TALES OF A WITCHER - Season 9 Episode 57

Hearing those words, Roland could not help but tremble.

Why would there be Battle of Divine Will in the Dream World too?

He looked at Garcia but her expression didn’t change at all as if she already knew or she didn’t care about it.

Roland could only keep his doubts to himself and under the lights, followed the crowd towards the square.

Reaching there, he noticed that there were many passages embedded in the towering rock walls like the structure inside a honeycomb. Whether it was entering from the ground or transitioning between the aisles, people had to take elevators on the rails. Now that the square was not as bright as before and his sight got used to the darkness, he could see dozens of elevators going up and down like floating fireflies. They gave off a feeling of a futuristic city.

Even though this design was beautiful, it was extremely inconvenient to use. If it was built in the city center as a landmark it would be alright, but buried under the ground like this, who would be able to see it? And in case of a fire, power outages and other emergencies, it would even be hard to escape from here.

Of course, building the Headquarters underground was already irrational even when considering the aspect of preventing others to infiltrate or the necessity of keeping it a secret.

There must have been another reason to do that unless the Martialist Association had too much money to spare.

As they entered the aisle number 24, Roland realized that the ground he was standing on was actually a moving ladder and he only had to stand on it to keep moving.

Adopting such a design in an underground structure was actually quite shocking.

As if realizing his doubts, Garcia shrugged her shoulders. “There used to be a mine here, and we used the abandoned mine tunnels to built all the elevator aisles you see on the walls—but of course, part of them were newly excavated. This depends on the speed of the Erosion.

“The Erosion happened in the mine?”

“Not exactly but for now you can think of it as such.”

“So the reason for building the Headquarters underground is to prevent the Erosion from developing?”

Garcia looked at him with a weird expression, “No, it’s not to prevent the Erosion from developing but to guard against Awakened ones with an ulterior motive.”

When she saw that he wanted to ask more, she shook her head and said, “You’ll soon understand.”

The passage soon led them into another hall, which looked a lot like a lecture hall, with descending levels, forming a podium at the bottom. The defensive measures here were obviously much better. There were martialists everywhere, wearing the same cloths, standing expressionless on either side of the hall and staring indifferently at the newcomers, showing no welcoming gestures.

“Aren’t warriors supposed to be straightforward and passionate? With an attitude like that towards the newly awakened ones, no wonder people weren’t willing to join them,” Roland thought.

Once everyone has sat down, the Chief Disciple Lan stood up on the podium.

Without saying anything, she opened a curtain on stage, exposing the bottom of a huge glass chest.

Roland couldn’t help but frown.

A dark red “crystal” was placed inside the chest. It seemed weightless as it floated midair. It reminded him of Taquila’s magic core. But the Force of Nature in the Dream World was not displaying ever-changing effects like the magic power. Additionally, this crystal did not seem to be realistic. It actually looked like a bad sample of a 3D-model. But seeing Lan’s serious expression, it didn’t look like she was joking.

“This is…”

“Erosion,” Garcia said with a deep voice, “or actually a ‘loophole'”.

“What?” Roland was stunned.

“The one on stage is just a small part of it,” she sighed, “Our world is becoming riddled with holes. That’s the essence of Erosion.”

“I think some of you may have already guessed or felt it—” Lan gazed through the audience and said word by word. “An evil force has entered our world. It allows the Fallen evil to multiply in numbers quickly, posing a serious threat to the safety of the awakened ones. But as far as I am concerned, this notion is incorrect. It was never an evil force, but rather an… overlay from another world. ”

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The audience suddenly uproared.

“What do you mean? Can you elaborate?”

“What’s this other world?”

“When did the Martialist Association become an academy of science?”

“So what’re the Fallen Evils, aliens?”

In sharp contrast with the real newcomers, those who had awakened the Force of Nature long ago started yelling loudly, without respect to the Chief Disciple.

“Quiet, ” Lan said unmoved, “I’ll answer your questions after the following demonstration.”

As she said that, the glass chest slowly rose, exposing the “crystal”, and then three hanging rods fell on top of the podium with a camera hanging from each of them. At the same time, the wall behind Lan also lit up—it turned out to be a huge screen showing three different pictures, shot respectively from the three cameras.

Roland quickly noticed a phenomenon that shocked him.

No matter from which direction you looked at it, the crystal always showed the same appearance.

How’s that possible?

In order to look like this, it’s got to be a perfect sphere.

An angular thing represented discontinuous changes when it was rotating. It should have appeared visually different on each side. However, he was stunned when he didn’t find any difference or movement in the three pictures as if it was not a moving object but rather a red spot on the screen.

His brain had subconsciously identified it as a virtual image as if the crystal itself didn’t exist.

But Lan’s next move once again surprised Roland.

The Chief Disciple took an iron bar and inserted it straight into the red crystal. However, the stick did not penetrate the virtual shadow as he expected but instead disappeared in it in front of everyone. Through the screen, they could see that all the three cameras captured the original look of the iron bar, clearly showing its polishing traces and angles, but the red spot in the three pictures looked still the same. It seemed as if there had been three iron bars inserted from a different angle… into one same spot.

When Lan pulled it back, the bar in her hands had become shorter.

The hall suddenly went quiet.

Seeing such a strange scene, everyone remained silent as if someone had clamped hand over his or her mouth.

After a while, someone said, “Can I come up to see?”

“Help yourself.” Lan nodded.

The man walked to the podium and stared at the red crystal for a long time. Suddenly, with a shout, he reached out to it—his skin was lightly colored in Silverlight. Apparently, he was using the Force of Nature. Not many warriors could achieve that. Garcia had once mentioned to Roland that those who were able to spur out the Force of Nature like that, resembled a lot the Fallen evil. Normal weapons were unlikely to hurt them. To be able to master such a skill, one had to be extraordinarily talented, or very experienced through life and death situations over the years. Thus, they were far stronger than the average martialists.

This was probably the reason for their arrogance.

Lan stood still, without any intention of stopping him.

His palm went through the crystal unobstructed, without catching anything, and just like the iron bar before, it disappeared. Soon after, the man screamed—he raised his hand, showing only the half of a bloody palm!

Everyone gasped in astonishment.

Roland finally understood what Garcia meant with those words, “You definitely don’t want to touch it”, because everything that came into contact with it turned into a void.

After the victim was taken to be treated by the martialists, a couple more stood up, hoping to come up and have a closer look. Lan allowed all of them, but they were much more cautious while observing. In the end, the Chief Disciple simply arranged for everyone to take turns to experience the incredible phenomenon from a close distance.

Roland was no exception as well.

When his turn came, he acted carefreely and circled twice around the crystal, but he suddenly felt his heart sink.

Its internal red rippling light seemed very familiar!

He had once seen a similar scene in the Divine Land too.

But in that domain, the red light hanging above him represented the Bloody Moon.