There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language — and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
× × × × ×
Third-person view
After killing Mifelias and taking the aether dagger, Lucius turned his attention to the system.
[God Rune Aroa's Requiem, twelfth rank x10, or upgrade to thirteenth rank?]
"Twelfth rank? I see," Lucius muttered to himself with understanding. "This rune is incomplete. It seems Arthur was unable to unlock its full potential after all."
"However, it doesn't matter," Lucius continued to think, "I have the system, so it can be fixed. Don't worry, Arthur, even if you can't revive your father, Adam, or Sylvia yourself, I will do it for you, in gratitude for giving me such opportunities."
Since Lucius had already confirmed in Maerin that he could extract the GodRune in the form of a white stone at any moment, he didn't think twice about upgrading to the thirteenth rank.
A vast amount of knowledge about the aevum's aether branch filled his mind, along with an instinctive ability to use it. Even his control over the aether improved slightly due to the knowledge he had gained.
Lucius turned his head away from the system and the sensations of the new GodRune and glanced around the destroyed room.
Arthur looked as if he had lost something, and it was clear that Arthur himself had seen what this rune could do in its completed state. He could have revived everyone he had ever lost, but he couldn't. He didn't reach that understanding...
Haedrig knelt beside the ugly remains of Ezra's mutilated body. The body of Ada, the only remaining offspring of the Granbehls, lay on the ground next to her mirror, which remained untouched.
The phantom was not bound, but she appeared to be unconscious.
Ada in the mirror, the real Ada, also lay on the ground, sobbing.
"She must have seen everything that happened," Arthur realized with horror. Bad memories of his own father's death flooded his mind again.
But his thoughts were interrupted by Lucius, who approached the mirror.
Arthur realized, looking at the confident Lucius standing in front of the mirror, that it was quite obvious that Lucius had also received this god rune.
Lucius reached out and touched the mirror, and suddenly he heard her stifled, maniacal sobs.
"I'm very sorry, Ada," Lucius said in a strained tone, but his gaze and earlier inaction spoke otherwise. Everything had gone exactly as he wanted.
Reaching for his soul, Lucius activated the new GodRune. The aether from its core was slowly sucked out, not nearly as fast as when activating the god step.
Purple dust particles flew from his hand, swirling around like a miniature galaxy. Ada raised her head, confusion and surprise momentarily replacing her despair, and she began to disappear, turning into a pinkish mist that flowed out of the mirror and returned to her body.
Thick black and purple smoke burst from her pores and was sucked back into the mirror. The phantom was back in its prison, with an expression of pure hatred on its distorted copy of Ada's face.
At his feet, Ada's body twitched, and she opened her eyes sharply. She jumped back, away from the mirror, her eyes wide with fear. Haedrig bent down and hugged her shoulders, causing Ada to scream.
"Calm down, Ada, it's me, only me. Now calm down," Haedrig said softly.
In white flakes, the bracelet on Lucius's hand transformed into a long silver spear. After twirling it to feel its perfect length and weight, Lucius lightly tapped Ada's mirror with the tip of the spear, shattering it into pieces and destroying the phantom forever.
Ada buried her head in Haedrig's chest, her small body trembling, her loud sobs incredibly loud in the quiet space.
Lucius turned and moved toward the other mirrors, and when he reached the familiar mirror prisons, Lucius silently placed his hand on the mirror and reactivated Aroa's Requiem.
The ascendant's eyes widened in shock as dust particles of aether swirled around Lucius's hand and began to fill the numerous cracks that crisscrossed the surface of the mirror. With a peaceful and weary smile, the ascendant closed his eyes and disappeared into the soft glow of the aether.
Making his way through the remaining mirrors, Lucius continued to use his newly acquired divine rune to free the souls of the ascendants trapped inside, until the last of them disappeared with a skeptical smile on his weary face.
The cold white hall dimmed slightly and changed tone to a warmer one. In the distance, a translucent portal appeared in one of the empty mirrors.
Turning his head to the still disoriented Arthur, Lucius nodded calmly.
"How... how are you feeling?" Arthur asked hesitantly, looking at Hades.
The poor girl could barely nod before turning away, her swollen red eyes full of indignation.
"Let's go, Grey," Lucius said, looking at the portal.
Hada turned her head sharply toward him, panic shining in her eyes. "Y-you're leaving us here?"
Arthur shook his head. "You all got into this mess because we were with you. If you two go through the portal one at a time, it will take you to the sanctuary."
"You can't know that," Ada said, her tear-stained face contorting.
"One thing I know for sure is that if you come with us to the next zone, it will be even more difficult than this one," Lucius replied in a restrained but gentle tone.
"I have no intention of returning to the surface," said the green-haired ascendant seriously.
"You can't be serious. You almost died, and now you want to go even deeper?" Arthur chuckled. "Besides, you saw that Lucius is unlikely to help anyone but me, so teamwork is definitely out of the question."
"I almost died because of you," Haedrig corrected him. "As I said, relictombs react differently to different people. I expected something like this to happen."
"You expected this?" Ada asked incredulously. "And you still took us with you? My brothers and my best friend are dead!"
This time, Haedrig's composure disappeared, replaced by an expression of guilt. "I thought your older brother was strong enough to..."
"Oh, so it's Kalon's fault that they all died?" Ada shouted, her hands clenching into trembling fists.
Haedrig grimaced. "I didn't mean..."
Ada took her simulet out of her secret pocket and threw it at the green-haired ascendant before heading for the portal.
Haedrig followed her, trying to catch up, but Arthur grabbed his wrist and pulled him back.
Just before Ada stepped into the portal, she looked back over her shoulder at the others, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, her bright green eyes sharper than daggers. "If the relictombs don't devour the three of you alive, Granbehl's blood will."
When Ada's last light curl disappeared through the portal, Arthur released Haedrig's wrist.
"Was it wise to just let her go like that?" Haedrig asked, clearly concerned. "Her family is very influential, especially for the unnamed blood."
"Should I have killed her?" Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Not killed... but at least we could have tried to talk."
"Her best friend and both brothers were killed right in front of her. I don't think anything we could say would have convinced her. Besides, it's suspicious anyway, since our names are registered," said Lucius, standing nearby.
"True," said Haedrig after a pause. "Aren't you worried?"
"I'm more worried about what the next zone will be like, and I advise you to go back too," said Arthur, turning to Lucius.
Haedrig shook his head. "I want to go with you."
Arthur shook his head, unable to believe his stubbornness.
"Leave him, Grey. If he wants to die, let him go," Lucius said, walking toward the portal.
Nodding to Lucius, Arthur walked toward the portal. His aether reserves were replenished by about a quarter, and the warm lights flickered as if warning them of the need to leave quickly. They all entered the translucent portal together. Hundreds of thoughts swirled in Arthur's head, but those thoughts flew out of his head as soon as he stepped through the portal.
White.
A milky white color flooded his entire field of vision.
Lucius had already crouched down and was slowly running his hand over the ground. The white color was everywhere; even the ground was not soil, but rather some kind of hard white mineral.
Ignoring the sudden change in scenery and seeing only a white forest of equally hard white soil, Arthur turned his head toward Lucius, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar girl with piercing red eyes and dark blue hair instead of the shaggy green-haired ascendant.
Arthur recoiled from her, completely taken aback, while her eyes darted uncertainly between Arthur and Lucius, who had already begun to get up. "Caera?"
Caera brought her delicate hand to her face, feeling her cheek, then pulled a strand of long hair in front of her face to get a better look at it. She paled noticeably as her hand reached up and touched one of the onyx horns growing on either side of her head.
Each horn branched into two main branches that extended forward and upward, while a smaller pair in the shape of fangs protruded from the back, framing her head with a dark crown. Each of the small branches was adorned with thin gold rings.
"Grey, I can explain everything..."
Arthur's hand blurred as he grabbed Caera by her slender neck and lifted her off the snow-covered ground. A quiet moan escaped her lips as she tried to break free, but his eyes were focused on those black horns.
'She's Vritra!' Arthur thought, feeling ridiculous for allowing someone he knew so little about to get close to him. 'No, in that case, she wouldn't have been able to enter the relict tombs,' he didn't know what to make of this sudden discovery. "Or does she just have Vritra's blood running through her veins?"
"I know you're shocked, as am I, but I don't think we'll get any answers from her if she's dead," Regis interjected, bringing Arthur back to his senses. "And look at Lucius, he seems completely shocked."
Arthur loosened his grip, allowing the Alacrike to fall to the ground, where she coughed convulsively, rubbing her throat.
"Please... Grey. I won't hurt you," Caera pleaded, her red eyes fixed on Arthur.
"Stop it," he warned in a dangerous tone, pulling the black sword out of the spatial rune again, while studying the noble alacria. At the same time, Arthur's gaze shifted to Lucius, who was standing calmly nearby.
"Say something. Did you know anything about this?" Arthur asked, pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind. Caera's gaze shifted to Lucius, who summoned his silver spear again from the white petals.
Instead of answering, Lucius activated mental communication and, connecting with Arthur, sent a 3D model of Haedrig and Caera's movements in different situations.
"Are you Sherlock or a creepy stalker? Why did you memorize her movements so carefully?" Regis asked suspiciously, looking at Lucius through Arthur's body.
"Neither one nor the other. I knew that Haedrig was Caera from the original story. As for why I remembered all the movements so clearly? I don't know, it's always been that way," Lucius said, shaking his head. "But as I said, she can be trusted. And I'll say in advance that this is not the same area I knew from the original."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Arthur asked in a slightly cold tone.
"There was no need. You would have found out anyway, but..." Lucius swung his spear sharply, sending it into a white tree thirty meters away from them.
Crack
A loud crack filled the forest, Lucius's arm stretched out, and the spear was drawn to his hand. Something was floundering on the spear, and even though it was pierced, not a drop of blood flowed from the creature. It was a strange combination of white stone and monkey.
"We need to focus on survival, we'll figure out who's who later," said Lucius, absorbing the aether from the monkey through the spear. A couple of seconds after absorbing the aether, he waved the spear and the monkey disappeared into his inventory.
Swallowing his emotions, Arthur nodded to Caera and stood a meter to the right of Lucius, making sure that Caera could only stand to the left of Lucius.
"Do you understand what this is?" Arthur asked, calming down in a few seconds.
"Well, actually, yes, it is," Lucius pointed his spear in all directions, from the floor and clawed trees to other monkeys and dozens of rocks, and finally to a huge rock resembling a volcano. "It's all bones, everything you see now is made of bones."
"It's..." Caera muttered, looking at her feet and touching her tightly constricted throat at the same time. "It really looks like polished bones."
"As I said, let's find out who's who after we kill these observers," Lucius said, standing in the stance he had seen Gin use.
"I agree, but first," Caera's gaze stopped on Lucius, her dazzling ruby eyes burning with interest, "when did you realize that I am who I am?"
Moving forward into the forest, Lucius began to mow down these skeleton-like creatures. It would have been difficult for anyone else, but the eighth-rank weapon with its enormous aether conductivity cut through the bone monkeys like butter.
Quickly dispatching fifteen bone monkeys, he turned his gaze to Caera. "I knew it from the very beginning. The moment I saw you, no, not you, your movements, I understood who you were."
"By the way," Lucius reached into the inner pocket of his cloak and threw a dagger with Danuar's blood medallion at Caera, "it's not good to follow someone without permission."
"I didn't..." Caera's cheeks flushed slightly. She wanted to argue, but at that moment it was impossible. She would talk about it later; now they had to protect each other from the strange bone monkeys.
Whistle
A white bone spear flew out of the horde of bone monkeys at tremendous speed and tried to pierce Caera's body, but the silver spear stuck at the perfect moment and completely stopped the bone spear.
"Hm?" Lucius' gaze stopped on a certain monkey who pointed a finger at him.
In that same second, the monkey's finger lengthened and thickened, and a second later, the bones in its finger protruded and vibrated, and two breaths later, the white bone spear, which looked like an extension of the finger, rushed toward Lucius at tremendous speed.
"Grey, may I ask you to be in charge?" Although Lucius' tone implied a question, he moved without waiting for an answer.
"Ha, as always, willful," Arthur muttered, slightly shifting his position to protect Caera from death in case of an emergency.
Cutting through the bone monkeys like butter, Lucius approached the anomaly among the identical monkeys step by step. He was not interested in the fact that this monkey could shoot bone spears, but in how it did so.
Standing a few meters away, he noticed this strange impulse again, so weak that Lucius didn't even understand what had happened at first, but now, "aether, right?"
A weak impulse of aether launched and created this spinning bone spear. It was not a direct result like an aether dagger, no, it was something else. There was so little aether that it seemed there was even more of it in the atmosphere.
This was something that did not fit into Lucius's mind.
Whistle
The familiar whistle and the bone spear flew towards Lucius again at tremendous speed. It was faster because of the short distance, but
Crack crack
The spear seemed to come alive in Lucius' hands. The bone spear flying toward him was redirected with surgical precision toward the horde of monkeys, piercing more than ten of them in a second.
"Screeeeech!, Eee-eee-eee!!" The bone monkey glared at Lucius with malice and screeched loudly. Because this strange man had redirected her attack, so many of her tribesmen had died.
The bone monkey suddenly screamed loudly, and immediately, as if growing out of the bone trees, a huge bone monkey appeared. Over three meters tall, its arm alone was as thick as Lucius's body.
But it wasn't its size that caught Lucius's attention. Deep inside this monkey, there was a similar pulsation, where the core should be, the aether pulsed faintly.
Crack, crack, crack
A loud crack filled the air when the right arm of the huge monkey cracked, and a shield appeared from its bone arm as an extension of the arm.
"Graaa!" roared the huge bone monkey as it rushed at Lucius like a battering ram.
"Huh? How strange, even the Djinn's aether art didn't work like that... but never mind," muttered Lucius as he moved at tremendous speed straight toward the huge monkey.