
"Moreover, the arcane system he founded lies in a field where I am weakest. So the Grand Archans and Legendary mages who grew up under the Magus Parliament afterward — there was no way for me to have witnessed any of them. Until you."
Lucian's curiosity satisfied, he noticed that Saer de was nearing the center of the pit. "Should we stop him?"
"Can you tell what the general function is? I suspect this Magic Circle is the key to this laboratory. We can hardly use ourselves as test subjects — but if it is a circle that transforms people into monsters, then once Saer de completes his change, he'll turn on us." Rhein seemed to very much want to see what Saer de intended.
Lucian shook his head. "I can only roughly determine that it is related to resurrection. After all, the 'Primordial Flame' revived even after being struck by the 'Destiny Meteor.' Here is a basic principle of magic: the more complex, more refined, and more powerful a Magic Circle is, the more vulnerable it is to disruption before it finishes running. We can watch Saer de and see what he's preparing to do. If something goes wrong, we interrupt at the critical moment. And if the circle activates with the protection of a Labyrinth's power, we destroy it immediately!"
"Agreed." Rhein had already been inclined toward action, and Lucian's reasoning only deepened his conviction.
The humanoid figure formed from the gray fragments settled into the hexagram at the pit's center, causing the surrounding magic lines to light up one by one — silver-white radiance, pure and resplendent.
Once every line was aglow, the dense, congealed aura of black, white, and gray death energy surged inward through the patterns on the floor tiles and walls, flooding the room with silent, icy cold.
"So it truly draws upon the power of the Netherworld," Lucian murmured, seizing the opportunity to memorize and analyze the entire Magic Circle.
Just then, the patterns that extended into the void were suffused with a radiant, sacred light, and a holy, boundless aura poured into the pit as well.