Chapter 88.

“My head hurts.” Lucas uttered as soon as he woke up from his trance states. That earns him a big sigh of relief from Michael.

“At last, you finally responded. I’ve been calling your name for a while now, but you on the other hand, were unresponsive. I thought something bad had happen to you.” Michael uttered as he helps Lucas to stand up.

“Are you alright? You got me really worried earlier. You look like you’ve lost your soul for a short time.” Michael said as he take a careful look on Lucas face, looking for any trace of the cube particles that went inside Lucas body.

“I’m fine. But how long was I out?” Lucas said as he try to recall the memories of what happen to him earlier.

“Just for a short time like a minute or so.” Michael sigh, patting Lucas on his shoulder. Before Michael changes his tone.

“I told you to be careful of touching foreign objects but you didn’t listen to me, and now we have to deal with that cube that’s inside you. But are you really alright? You appeared to be experiencing extreme pain earlier.” Michael ask as he checks for possible damage on Lucas armor.

“I know, I know I’m wrong. There’s no need to further sermon me about it. What’s important is that we now have this cube.” Lucas replied as he presented his palm in front and a smaller form of the cube shows up as the dust like particles appears once again gathering at the palm of his hands.

“The heck is that, it almost endangered your lives and you’re still happy to get it.” Michael said furiously.

“Michael its not an ordinary cube it’s a magic artifact and it has information about this place.” Lucas explains to try and calm him down.

“Fine the cube is important since it was a magic artifact, I get that. But why did it dissolve into your body and how did you do that? For goodness sakes that’s a metallic cube, and yet it just disintegrated like dust.” Michael says in worry as he looked at their surroundings in panic.

“We don’t even know what this room is for and what causes that hole like tunnel in that wall.” Michael says as he points his finger towards the hole at the back of the room. It’s not easy to notice it at first sight, since it completely blends to the surrounding area even the edges of the hole itself is very smooth like it was originally made to be there.

But once you take a closer peek, you will find that it only leads to a long tunnel like rocks without any ends but this is also where they discovered how thick the metal plate is on the wall. It is exactly a meter thick making this place almost indestructible from any attack.

Except of course, from the cube as it was the main culprit for the damage in this hole.

“It’s okay everything is fine now. I already learned most of the things here thanks to this cube.” Lucas answered as he materialize a small cube on his hands albeit it was the smaller version of the one inside his body.

“Milo are you there?” Lucas called in his mind while waiting for the cube’s answer.

“I’m here and what is it do you need?” Milo answered to him in a grumpy tone, but Lucas is the only one who could hear him talk on his mind.

“Can I tell Michael about your existence?” Lucas asked Milo in his mind.

"No, you must keep my presence a secret," Milo replied sternly. "If anyone else finds out about me, it could put both of us in danger. “

“Okay, I understand that,’ Lucas said, while nodding his head. “But can you at least tell me more about what happened in this place? I mean, who destroyed the glass tanks and even desecrates the weird creature inside of it.” As he took a look around their surroundings.

“It’s me.” Milo answered simply as it was just a normal thing.

“But why did you do that?”  Lucas ask in surprised while observing the frozen corpses around the room.

“Simply because I need more energy. The body of this experimental beings contains polluted core and those cores are energy that I badly need, enough to maintain the operation of this cube. And besides, I’m doing you a favor by killing them completely as they were only in a deep hibernation state.” Milo replied with a smug tone.

“With your current strength, even if both of you decided to fight one of this creature, you will still have a hard time defeating it, even on it weaken state. They are just far too strong to someone like you, who only knows how to control his aura, without the proper strength and knowledge to deal with them I’m afraid that you will only become a food for this creatures.”

Milo states as he further explains to Lucas the abnormal strength of each one of this experimental creatures that is previously enclosed on this glass tank.

“Are they really that strong?” Lucas asks with great concern. He remembers the one missing creature on the tanks, which he believes caused the sudden changes in the enchanted forest, including the massive fog invasion and monster mutation on their land.

“Absolutely. After all, they are the combination of demonic creature and magic beast. Their existence alone is already a threat to most people. That’s why they are enclosed in this special tanks made from special material. This tanks are design to contain them and prevent them from causing any harm.” Milo explain as Lucas trod towards the broken glass tank where the missing creature is located.

“Milo, do you have any details about the creature that was in this tank before it was destroyed?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have those details with me. These ruins may have been made to last for a long time but many of the magic artifacts in these places have already been destroyed the same for the data and information of this creature. All I know about them is the remaining details engraved on their tanks,  which says that they are experimental subjects no 12.” 

Milo answered as a blue panel appears on Lucas eyes pointing towards the metal plate underneath the tank, trying to make sense of the words translated onto his blue panel.

“Experimental subjects, huh? What kind of experiments were they conducting here?" he wonders aloud.

"I don't know. The information about these creatures is limited. All I know is that they were being held here for observation and research. But the fact, that this creature bore a closed resemblance between demonic creatures and magic beast explains a lot." Milo says before it gone quite.

“What are you staring at? Did you discover something new? And you still haven’t told me anything about the cube. Like why did it dissolve inside your body and how can you control it? ” Michael suddenly asked, noticing Lucas has not been speaking for a while.

This reminded Lucas that he had yet to respond to Michael's inquiry, as he had been preoccupied with conversing with Milo. It’s just a good thing that only a short time has passed by during his conversation with the cube.

“The cube has bonded itself to me, granting me access to these ruins and, of course, some information regarding this place.” Lucas revealed this to Michael as they walked around the place, observing all the frozen corpses on the ground.

“And what does this cube do? Can you use it to attack or defend, or does it have any special ability aside from giving you the information about this place?” Michael says in ridicule.
“You almost sacrificed your life just to get this cube, and that’s all it can give to you?” Michael added, staring grimly at Lucas face.

Completely not happy with his decision and action earlier that almost endangered his life.

“Of course not, just take a look at this.” Lucas quickly answered as Milo informs him about the cubes other function.

After saying those words the cube immediately appears once again as it quickly gathers at Lucas palm until it completely forms its cubic form before it disintegrates and blended into Lucas armor, further reinforcing it.

“Isn’t it useful?” Lucas asked as he shows the new look of his armor, with glowing blue lines added to it.

But Michael still looks unconvinced as he only takes one glance at it before denouncing him.

“Just that?” Michael replied shortly.

“Why are you so hard to please?” Lucas answered dejectedly.

“Fine I’ll show you something strong.”

Lucas immediately pulled his sword from his scabbard, and the dust-like particles also flowed into it, attaching themselves to his blade and covering it entirely as new changes began to takes place. His new blade now had a crimson light attached to it. With one stroke of his blade, Lucas was able to release a blade of light, creating deep marks on the cave's walls.

“Fine, you win. But don’t do something like this next time. Don’t risk your lives easily just because of this magic artifact, it’s not worth it.” Michael says patiently to him before he begun to observe the damaged room with frozen corpses littering the ground.

“But what happened to this place? The last time we were here all the glass tanks are still intact, except for one, but now, they were all completely broken. Even the unknown corpses inside have been destroyed to such degree.” Michael says out loud.

“The cube did this.” Lucas immediately answered.

“Ha? What do you mean?” Michael asks in a puzzled manner.

“This cube runs on Mana energy and it badly needed to restore some of it, that’s why it destroyed their tanks and took their cores. This is also the reason why it quickly reacted to my touch, as it quickly devours most of my aura. Thankfully it also recognized me as it’s a new owner that’s why I’m in a trance-like state for some short time.” Lucas explains as they exited the hidden room leaving the pedestal sucks out of Mana.

“That cube? How did it do it? It’s an artifact. It doesn’t suppose to have any capability to think.” Michael states in shock.

“It might be an artifact but it’s different from what we know. It’s even older than any of our known written history. The cube just informs me that this ruin is not from the Gregorian empire. It’s from the dwarfs of the old age.” Lucas answered quickly as Michael was left there standing in shock.

“You have a lot of things to explain once we get home.” Michael simply says as he catches up with him before they start to run back toward the cave's exit.

“I know and you also have a lot of listening to do.”

“But I don’t understand. You already retrieve that cube, but why is it that the temperature in this place is still freezing and I even feel that it got colder than before.” Michael added while they are submerged in the knee-deep freezing water.

It also causes Lucas to frown as he thought that it was the cube that causes the cave's temperature to go down but it looks like it’s not the main culprit. “I also don’t know. The cube doesn’t tell me anything about the changes in temperature in this place.” Lucas replied as he quickly calls Milo to his mind.

“Milo, Milo! Do you know anything why is this happening?” as Lucas asks him about the freezing temperature.

“Do you think I’m an omnipotent being to know everything? Do you even have any idea how big this place is? We haven’t even explored 1% of its total space. Besides I have no way of knowing what happens in this place as long as you had not connected me to the central control room of this ruin.” Milo answered angrily.

“Central control room? Where is that” and If I got you connected to it would you be able to observe everything on this ruin?” 

“Of course, the dwarves are the master of building. If you can find their control room it would be easy for me to connect to this ruin as it runs using my own magic inscription. But I advise you not to go that place yet, as it might take you days if you go there on foot.” Milo explains as Lucas managed to reach the dried land.

“Days? It would take us days to reach it?” Lucas asks in shock.

He never expected that looking for a simple control room would take them days to reach. Never in his mind, had he expected this ruin to be this big. it seems like it’s not just a simple ruin but an entire city hidden underground or even a large kingdom. A lost kingdom of dwarfs.

Thinking about this, causes Lucas to suffer some short breath because of anticipation and excitement. It seems like their exploration of this ruin is still not done.

“It is. Dwarves are fond of living underground, the deeper you go the better it is for them. That’s their own motto engraved into their genes.” Milo says as he takes a quick scan of their surroundings by releasing a low frequency of Mana pulse.

“The freezing temperature in this place is not caused by natural events, I’m detecting some low traces of energy within them but I can’t tell what is it.”

“It’s fine. We can explore this later together with my father and he is much stronger than me. Besides, it would make our exploration much easier if we have more people with us.” Lucas said happily as they now trek on the area with twinkling beads of pearls on the cave ceilings.

“So, did the cube knows the answer to why is this place freezing?” Michael asks once again still waiting for his reply.

 “It didn’t give me the answer for it. It simply doesn’t know why this is happening.” Lucas replied back to him while lost in his thought.

“So, it’s not as good as you said. I thought it knows everything about this place.”

“It did know this place but not all of it.” Lucas answers in defense.

“Whatever, Two hours are about to pass. We need to go back quickly before they notice us going missing. I’m sure sir Kiel would not be happy to know that we escaped the city during this time.” Michael says as they finally managed to exit the cave.

But before leaving they erased all their track and even covered the entrance of the cave once again before running back into the city at their fastest speed.

(End of chapter.)