Keynes and Kora stepped onto the dirt road; it led to the castle anyway, so they didn’t see a point cutting across fields. It also gave them some time to strategise.

  When Alice came back from a reconnaissance, she informed them about the situation. The castle appeared defenceless but she noted stone statues that were likely to come to life once the ascenders got closer.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to peek inside the castle due to some kind of energy barrier. A mix of spiritual and magical energy. Keynes still struggled with the concept of magic and how it differed from spiritual energy.

  They passed several abandoned medieval houses, huts and even log houses. Alice checked them but found there nothing but rubble and rot.

  Note to myself: let Rell deal with this.

  The researchers would undoubtedly were going to be excited at the prospect of this rift.

  The dirt road slowly meadered upward until they stopped before an open gate. Because of the location of the cast, there was no moat surrounding it. Otherwise, it looked very much ordinary like a medieval castle in movies. With exception of the Blood Hunger aura, which started to affect them. Still no debuff notification. That seemed like bullshit.

  An iron portcullis was hidden in the ceiling while heavy wood doors cracked open, enough to take a peek inside.

  “The energy barrier is gone,” Alice said.

  On both sides of the gate stood two large stone statues representing a knight in a vigilant pose, with their swords stabbed into the ground. Thematically, it didn’t make sense but not much about the rift felt cohesive. Despite its blood affinity, there was barely any blood. Keynes didn’t dwell on these issues though. This was one of many rifts he would explore, so fixating on it was counterproductive right now. Even though he couldn’t argue with the fact that they stood in front of a Level 6 castle. Each and every component of this building was Level 6. For all Keynes knew, this stone wall might actually be more sturdy than a Level 0 steel reinforced concrete.

  Levels didn’t simply make material stronger; other nuanced changes appeared with materials of Higher Levels. It was still a bit of a grapple to consider how the concept of Levels applied to normal materials. Frankly, Untainted Paradise built most of their fortune on selling High Level raw materials but Keynes barely paid any attention to that. He wondered how much this castle would be worth.

  “Keynes?” Kora whispered, snapping him out of his thoughts. He glanced at and she made a questioning expression.

  “All’s good. I just zoned out,” he replied, frowning at the nonsensical statement. Not making a big deal out of“Just zoned out” in a rift that had a powerful aura, which didn’t show up in a debuff status couldn’t be a death sentence. Just for a good measure, Keynes activated [Pure Body], letting the spell cleanse his mind and body. He felt better. An invisible weight was taken off his chest. Something evidently was affecting them. Why wasn’t it shown on their debuff status?

  Kora didn’t comment.

  Carefully, they edged closer to the gate, constantly eyeing the four stone statues. With every step, Keynes’s heart thumped louder than a step before.

  He felt restlessness grip him the moment they reached the gate. It was as if his blood couldn’t sit still. He turned toward Kora, while she did the same. For a split second, they lost awareness of their surroundings.

  “WATCH OUT!” Alice yellowed, her voice sounding distant, almost overwhelmed by a sound of thumping of heart and swish of blood.

  Reacting purely on instinct, Keynes unleashed his full spiritual aura. He couldn’t exclude Kora from this as the whole thing happened far too quickly.

  Power exploded out of Keynes, shoving Kora away. At the same time, as if a veil was lifted from Keynes’s mind, he became fully lucid and aware of his surroundings.

  Four stone statues stood above them, their stone swords raised and about to strike. Whatever his outburst of spiritual aura did, it also cleared Kora’s mind. She used her Talent, enhancing [Empower] further. She reacted nearly instantly, her jump cracked the paved stone.

  The statue reeled back as Kora’s fist hit it squarely in the face. Even with her Talent active, the statue withstood the hit. What the fuck were these things made of? Focus!

  He spun on the heel and then rolled out of the spot where the sword fell. The ground shook upon impact. Keynes hoped that the sword would get stuck, given the absurd force of the impact, but no, the statute effortlessly raised it again.

  “Fuck you.” Keynes blasted [Chaos Aura] against the statue's head. It resisted for a few seconds, the stone visage boiled and hissed as it was chaotically turning into different states of matter. But since Chaos became buff and Keynes gained the title of Defier of Chaos, his control over the exotic element became nearly natural.

  He noticed that not all reactions were equal. Liquifying the stone was far harder than turning it into dust. In less than 2 seconds, the statue turned into a pile of dust.

  The second statue thrust its sword but before its eyes the sword fell apart. Unfortunately, the statue didn’t marvel or get confused. It possessed no intelligence. It was mechanically driven toward killing Keynes. As the statue rushed the young ascenders, its members started falling apart as if a stone became a sand.

  “It was amazing,” Alice whispered.

  Keynes nodded mind-absently, remotely aware that Kora was still fighting the other two statues, but she’d give him an earful for interfering. Instead, he mulled over what just occurred. He knew he was powerful when he used [Chaos Aura] but this, this drove the point home. These stone knight statues weren’t average Level 6 monsters by any stretch of imagination. Kora actually put effort into defeating them and Keynes—he just turned them into two piles of sand as if they were nothing.

  He didn’t know what to think about it. Power was a weird thing.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “You’re still mopping?” Kora joked as she jumped off the pulverized stone knight. Despite sounding light and merry, she was tired. The statues might not pose a danger to her but they were physically resistant.

  “How is your mana?” Keynes asked. He was running at 35 out of 286 points. Not much. A Level 6 ascender like Kora had a base mana of 371.

  “Still over two hundred.”

  “That’s so unfair,” he grunted.

  “You were saying something?” In response, Kora wiggled her brow at the dusted stone knights.

  “This shit is costly,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  With the stone statues defeated, they noticed the strange state didn’t return. Were the statues the source of that? Unlikely. The Blood Hunger didn’t vanish after all, it just retreated deeper. Oh. I see. I think I get an idea what the quest wants from us.

  He explained his hypothesis to Kora and Alice, they agreed it was a plausible scenario.

  “Did you notice?” Kora whispered. “We didn’t receive any essence for killing the knight statues.”

  “Shit. It slipped my mind. I wonder why…”

  “Pssst,” Alice hissed. “No chit-chatting. We’re in the middle of enemy territory. It almost killed you already. So focus.”

  She was right. Keynes fixed his eyes on what lay behind the gate.

  Kora’s hand gently touched his shoulder, and he half-turned toward her.

  “Don’t hesitate to use [Chaos Aura] again. Our goal isn’t to master our attributes. We just want to be done with it.”

  He nodded.

  They entered the gate. No enemies there. Alice floated ahead, scouting out potential traps. The short tunnel was pitched dark, even [Night Sight] failed to show more than contours. If there was going to be a trap it was the perfect location. Kora had conjured some weapons that moved alongside them, ready to intercept any unseen attacks.

  We badly need more spells. Having [Create Fire] or [Create Light] would be so handy right now. The entire sub-type of ‘Create’ skills was very spiritual light so unless something was unavailable or required elsewhere, they had no excuse to not acquire it.

  No traps or ambushes were sprung, though their walk through the dark tunnel toward the courtyard caused a sensation of displacement. Similar to being in space. Keynes worried the most about the ceiling falling and crushing them to death. In a way they were stupid and irresponsible to proceed without proper caution. Despite Alice and Kora’s own spiritual companion checking every nook and cranny, they had no guarantee their spiritual companions could see everything. Given the fact that Alice had encountered an energy barrier earlier, it was not only possible but should be expected to run across something she couldn’t see.

  Regardless of that, they reached the courtyard without incident. The courtyard was rectangular, fully-paved and without any specific features other than a fountain in the middle. From three sides the courtyard was walled. On the opposite side, however, was a large iron door. Presumably locked. That made Keynes chuckle. Glancing up, they felt like inside a well. There were windows above the first floor, but it didn’t erase the feeling.

  “Feels a little claustrophobic,” Kora said. The courtyard was around fifteen metres across and appeared to be a square, but the sky seemed so far, it was clearly a space distortion of some sort. From outside, the castle didn’t look this high.

  “It could be that shitty aura messing with us again,” Keynes said.

  Speaking of aura, they still had to cleanse and it appeared that the fountain was a part of it. Its water was crystal clear, its surface barely distorted by the cascading flow.

  At the bottom of the fountain was a bronze key.

  Was it safe to reach for it? Most likely not. It didn’t matter. With Keynes’s Talent nothing was truly locked. They briefly discussed their next step and what to do about the fountain and water. Both felt ‘magical’ so it was still possible that even if Keynes unlocked the door with his Talent, something might happen.

  They agreed that it would and acted accordingly. Keynes approached the iron door. It was plain but undoubtedly magical. Standing before it, Keynes felt the Blood Hunger aura getting stronger once more. He suddenly felt thirsty. It got weirder because knowing it wasn’t real, didn’t help much.

  Keynes did his best to ignore it and placed his hand on the door. The magical aspect got far more pronounced though Keynes couldn’t discern what the door’s magic did. In his case, he could just look at it with a spiritual sense, finding a mind-boggling complexity. Shoving all the unnecessary thoughts aside, Keynes activated Lockpicking on the door. He met an expected resistance and honestly, without Lofty upgrade he might have not unlocked the door at all.

  An inner mechanism within the door clicked and the door cracked open, just a sliver. Instantly, a powerful attention locked onto him from somewhere above.

  “Keynes…” Kora muttered.

  He knew. He felt the stir of power from the fountain. A wet slap sounded behind him. He turned and found a three metre tall humanoid made out of water.

  “Water elemental?”Keynes said, a bit surprised.

  It constantly churned within the monster.

  “This one is stronger than the statues,” Kora said, Keynes and Alice agreed. But Keynes wasn’t going to waste time on the water elemental.

  “Stand back,” he said to Kora, then after a short delay he slammed [Chaos Aura] against the monster. Knowing it was made out of water, he started to evaporate it.

  The castle shook as an otherworldly scream cut through air. Keynes and Kora tasted blood. The air gained a reddish hue. The moon appeared in the sky above them, it was turning bloody red.

  [Chaos Aura] was extremely powerful so it came as a shock to Keynes when he felt resistance from the monster. Its body was still being evaporated but the rate slowed down. It was enough to allow the monster to proceed forward.

  From behind, several conjured spears came and hit the elemental pinning it in place.

  They worked on the elemental because they weren’t physical creations.

  The elemental roared or at least tried as Keynes’s evaporating its head. The annoying issue was that it kept reforming. Even with six spears skewering it, the rate of regrowth didn’t diminish as much as he hoped for.

  Also, his mana dipped under a hundred points and nothing would change; he'd be forced to deactivate [Chaos Aura]. The lack of proper skills just got more evident.

  Another two spears hit the monster but there was no change. Shit. This isn’t working…

  “Destroy the fountain,” Alice shouted.

  Keynes glanced at the fountain and saw streams of water were supplying the elemental. So it was like this. Huh. Oddly enough, this appeared to be a surprising counter to Keynes’s [Chaos Aura]. A water elemental with an unlimited water supply.

  He warned Kora what he was about to do, then changed the focus of [Chaos Aura] toward the fountain. It too resisted but this wasn’t a real fight. The fountain crumbled to dust in a matter of seconds, ending the supply of the elemental with water.

  Another roar came out of the monster as he managed to reform his head without [Chaos Aura] constantly evaporating it. An elemental’s triumph was short lived though as a conjured axe cleaved it from the head to the bottom. This one had been created with Kora’s Talent’s empowerment as it looked far more detailed and its power vibrated the air.

  Keynes looked at her askance.

  “Why didn’t you do that from the start?”

  “It would have reformed,” she replied. “Also, it cost over 100 mana to conjure this thing. I didn’t want to risk it.”

  Keynes sighed, laying down. He was exhausted. He let [Pury Body] wash over him cleansing him from any harmful debuffs and whatnot, then simply stared at the faraway sky and the bloody moon.

  “Let’s rest a bit.”