The muscles and bones of Asa's body still felt as if they had been shattered. He realized he was lying on the altar that had originally been hidden beneath gold and treasures. Beneath him was a complex and inscrutable magical circle, with the central black gemstone emanating immense life force. However, the entire magic circle had been stained with blood—his own blood.
The blood had flowed from a wound on his wrist, a clean cut freshly made. His hand rested atop the black gemstone, and blood continued to seep from the wound, nearly submerging the gemstone in it.
Asa suddenly jolted awake and jumped to his feet, his healing magic quickly stopping the bleeding from his wrist. A few meters ahead, a woman with red hair and dressed in black leather stood, gazing at him. The sharpness of her features now carried a look of confusion and disbelief, as if her surprise surpassed even his own.
"Why? Why can't I feel the imprint of the Dark Star in your body? Why does your blood lack the essence of the Dark Star? As the guardian of the Dark Will, how could you not have the Dark Star's mark? Without the mark of the Dark Star, how could you move freely within the Spiral Shadow Mountains?" Moriel's voice rumbled, filled with both astonishment and fury.
Asa stared blankly at the woman before him, a projection of the black dragon. His confusion and anger were overwhelming, but he still didn't understand what was happening.
"Are you not from the Necromancer Guild?" Moriel roared, the cave trembling in response. The immense, oppressive voice coming from such a figure felt strangely mismatched. She was filled with rage.
"I'm not..." Asa shook his head slowly, answering as best as he could. His eyes were bloodshot, and he could feel the veins on his forehead throbbing with the fury surging through him. If anger were to be measured, his rage was certainly a thousand times greater than the red-haired woman's. No one could stay calm after nearly being killed by someone they had just saved. He honestly wanted to punch that face into oblivion.
But Asa managed to hold himself back. Even with a hundred times more rage, he would have to restrain himself. He knew the difference in power between himself and this dragon, who had already regained her strength. Rationality told him that if he actually swung a punch, it would be his own face that would be reduced to a pulp.
Moriel didn't say anything further, but her massive yellow dragon eyes remained fixed on Asa. There was still no killing intent, just an overwhelming aura emanating from her body, from every cell. Any human, as long as they remained human, would feel the immense pressure under such a presence.
Asa also remained silent. His nerves were taut, his body weakened from blood loss. Even if he weren't so weak, he felt as though he had no room for resistance—this was simply a natural bodily reaction to the pressure from her presence.
Rodhart and Hilika had managed to drag themselves off the collapsed rock walls. Their battered, mangled bodies seemed to have regained some slight movement, resembling two crushed cockroaches as they struggled to crawl toward the few remaining corpses of the temple knights.
Finally, a long sigh escaped Moriel's nostrils. Her expression grew somewhat strange, and the overwhelming aura surrounding her seemed to diminish significantly. She looked at Asa and said slowly, "Alright, relax a little. Although you have the World Tree's leaf and Akibard's meditation, the most important thing is that there's no imprint of the Dark Star in your body. Killing you would be pointless."
"Pointless?" Asa was taken aback, not understanding what she meant.
"Let's talk properly, human. First, tell me how you ended up here through the Necromancer Guild's exclusive passage. And if you're not from the Necromancer Guild, then how do you have these two necromantic puppets? There seems to be a lot about you that I didn't expect."
Though still confused and increasingly bewildered, and despite feeling more frustrated than ever, Asa couldn't help but relax slightly. At least, it seemed like Moriel no longer had any intention of taking his life.
The Spiral Shadow Mountains were like an immense web, twisting and extending endlessly across the land. Within this web, there was almost no life; all vitality had been consumed by the deathly stillness and dark energy that permeated the region. Anyone, human or animal, who dared to venture into this place would be drained of their final breath by this oppressive aura and would eventually become skeletons, zombies, ghosts, or other undead, nourished by this dark presence.
At the very center of the mountains, a towering solitary peak rose up, piercing the clouds. For dozens of miles around, the mountain slopes gradually gave way to a flat platform at the very summit, measuring only a few dozen meters in size. In the center of this platform stood an ancient altar, upon which a swirling mass of black mist hovered.
The unique, boundless energy of the Spiral Shadow Mountains had become so thick on the summit that it felt almost tangible. This was the breath of death, the breath of darkness. The mist above the altar was the purest, densest, and most concentrated form of this energy.
It was not that the mist emitted its energy outward into the mountains; rather, the entire mountain range's energy naturally converged here, before radiating out again in an endless cycle. This peak was the axis of the vast web, and the black mist represented the very core of this axis, the essential point from which everything flowed.
But at the very heart of this most intense and concentrated deathly energy, an old man stood on the platform, staring blankly at the swirling black mist. The old man was incredibly frail, hunched over with a back bent with age. His face was covered in so many wrinkles that it seemed as though his very face was pieced together by them. He was small and fragile, and even standing seemed to be a challenge. His tattered robe fluttered wildly in the mountain winds, as if his very body might be swept away by the gusts at any moment.
Even the strongest of the mighty Bimons could not endure the intense deathly energy in this place for long, yet this frail, aged man appeared unaffected by the thick, dark aura. The energy that extinguished all life around him seemed no different than water to a fish in his presence.
"Master Shante, what brings you to this place?" Another old man appeared at the edge of the platform. This one didn't appear very old; his neatly kept mage's robe and lively demeanor gave the impression that he was sharp and clear-headed, always ready to act.
Master Shante didn't respond right away, still silently watching the black mist on the altar. After a long pause, he slowly asked, "Stephen, how many years has it been since you've been up here?"
"About twenty years, I think. Since Sandru broke the sword's hilt and took it, I came up once to see," Stephen thought for a moment before replying.
Master Shante said indifferently, "It's been more than fifty years for me. Ever since that time fifty years ago when I came here to receive the mark of the Black Star and became a necromancer, I never came back again."
"Then why have you come today, Master?" Stephen asked, noticing that the old man's words and tone seemed different from usual. "Your health..."
"That boy helped me heal," Master Shante replied.
"That boy..." Stephen paused slightly, and then a look of surprise flashed across his face. "You mean the one..."
"Yes. The one who learned necromantic magic under Sandru. The one that Vadenina always wanted to bring into the guild. Not long ago, that boy came to me. It was Agrenel who directed him to me, and it turns out the path he took was the one only an acting guild master could walk, the one designated by Lord Akibard himself."
The surprise on Stephen's face deepened. Since Shante had left the guarded passage, it meant that the boy had indeed passed through. "Oh? So... you really let him in?"
"That boy picked up the Black Star's hilt in front of me."
Shante's face remained expressionless, and his voice was soft, dry, as if the ashes of burned bones were being blown away by the wind.
Stephen heard it clearly, but this time there was no more surprise on his face. Instead, he seemed stunned. After a long sigh, he fell silent, his gaze fixed on the black mist in the center of the altar.
To the eyes of others, it was just a swirling black mist. But to those who had accepted the mark of the Black Star, like the necromancers standing before it, they could clearly see that within the mist, a dark longsword was embedded at its core.
Black. It was simply black. No adjective could properly describe the sword other than "black." It seemed as though all the darkness and shadow in the world had been condensed into this blade. But right now, the sword had no hilt; it was just a lonely blade thrust into the altar.
This was the Black Star, the legendary dark artifact that could supposedly change the world.
"I can feel it clearly. He really took it, really grasped it. The essence of the Black Star has completely merged with his body. At least for a moment, he has come as close as one can to becoming the Necromancer King," Shante's eyes were fixed on the dark mist surrounding the sword, his gaze as heavy and dense as the surrounding deathly aura.
"The Necromancer King..." Stephen smiled softly, though most of it was a bitter smile, and a small part was a cruel one. "So, with the life force of the Sun Well and the World Tree's leaf, along with the True Meditation, does this mean he's gathered the power? In other words, according to Lord Akibard's prophecy, one day he will come here and pull the Black Star from its place. And then, all of us necromancers will faithfully bow at his feet... the history of Dehya Valley... and the entire continent will come to an end."