A true creation of "Life Alchemy" had to be nurtured for at least seven years in an environment completely isolated from external magical interference. During that time, it required daily nourishment with stardust and constant "programming" through the chanting of ancient spells.
Once born, its magical power would grow exponentially, far surpassing that of any naturally born wizard.
More importantly, such creations were virtually immune to conventional magical defenses because their very existence was a reinterpretation of the laws of magic.
"I think this possibility is much more likely."
Saruman's breathing quickened slightly.
If the owner of that voice really was such a... thing, then everything made sense.
That terrifying magical power wasn't something accumulated through years of training. It was an innate capacity maxed out from the moment of its creation.
The more Saruman thought about it, the more convinced he became.
It wasn't surprising that hearing a single spell had sent his thoughts running this far. Geniuses were proud, and peerless geniuses even more so. Saruman could only allow himself to think of it this way, otherwise, his pride simply wouldn't accept it.
To preserve his peace of mind, Saruman's mind raced through past memories.
He suddenly recalled something he had seen thirty years ago in an underground chamber beneath an abandoned alchemical workshop in Eastern Europe.
It was the perfectly preserved corpse of an infant.
Its skin was as white as porcelain, and though its eye sockets were empty, a faint silver glow still shone from within. There was no heart in the infant's chest, only a tiny fragment of a Philosopher's Stone, slowly rotating in place.
At the time, Saruman had assumed it was a failed experiment.
Looking back now, perhaps it was merely an unfinished creation whose development had been interrupted halfway through.
Had someone mastered true "Life Alchemy" long ago? Were these artificial lifeforms being used to explore dangerous ruins and perform similar missions?
If some hidden alchemical family, or some brilliantly mad sorcerer, had truly created a perfect "Alchemical Child," then deploying it for something like this actually made sense.
"Whatever the case, this fellow may be every bit as dangerous as these ruins themselves."
After running through countless possibilities, Saruman finally reached that conclusion.
"Doesn't sound that bad to me."
Kag patted the hilt of his greatsword, displaying the straightforward practicality of a warrior.
"The stronger he is, the better! Whether he's a boy or some ancient monster doesn't matter. If he's strong enough to survive in this damned place, and is even fighting something here, that means he has a way to deal with the dangers around us."
"We don't need to confront him directly. We just follow behind him like shadows. Watch him, track him, and maybe he'll lead us to a way out of here! Let him clear the path while we reap the benefits. Isn't that even better?"
Kag's intellect was clearly well above that of an average warrior.
"Uh..."
Saruman fell silent for a moment.
Kag's idea was simple and direct, but it was undoubtedly a valid survival strategy in an unknown, perilous place.
In the end, Saruman nodded and didn't argue further, though his vigilance didn't lessen in the slightest.
"Either way, we can't enter the city recklessly. Before we do anything, I need to figure out exactly where we are. This stone tablet... may have the answer."
His gaze returned to the massive broken stone tablet covered in strange writing. His thirst for knowledge and an ominous sense of foreboding drove him in equal measure.
Kag had no objections.
He turned his attention back to the stunned Lina, carefully moistening her dry, cracked lips with clean water and wiping away the foul-smelling mucus seeping between her scales.
Even while tending to Lina, however, he couldn't stop glancing toward the City of Silence.
That deadly green flash kept replaying in his mind.
"Avada..."
Kag quietly repeated the unfamiliar word.
As a warrior, his understanding of magic was nowhere near Saruman's, but that brief glimpse of pure death had already been deeply carved into his memory.
"What kind of magic was that? It was so... clean. So direct. More decisive than any blade, almost as if death itself were whispering..."
He couldn't comprehend that kind of power, but that didn't stop him from recognizing how utterly terrifying it was.
Whatever unknown entity was inside the city was currently using that horrifying power to fight something. That gave Kag hope for the road ahead, but it also filled him with an indescribable mixture of awe and unease.
While Kag stared into the distance, Saruman devoted his full attention to deciphering the stone tablet.
He slowly walked around the enormous slab, his fingers hovering over the cold, rough carvings that seemed to carry the weight of countless ages.
Over the following hours, he would sometimes crouch down to carefully examine the details of a particular symbol. At other times, he would step back and study the overall arrangement of the symbols and the flow of magical energy between them.
"Strange... these writings..."
Saruman's brow hadn't relaxed once.
He continuously pulled various tools and reference materials from his magical storage pouch. There was a magnifying glass engraved with a True Sight Rune, capable of magnifying and analyzing traces of magical energy. There was also an ancient dictionary bound in dragonhide that contained fragments of writing from lost civilizations, along with notes Saruman had compiled on the symbols used by different magic systems.
"So the only place with anything similar really is Raven's Ruins..."
Saruman seemed to have finally found a lead. From that connection, he threw himself into the deciphering work.
Time seemed to lose all meaning in this silent world.
The murky yellow sky never changed, while the black stone beneath their feet radiated a cold, lifeless aura. The only things breaking the suffocating silence were the occasional rustle of Saruman turning pages and the faint syllables of experimental spells muttered under his breath.
"At least there aren't any disgusting monsters outside the city."
Kag faithfully carried out his duty as guard. While taking care of Lina, he kept a wary eye on their surroundings, especially toward R'lyeh City.
Every now and then, vague sounds echoed from within the city.
Sometimes there would be more flashes of green from "Avada Kedavra," though these were noticeably weaker than the first. At other times, there were dull impacts or strange, indescribable noises that sounded like massive boulders grinding against each other.
That convinced Kag that the battle inside the city was still raging. That powerful "young" wizard was still active.
And Kag was increasingly glad for it.
Of course, every time he looked at Lina, that hope vanished.
Her condition remained grim. The transformation affecting her continued slowly but steadily. Scales were spreading across more of her body, their color growing darker and deeper. Even the words she occasionally muttered while unconscious sounded increasingly like some non-human tongue.
"Dammit..."
Kag's heart ached at the sight of her suffering. All he could do was place his hopes on Saruman's research, and on whatever opportunity the unknown wizard inside the city might bring them.
"How's it going?"
Every so often, Kag would ask his companion.
But Saruman, completely absorbed in his work, never answered.
"This symbol... how am I supposed to interpret this one?"
Saruman's progress was slow and arduous.
The writing system on the stone tablet was completely unlike any language he knew. Its structure wasn't linear; one symbol didn't necessarily connect directly to the next. It was also filled with recursive and self-referential symbols, as though describing concepts that existed beyond three-dimensional space.
Naturally, that made deciphering it even harder.
Worse still, many of the symbols carried a faint corrupting influence on the mind. Staring at them for too long threw Saruman's thoughts into chaos and caused brief hallucinations.
He saw enormous, slimy tentacles writhing across the surface of the tablet. He heard mad hymns rising from somewhere beneath the deepest ocean.
There was nothing he could do about it. Unable to let those hallucinations take root, Saruman had to stop frequently and cast calming spells to clear away the mental pollution.
Sweat soaked through his silver robes, and his face grew pale from the intense mental strain.
But he refused to give up. His thirst for knowledge and desire to uncover the truth kept him going.
Finally, after countless attempts, comparisons, and logical deductions, he found a breakthrough.
Several core pictographic symbols that repeatedly appeared on the stone tablet bore a faint resemblance to patterns he had once seen in an extremely obscure document from Raven's Ruins, a damaged record concerning legends of an ancient continent.
That record contained vague information about a Sunken Continent and ancient gods, details generally dismissed as nothing more than myth.
Yet now, those myths seemed to be finding confirmation here.
"Raven really is my lucky star."
Saruman sighed with emotion.
Combining the context of the symbols on the stone tablet with his deductions based on their relative positions and the flow of magical energy, he painstakingly began piecing together fragments of those old legends.
"...Eternal... slumber... city..."
He murmured under his breath, one trembling finger pointing toward the largest cluster of symbols at the top of the tablet, shaped like a twisted crown.
"...R'...ly...eh...?"
"R'lyeh?"
Saruman had successfully deciphered the name of this place.
Unfortunately... he still hadn't realized just how dire the situation was.
"R'lyeh..."
Saruman quietly repeated the unfamiliar name, searching his memories for anything connected to it.
He came up empty.
He had no idea what "R'lyeh" meant in the context of Cthulhu Mythos lore. He didn't know its connection to the sleeping god Cthulhu, nor did he know that this was the ultimate Forbidden Land spoken of in terrifying legends.
It all stemmed from ignorance. Because he knew nothing, he couldn't fully grasp how dire their situation was.
Of course, from another perspective, perhaps that was a blessing. At the very least, Saruman and the others wouldn't lose their sanity to sheer terror just yet.
He continued deciphering the other relatively clear sections of the tablet.
Saruman poured all his attention into the work. This was no longer merely the stubbornness of a scholar, but the desperate instinct of a drowning man clutching at a straw.
He slowly paced around the massive tablet, which stood like a gigantic tombstone, his fingers hovering over its cold, rough surface. Every carved line seemed to carry the weight of ages older than mountains.
At times, he crouched down and used his magical magnifying glass, engraved with a True Sight Rune, to carefully examine the minute differences in magical residue around a particular symbol. At other times, he stood up and took several steps back, narrowing his silver eyes as he studied the overall arrangement of the twisted symbols and the obscure paths of energy flowing between them, trying to comprehend the underlying logic of their non-Euclidean design.
Time in this dead world seemed frozen solid. Yet at the same time, it felt like it was racing toward a predetermined end.
The eternally murky yellow sky hung overhead like a filthy, lifeless curtain, sealing off this abandoned land. The black stone beneath their feet radiated a chill that sank deep into their bones, as though it could freeze the soul itself.
Only the occasional rustle of Saruman turning ancient pages, sounding like dry leaves rubbing together, and the faint syllables of detection spells he murmured while testing symbol reactions offered any proof that living beings still moved in this place.
Before long, Saruman began to get results.
The inscriptions were fragmented, but they were filled with warnings and taboos. The malice and indifference contained within them seemed to originate from the birth of the universe itself, sending a bone-deep chill racing from the base of Saruman's spine straight to his skull.
For a moment, it felt as though the blood in his veins had frozen solid.
"...Domain... beyond time..."
"...when the stars... return to their proper positions..."
"...the Great Old One... slumbers..."
"...do not disturb... do not behold... the eternal... nightmare..."
"...all who touch it... shall suffer... distortion and... destruction..."
Even without understanding the full background behind those words, the sheer danger radiating from them was enough to chill Saruman to the bone.
"Domain Beyond Time?"
"Great Old One?"
"Eternal Nightmare?"
Even the most superficial interpretation painted a picture far more terrifying, absolute, and hopeless than the Infinite Corridor!
This wasn't the outskirts of some ruins, nor was it simply another level. This was an entirely separate Forbidden Dimension, something fundamentally different!
A prison where even the laws of time itself were distorted!
They hadn't been lucky enough to escape that stone prison at all. Like fools, they had thrown themselves from a small cage straight into a vast, incomprehensible, ultimate prison!
"How could this happen?!"
Saruman's expression turned grim. The small glimmer of hope he had regained began to crumble once more.
If the stone tablet spoke the truth, then the city of R'lyeh was itself an extraordinarily dangerous entity. And as for whatever the "wizard" fighting inside the city was facing... Saruman didn't even want to imagine it.
He was still reeling from what he had deciphered, uncertain whether to tell Kag and unsure of what to do next, when,
From deep within R'lyeh City, that young yet icy voice pierced the dead silence once again, echoing beneath the murky yellow sky!
"Avada, Plague!"
This time, it wasn't just a single ray of death.
The moment those words rang out, countess streams of green magical energy, so dense they seemed to boil, erupted from near the city center like a bursting dam, or a living cloud of plague.
Green light instantly washed over vast stretches of the twisted city, transforming the buildings into something straight out of hell.
And the light didn't remain still.
It surged.
It spread.
It churned wildly through the city like a living, highly contagious force of pure destruction.
Its scale was monumental. The sheer magical power behind it far exceeded every previous "Avada Kedavra" combined!
Saruman's head snapped up.
He stared toward the city, where that green hell boiled across the skyline, feeling the terrifying wave of magic sweep outward, a force that seemed capable of extinguishing every trace of life in its path.
"My God!"
Every doubt in Saruman's mind and every last bit of wishful thinking shattered in an instant.
Only overwhelming shock and horror remained.
He couldn't stop himself from crying out:
"That... that's no ordinary wizard!"
"That's a, Legendary!!"
His voice turned shrill with sheer disbelief.
(End Of This Chapter)
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