They lost count of time, they didn't know just how long they were walking for, continuously descending the endless flight of stairs.
Alan's little wisp of flame did little to help, only lighting up the stairs ahead of them, without providing true vision of where they were.
Honestly, Alan felt uneasy, they were going down, without a real goal in mind, surrounded by complete darkness, even the way they came from was now black.
"How far does this go…" Alan didn't know for sure, all they knew was the fact they were heading down into the undergrounds of the royal castle.
He still couldn't understand how this place existed, even if the emperor was the one to create this space, it wouldn't make sense for no one to notice this area.
The only reason he and the three other prodigies realised, was because quite frankly they weren't normal, despite being a low rank they still sensed it.
But those who most frequented the royal castle were some of the strongest in the continent, even the average head of a noble family was rank 5 in their mana core, transcended past their human limits, effectively becoming a demigod.
"Damn it…" Alan signed, letting his thoughts drift off, the more he thought about it, the more questions filled his brain, so he just focused on what's in front of him.
Thus, they continued descending, only their footsteps echoed throughout the vast stairwell as they moved in silence.
After a while.
Alan became bored, since walking into the place, both he and Lucian kept their guard up for any possible events to occur, but nothing happened.
Now it felt like a chore having to walk all these steps, still it didn't mean he completely let go of his guard, he kept up the bare minimum.
"Lucian." Alan started a conversation. "What's your opinion on those two."
Referring to Julia and Iris.
"Hmm." Lucian knitted his brows together, seriously thinking about it. "Strong."
"Do you like, not feel anything else man?" He knew Lucian liked fighting a little too much.
"They're pretty?" Lucian hesitantly replied.
"No way…" Alan eyes widened to its limit, he was even more shocked than when he saw Sparky.
In all the years he has known Lucian, the man has never shown an interest in another person's appearance, at one point Alan even thought he was impotent.
But now that very same man is calling someone attractive?
"Who is it." Alan stared into Lucian's eyes with a wild, hungry glare, the only conclusion he reached, was Lucian has a crush.
Lucian frowned once he saw Alan's abnormal look. "I don't know what kind of assumption you have of me, but cease it immediately."
"Don't worry man, you can tell me." But Alan wasn't listening, he shook his head and pointed to himself in a reassuring way. "I'll be the greatest wingman for you."
Alan winked, making Lucian scrunch his face is utter disgust.
"Why would I even need you to be a wingman?" Lucian tilted his head, not understanding Alan's thought process.
"Why?" Alan scoffed as if it was obvious. "You like someone, don't you?"
Alan winked again, this time Lucian understood what Alan was thinking. "How on earth, did you come to that conclusion?"
"Why wouldn't I? This is your first time calling someone pretty."
"So?" Lucian raised a brow, his nonchalance making Alan hesitate for a moment.
"What do you mean so…?"
"So what if it's my first time calling someone attractive?" Lucian looked confused. "Doesn't mean I don't find others attractive."
"Oh… Then who the hell did you find good-looking before?"
"Hmm." Lucian rubbed his chin. "Your mother."
"The fuck you just say?" Veins bulged on Alan's forehead, clutching his fists tightly to suppress his anger, when it came to his mother Alan was overly protective.
"What?" Lucian again looked confused, speaking in a calm voice. "Lady Miya is certainly beautiful."
"Ah…" Alan released his hands, Lucian meant it quite literally without any ill intentions, the man had a bad habit of being extremely straightforward.
Alan sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Fix your way of talking."
"Why? I believe I'm very normal."
"Hell no, you're not." Well, even Alan wasn't normal, but who cares. "Anyway so you don't like anyone?"
"Yes?"
"Man." Alan shook his head with disappointment. "How are you going to get married at this rate."
"You know, Alan." Lucian narrowed his eyes. "You sure talk big, but I haven't seen you involved in any romantic relationships."
"W-what?" Alan stuttered. "I have plenty of experience with women."
Alan nodded, thinking back to his past life as Leon, but quickly realised how flawed that was, Leon died a fucking loner, the man was dead before he even hugged a woman.
Suddenly, Alan was deplorable, slouching shoulders with a pout across his face.
Understanding without even needing to speak, Lucian silently patted his back, as the two of them continued walking.
Their footsteps were the only sound echoing through the stairwell.
…
"We're getting close." Alan muttered, all previous jest vanished from his expression, leaving his lips pressed in a single line with his eyes scanning the path forward.
Lucian nodded, similarly, his face too becoming serious.
The only reason Alan said what he said, was because there was light ahead, faint, but it was there.
The light brightened their path forward, the steps before them becoming partially visible.
Snap
Alan snapped his fingers, dismissing the violet wisp that was guiding them previously, the new source of light was enough for them to continue by themselves.
The further they walked, the brighter the light became, a pale, grey light hugged the stairs and walls, creating a strange atmosphere, and it wasn't pleasant.
They stopped walking, finally finding something ahead of them, a door, a metallic door with a line in-between leaking the same light from before.
Alan and Lucian exchanged small looks, before approaching the iron door, placing his hands on its surface, Alan pushed it open.
"Fuck..." Alan's face darkened instantly, for a small moment he just walked to run away.
Roll Roll Roll
Eyes, hundreds upon thousands pairs of eyeballs locked onto Alan, each and every single one was a bright, blood crimson, staring at him with a bloodthirsty glare.
Long cylinders tubes, stood erected across the entire place, numbering in the thousands spanning across all sorts of sizes, some were small, some were insanely large, others the length of a man.
Despite the various difference, the cylinders all held something in common.
All of them contained creatures, their skins were pitch black, some of their skins were scaly, covered in dark scales.
A few of the creatures resembled humans in body shape, but at the same time didn't, their legs were too long, their arms were too curved, their mouths were jagged.
Most of them didn't even look like humans, they seemed looked like creatures from someone's nightmares.
The largest cylinder belonged to an enormous octopus, its entire body was black including each of its tentacles, its head wasn't even a full octopus but deformed into a jaw, still the creature held eight pairs of crimson eyes, all staring at Alan.
Others were smaller, but no less terrifying, their bodies mimicked that of beasts, but looking nothing of the sort, instead they seemed disfigured, bent out of shape variants of the said beasts.
And without exception, all of their eyes contained the same blood-red colour dripping from their iris's.
"Abyssal creatures..." Alan whispered, his voice didn't hold any fear, instead reflected his innate disgust towards these creatures.
Creatures born from the Abyss, the stronger they become, the more closely they resemble humans or other humanoid races, every demon in the world was at one point an abyssal creature.
Those at the lowest ranks, are simply creatures that mimic beasts, in a very uncanny way, eventually evolving to inherit that beasts traits once they evolve to a demon.
Which explains the absolute varieties of creatures here, some resembled humans in distorted ways, others vaguely reflected the image of beasts, abyssal creatures all ranks under a demon rank was gathered here.
Step Step
Alan and Lucian walked through the maze of test tubes, passing by all sorts of variants of creatures, still every single one of their eyes followed Alan, with open hostility.
He stopped for a moment, turning his head left to glance at the tube beside him, making eye contact with the creature within.
It was an abyssal creature that looked like a bat, just with scales and four crimson eyes looking back at him.
Alan frowned, staring at the eyes. "They look just like Julia's..."
When he said her eyes was like that of demons, he was only basing it off facts he learnt from small bits and pieces of the novel he read, not from ever encountering one himself.
Now seeing it face to face, it was true, her eyes were an exact copy of these abyssal creatures, it looked identical.
Alan continued walking forward, leaving behind the bat, the tubes all contained an unknown grey liquid, holding all the creatures in place, keeping them from moving as they wished.
"Why are they looking at me." But it didn't stop their eyeballs, every creature traced Alan with their eyes and only Alan, without as much as a glance to Lucian.
Despite feeling uneasy, Alan continued walking, his questions had no answers as of right now.
The underground was huge, far too big, the place spanned across multiple kilometres, housing thousands of abyssal creatures.
Lucian closely inspected the creatures, but even he couldn't find anything, all they uncovered so far were numbers, each of the cylinder tubes had certain numbers branded on them.
They continued walking for a while, passing by the abyssal creatures in silence, until they finally found something.
A table of sort, with multiple books stacked on top of each other.
"Yeah, wow, totally not suspicious." Alan approached the table, scanning it for anything else, but there was nothing, it was an ordinary wooden table without a chair, its only purpose was to hold books.
The cover for all the books were plain, without any words or titles, a plain white cover, only the spine of the books had numbers it ranged from one to fifteen.
Alan picked up the one numbered with '1' and flipped the pages open.
"Hmm?"
[ Subject 1: Failure. ]
[ Subject 2: Failure. ]
[Subject 3: Failure. ]
The entire page was just repeating failure over and over, just with a different subject numbers.
"The hell is all this." Alan frowned, handing over the book to Lucian, there was literally nothing else, no information or anything just failure.
Alan picked up another book numbered '4' and opened the pages.
[ Subject 1211: Failure. ]
"1211?" Alan tilted his head, finding the number familiar, turning to the side he saw the enormous cylinder tube, holding the octopus with sixteen eyes, marked below the tube was the number '1211'.
He looked away, placing the book down he picked up another one with the number '9' and opened it.
[ Failure. ]
[ Failure. ]
[ Failure. ]
[ Failure. ]
There wasn't even a subject number anymore, it repeated failure over and over, some even of them were uneven, written diagonally, crossing over others creating a chaotic scribble.
Alan put it down, and picked up the very last one number '15'.
[ Failure. ]
[ Failure. ]
It followed the same process, of being increasingly messy and scribbled, repeating failure over and over.
Then Alan flipped to the last page, finding a word different from all others.
[ Success. ]
Written in perfectly clear, neat and beautiful writing was the word 'Success', besides it was a date.
"...Almost sixteen years ago?" The date was close to sixteen years ago... and who was coincidently turning sixteen in just a few weeks?
"So you found it." A chilly voice rang out from behind him, Alan quickly spun his head.
A pair of crimson eyes stared back at him, but it was different from the others, it wasn't held inside a tube, but standing out there in the open.
"Julia..." It was Julia, standing there with a plain, cold face.