Walking through the green sewers after that hellish experience could only be called enlightening.
Having finished engraving three runes onto my body, I continued to experiment with the three runes that carved their very existence into my flesh.
The rune with the beehive engraving was placed onto my palms where nothing was before, when I clapped my hands together, nothing happened, when I infused them with mana, nothing happened.
It was only when I performed those two actions without using the blaze rune and covering my hands in a blaze that I was able to discover what it did.
Suffice to say, it wasn't called the teleportation rune for nothing, I truly wish I could control in which direction I teleported though.
Feeling as if I was still soaked through from my brief dive in acid, I continued to experiment with the rest of my runes while making sure to take care of the undead group of undead roaming the sewers.
'These guys are unique.'
Engraved into the sides of my waist, something akin to a clock and a wrench were placed by my sides.
If I just had the likeness of a belt tattooed onto my waist, it would seem as if I was wearing a belt with both a clock and a wrench.
The clock just as it's appearance suggested allowed me to manipulate time.
'It's just limited to me though.'
After a brief few experiments, I could speed up and slow down my every movement, including those of my thoughts without being able to do the same with objects.
Maybe more results would come if I used a living being, but I was much in the category of not getting my face mauled off.
Anyways.
Speeding up my thoughts was just as it was stated, allowing me to adapt to sudden changes of speed when I sped up my body.
Slowing down my thoughts was honestly counterproductive as everything became stupidly fast and I fell into the sewers again, only reacting after some time.
Slowing down my body had the unintended effect of making my body move slowly no matter if I was in the air or not, it could be useful if I wanted to slow down my fall.
I don't think I want to experiment with falling down at supersonic speeds though.
But then again, I don't think I'll be able to do more of these experiments as I felt something distinctly flowing out of my body and making it so that I felt inexplicably tired.
'This is probably the mana that Ella was talking about.'
The wrench at the side of my waist was safe to say, less intuitive than I thought.
At the least the clock at the side of my waist hinted at what it could do with it, the wrench on the other hand?
When I applied mana to it, nothing happened.
Even when I performed several actions like how the teleportation rune didn't react until I ran mana through them and clapped my hands, it didn't even twitch.
Sure it was called the custom rune, but I honestly don't understand what its effects could possibly entail.
*Tremble
"Woah!"
Tripping over the ground, I snapped my head backwards and stared at the spot on the ground I had just tripped over.
Usually, I wouldn't even take notice over something like that as every now and then it was normal to trip, even more so in the sewers where the ground was slick in some sort of oil.
But here?
'It doesn't exactly spell normal when pieces of the ground are suddenly flying in the air.'
You may think that it's just the scorpions trying to dig their ways out of the ground to attack me with their tails again, but even after waiting for sometime, nothing even happened.
It was only when I stepped off of the spot on the ground shaking and stepped back on did the spot of land tremble and shake.
And now having given my full attention to the shaking ground, I was able to notice a symbol engraved into the ground.
'...'
'Yeah I don't know what that's about, and I don't think I want to stay long enough to find out.'
I turned my head to a glowing yellow passage.
'Besides, there's a perfectly good doorway right here.;
Having had enough I stepped into the yellow door and straight into a place called the Ramparts.
'What.'
Having already been here before but not 'here' before, my eyes drifted to the minimap that had already a good portion of it revealed to me.
'Yeah that makes sense.'
Seeing that nothing was different here except I was just in a sea of black, there was a not insignificant gap between where I was and where familiar ground was.
'Not that I'm familiar enough to recognize my surroundings and neither do I want to become familiar enough to recognize a place on sight.'
If the latter situation happened, then I could assume by then that I haven't cured the malaise and thus couldn't solve the time travelling problems thus leading to the destruction of the entire world.
'Let's hope that it doesn't ever get to the point I could recognize my surroundings.'
Thinking that, i turned my attention back to the doorway and wondered why I hadn't gotten the chance to enter the room where the Collector and Guillian were.
'Is it because of that?'
In the first run, when I first met the collector, he had introduced the place that they were in, a gathering place between time
And as a gathering place between time, this meant that it could possibly connect to every single connecting point between areas at once.
Conversely, this also meant that there was a distinct possibility of said gathering point not appearing between the connecting points making it so that I just couldn't enter the Gathering point.
But that was just a theory
A theory I instantly tested by backtracking through the doorway that was a suspicious red.
'Wasn't the door to the Sewers green?'
With those last ringing in my mind, I passed through the jelly like red membrane.
---
'Now where the hell am I?'
Stepping through the doorway made it clear that there was definitely a time when the gathering point disconnected between the connecting places making it so you were transported instantly to the place that the doorway was heading to.
This didn't explain why the hell I was suddenly in someplace unknown.
Looking at the minimap, it was clear that I was nowhere near the sewers.
'Actually this is pretty near.'
Seeing that the distance between where I was and where the sewers were was actually relatively close, closer than the distance between the place where I initially was before here and the place where I explored the ramparts.
It was clear that this place was a place where I could access through the place called the sewers.
That's a lot of places in one sentence.
'God that's a mouthful.'
Licking my dry lips, I observed my surroundings, hoping to glean a bit on where I was.
For one, this was definitely somewhere below ground.
Built out of black stone, tall pillars holding the building up were lined with lion carvings roaring at unknown intruders, red eyes lining their pupils
Lining the walls and the ground respectively, red drapes with golden tassels lined the walls while a red carpet emblazoned with various insignias I had seen all over the kingdom ran across the sides of the carpet.
Blue light cast against the ground, the candles silently burnt without a trace of smoke causing me to frown at the ominous blue.
Call it being paranoid, but I felt a strange feeling from those blue flames.
Anyways, despite all of the decorations, there were no signs of windows which were definitely an affordable price for whoever owned this place unless it was just the owners particular taste.
And if my conjecture that I had exited from the Sewers was correct, then this place was definitely underground.
But even with all of these decorations clearly stating that this place was one of great grandeur and spectacle, it didn't even give me an inkling on who owned this place.
'Sure the large amount of red and gold in what seems like medieval times means that the people here are royals or at the least very wealthy nobles, but I know jack shit about the nobility of this kingdom.'
Actually now I think of it, the fat undead I had seen guarded by the giant skeletons on the island may have been undead, but I don't think I could just go up and ask if they owned this place.
In the first place, I would have to get there and talk to insane dead people while eradicating a giant skeleton that could unleash flying blades in the air.
'So just where am I?'
Tapping my foot against the ground, the mystery of the door behind me was long forgotten as I delved into my memories for any possible clues on where this place was.
'Wait, from what I can recall, wasn't there a black castle on the island I started on?'
And my brain churning question bore fruit.
Instantly recalling the castle of black with red paned windows, pointing to the sky with gothic architecture, I instantly reassessed my opinion on the decorations and noticed many things that I previously couldn't
For one, the ceilings were inefficiently high, a classic in gothic architecture, the black stone being the cherry on top the already large mountain of cherries.
'Well I guess I now know where the hell I am.'
Looking at the insides of this castle, I stepped forwards in hoping to unravel the secrets of this place
Who knows, maybe I'll find out why they moved to the other island, or maybe I'll find a clue to how this damned disease started in the first place.
But in the end, there was only one thing I could do in this world constantly repeating.
Explore this darkened castle
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