Chapter 99: Breaking out

Edward, together with Eddena and Fenrir, started brainstorming while carefully analyzing the teleportation platform, but even with Fenrir’s knowledge they barely made any progress. He even gave Eddena one of the remaining talismans to use, knowing that if she got out of there he could just let the wolf run free, but nothing happened. The talisman simply didn’t activate.

The markings all around, which Edward eventually ended up calling runes since they didn’t form words but were just symbols spread around, also didn’t help since no one there could understand them.

With nothing to go on, one week and three losses of control from Eddena later, Edward started counting all the runes inside the ruins. He wanted to form an alphabet of unique ones and maybe try to understand them somehow.

Slowly, relying on Fenrir’s perfect memory, he walked around the entire set of ruins and had her memorize every rune displayed on all the walls. This took two more days because of the immense size of the place.

[543 different runes, but most of them repeat, except the one straight under you.] said Fenrir after asking Edward to return to the center of the platform.

Edward looked at the rune there and hit it with a water attack. The attack was once more redirected towards him and Edward blocked it before bending down to take a closer look.

Eddena had a pensive look as she stared at the symbol under Edward before saying: “It appears similar to a magic seal…”

Edward turned towards her with a raised eyebrow. He knew about seals and has seen the one made by Circe and the guild, but he did not know how they worked.

“What kind of mage are you? Didn’t Circe teach you about magic seals?”

“Well, seals are advanced-mage territory and aren’t useful in a fight, so I kind of skipped that part.” Replied Edward with a wry smile. That was the truth, and there was also the fact that Azure did not know how seals worked either, saying the humans of this world created them.

“To create a seal, you’ll have to form symbols using your mana and place them in a certain order. Depending on the way they are placed, the seal’s effect differs. The reason I didn’t think this might be a seal before was that I’d never seen such a complex one. Also, the symbols differ from anything I’ve read before in any book at the magician guild.”

“Alright, but how does that help us?” asked Edward.

Eddena smiled and looked at the symbol under Edward: “To cancel a seal, you must just remove its central symbol. Usually, it’s hard to find, but there is one characteristic that makes it easier in our case. The central symbol is unique. If this is indeed a seal, that should allow us to break it.”

Edward understood what she was implying and placed his arm atop the symbol. Turning to look at Eddena, he asked: “Are you ready?”

Seeing her nod, Edward asked Fenrir to release her chaos energy. He could see the symbol slowly brighten up before taking on a gray hue, but the building didn’t shake as before, so he continued.

After a while, the symbol got overwhelmed by the chaos energy and shattered. This spelled the beginning of a chain reaction as all the other symbols started shattering one after another, extending outwards from the platform under him.

Edward and Eddena were smiling while watching the show until, to their surprise, the building started shaking again, with cracks extending on the walls all around.

[Azure says you’re deep underwater and the space energy was protecting you from the water pressure. Now that the seal is gone, the whole place is breaking apart. Eddena, get next to Edward. Edward, create a water bubble around you two and be careful of the falling debris.]

The two followed Fenrir’s instructions in an instant and they could see the building slowly crumbling with water jetting through the cracks.

It took less than two minutes until the entire thing crumbled to pieces and they were left in the dark at the bottom of an unknown body of water.

Because of his water control, Edward had no issue keeping the water and pressure at bay. Not being able to notice anything, he turned towards Eddena: “I’m going to turn to get the assassin passive skills before heading upward. You ride on top of me. This way I can minimize the mana expenditure.”

Eddena chuckled and nodded: “Okay, but you’ll have to buy me dinner after making such demands.”

Edward smiled as well and took his wolf form. Once Eddena was on his back, he decreased the bubble size and started heading upward.

After five minutes of going straight up, the mark on his arm started heating up. Edward also knew danger was coming. Even if he still couldn’t see, his senses allowed him to feel something swim toward him through the water.

Releasing his mana to increase the hardness of the water bubble while monitoring the direction of the unknown being approaching, he also raised his speed to the maximum.

Eddena noticed their increased speed and frowned. She understood the reason in an instant and said: “We must be in the ocean outside the continent. There are even beasts around level 90 in its depths. Don’t even think about fighting it.”

Edward nodded and got ready for the impact.

*Bang*

*Crack*

After a heavy impact, the surrounding shell of water started cracking while also getting pushed hard in the opposite direction, but it didn’t break. This allowed Edward to gain some confidence before controlling the water around to head up again.

After 30 minutes of his shield getting hit by many beasts, their strength and frequency also decreased and he turned back into his human form.

“The bests are getting weaker the closer we get to the surface.”, said Edward, ignoring the fact that Eddena was now riding on his back.

“That should be true. How is your mana?”

Edward smiled wryly and shook his head: “Five more minutes or probably a handful of attacks.”

Eddena frowned: “Damn it. I don’t know any spell to protect us in here. I’ll also not be able to provide you with air after the bubble breaks.”

“Why do you think I turned? We can still swim upwards, but I will probably end up passing out with no air. When that happens, I need you to rush ahead so that my curse won’t hurt you. The beasts now should not be stronger than level 30 something, so we must be getting close to the surface anyway. I want to use the remaining mana to decrease the pressure slightly so we won’t get crushed.”

Eddena agreed to his plan, and Edward turned again before releasing the water bubble. He held his breath as they both swam upwards. The beasts were indeed weaker and Eddena dealt with them easily while Edward assisted from time to time.

The fundamental problem was that without Edward’s magic to push them upwards, their speed also decreased. Twenty more minutes later, Edward could no longer hold his breath.

His senses allowed him to see slightly as they got closer to the surface, but his vision was now blurry. Looking at Eddena who was fighting a beast not that far away, Edward canceled his wolf form and motioned for her to leave as he stopped his ascent and closed his eyes.

He figured her level was enough to resist the pressure so she might make it to the surface before the wolf targets her.

Eddena noticed Edward’s condition and frowned as she slashed a water beast with her blade. She then rushed down and caught his falling body by the waist.

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Edward was already close to passing out when he felt an arm grabbing his waist.

‘Is she crazy?’ yelled Edward in his mind as he held onto his consciousness and tried to push her away, but before he could even put any strength in his arms, he felt something touching his lips and parting them.

Air started passing though his lips and filling his starving lungs as his eyes snapped open.

Seeing Eddena feeding him air through his mouth, Edward was left completely stunned. Before he could make sense of the situation, Eddena winked and broke the kiss before taking care of another beast.

With his air no longer being a problem, Edward turned again, and they reached the surface in less than ten minutes.

Taking a deep breath, Edward canceled his wolf form and looked towards Eddena not that far off.

“Why didn’t you just run?”

Eddena chuckled when she heard the tone of his voice and said: “Where would I run to? If your wolf is at least as strong as you, it would have probably caught up to me.”

“But you could have reached the surface.”

“And what then? Did you forget I’m not my sister? I can’t fly.”

Edward just sighed and let himself lay on his back to recover some of his strength. The beasts close to the surface were just low-level beasts, around level 3. They didn’t even dare to come close to them, so they were safe for now.

“Stop acting like a damsel who had her first kiss stolen. This was the best solution and you know it.”

“I know, I know. Fenrir, do you have any idea where we are?”

[I can feel the mark I left in the dragons’ dungeon. We should be six running hours northeast of that place.]

“Alright. We should return to the continent.”, said Edward.

[Wait a moment. Go even further north. There is something strange over there and I want to check it out.]

“No need.” Added Eddena, “It’s probably the Great Barrier.”

“Great Barrier?”

[Great Barrier?]

“No one knows too much about it from what I can tell. It’s a barrier that has always been there as far as I’m aware. If you travel through it, you’ll end up on the opposite side of the continent.”

“Another space loop?” asked Edward with a frown.

[Probably, but would have bothered to surround the entire continent in a space loop, and why? Also, there’s no way it is not related to the ruins we were in.]

“Well, we can come and investigate at another time. We should return to the continent for now.”

Fenrir remained silent and Edward started swimming towards the shore with Eddena. His mana also recovered after two hours and Edward increased their speed while riding the ocean waves.

After one more hour, the gigantic walls of the dragon kingdom appeared in their vision. They moved underwater for the rest of the way, careful not to get spotted by any dragon, and returned to the place Edward had dug his tunnel.

“You should go back, Eddena. This place is too danger…” before Edward could finish his words, Eddena slapped the back of his head.

“You increased your level slightly and now you think you get to order me around? I’m coming as well.”

Smiling wryly, Edward said: “But you will have a hard time dealing with the dragons. Your stealth abilities are also not as good as mine. I can move a lot easier on my own.”

Eddena stared into Edward’s eyes for a moment before sighing: “Damn, this is frustrating. If I could I would really beat you up right now.”

Edward smiled and nodded: “I’m sure you would. Be careful and say hello to the assassin guild leader’s daughter when you return to the city from me.”

Eddena nodded and turned around to leave, only to stop after a few steps.

“Edward, if you can’t save her or it gets too dangerous, just retreat. Those lizards can’t kill my sister.”

“Huh? The leader of the magician guild told me something similar. What does it mean?”

Eddena turned around and smiled sadly before saying: “I don’t know. She never tells me anything. Good luck.”

As her words ended, she sprinted away, leaving Edward to look in her direction with a frown on his face.

[One sister cursed by Yggdrasil and the other one somehow can’t die?]

“Did you think about something?” asked Edward.

[Not really. Just that there are too many strange things in this place. We need to get some answers from that master of yours. Whatever game Yggdrasil is playing here, I’m tired of playing by her rules. We must move out of the chessboard.]

Edward nodded and fixed his eyes on the entrance of the tunnel.

“I guess we can only move to save Circe first.”

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