Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 443: Gurgaorus’ Disciple

Killing the water mage felt great and meant that Thalion would be able to enter the final trial. It didn’t mean that he was relieved or anything, but more focused than ever before. He had hit the threshold, but this didn’t mean that he was giving up on finding the right spot for the tablet. The treasure was always better the harder it was to get. At least that was Thalion’s experience so far.After destroying the ship, the seawomen must have given up, because Thalion didn’t spot them anymore, even after diving over a kilometer down. The hours passed, and Thalion really began to doubt himself at some point, wondering if he was just chasing a ghost. The only positive was that he killed some mixture between a squid and a snail, which had a good passive skill he transferred to the tidecaller serpent before discarding the form.

Tide Alignment (Legendary)

With this passive skill, the water sees you as its friend. The natural resistance of water lessens around you, allowing you to manipulate currents, tides, and flow with far greater ease. Movements through water feel smoother and more intuitive, as if the sea itself is cooperating rather than resisting. While this skill does not grant direct control, it greatly enhances all water-based actions and abilities.

When it came to getting new skills, Thalion hadn’t found anything good so far. Even the Scarn didn’t have anything he could use. The problem was not that the skills were bad, but that the skills he already had were very good. The only thing holding him back was the evolution to E-grade. This passive skill was an overall nice addition to the tidecaller serpent, and it felt like his engine got oiled. Everything was so smooth.

Thalion had already been able to move the water around him a little bit, mostly because it wasn’t that different from his blood manipulation. Now his range and the amount of water he could move might have easily doubled. It was a lesson learned. Sometimes you found the best skills with beasts that were otherwise super useless and needed something overpowered to make up for their lacking bodies.

The snail-octopus had been big, unable to move fast, and without the ability to hide itself. These were all horrible conditions for such a creature, which it made up for with the passive skill. With the help of the skill, it had pulled in prey it then grabbed with its tentacles, because normally it would never have been able to catch a fish on its own. Against Thalion’s Aqua Lance, it did very little. Against creatures with little resistance, Aqua Lance was like a lightning beam that cut them apart without much resistance.

Thalion had to use Aqua Lance quite often to reveal more of the black monolith that ended in the island above the water. Seven hours after killing the water mage, and with ten more hours to go until the final stage began, Thalion finally found the place for the tablet. At first, he could almost not believe it and was so close to just going on. After blowing corals off the monolith for so many hours, he was in such an auto-mode that he almost swam further.

It was quite interesting. The map was also something else. To Thalion, this had made little sense. The only logical solution was that the map that led to the other island must have been a bait, and this might lead to the real treasure.

After placing the tablet, the whole monolith began to burn with energy as power rushed through the runes and channels. With excitement after all these days of monotone work without any payoff, Thalion shot upward to see if something had changed. When he flew over the island, he noticed that nothing had changed. You couldn’t see the dense power that was coursing through the monolith below the water.

Thalion entered the construction in the middle in his human form, hoping not to alert the sailors. He wasn’t keen on sharing any of this. Mist form brought him past the golems he had killed on the upper level. The deeper he went, the more power flowed through the chamber, and in the final chamber, where the map had been placed between the two pillars behind the altar, a black portal had opened.

This better be good, Thalion thought as he stepped forward after feeling nothing sinister or, in fact, any danger coming from the portal. To be sure that he wouldn’t die, he first touched it with his finger, but after nothing happened, he stepped through.

The world changed to pure blackness, and Thalion began to worry that he had messed up big time after a few seconds passed without anything happening.

Then vision came back as Thalion appeared in a dark chamber made from the same materials as the last one. Yet here, the air was filled with so much mana and power that Thalion began to worry. If he needed to fight anything that had been living in this environment for such a long time, there wouldn’t be any way for survival.

He turned around to see if he could go back through the portal, but there was nothing. Then a voice rumbled through the chamber.

“Finally, someone after all this time. I almost thought that all my work would have been for naught.”

The voice sounded old, but so powerful that Thalion feared the person might kill him just by speaking loudly. He also didn’t like the way the voice made it sound as if he were the last ingredient of some kind of project. That couldn’t be good, right?

“And I see you are able to wield a sword. Good. In fact, this might almost be too good to be true. You are really here, right?”

That last sentence gave Thalion the creeps, and he turned around to make sure that the portal really was gone. A being this strong and not mentally stable was not at all what he had wanted to find in this place.

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It took a lot of willpower for Thalion not to just say,

Instead, he spoke while trying to keep his voice as strong and uncaring as possible, which was quite hard when the other side could kill you with a pinky finger and you had no idea who they even were.

“No, I’m real. Where am I?”

To Thalion, this was the best question right now, one that would hopefully lead to the most revealing answer.

“You are in my laboratory. Oh, how rude of me. So much time has passed that the world must have forgotten my name.”

With that, a person appeared before Thalion. He looked human, like the sailors, except his skin was black and covered in the same runes as the black monolith. His eyes burned with yellow light, giving him an unnatural appearance. The brown clothes he was wearing looked rather simple. The most confusing part was that Thalion could look through the man’s body from time to time, as if he was a projection.

“I am called Rurgaorus, and I was the first disciple of Gurgaorus the Great Sage.”

Rurgaorus spoke the name of his master with so much hate that Thalion swore he would never ask him any questions about the elixir. Good thing the clearly mentally broken Rurgaorus continued to stumble on with his explanation.

“My master always saw himself as the greatest genius of all time. That his dear disciple would surpass him never came to his mind. Yet you probably all have heard of the marvelous elixirs and other items he created over time, while I got swallowed by history, right?”

For Thalion, this was a very uncomfortable situation. He was already on edge, just waiting for the moment Rurgaorus would erase him. Thalion wasn’t sure if this being could tell when he lied, but he decided it would be best to stick with the truth.

“Hello, I’m Thalion. Nice to meet you. I’m actually not on your planet, and I don’t think this building is either. It looks like this laboratory is part of a system trial. A treasure hunt, to be accurate, and I’m a trial taker. I just entered this stage or planet a few days ago and was searching for a grand treasure with a few other sailors.”

While stumbling his words out, Thalion kept an eye on Rurgaorus’s expression to make sure he didn’t make a big mistake, but so far the man just nodded along, which didn’t give much away. His title was also silent. According to the title system, this Rurgaorus didn’t even exist. Knowing that he couldn’t rely on his danger sense didn’t ease Thalion’s mind either.

“Oh. Alright, that makes sense. I already wondered why you had those red eyes—such a sinister plant in your body,” the hologram chuckled.

“But a man of blood, fire, and steel. You are a warrior of flesh and blood. Then the conviction in those eyes. You have a dream you follow. Good. Very good. Was the system specific about what treasure you have to find?”

That question wasn’t good, and Thalion swallowed hard before answering.

“It was named the elixir of Gurgaorus. That’s all. No words on what it does, and I would have put it in my spatial amulet for leaderboard points anyway.”

The last words Thalion added casually while getting a bit faster. This also must have been the first time Rurgaorus noticed that Thalion wasn’t feeling that well.

“Haha, you don’t need to worry. I am just a projection and don’t want to do anything to you. See, nothing bad happenes.” Rurgaorus said those last words while casually pushing his hand through Thalion’s body and pulling it out again. Thalion only stared down at his chest with wide eyes. If he had been back on Earth, he would have died of a heart attack.

“I guess the one with the highest leaderboard points wins. Am I right?” Rurgaorus asked, now intrigued.

“Eh, yes,” Thalion answered, trying to keep it as simple as possible so that the man before him wouldn’t even think about pulling off such a move again.

“Then how many leaderboard points would you get for the elixir? And how much is that compared to the total the top contenders have, and in which position are you?” Rurgaorus asked, now in a tone as if he had wanted Thalion to give that information five minutes ago.

“Eh, it gives around thirty million. The top currently has ninety-two million points, and I have over thirty million. So far, I had been in first position, but we lost the ship, which was how I ended up here,” Thalion summed up. Telling the man that he had been in first place wasn’t needed, but his pride didn’t allow him to skip that part.

“Never liked those system trials anyway. Most are random and more or less made for the true powerhouses to slaughter the rest,” Rurgaorus commented before continuing.

“But fear not, my… friend. I can help you out. Like I said before, I surpassed my master by a great margin, which he didn’t like at all. I never wanted attention and was so caught up in my work that I didn’t notice that my master was already trying to get rid of me permanently. My family was the first to feel his rage. My… my daughter was a warrior like you, but against a D-grade, she stood no chance. I had been working tirelessly on a sword for her. She always liked those that were bigger than the norm and looked a bit stupid when wielded. When I told her that it wouldn’t work like that and the sword would just get stuck in the ground, she just replied that I would have to make the sword cut through it without resistance.”

With those last words, Thalion watched very uncomfortably as the eyes of the man began to get watery.

“I couldn’t find her body quickly enough to save her soul, and so the sword I wanted to make for her became her new vessel. Gurgaorus, of course, sent multiple fighters to kill me, but I survived. He even managed to persuade the king to send out his soldiers to catch and kill me. This was why I built this secret laboratory. Here, I did everything in my might to stabilize the soul of my daughter, but fixing a soul took a lot of time, and I didn’t have that much left. This was when I created this hologram, in which my will could exist even after death and guide my daughter’s recovery. She is currently in stasis, and the only missing ingredient to wake her up is someone who takes the sword and puts it to good use.”

With every sentence, Thalion felt more and more uncomfortable. Carrying a basically dead soul in a sword didn’t sound like something he wanted to—okay, probably a bit much, considering there were hundreds of souls in his amulet. Still, there was one thing that rubbed him the wrong way.

“You just want to give me the sword and use it, but won’t your daughter be stuck in the sword forever?”

“There is no way around it. Because of her damaged soul, she is not only stuck in the sword, but she the sword. Should it break while her soul is still alive, the sword will repair itself. No, I am asking because this is a way for her to see the wider universe and experience the fights she had always loved so much.”

With those words, Rurgaorus motioned to an empty spot on the other side of the chamber. It was as if an illusion was dispelled, revealing a monstrous apparition. There were four almost robotic arms holding an incredible-looking sword above something that looked like an endless abyss.

The sword hilt reached Thalion’s chest, and the blade was a very dark purple, almost black, in color. There was no visible crystal in it, and the whole thing was covered with runes and lines similar to the black monolith.

It looked perfect.