Chapter 26: 25. A Glimpse into the Past and the Future

“Petra!” I screamed once more, but she turned around this time. I exhaled in relief and kept ascending the stairs at a rapid pace. I could’ve boosted my stats with the flames to get there quickly, but that would cause great damage to the environment.

I reached the peak of the tower in less than a minute and greeted Petra, “Hey, you scared me there! I would’ve had to decapitate you if you pretended not to hear me.”

“This isn’t a good time for jokes!” She looked amused and laughed, “Anyway, why are you here? And why aren’t you wearing anything except for your cape and crown?”

My cape was large enough to cover my whole body from my neck to my knees, so I didn’t see the purpose for me to buy more clothes that I wouldn’t use most of the time.

“I am here to help you with the temple,” I said with a smirk, “As for my clothes, I tried to buy some stuff before, but I ended up burning them. Powerful people have hard lives, y’know?”

“I thought that this area wasn’t interesting to you,” she replied, squinting her eyes, “Why didn’t you help me from the get to?”

“Oh, don’t sweat the details,” I said while shaking my head, “You need to focus on the present; we have a temple to plunder! Besides, I have another matter to discuss with you.”

The truth was that I had better things to do than fighting some low-leveled creatures. However, someone had to kill all the Chupakabras for the temple to allow people to access it.

“Thank you, I appreciate your help!” she said, then she furrowed her eyebrows and added, “What was it that you wanted to discuss with me? Are you going to take all the items for yourself?”

“Don’t worry! I won’t take more than a couple of items,” I replied, “As for the other matter, I was going to tell you about some of my plans for the future...”

I told her about my first plan when we finish the tutorial, which would be opening a guild, and that I wanted to hire her as a manager. She could make contracts, and her class allowed her to be a versatile guild clerk.

With some training, she should be able to take care of most logistic matters of the guild, I thought.

She seemed very enthusiastic, but her interest decreased when I told her that she’d be working with no salary. I laughed at her reaction and told her about the basic structure of the guild and the members that might join us early on.

The guild would have a mixed focus; combat and alchemy. Even though generalist guilds didn’t see much success in my past life; I had the means to achieve my goal.

My plan to increase my net worth was to manufacture permanent stat bonus potions and hold a monopoly over them. Humans didn’t learn about their existence until two years after the system integration, and not many people were able to create them. With my current supply of Trolls’ essences, I should be able to control more than twenty percent of the economy with permanent potions alone. Thanks to my knowledge of the future, the alchemists of my guild would get a head start compared to the others.

I would hire a certain gnome called Ratska, as he had a good class for brewing potions. I’d give him a good salary, and allow him to have as many assistants as possible to accelerate the manufacturing process.

I thought about inviting all the top twenty rankers to my guild, but that would be after I establish its position as one of the best guilds.

I might even invite Jared; the leader of the guild that I was a member of, I thought. He was a decent person that helped me, and he’d make for a good administrator for my guild due to the nature of his class.

I also had some potential members in mind. They weren’t as useful as the other ones, but I cared about them in my past life.

There were three of them; each of them helped me when life got harder. One of them helped me start as a porter, another one introduced me to the guild to work as a dismantler, and the other had been my friend before the system integration; we used to drink together for a long while.

My heart ached as I remembered my last friend’s fate; he got robbed and killed by some people that were too powerful for me to do anything about.

I’ll protect everyone this time, I thought. Might makes right; let’s see how the strong people act against someone even stronger.

I didn’t let my emotions appear on my face as I told Petra about my plans for the future. She agreed to join the guild, as long as I could assure its success. She seemed to have some administration knowledge, as she tried to be an entrepreneur a couple of years before the system’s integration.

We discussed the matter for a couple of minutes in front of the temple’s gate before she asked me.

“Do you know what the statue stands for?” she said, pointing her finger toward the statue that coiled around the temple’s entrance.

“This is how an ancient civilization portrayed their deity,” I said, “I’ll tell you more about it later. Let’s enter the temple already.”

I pushed one of the gates with my right hand; I went inside and Petra followed behind me. I could see nothing due to the lack of any form of lighting in the area, so I used my [Flame-N-Go] skill to ignite a flame and have it float just ahead of us. We were in a narrow corridor that seemed endless.

As I turned around, I saw Petra looking at the walls on both of her sides. Many scenes were drawn side by side all over the walls, and it was obvious that they told a story. A group of uncivilized people roamed the wilds, killing each other and stealing others’ belongings to stay alive.

A great serpent appeared in front of them and gave them the blessing of knowledge and culture. The people thanked the deity by building temples for it and worshipping it. The years passed and they forgot the serpent’s teachings. They gave up their civilized lifestyle and went back to their old ways. It didn’t take long for the feathered serpent to appear once more in front of them; they tried to repent, but all they received was a divine punishment.

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“They blasphemed against the deity’s teachings,” said Petra with a melancholic tone of voice, “The serpent had been benevolent to them, yet they didn’t return the favor.”

“I can’t say that Quetzalcoatl punished them lightly either, almost none of them survived the tornados that he unleashed,” I said, “That’s his name, by the way, you might’ve heard of him before.”

“I remember him being one of the gods of the Mesoamerican civilizations” she replied as she nodded, “It seems intriguing; for the same story to be drawn multiple times across the wall.”

“History tends to repeat itself,” I replied, “This exact story happened repeatedly until the deity realized how stupid mortals truly were.”

Her eyes widened and she brought her right hand to cover her opened mouth. We kept walking through the narrow corridor, as we stared at the drawings.

That deity helped many tribes of mortals throughout history, and across time and space, I thought. However, they always disappointed him.

Back then, Quetzalcoatl had been a young deity, and he held mortals in high esteem. He was a god with great knowledge and had sublime control over the wind; he blessed people with education and good weather.

As usual, mortals were greedy and had excessive pride in themselves. It didn’t even take them hundreds of years to forget the gifts of their god and rebel against him. One day, Quetzalcoatl stopped blessing mortals and he no longer answers their calls.

This temple has a special item, I thought. A necklace that would allow its user to contact the feathered serpent, and ask him a question.

Quetzalcoatl had vast knowledge; he answered all kinds of questions easily, and there were a lot of mysteries that I needed to unravel.

I didn’t plan to reveal the use of that item to Petra, as people didn’t realize its value until two years after the system integration.

The necklace looked shabby and its description didn’t reveal anything special about it. However, someone found out that it could be used for a ritual to contact the deity himself.

It had to be soaked in the blood of a person whose ancestors were blessed by the feathered serpent, I thought. I am not sure how they found out about it, but that piece of information sent the world into an uproar.

The number of people that managed to obtain this necklace wasn’t that big; they were less than twenty. Many of them sold a copy of this necklace to collectors for cheap sums, and they regretted their decisions after hearing the news. Three necklaces were offered in auctions throughout the years that I’ve lived as a [Dismantler]; they were sold for millions of larger mana stones to unknown buyers.

Those five years had been rough for me, but many people managed to find success, I thought.

“…Jason!!” screamed Petra, grabbing my attention, then she added, “This isn’t the time for you to be lost in thoughts!”

“Ah right,” I said, looking at my surroundings; I managed to see rays of light at the distant end of the corridor “I guess we’re getting closer to the challenging parts of the temple.”

The temple had four levels, and we were at the first one; the farthest one from the ground. Every level had one room and each of the rooms had a different set of challenges. The ones who managed to fulfill the conditions of a room would be allowed to pass to the next one.

The treasury was at the deepest level, and it had many items that had great significance to people who believed in the feathered serpent.

We increased our pace, and it didn’t take us too long to arrive at the entrance of the first room.

The room was cubic and much smaller than the safe room. Its walls were pitch black, but the ceiling and the floor were white. The floor had a closed trap door at its center, which would open when the person cleared the challenges.

Petra tried to enter, but I raised my right arm to obstruct her path. She looked puzzled and tilted her head, waiting for an explanation.

“Just watch,” I said. I pulled an empty vial from my bag of holding, feeling thankful that I didn’t throw it after the fight with Chris.

I raised my right arm and threw the vial into the room.

Suddenly, an eerie sound could be heard from the walls; it was similar to the sound that metals made when they were scraped against each other.

Each wall unleashed a single shuriken; a total of four. Their target was the vial, and they managed to strike it.

It got destroyed and only small pieces of glass remained. Petra was petrified, as her eyes widened and some beads of sweat slid across her face.

This is only the first room, I thought. A room filled with deadly traps.

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