Chapter 179 - First Lesson

Mari inhaled sharply, but as her lungs expanded, it was not air that filled them, but green goo. The expansion of her lungs felt pained as the goo filled the gaps, only slowly releasing. This happened a few more times as part of her natural reaction, causing the same pain again.

[Please do not attempt to breath too hard. It will adversely affect your body.] A monotone voice that sounded like an arctech puppet blurted out, the sound vibrating through the green goo and into her body.

Who?! Mari tried to speak, but with her mouth full of green goo it was impossible to. Surprisingly, as she tried to open her eyes, her eyes were not stung nor affected by the green goo despite being exposed to it. No part of her human body was.

She did not see anyone else around in the pod, only what she could describe as a room of metal snakes, slinging across the floor and ceiling, coiling towards a series of black metal plates lined up on a table, seemingly facing a single chair.

Where am I? Mari was slightly fascinated by the surroundings, haven’t seen anything like it before. Is this one of the ruins my grandfather told me about? But how did I –

The memories came rushing back, realization dawning on her. Mari quickly checked her waist, but noticed that it had been healed perfectly, though the new meat felt foreign to her, like a growth or a tumor. However, there was something far more important in her mind. GIDEON!

Mari could clearly recall Gideon’s being shot as well as her capture. She began to look around the pod, trying to find a way to escape her capture, planning to leave before her captors returned. As she turned and twisted, she noticed a few of the metal snakes attached to her body, their heads flat and pressed to her skin with a sticky adhesion.

[Please do not remove the sensors. They are delicate and I have limited stock with an inability to produce more.] The monotone arctech puppet voice resounded again, but Mari took no heed to the voice, focused on escaping before any human appeared.

She noticed the top of the pod was a lid, but it was sealed from the outside. As she swam to the top and hammered it with her hands, it was impossible to move it as well, far too heavy for her to push up against while floating in the green goo. I need leverage and a weak point.

Her brain raced, trying to think of methods to escape. She attempted to punch the glass of the pod, though it hardly budged, impervious to her weak fists. Mari even tried to push with all her limbs on both sides of the pod horizontally, attempting to strain the flexibility of the glass to no avail.

Desperate and out of hope, Mari’s mind could only think of one other method, something she had only done once. How do I replicate it? She could clearly remember conjuring a bolt of energy like magic, but she did not recall the method. Do I have to shout something? Or cast?

Mari focused for a while, trying to think carefully on how to summon the bolt. But as soon as she began to seriously think of it, beads of what she could only refer to as marbles began to move through her body, accumulating at her fist before her veins glowed white, brimming with energy.

With a thrust, Mari unleashed the trapped energy in her hand, bursting out through her pores and condensing into a bolt. The bolt smashed right into the glass, cracking it slightly but not shattering it completely. Chance!

Mari pushed against the glass again, exploiting the crack that now served as the stress point, before one more kick had the glass fragment into large chunks, with Mari sliding out of the pod in a rush of green goo.

The cold air of the metal room caused Mari to shiver, as she instinctively breathed once more. However, instead of being able to breathe, her body began to regurgitate out all the green goo from her airways, coughing and vomiting violently on the floor until only residuals were left in her body. A sharp stabbing pain could be felt on her elbow, cut by one of the larger glass pieces when she fell in a long gash that seared when exposed to the air.

Get up, Mari. Get up! Mari struggled to stand, but her legs were far too weak. She did not know how long she had been in that pod, but it was clear that her muscles had not moved for quite some time, feeling alien to her. She staggered on all fours, avoiding the glass shards mixed in the green goo before scampering to a dryer section of the floor. As she grabbed a nearby table with her slimy hands to support herself, she could finally get a better look at the room, filled with what she could think of as relics – similar to the one found in ruins.

My god, this is a treasure trove. Far better than anything in Versia! Mari shook her head, trying to get rid of the thought. Focus – focus on escaping! You can come back next time when you’re stronger! As she shifted her hand across the table, she noticed a clean set of clothes and towel – her usual wear back at the mines. It was only then Mari was fully cognizant that she was stark naked as of now, drenched in green goo.

Mari’s head darted around, looking for anyone watching before quickly drying herself off and wearing it, nearly slipping and falling a few times as she put her clothes on. She also noticed that the place that she had been shot had been neatly covered with a different patch of fabric. Weird.

The metal room only had one entrance, but it was left wide open, the light from beyond spilling into the room like the end of a tunnel. Mari was about to begin stumbling towards it when she stopped herself, thinking carefully.

Strange – if I was captured, why is the only door to my cell left open? Mari remained hesitant, but decided to sneak up to the door either way, silently creeping as much as she could to the edge of the doorway before peeking her head out to see what was beyond.

All she could see was an utterly barren corridor that seemed to stretch down to infinity, though there was a T-junction in the middle, an exit to the left. However, she did not spot any humans, nor anything resembling an arctech puppet. Where was that voice coming from?

She waited for three minutes, weighing her options. Let’s find out where the T-junction leads first. Propping herself up against the wall, she moved her legs as fast as she could, focusing on stabilizing herself. Left foot, right foot, left foot…

She soon got the hang of moving around normally as she moved down the long corridor slowly, eventually not requiring the support of the walls. When she reached the T-junction, the signs were hardly legible to her, though she could feel a gust of air coming in from the perpendicular pass. Left it is.

Mari got the sense that she was being led somewhere, but as to where, she did not know what. I might be walking right back into my captor’s hand.

However, waiting in the pod would have the same outcome as well, so Mari moved forward bravely. Mari gathered arcia energy in her hand again, now confident in her ability to use it – at short range at least.

She trudged towards what seemed like two metal doors, and as soon as she got within range, a pneumatic hissing sound frightened her, making her raise her arm, aiming right at the slowly opening door, revealing a weird central chamber with multiple doors along its circumference in a circle.

At the very centre was a destroyed table with metal snakes cut in half out, similar in make and shape to the ones Mari had seen in the other metal room. However, this time, there was a human here, and it was someone Mari knew very well.

“YOU!” Mari’s emotions flared up again as she raged, her walking much more stable now as her hands glowed white, the capillaries and veins surging with arcia energy. The man strapped to the chair, bounded by what seemed to be a metal handcuff, a relic as well.

However, Mari did not care who had captured him or had him here. But before Mari could approach any closer with her fist raised, the man began to plead sincerely, his eyes filled with tears. “Please, don’t kill me! I was only under contract!”

“Contract?! You killed my friends and enslaved the rest!” Mari roared.

“I had no choice! If I did not attack the mine I would have been killed myself by the Ardent Cretins!”

This was the first time Mari had heard about the Ardent Cretins, though the name was now seared into her brain. “There is always a choice! You could have ran away!”

“You have no idea how powerful the Ardent Cretins are – they can find me even if I fled to the Hwa Dynasty or Proco!”

“That’s bullshit – you’re a leader of a mercenary outfit and you can’t hide from them?” Mari called out his lies, knowing that he was the leader of the ones attacking the mines. However, she assumed that she had been captured by them before she blacked out, so why was the leader here in chains himself?

“Who captured you then?” Mari questioned.

“Someone far worse! He’s the one who captured you too!”

Mari remained suspicious, especially when she was not in handcuffs, and she could see clear torture wounds on his skin, and blisters on his feet as he continued to shuffle uncomfortably. If we were both truly captured by the same person, why is the treatment so different? She recalled the clean set of clothes and the open door, as though she had been guided to come here by herself.

She glanced down at her fist, still glowing white, recalling what the leader had called her before she was rendered unconscious. Am I treated because I am a fledgling mage? She lowered her fist, though she did not intend to kill the man in the first place, her heart still naïve.

“He’s watching us right now, even in this Yual-forsaken chamber! He controls everything in this damn ruin!” The man continued shouting out. “Please, if you save me, I can help you break out!”

“How so?”

“I know the method to unlock the door – you don’t know that, don’t you?” The men tried to bargain.

“You fucking killed my friends, why would I even trust you?”

“It was a matter of necessity! I had a family to feed as well, I needed to pay for my son’s medicine, and my normal job just was not cutting it. Believe me, please, I never wanted to hurt any of you. But I… I had to protect my family.”

Mari felt her heart soften slightly, but she still did not truly believe the man, knowing that the moment she freed him, the man might attempt to kill her. She did not believe herself to be competent enough to fight against the man one on one.

Instead of responding, she took some time to examine the exit door, using her hands to feel for any grooves. There was not any obvious mechanism nor arctech engravings on the door, making her wonder as to how it was moving. Mechanical?

“See! I told you, you needed me! Only I know how to open the door!” The man bargained once more. “Look, you can leave my handcuffs on, but at least undo my legs!”

Mari weighed the options in her mind. She had not taken a human life before, but she swore to keep her guard up as much as possible. She undid the restraints slowly, keeping one hand charged to attack at a moment’s notice, but the man hardly moved at all, content to let Mari continue undoing the restraints.

With her other hand, she channeled the arcia energy into the relic handcuffs, slowly melting and disrupting the mechanisms within. With both leg restraints gone, the man could finally stand up again, his face filled with a new breath of freedom. “We need to get out now.”

“What’s the method to open the door?” Mari kept a safe distance from the man.

“See this destroyed table? One of these dangling metal twine should be controlling that door. If you send a surge of arcia energy down the twine, it might trigger the door to open.”

“Might?”

“Just try it, you don’t have any other options.”

Mari couldn’t really refute, and while she was still hesitant about working with someone who killed her friends, she moved to the destroyed table, checking where the twine led. As her eyes traced the twine, sure enough, four of the twines were connected to the door.

But before she could even begin to try anything, a loud snapping sound could be heard from behind, before a hand immediately grabbed her arm and twisted her hand into an arm lock, her knees kicked in and causing her face to slam onto the ground, her chin bruised.

“Idiot!” The man grinned from behind. “Both you and the fucker who got me are idiots! HEY YOU! LET ME GO ELSE THE GIRL FUCKING DIES!” The man shouted to seemingly thin air, his head raised to the circular dome ceiling of the chamber.

Mari half-expected a response from the treatment that she had been receiving thus far, yet nothing happen, even as she struggled to get up, pinned down by the man’s obviously greater body weight.

“Looks like that bitch doesn’t really give a shit about you to as well.” The man grabbed Mari’s head and slammed it onto the ground once more. “Now you’re going to charge that fucking twine and get us out of here. Don’t you try anything funny, twat!”

Instead, Mari’s body began to glow tremendously, her eyes sparking with arcia energy as she roared with all her might, anger towards the man behind her.

The man yelped and staggered backwards as his hand was nearly seared by Mari’s overheating body, a layer of arcia energy burst out from her. She immediately got up and threw a punch at the man, the arcia-infused punch sending him flying into the chamber with a dull thud.

The man coughed up a glob of blood, his bones hurting from the sudden impact as his body crumpled to the ground. Mari sprinted over, before delivering a kick of her own to the man’s head, dislocating his jaw with brutality.

Mari then grabbed the man with her two arcia-infused hands, searing his skin and attempting to strangle him. However, she could see the fear of death in the man’s eyes, her heart faltering once more. She tried to convince herself that the man needed to die, but there remained something that prevented her.

“I was a fool to trust you! This is what you get for killing Gideon and the others!”

“…p..plea..se… I … don’t want … to … die…” The man struggled to get the words out as he was strangled.

Like cold water splashed on her head, Mari involuntarily let go of her hands slightly, reducing the stranglehold for a moment as a battle of morals raged within her.

But before she could make a choice, she felt a sharp pain in her waist all of a sudden, a metal shard stabbed into her by the man. “Fooled twice.” The man grinned. “Too easy. If you don’t help me escape, I rather kill you than let that fucker have you.”

With a burst of rage, Mari grabbed the man’s neck, twisting with all her force, her arcia-infused muscles pushing with strength. In a single bloody rip, she crushed and ripped the neck apart bit by bit; the man’s slowly widening eyes in horror as his airways were gutted, his brain suffering from oxygen depletion.

As the man’s head lolled to the side, the exit door slid open, revealing a well-dressed man along with what seemed like a hobgoblin queen, the two of them staring at Mari with clear interest.

“Lesson number one: don’t trust anyone.”