Under the power of the young-looking gnome man who came to get me, we moved down through solid rock. We moved down for quite a long time. How long, I am unsure. Eventually, I just got lost in the way the stone would ripple and shift around us, moving out of the way below and then closing again behind us.

If I were back in the Agarath still, in my pure spiritual form, this whole exercise of dragging an air pocket along with us would be a completely pointless effort. In addition to the fact air didn't even exist in the Agarath in the first place, gnomes such as myself could freely pass through most stone as one of this world or Earth where my other half is from would pass through air.

As such, this practice of moving the earth around you as the esophagus would around a bit of food was not something I had really encountered before. This made it somewhat mesmerizing. To be more accurate, it was not the stone immediately around us that was shifting. That had turned fully solid and stable almost immediately after we had sunk fully into the ground. At this point, we were in a capsule of stone being pushed along by stone outside that was constantly shifting under this guy's power, and the magical control involved to make all these things move as they should was absolutely fascinating.

The only thing I could compare it to would be watching a master of par-cour traverse a complex bit of urban terrain. This guy may not be running and jumping around physically like that, but in terms of how complex and fascinating this was as a magical feat, it was in the same category.

"Wooow!" I exclaimed as I observed the area around me with my earth mana senses.

[Hehe, looks like the kid knows what he's looking at. I heard you were impressive, but you already have mana senses to see what is going on, huh?] the guy asked. [Hehe, well, I guess it is just like a kid to be impressed by something simple like this. Don't worry, you will learn how to do this too. This is actually one of the fairly basic skills you need to learn, so I do hope you don't get too impressed just from this.]

So this is the basics, huh? Well, I guess I should have expected as much from a race specifically created through magic to be good at earth magic and trained in it since a very young age. In fact, just watching his work, I'm already getting a pretty good picture of how it works. Whether or not I could pull it off is a different matter all together, but after seeing it this once, it should only be a matter of practice until I can do it too.

After having my earth and seismic senses focused on the movements nearby for so long, I finally decide I should try to use them to get more of an idea of what's going on around us. Of course, we have no visual way to perceive the world outside of this sphere of earth moving through the ground, so the only way to sense anything beyond it would be with earth and seismic senses. This guy must have been using those senses constantly to pay attention to where he was going, because he seemed to keep pushing it through the ground on a straight line toward... something. I don't know what exactly, but he was definitely moving without even a hint of hesitation, as though he'd traveled this route many many times.

I focused my senses further outward. My seismic senses were rendered completely useless by our constant movement, but I was able to actually get a half decent sense of what was going on out there with mana senses.

That was when I could feel it. There was something... there was a whole lot of concentrated earth energy in a single small area under us, and we seemed to be heading straight toward it.

[There's something ahead,] I commented, figuring acting like a kid in this circumstance would be the best way to get information. Something I was very sparse on due to how suddenly all of this was sprung on me and how quickly it was all rushed through since that woman popped up yesterday.

[Yeah, that's the gnome area,] the guy who was conveying me said. [It is a place none of the other demon races can reach, completely isolated without a single cave line leading to it. We created it in the middle of one of the thickest areas of pure rock we could find. No one other than lord Iuutel himself can intrude on us there. Even the high priest who serves him is unable to enter.]

Iuutel. That is the god they seem to worship down here. And, if the artwork the guards made around my training room is any indication, it seems to be a rather bloody religion. They seemed so proud of their depictions of blood being poured from decapitated bodies into a pool that they saw fit to paint it up all over the place in my training room, and did not seem to feel it was in the least bit inappropriate to show to a kid like me.

As we got even closer, I began to make out air pockets shaped in a way that laid out a sprawling multi-level complex of rooms. There were also signs of other gnomes moving around between the rooms, using this same earth magic method to go straight through what were more like expanses of stone between rooms instead of walls. There were very few hallways I could detect, and most of them seemed as though they were focused toward the upper levels.

This was confusing to me. It would mean one of two things. Either it meant the upper level was for beginners and the gnomes' idea was for things that were lower down to be considered more important in terms of status, or the upper levels were for the important people and they didn't want to bother with having to move through the stone everywhere.

Somehow, I got the impression it was the former.

We continued moving down toward one of the outer rooms on the topmost level, one of the few not connected by hallways on this level. The guy pulled his stone sphere right up to the side of the room. Now that we were stopped, my seismic senses were able to work again, giving me a far clearer image of what was right on the other side of this sphere of stone. I detected that the exact place we'd pulled up to was one of the few places in the room that was not covered with the usual elaborate decorations of gnome stonework, probably meant as some kind of doorway.

I felt a sharp and quick pulse of earth mana directed at us. As though this were some form of signal, our sphere began moving again and pulled up to this "doorway," and our air-pocket merged with the one that made up the room. We were promptly ejected and I had no choice but to step out or else be thrown into the room roughly.

[Ah, Abu, it seems you brought the boy quickly. Very good.]

A voice greeted us, or rather the man who brought me, as soon as we arrived. I looked up to see the other side of the room was crowded with a whole bunch of people wearing a lot of red. It was the first time since my arrival in this world I'd ever seen anyone without a stitch of non-red clothing on. If the amount of red one wore indicated power in the gnome hierarchy, just what did it mean to have zero clothing of any color other than red?

It wasn't just one or two of them either. It looked like at least half a dozen people were seated on some sort of raised section on the other side of the room, and right now every single eye was focused in on the two of us.

A small part of my mind wanted to laugh at the name I'd just heard for the guy who had been taking me around until now. Abu? That was really his name? The cartoon character from Earth he shared a name with aside, in the Elven language, Abu literally meant darkness. His name was seriously darkness! But, well, suddenly being faced with that many eyes of clearly very important people instantly removed any frivolous thoughts like that.

[Yes, thank you lord Iisular,] Abu says with a very formal and elegant bow. [The boy was quite cooperative and posed little trouble, so things were able to move quickly. I am unused to children so young, but he had been far better behaved than I'd feared.]

[Is that so? Well then, you may take a seat off to the side. Kain has yet to arrive with the girl, but we will proceed as we can in evaluating the boy until then,] the same voice from before said. This time, I managed to catch the speaker. He was the gnome seated in the center and most prominent position among the ones gathered over on the other side of the room, and he seemed to be leading... whatever was going on here. And whatever it was, I really didn't like being the subject of it right now.

[Step forward, boy!] the man, Iisular, barked.

Under the intimidating and stern pressure of an entire room full of eyes watching me and demanding my obedience, I had no choice but to do as he said. I stepped forward, glancing furtively from one side to the other at all the people gathered, all of them gathered here for the purpose of subjecting me to some kind of evaluation like I was a specimen in a lab. Those eyes felt alien, and frightening.

[Humph. Obedient, as the reports told us,] one of the men off to the side said.

[Seems a little weak to me, but I am sure some time in the pit can toughen him up,] another commented, a woman this time.

[The pit? He is practically a babe still. Would he even survive in the pit?] A third person asked.

[All new initiates start in the pit, the real training does not begin until they can climb back out. That is the way of it. I'd have thought it a foregone conclusion he was going to the pit as soon as we decided he'd join the program at this age,] the same woman from before said.

[But is he seriously ready though? I cannot believe it, a child this young...]

[What you say is nonsense. It was the words of the high priest himself. He stated it was the will of Iuutel that the two abnormal children be made to join the program now, so it is clearly the wisdom of Iuutel that says they are ready for it. We should give them the full normal experience.]

[All of you, stop squabbling!] Iisular shouted over everyone. [Whatever you believe on this matter, this is what we are here to evaluate now. The two children chosen by lord Iuutel. As soon as the girl arrives, we can begin the evaluation properly. Until then, I will have no more of this baseless postulating. We shall see what they can do personally and render judgement then.]

[Hmm... where is that Kain anyway? How long is it going to take him to get here?] the huffy woman who was talking about the pit earlier said with an annoyed tone.

I was beginning to wonder the same thing. The last thing I needed right now was to start getting torn down by this bunch of clearly very annoyed people in positions of high power all because they were annoyed about someone else being late.