Chapter 1165
Adler’s Product Showcase
After Eluas assessed the curse’s strength by healing Dong Ya, he returned to reorganize his team.
The seventh-tier curse power was not something ordinary people could withstand. Neither Ritualist Ibn nor Anar could bear such a degree of curse. Even if Eluas could lift the curse, he couldn’t move forward step by step, slowly resolving it. They needed at least some resistance to the curse.
Isabel dared not come. She herself was not afraid and was curious about Rock Cell City being petrified. However, she worried that the curse would have adverse effects on the child in her womb, so she chose to play it safe.
Sherlock was not particularly afraid of the curse. The professions in Mith’s lineage, upon reaching the Fifth Tier, had lit the Fire of the Sun and gained the Power of Devotion—that is, the might of light and fire. With this power, his “Spiritual Body Disorder” was also completely healed. By casting a spell to resist the curse on himself beforehand, he could enter Rock Cell City for a period of time.
Next was Lixia. As an Ascencist, her resistance was strong enough to allow her to survive in various environments. Furthermore, her current Winged One form could provide sufficient resistance to negative statuses. And then there was Lily, hiding in Eluas’s shadow.
With Lixia as the tank and Eluas as the healer, they formed a rather standard light recon team. Although Anar wanted to come along and see, Eluas sternly ordered the Snake Person to keep her in check and not let her act recklessly. He didn’t want to be distracted by protecting a fragile NPC while exploring a dungeon, even if the dungeon wasn’t particularly strong.
As a precaution, Eluas switched to his Beast of Sin form and summoned Viness, with Little Crow perched on his shoulder. However, to prevent getting lost in this damned desert and to conserve energy, they did not continue to trudge through the desert.
The Snake Person Shrine, as the main transit point for Rock Cell City’s inhabitants, had a secret tunnel directly leading to the underground of Rock Cell City. In reverse, one could also directly enter Rock Cell City through the secret tunnel. As for the problem of the exit being sealed by petrification, it was the least of their worries.
“—We’re here,” Eluas said.
When he entered the tunnel earlier, he had removed the illusion cast by Isabel, thus fully revealing the antlers on his head. Their faint glow was enough to serve as a light source in the dark underground passage, and it was much safer than torches. Though they didn’t really need illumination. Lixia, in her second evolved form, already had night vision. Lily simply hid in Eluas’s shadow, following him with a single button press. Only Sherlock still needed illumination, and he could also cast spells on himself to provide night vision.
After being blessed by Eluas with divine art that increased movement speed, they took less than an hour to easily complete a journey that would normally take three hours, which in the desert outside would take at least eight hours, assuming they didn’t get lost.
Because of this, Eluas and his party arrived at Rock Cell City early. It was not yet twilight, and the sun had not yet set. Although the petrification curse had indeed sealed the outward passages, a few subtle rays of sunlight pierced through the stone walls like needles.
The twilight glow coated the gray-white city with a honey-like shell. The entire city was like an insect specimen encased in a giant piece of amber.
“I’ll do it,” Sherlock said, glancing at Lixia, who was eagerly about to punch the gate, and sighed helplessly. “Don’t break it them… they might need it later.”
As he spoke, he tapped his Sapphire staff. A loess-yellow magic circle instantly appeared. The stone in front of them dissolved into mud and flowed to the sides. The sunlight at dusk poured in like water, and they walked directly into the light without any process of adaptation. Immediately afterward, the mud flowed back, re-sealing the entrance.
This seemed to be a “dead end” in a remote alley.
“Wow,” Eluas exclaimed, looking up. “It’s good I didn’t bring them along.”
The entire city was enveloped in an amber halo. The serene curse power surged rhythmically like a tide, continuously reinforcing the curse. Dong Ya, the Priestess, likely couldn’t sense such an invisible power. Eluas could only clearly see the ripples of the curse through his special vision.
This also implied something else.
“This is by no means a ritual of single-release power like ‘projection’ or ‘detonation,’ but rather a mode of ‘transmission’ or ‘sacrifice’,” Eluas narrowed his eyes and said.
“What do you mean?” Lixia asked with a doubtful voice.
“Which means continuous effect… or even continuous casting,” Sherlock said leisurely from the side. “To put it more clearly…”
He then looked at the city, which had been instantly frozen by the curse. A woman holding a water-filled pottery jar maintained a startled upward gaze, and the splashing water droplets froze into tiny quartz crystals in the air.
A sentry on the city wall seemed to be trying to ring a bronze gong to warn of danger, but the sound waves manifested in the amber, radar-like fluctuations, turning into visible sandstone patterns.
A guard drawing his sword and looking up roared with his throat and mouth bulging, his right hand holding a saber raised in a delicate gesture. The half-drawn saber was also covered in a layer of gray-white.
A slave child, covering his head, curled into a ball with his eyes closed, as if the curse was not petrification but the master’s raised whip.
A startled camel maintained a posture of lifting one leg, and a sand lizard, innocently caught in the aftermath, also turned into a gray-white stone statue while running, its tail tip still maintaining the arc of escape as it stuck to the wall.
The faces of the people were filled with panic, shock, and fear… distorted visages, like souls tormented in the infernal hot springs, or like wax figures cast and solidified alive.
“…That means the curse ritualist preparing the curse medium should still be here. They’ll probably die too—a large-scale curse ritual of this magnitude allows for no distinction between friend and foe,” Sherlock said sarcastically. Otherwise, the curse would be too easy to break—even if it couldn’t be broken, one only needed to obtain “friendly” status. And this kind of curse, which required continuous casting, needed the sacrifice of one or more ritualists. Its essence was a “single-soldier, shoulder-mounted nuclear bomb” with a range shorter than its kill radius.
Sherlock said calmly, “Obviously, this border town has gotten into something too big. This is not simply establishing authority, but premeditated murder, a street trial. It’s like executing a thief with saturation artillery, which doesn’t make sense… The key issue might be the stone tablet.”
“No,” Eluas shook his head. “I think the key is Star Antinomy.”
“Rather than Star Antinomy, it’s war,” Sherlock sneered. “I think we’re talking about basically the same thing.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Angel Lixia, the only one not keeping up, asked in confusion. “No, Gentlemen… can you explain it to me in a way I can understand?”
“—This is not punishment, nor is it even war. It is a ‘weapons showcase’,” Eluas said. “Just as we receive news from Anxi with a delay… Anxi also receives news from outside with a delay. Perhaps the Lord of Heaven City heard that Star Antinomy was at war and decided to sell the ‘Petrification Curse Ritual,’ which could instantly turn the tide of battle, to Star Antinomy. This city is closest to Star Antinomy, so it was ‘fortunate’ enough to become the display showcase for this ritual weapon. Rock Cell City did nothing wrong. The ‘ransom’ given by the Lord of Heaven City was something they could not afford because he wanted Rock Cell City to refuse to pay, thereby giving him an excuse to act. Or rather, the ransom he initially demanded was just an excuse for him to kill the entire city’s inhabitants with a clear conscience.”
“—Hypocritical humans,” Little Crow scoffed. “No different from the nobles of Hrasal.”
“Humans have been repeating the same mistakes since ancient times. Judging from the fluctuations of the ritual, there are probably still living people maintaining it. I really don’t know what price Adler offered them…” Eluas sighed, swallowing the latter half of his words.
He looked at the stone mansion of the Lord in the city. “Let’s go, we’ll go to the core area to take a look. The center of the ritual might be there.”
