When the sun rose, a small group of warriors could be seen at the south gate. A total of 20 soldiers were here. This included the 10 participators of the goblin fight as well as 10 more random farmers from the woodcutters camp.

 

When they would be gone there would still be nearly 30 others left, and despite the miners not having trained for long and the scientist not having much combat prowess either, Jay felt at ease. 

 

After all these people had General Green. He decided to leave him here to defend the camp and train the new troops. As he had no idea how large the ruins were, he put general Green in charge of the military.

 

The previous night he had asked Enchantress Evergreen to make him a soul-light. This was a very basic enchanted item that would emit a tiny red light. When the person it was bound to died, the flame would disappear completely. By leaving this in general Green's care they wouldn't have to worry if this exploration trip took a few days.

 

Lastly, he had given Architect Gariel permission to act as the temporary village head. This included welcoming the new arrivals and choosing how to use their resources.

 

With all the important stuff out of the way, he lead the group of 10 spearmen, 5 axemen, and 5 swordsmen into the forest.

 

At this point, their group didn’t have to worry too much when inside of the forest. Whenever a wolf saw a human they would flee immediately. After all these last days any animal that came close to the woodcutters would quickly be killed.

 

After walking for an hour Jay and his troops arrived at the ruins. What they saw was a massive broken gate with stone steps that lead underground, further to the east. This annoyed Jay greatly as just a hundred meters east or so there was the invisible barrier between zones. This meant that it was likely he wouldn’t be able to explore the ruins fully, or perhaps not at all.

 

Despite this, the group still headed down, there was still the possibility the massive stairway turned or that the barrier was a bit further then he had estimated! Under the guidance of a small fireball he created, Jay slowly descended from the large steps. Each step was nearly a meter large and traversing them was rather exhausting. Luckily each of these men had good arm-strength and-

 

| Region announcement: Congratulations Jay Collin for being the first person to traverse away from the Cario region. |

| World announcement: Congratulations Jay Collin for being the first person to traverse regions. |

| Reward: 150 gold, title: adventurous |

| Reward: 500 gold, random E-grade cultivation technique, title: True Settler |

 

And- and- Hold up what?

 

Traversing zones was something of the highest difficulty only prominent figures could do. And even then it would cost a lot of manpower and strength to breach the barrier. In his last life, he would've only been barely able to breach the barrier if he gave it his all and gave up on some of his treasures.

 

What sort of building was he in for it to be able to create a space unhindered by the barrier? This was simply unbelievable.

 

On the other hand, there was the E-grade cultivation technique. This was an item he had risked his life for many times in his previous life and could be considered his greatest treasure back then.

 

Later on, there would be a massive divide, the largest of guilds would be able to, with a lot of saving, get F-grade cultivation techniques. E-grade cultivation techniques were said to be multiple times as effective and even lords had to spend a lot of resources to get one. More than once allies became enemies just because of such a technique. The reason Jay’s guild managed to become the largest in his region was, for a large part, thanks to this cultivation technique.

 

In the end, he was both glad and worried. He was glad since this tunnel would allow him to gain influence in 2 zones and potentially trade each zone's regional item to the other. He was worried, however, since this ruin was very close to his capital and it would allow enemies to pull up onto his doorstep at any time.

 

He might like fighting wars, but he certainly wanted to win them all. After all, he was no suicidal fool! Those were all dead before a year passed.

 

At this point, he realized this ruin must be from some truly great civilization. Such ruins were highly valuable and could contain secrets from another era. Once they went down nearly a hundred of the massive steps they finally reached a room. The walls and ceiling were all made from large stone bricks, somehow still remaining completely intact even after a large amount of time had passed.

 

Inside of the room, other than piles of dust were 2 large, 3 meters tall statues. Each of them held a position one would hold when holding a weapon, yet their hands were empty. There was a pile of dust underneath each of these statues that might explain what happened to those weapons.

 

After resting for a bit, they moved towards these statues in a basic formation, this time with the spears in front. It was likely that these statues were actually golems, hence he would rather have it that nobody got close to it.

 

And as expected, once they got closer the golems both moved, barring the door behind them. Waiting a somewhat safe distance away, Jay started drawing on all his mana. His hairs stood on end as his left arm started glowing red more and more. This time, different than in his last fight, the red light started seeping out of his hand to create a ball of fire that was silently floating and turning above his palm.

 

It was a new spell he learned from one of the magic books in his private library. Since it was the most destructive tier 1 spell he could find, it was the first new spell he learned.

 

After 10 minutes had passed the ball of fire had reached the size of a basketball, all of his troops had also taken a few steps back since they could clearly feel the heat of the fireball. Now that he noticed he was nearly out of mana he threw it towards the golem on their left, aiming at the middle of its torso

 

In the beginning, people often tried attacking golems' heads. Only to find it doesn't have much of an effect and even a headless golem could keep fighting. The best place to attack was the center of its chest since the magical crystal from which it was created would reside there.

 

The golem's chest started breaking as soon as it was hit. Even to the point Jay was shocked. It would seem that these golems had become brittle after all these years, no longer being worthy of being called a true golem. 

 

Seeing the other golem also being defeated in just a few minutes without anyone being so much as wounded this theory was confirmed. This would mean that this ruin was at the very least 1,000 years old. After all, golems didn't degrade quickly whatsoever, even after a few hundred years, it wouldn't lose any of its strength.

 

After inspecting the 2 Magic Crystals he saw that they seemed to be just fine. It was just that they no longer had any mana. If he were to leave them under the sun for a few weeks or in the magic tower for just a few days, it would once again be filled up and ready for use.

 

After disposing of these golems so easily, the group was rather confident. So without much hesitation, they quickly destroyed the wooden door before them. Or at least, that's what they tried to do. In fact, this door that seemed to be made out of wood didn't budge in the slightest.

 

When he simply tried opening the door by turning its knob, it opened without a problem.

 

What they could now see before them, wasn't quite as simple. Before them, was a ginormous room filled with gigantic pillars. Each of the pillars was 10 meters long, and dozens of pillars could be seen from their location. But the terrifying thing wasn’t the pillars. It was that every pillar had hundreds of hairy rats on it which were no shorter than a meter in length.

 

| Mission: Kill 100 Ancient Rats |