Chapter 224: The Man-Headed Eagle
Talking as they went, they arrived at the mouth of the cave. The opening was small, barely wide enough for one person to pass through. Evan summoned his Wraith Eye above his head and flew it into the cave. The passage ran deep, with several forks branching off. Evan couldn't afford to observe for long — there were bones scattered inside, and some clearly belonged to bodies dead only a few days at most, preserved by the bitter cold. Evan didn't linger over the details before entering.
Ronaldo followed him in. The passage widened gradually as they went. Evan cast a light spell, a faint glow illuminating only about ten forearms of space around them, everything beyond swallowed in darkness. At first it wasn't so bad, but soon they couldn't see a hand in front of their faces. Evan sensed the tunnel winding back and forth, its overall direction leading downward. After walking for a while, they came upon a body — a Snow Werewolf's corpse.
A while later, Evan sensed they seemed to be descending in a spiral. Along the way, they came across another body — a knight's this time. Evan stopped and examined the insignia on the corpse: a knight of the Tulip Guard. His weapon was gone, and his body had been dragged to one side, presumably by his companions, who must have meant to come back and deal with him properly later.
The deeper they went, the farther they walked — well over five kilometers by now. Though side passages branched off here and there, Evan's Wraith Eye scouted ahead, and the two of them never took a wrong turn. But the eye had already spotted the end of the tunnel — the cave terminated here.
Had it not been for the occasional body along the way, the two of them might have suspected they'd taken a wrong turn. They quickened their pace and soon emerged into a large chamber. The path ended here. Evan cast another flash of light to make out where they'd ended up — a dry chamber with murals on the walls, depicting crowds of people worshipping some deity. The deity in the images, though, wasn't human, and one of the murals depicted what was clearly a blood sacrifice — a human offered up as the victim.
The figure was a monster with a wolf's head, a human body, and bat wings — a local deity from some very distant past, roughly ten thousand years gone, long since buried in the dust of history. Modern people had entirely forgotten it. This appeared to be a relic left over from a very ancient age.
But after searching thoroughly for some time, Evan found nothing besides the murals. He turned to Ronaldo. "Didn't you say: peak within peak, cave beneath sky, heaven and earth between, the skull shall lie? We've found the peak within the peak, and we've found the cave — but where is the sky beneath the cave?"
Ronaldo looked equally puzzled. He gave a wry laugh. "I only heard that line from Teresa. I don't actually know what it means myself. Could we have taken a wrong turn somewhere?"
"Whether we took a wrong turn, I couldn't say. But it's a fact that many people came through here before us, and they, too, disappeared — they never turned back. Where did they go?" Evan mused, falling silent for a moment.
"How do you know they never turned back?" Ronaldo asked, curious.
"On our way in, we passed several bodies, clearly moved aside by someone. If they'd gone back the way they came, they'd have taken the bodies with them. That the bodies were left untouched tells us plenty. There's no way out from here — and by now, this passage has probably taken us a kilometer or more underground. So where did they go?"
"Fair point. There's nothing here at all. Where could they possibly have gone?" Ronaldo was equally baffled.
"If there's a demiplane here, there should be an entrance somewhere. We just don't know how to get in — we can't even find the door," Evan said. His flash spell had already faded, the glowing orb of light dimming along with it. On an idle impulse, Evan glanced upward, toward the ceiling he'd examined so carefully a moment before, and thought he saw a hint of light. Something stirred in him. He let his light spell die out entirely, plunging the chamber into total darkness.
A faint glow flickered to life, growing steadily brighter. The two of them stared upward in astonishment as the light overhead spread, a single point expanding outward, as though by sorcery. A sky opened up above their heads — an overcast, brooding sky, lightning occasionally rippling across it. Evan felt a moment of disorientation, taking it at first for some kind of projection, like a film.
Ronaldo cried out, "Where are we? What is this place?"
Evan looked around quickly. They were standing on an open grassland, hazy blue mountains visible in the distance, wild grass stretching in every direction around them — nothing at all like being inside a cave.
Ronaldo could hardly believe his eyes. He sprinted forward at astonishing speed, covering a distance far greater than the width of the cave had ever been, and found nothing but open emptiness in every direction, waist-high wild grass, and that brooding sky above. He returned to Evan's side, bewilderment written across his face. He even pinched himself and genuinely felt the pain. He had no idea what had happened, and looked to Evan for an answer.
Evan remembered clearly — they had been inside the cave only a moment ago. He replayed the sequence over and over in his mind and seized on one anomaly: that brief moment of disorientation. He'd taken it for something ordinary at the time; now it was clear that was anything but normal. Had someone secretly cast some kind of teleportation spell on them, or did the cave itself contain some hidden teleportation array? He bent down, searching the ground for any clue.
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Just then, thunder cracked overhead, and a bolt of lightning snaked down, striking the grass not far off. The grass caught fire, and a gust of wind swept toward them, carrying a wave of heat. Their expressions changed as the flames advanced on them. They broke into a run, and fortunately the fire didn't spread quickly; after covering more than five kilometers, they finally stopped.
Looking back, the fire was no longer visible. Now it was clear — they had entered some kind of alternate space. Whether it was a demiplane, Evan couldn't say for certain, but one thing was sure: they were no longer on the Material Plane.
Just how this space had come to exist remained a complete mystery to both of them. Neither had any idea how to get back, or even where they currently were. Evan didn't even bother taking out his magic map — it went without saying it would be useless here. A magic map was, after all, a mage's own creation, formed through careful surveying of places the mage had actually visited, rendered through magical means. Hollingburton possessed only a complete map of Taerxi Continent; the other continents' maps were incomplete, let alone this place, which he'd never even heard of before.
There seemed to be no one around, and they couldn't even get their bearings. Evan thought for a moment and said, "Let me go up and take a look — see what the surroundings look like." With that, he rose into the air with a levitation spell, climbing straight up toward the sky.
He swept his eyes across the horizon and spotted what looked like buildings among the distant hills. His heart lifted — and at that very moment, he sensed something was wrong. At the same instant he heard a cry of alarm: "Get down, there's a huge bird!"
Something was already bearing down on him, and its full shape registered in his mind before he even consciously processed it — an enormous eagle, unlike any ordinary eagle, not merely in size but in the fact that its head was disturbingly close to human, its beak a human mouth, its wings spread wide like a black storm cloud. Before it, Evan felt no larger than a mouse.
Evan dropped low. In the suddenness of it all, there wasn't time to draw the blade from his staff-sword. The creature had come at him from behind, utterly silent, but fortunately Evan's primordial spirit had already stirred unconsciously — everything within a dozen or so forearms around him registered almost instantly in his mind.
In that instant, the staff in his hand transformed into a knight's warhammer and swung backward. The man-headed eagle's iron talons had already arrived, gleaming with a light like blood. Evan's staff blazed with white light in answer. The two collided with a muffled boom in midair. The man-headed eagle let out a shriek and went tumbling sideways through the air, while Evan's body was flung sideways and down.
Evan steadied himself with a surge of strength, drifting down gently. The instant he touched ground, alarm flared in his mind — he didn't stay planted there, instead pushing off the moment his feet brushed earth, launching himself forward. A string of blood-red lightning bolts crashed down exactly where he'd been standing.
He turned and saw the man-headed eagle, its whole body now flaring with a bloody radiance, thunder and lightning roaring from its beak as it spread its wings and dove straight at him.
A tiger doesn't show its fangs, and you mistake it for a sick cat. Evan spun and swept a hand through the air. A shrill whistling sound rose, and countless blades of wind surged forth in a swarm, pale blue wind-blades rolling forward like waves across a lake's surface, sweeping toward the eagle in a torrent.
Wind Blade was, admittedly, a low-tier spell — but its power depended on who cast it. The moment Evan struck, he drew on the array woven into his bracer, and given how formidable he had become, how powerful his mental force now was — capable, even, of taking on physical shape — the wind blades carried a force far beyond what any ordinary mage could summon. In an instant, they engulfed the man-headed eagle entirely.
The eagle let out a shriek, its bloody radiance flaring outward, lightning bursting from its beak. Amid the surging waves of wind blades, it looked like a blood-red gem — the wind blades sliced its aura into shreds, but couldn't break through entirely. The lightning bursting from its beak shot straight toward Evan.
Evan gave a cold snort, and a scythe appeared in his hand — the Death Saint Weapon, its rudimentary form manifesting before the world for the very first time. Even Ronaldo felt his spirit waver at the sight of it. The scythe wasn't entirely distinct in form, but the instant it appeared, an aura of murderous, deathly stillness seemed to envelop the man-headed eagle. The blood-red lightning bursting from its beak vanished at once, and the eagle felt its heart turn to ash, unable to summon even the faintest will to resist.
Sensing disaster, the man-headed eagle abandoned its attack entirely, shrieking as it climbed frantically upward, but the Death Scythe, trailing its aura of death, had already swept through it. In the middle of its ascent, it froze. Ronaldo watched as a massive phantom shape of the man-headed eagle was drawn out by the scythe, shrinking rapidly as it was pulled into the blade, while the eagle's actual corpse dropped from the sky, feathers scattering.
When Ronaldo looked again, the eagle's body had already withered to a husk. And the scythe itself had grown far clearer in form — on its blade, the image of a man-headed eagle now stood etched, lifelike, as though straining to break free and take flight. The scythe then shrank down and sank into Evan's body.
Evan took stock of the sensation — the Death Saint Weapon had grown noticeably more formidable. It seemed to have advanced another step, though it remained a long way from taking its final, complete form. Its nature reminded him somewhat of the legendary magic treasures from his previous life, except this one was composed entirely of energy. Evan found himself looking forward to watching it grow, curious what shape it would ultimately take. If a hundred different cultivators each forged their own Death Saint Weapon, there would be a hundred different results — even the author of that book hadn't been able to say for certain what the outcome would be.
"That's it? It's over?" Ronaldo stared, dumbfounded.
"What, were you hoping for more of a show?" Evan couldn't help but find it a little funny.
Ronaldo shook himself back to his senses. "What did you see just now?"
"There are buildings over that way, and it looks like there are people there. Let's go take a look — maybe the Saint's Skull will be there," Evan said, pointing toward the distant hills.