BXBX NOVEL Chapter 143 The Gate
On entering Ashad, Seth had first visited a church, a place never before seen by the Ergand federation, and from there he had gone searching for a mission which led to him getting attacked by some annoying monsters.
At present, Seth figured he was done wandering around and rubbed a ring on the middle finger of his right hand, two big bags falling to his side.
Due to the difficulties which soldier stage cultivators faced in storing things when using space rings, Seth had stored all his items in the two big bags before him and then his weapons in other space rings, this way he could easily access his belongings without spilling everything on the ground.
Seth bent down and rummaged through one of them, pulling out a tablet seconds later, switching it on, and fiddling around with it, and a moment later the hologram of a map popped up from the screen and Seth began going through it, looking for any landmark that correlated with his current location.
Some swipes later, Seth came across an image on the map, drawings of the monsters which had just attacked him drawn near the plain, and from what he was seeing, they had been named snake moles.
Though the plain and the beasts inhabiting it corresponded with his current location. Seth had to sigh and switch off the pad when he noticed that on his map there were two tall mountain peaks on each side of the plain, but in his current location, trees were the only thing his eyes could catch at the extremely far away end of the plain.
The warnings of the map being useless at this time of the year had been true, and at the moment, Seth found himself lost and possibly without a way to even get a mission.
After staying silent for some seconds, Seth went back to one of the bags and after going through it pulled out a compass, and then packed up and proceeded to head east.
Seeing as his running around was bearing no fruit, Seth decide to follow one of the directions the old man had called out when assigning missions to those guys in the church.
"Head east and follow the downwards stream till you arrive at the ruins of a town, go to the center, and there you would find the gate" was what the old man had said to one of the people at the church, maybe number 2, Seth wasn't sure, but he might as well head there.
Hours went by and Seth had finally left the plains and was now traversing through the forest at a moderate pace.
Hours turned to days with Seth questioning whether or not he had perhaps already passed the river, by the time Seth finally arrived at a river, 5 days had passed according to the readings of the rising and setting of the sun, but as usual nothing in Ashad followed the common rules, so Seth wouldn't be surprised if he left the dungeon and was told that only 3 days had passed.
"After 5 days of feeling disgusted by the smell radiating off his blood-covered body and Seth was filled with happiness at finally seeing a water source, deciding to camp for a whole 2 days at the riverside before he began heading downstream.
At long last, after days of travel, Seth finally arrived at the ruins, his journey having been surprisingly peaceful with no attack from monsters.
Roofless buildings and collapsed walls were what greeted Seth as he reached his destination, the deep holes, and craters at different places in the ruins telling the story of a destroyed village, a story which did not concern Seth as the man immediately began marching to the center of the village, not amused by how long it had taken him to arrive here, conveniently ignoring the time he wasted camping on the river banks.
At the center of the ruins, Seth found no building of prominence, meeting only a tall and long rectangular block with several carvings and inscriptions on it, and an empty spot in the middle that could just about fit a round object.
Seth concluded that it was a seal and after thinking over the old man's words, he deduced that this was the gate he had referred to and that this could perhaps be a teleportation seal.
Seth walked up to the huge block and stood in front of it for several minutes before pulling his gaze from it and rubbing his ring, two bags popping out which he went through and began bringing out tools.
An hour later and Seth was sitting cross-legged on the ground, different drawings on the paper before him as he challenged himself to understand what could only be a seal on the block all without the help of his enlightenment sphere.
Sure the enlightenment sphere made things easy, but in the end, how much a nitro could increase the speed of a car was determined by the kind of car, not to mention the fact that he once come across a teleportation seal in Longsam canyon but in the end had been unable to study it.
At the moment Seth was lost in the workings behind the current seal, his plan was the understand it, start it up, and head to whatever place the other inhabitants of the church had gone
An hour turned to hours, and Seth still had not made any progress on deciphering the seal, hours turned to days, and at this point, Seth began using his enlightenment sphere.
Time trickled by as set tried to understand the seal beforehand, and by the time he made a breakthrough, four days had passed, his breakthrough only teaching him about 4% of the seal before him.
Seth was being exposed to complexities beyond anything he had ever seen, and to his surprise, his enlightenments sphere, an accumulation of the several sex sessions he had engaged in had been reduced by half.
4% understanding of the seal had drained him of half his enlighten sphere, this was a shocking realization for Seth as he realized he was trying to bite off more than he could chew, and so taking this into consideration he stopped trying to decipher the whole seal and began looking for a way to activate it without using the key.