The slaughter continued endlessly: a few dogs, some wolves, a couple of bears, a handful of snakes, and even those strange and small furry humanoids.

  Faust had lost count after a hundred, but he was certain the number far surpassed that by now. Fighting beasts that didn't work in packs was far easier than killing the clustered dogs, though even they had become simpler than before.

  Was it mana? Likely so. It proved an invaluable tool on his journey to the next room.

  Truthfully, it wasn't just a tool. Faust was sure mana was the only reason he was still alive. Mana sharpened his thoughts, improved his mind passively—an effect he had noticed from the beginning.

  When he had touched the coffin, his mind had been flooded by an ocean of knowledge. No normal man... no normal mind, would have survived that. Now, most of that knowledge had faded, information he was unable to retain and simply disappeared.

  In fact, he felt as if more than just that forgotten knowledge was gone. He now struggled to recall names of people whose faces and minor details he still remembered. Thankfully, it didn’t affect the core of his memory. He was still fully aware of where he was and what he had to do.

  That, at least, was impossible to forget.

  On a positive note, he had retained some important fragments, if they could even be called that. They were more like momentary flashes than coherent information, but they helped. Sometimes he would look in a direction and have a rough sense of the area's geography, or glance elsewhere and know a den of beasts lay there.

  Even better, he knew where he had to go to leave this room. Unfortunately, information about the next room, or about the inverted pyramid as a whole, remained out of reach. It seemed he had to witness or experience something directly to remember any detail about it.

  This only deepened his curiosity about what was happening, or how it worked, but he understood that excess curiosity in this place was a curse. Better to avoid it.

  The sacrifice rune also proved a blessing. Slaughtering so many creatures gradually increased his mana, though the gains seemed to slow the more he gathered. But that was a problem for later. The current situation was more pressing.

  He stood before the door to the next room.

  Faust felt strangely aware as he looked at it, as if an idea had surfaced in his mind only to vanish... something that didn’t want to be remembered.

  But what choice was there except to move forward? It was the only path he had been forced to take until now.

  Touching the door, he allowed it to absorb his mana. Without hesitation, he stepped forward as the door sank into the ground.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold, the door closed behind him. He looked ahead.

  A city. A decayed city.

  Dark stone structures—some whole, some in ruins—stood amid scattered bricks that littered the ground and blocked alleyways. A thick gray mist made breathing difficult and obscured vision, hiding all but one structure.

  Standing tall at the city’s center was a tower. Graceful and undamaged, yet it seemed… sad. A clock was set into its side, unmoving, as if it had stopped working long ago.

  Faust had never seen one in person, but he knew what it was. For a few seconds, the clock held his entire attention, and inwardly he understood: he had to go there. The tower was the next goal.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It is cold… Ouch!

  Faust vision blurred, his head aching a little. Soon enough, that passed.

  Before moving, Faust glanced at the door he had just entered. It was different from the others.

  Unlike the previous doors, this one bore deep gouges. It was fractured, not whole, its white metal surface scarred and damaged—destroyed by something.

  It was possible to sense the violence behind those attacks, the will of something far superior that had still been unable to escape.

  Besides the door, it was in reddish:

  Lie.

  Instinctively, Faust tightened his grip on Iron-Beak. He took a step forward, then another, and began to explore the dead city.

  Using his “mana vision”—the name he had given the technique—proved of little use. The city was as empty as it appeared. There was no presence at all besides his own.

  At first, Faust assumed this city was simply another peaceful area where he only needed to reach the objective and leave. Slowly, however, he learned it wasn’t that easy.

  No matter which direction he walked, which alleyways he took, even if he climbed onto rooftops and traveled above the streets, he would end up lost. Not lost in the sense of not knowing where he was, but more so that he would momentarily forget where he intended to go and move the wrong way.

  It was a sensation similar to what he had experienced in the snow biome. His mind grew hazy during periods where he simply couldn’t remember what had happened.

  He kept moving, and kept getting lost.

  At a certain point, he found himself closer to the clockwork tower. How? He had no idea.

  But he was slowly approaching it. Perhaps even during his moments of confusion, some part of him retained direction.

  Looking at his hands, he saw that Iron-Beak’s usual shine was dulled by the mist and lack of light.

  “Poor Beak,” Faust said. “We won’t take long to get out of here. I’m telling you.”

  “Yes, my friend. I know that.”

  “Good! Good…” Faust looked around. “Strange…”

  “What?”

  “This sensation. Don’t you feel it too? As if there’s something above the mist, watching us.”

  “I feel it too, friend.”

  “Yes, I’ve been feeling it for a while now… but I don’t know how long.” Faust looked up. There was nothing but a stone ceiling far above and the thick, gray mist.

  “I’m not seeing anything with mana, so it must be nothing. It’s probably just because it’s too dark…”

  “Yes, it must be nothing.”

  Shaking his head, Faust looked back at the clockwork tower and took another step forward.

  “It doesn’t…”

  A sound…

  He blinked.

  “…matter.”

  When his eye opened, he was somewhere else. Inside a house, lying on a stone floor while terrifyingly dark walls and encroaching mist and shadows concealed him. His breathing was heavy, his body ached, and he felt something wet.

  Looking at his own hands—his vision already adjusted to the darkness—he saw a crimson liquid.

  Blood.

  But it wasn’t from his hands. They were fine, still gripping his mighty friend. He looked down and saw a gaping yet clean, straight wound across his chest.

  Blood oozed from it in visceral gushes. Mana was helping the wound close, but not fast enough.

  It was hard to see perfectly, but touching it, Faust understood why. It had been too deep.

  He felt the hardness of bone, the twitching of muscle beneath skin, the warmth of exposed organs. Slowly, adrenaline wore off, and the pain flooded in, amplified by mana.

  Gritting his teeth, he breathed in and out, calming himself as much as possible. The first question was: what had caused this?

  He couldn’t remember anything.

  One minute I was walking down an empty street. The next, I was… here.

  His mind wasn’t just hazy... he couldn’t remember anything at all from that span of time, as if an entire segment had been cut from his memory.

  All that remained was the wound and the pain.

  But pain could be ignored. The danger of the unknown could not.

  Faust thought and thought, trying to gather anything from the void of memories… but it was a void. There was nothing to gather.

  With no other choice, he gave up trying to remember what had happened. Instead, he assessed the main points.

  Iron-Beak’s blade was not clean. That meant either he had injured whatever had injured him, or that he injured himself... but why?

  No, it doesn't seem that's the case...

  Which led to the second point: how did he know it was “something" like a fall, perhaps.

  First, the injury was too deep to be an accident. Second, aside from a slash, nothing could have caused a wound so clean...

  He had killed before, many, many beasts. Not a single one bore an injury similar to his. That was not the work of Iron-Beak. His trusty friend didn’t cut clean; it crushed, it ravaged, but it didn’t slice with such precision.

  No, it didn’t. It was heavy, creating wounds that were less deep but more brutal, mashed meat and bone. That was the nature of his friend: a weapon designed for violence.

  But reaching the conclusion that this was no accident, nor self-inflicted, left room for something far grimmer.

  He was not alone.