Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Just like the outside, the interior of the Temple held true to the terror-inducing theme: splattered red could be found every ten steps, dim lighting from the candles swaying from the ceiling, and the windows on the side that definitely felt much thinner than how they looked from outside.

There were light sources, but overall, darkness reigned inside the Temple and many things were sure to escape Evin's attention. But Evin wasn't very worried. Despite being useless most of the time, the World of Darkness was his forte, after all.

<Since the place is like this, I'll take care of keeping us invisible with the World of Darkness, and you can just focus on traps and enemies,> Evin said while covering his body with layers of darkness.

He then gathered a patch of Lumiaris's energy in his eyes and willed for something specific. The next moment, the details of the dark interior of the Temple became much more visible to his naked eye, but he could only see in black and white. This was a trick he learned when playing around with the World of Light and the World of Darkness, one where he could make himself see better in either bright places or dark ones.

With his newfound vision, Evin observed the first room of the Temple. Contrary to the Tunnels, which offered a choice between four routes, Evin could only see one path forward. This was fine in itself, as Evin didn't need to worry about making decisions. He only needed to keep vigilant and proceed forward.

But two minutes into his walk, Evin noticed a rotting smell coming from his front. Expecting to see a the outcome of a battle before him, he hastened his pace. His eyes quickly noticed the outline of a pale-skinned naked man sprawled on his side, blood drying on the ground below.

Evin stood blankly for a few seconds, staring at the body of the deceased. His reasoning seemed to have escaped him, and the thing that pulled him out of his daze was a sudden sting of pain coming from the rip in his cheek.

'Are they fucking serious? Did they actually kill someone inside the test?'

<Go check the body out,> the Voice ordered. <I wanna see its face at least.>

Evin didn't know why that was necessary, but he reluctantly circled around the body and looked at it from its front.

"Is that really a human?" Evin couldn't help but think looking at the face of the body.

Small orb-like eyes; an elongated nose; thin, perked up ears; and sharp, almost sawed teeth. This definitely wasn't a human. The unknown identity of the corpse calmed Evin down much more than he would've expected, and curiously, Evin observed the rest of his body.

Immediately, he noticed many features that separated the corpse from a human: an abnormally hunched back, sickly pale skin, the lack of genitals whatsoever, etc. One thing that concerned him was the countless stab wounds littering its stomach and back.

<What the hell is that?> Evin asked.

<Can't say I know,> the Voice didn't seem very shocked by the turn of events. <The only thing that's obvious is that these things are your enemies. Let's go.>

Its casual dismissal of the corpse calmed Evin down, and gave him an impression that maybe things weren't as bad as he was making them out to be.

Diligently, he checked his illusory covers and followed the route. On the way, he encountered more corpses of the creatures, their numbers increasing in each room. These newer corpses also had much cleaner deaths, with some of them even not having any wounds at all, except for being slightly wet. Evin suspected that these ones were Decatur's handwork.

It also showed that the nobles' group had probably just arrived here.

But aside from these encounters, nothing interesting happened until Evin was met with a divide in the path. One choice led him downstairs, while the other choice stayed on the current floor.

He put himself in the shoes of the nobles and decided that they would be more willing to stay on the current level, as it should be brighter. Also, the Temple was three stories tall, so it would be natural for them to think that staying here would lead to the floors above.

'Perhaps they could've divided their group to cover more ground, but considering the Temple's atmosphere, the last thing I'd want to do is to separate,' Evin reasoned.

Then, realizing that he was exploring this creepy area all by himself, he felt a bit good about himself. Shaking away the unneeded thoughts, Evin carefully descended downstairs, and was met with a wooden door.

<Can you hear that?> the Voice suddenly warned.

Evin held his ears to the door and half-expected the students to be talking behind the door… but the only thing he could hear was a rhythmical, yet hoarse breathing, almost bordering on a snore. It reminded him of the times his father would get drunk and lightly snore throughout the night.

'I can't be sure, but that must be one of those creatures,' Evin decided.

<Go in, and immediately close the door behind you without making any noise. I'll take care of the enemies inside.>

A part of Evin wanted to slam the door open for an unknown reason, but the Voice was right. The less noise he made, the better it was. He considered using the weightless spear that was dangling from his back, but decided against it, as it was surely going to be more burdensome to try and use a spear he only got three hours ago.

'Actually…' Evin thought and took off the spear from his back and laid it down next to the door.

Taking a deep breath he quickly opened the wooden door and closed it behind himself, searching for the enemy all the while.

As luck would have it, the creature was waiting right behind the door, leading to a very awkward situation for Evin, but thankfully, the Voice stood true to his words and quickly shot three air bullets at the enemy's eyes. Then, a sword of Hard Air mercilessly cut into the creature's neck and was swiftly pulled out.

A gurgling noise came from its throat, with dark-red blood splattering over Evin's body. But he didn't have the leisure to focus on that, as he noticed two more of the same creatures in the room. The Voice shot air bullets at them as well, but unbelievably, the two were diligently protecting their eyes this time around. The bullets grazed their arms a bit, but other than that, no serious injury was inflicted.

Evin felt the Voice trying to change the angle of the accelerator to get a clearer shot, but unbelievably, the two's hands followed the barrel of the accelerator, as if they could see the invisible construct of Hard Air and also know that it was the thing shooting bullets at them.

Now that Evin thought about it, they were dashing at Evin, even though he should be nigh invisible with the layers of darkness on his body.

But there was no need to panic, as the Voice still had the sword to use. Evin noticed that the creatures were able to see the swords in the air, but that didn't matter much, because a sword propelled by magic could attack an enemy from all the impossible to defend against angles. And even if they could defend, these naked creatures which wore only the skin on their bodies couldn't stop the blades from severing their limbs and rupturing their insides.

The sight of the invisible sword making mincemeat of the creatures made Evin's stomach send acids up his throat, but he managed to contain the vomit, urgently convincing himself that the enemies weren't humans. The thought seemed to calm his heart, and the fact that he wasn't the one casting the spells to kill these creatures helped a lot as well.

Finally, with the three enemies dead, Evin could enjoy a moment of respite. Even though he hadn't moved more than three steps during the entire fight, he still felt out of breath.

"Shit… that felt close…" he couldn't help but mutter.

<Hmm, these guys are much harder to deal with…> the Voice commented as he pulled the Hard Air sword closer to Evin. <If I wasn't the one doing the killing, you'd definitely have to go through a traumatic experience here.>

Evin remembered the countless stab wounds that decorated the body of the first corpse he saw in the Temple. It was obvious that the student who did it wasn't in the right state of mind during the act.

The pain in his cheek began to flare up again, and Evin's heart remember the sheer panic and terror he felt when the rat was making a mess of his face. He imagined one of the creatures on the ground doing the same to him, and a chill went down his spine.

<Isn't this too much?>

<Hmm… Back in my world, something like this would definitely get the Academy executives' heads rolling, but it seems that no one really thinks much about it here. Perhaps they see it as something necessary for the students to grow?>

<Isn't that inhumane?>

<He-he, did you know that the only reason you're saying that is because of me?> the Voice said out of the blue. <If I didn't exist to mock your situation, you'd think that it was normal to disregard others and inflict violence upon them. Some people wonder about the truth behind nature versus nurture, but from my experience, nurture always trumps.>

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