It was clear that he only had two options here. Either going ahead or just sit down on the floor. There was no going back, after all there was no exit. It was a tough choice but it was just him making things hard for himself.
He did not know how long he was going to last before he was hungry again. If he stayed here, was he going to eat the statues? Maybe there was something inside the hall that could help him survive.
He weighed his options and he took a step forward. His heart raced as he raised his vigilance and unsheathed the sword and held it above his shoulder. He took cautious steps forward. He approached the hall slowly and before him stood a flight of stairs he had not seen before.
Each stair step extended roughly 100 meters. At the moment, his heartbeat had become steady and his focus was unparallelled. Even his hair could not hide his eyes.
Taking a deep breath, he raised his leg as his foot landed on the first step. A surge of force, not violent but utterly inescapable, shot up his leg...
'Huh? I see… so I was still careless…'
He did not know what had happened as he realized he was no longer on his feet and was being sent flying backwards. His right foot was numb and his hand had involuntarily let go of the sword. He fell around ten meters back and he spluttered a mouthful of blood as he slid another five meters back.
He sat up and wiped the blood on the side of his lips. His eyes seemed to have calmed down further, almost chilly. He could not blame it on anyone but himself as he waited to feel his leg once again. As for the pain after the impact, he totally deserved it.
Later, he stood up and walked towards his sword as he sheathed it. What was he expecting to achieve from the sword? Could he even use it to defend himself? He chuckled as he looked at the stairs once again. He then moved to the base of the stairs and sat there in deep thoughts.
The first thought was that he was being rejected or that there was a barrier. He quickly stood up and pick the head of a statue and threw it towards the stairs and to his surprise, the head soared through the air and landed at the third step.
'So, I am being rejected…'
Lyren sat at the base of the stairs again. He was not sure what to do anymore. His thoughts came to a stop as he stared at the hall looming before him.
His elbow rested on his thigh as he let his chin rest in his palm. He let out a deep breath he didn't know he had been holding. In this state, he could feel Elyria pressing on to him. This time, it seemed to want to break its way into his body.
Lyren was at first confused by the sensation as he continued to feel the energy boring into him. One thing he was certain though was that if he dared tried to reach it, it would go even further than it had been before.
With all his interactions with Elyria up to the moment, it appeared like it kept getting harder than it was before to grasp it once it slipped away. So, he just lingered in the moment.
His mind started drifting back to the patterns on the ground. He looked at the ground beneath him and just as he had expected, the patterns were still there but they diverged a lot further from each other.
He ignored Elyria pressing on him and started tracing these patterns as they diverged. He followed through one of the patterns and at one point he realized several lines were merging at one point.
What secret lay here? He now seriously decided to find out what was happening here. There was definitely a catch. He placed his hand at the middle point of where this group of lines merged. He gently placed his palm on it and realized it was slightly rounded.
'It's warm…'
Lyren thought as he felt he was on to something. It wasn't just warm; it felt like a faint, rhythmic pulse, as if he were resting his hand on the chest of a sleeping giant.
He decided that this was a good starting point and picked one of the lines to follow. The line seemed to weave into other lines but on closer inspection, he realized that these lines barely merged unless they were coming from a rounded part.
He discarded this line first after a while and realizing that it was merging with another line as it stretched further. He moved on to another line from the source. This line was next to the one he had chosen first. As he traced this line, it too weaved but it was almost like it was trying to get away from the first line.
Still, he realized that these two lines though they kept close to one another and at some cases seemed to merge, he realized that it was not the case. There was a very thin separation between them and with the erosion over time, one could mistake the lines to merge.
This brought him to rethink the first finding where he had found out that the first line really merged with another. He retraced it several times and confirmed that they truly did meet. When he went back to the second line, he realized that it did not merge with any other line but there were several lines that merged with it.
He found this line that was merging with the two lines very intriguing. Afterall, the first two lines seemed to either merge and the second one did not even merge with another one. Still, some other lines merged with this one.
Lyren picked one of these lines and started tracing it. Just like he thought, the first two lines only followed one direction but this one could go either direction. Following it, it seemed to be among the several connecting the first two sets.
His head throbbed, his brain struggling to hold the intersecting lines in place like a crumbling house of cards. He decided to name the first line he had traced A and the second one was B. As for the last one, he called it an anomaly and named it X.
The X lines seemed to be connecting several sets of the A and B lines. He realized there were many other A and B lines all over all coming from the rounded part which he called the core.
He went on and formed a mental picture of the patterns but just when he thought he had memorized it, he realized something he had been ignoring or maybe it was just that he was just beginning to understand it.
The A lines all seemed to merge together at the edges all together and formed almost circular shape at the edge. They all seemed connected but not a single one of them crossed over the B lines. As for the B lines, the only had one direction and that was to the edges and the did not meet.
It was the X lines that seemed to merge the two sets of lines and the moment it all clicked, his hand moved to the core unconsciously and placed his palm there visualizing the entire set of patterns he had memorized as one.
'Ouch…' Lyren quickly retracted his hand…