The same warm lights that illuminated the ground floor of the cathedral filled the basement, so the room was well lit. Yet a thin, white veil hung in the room, barely making its presence known. But there was not a person alive who could ignore the fog, even as thin as it was, for this fog had killed even sages.
To be clear, it wasn't as if immediate exposure to the fog killed someone. Usually, to be affected by the fog, one would need to go deeper into it, or stay in it for a while. But even Nero could not remain completely calm right now.
A chill, the kind that even Nero could feel, shot up his spine as he entered the basement. The temperature was a little lower in the basement, yes, but the fog also seemed to press down on them. It was as if it wanted to enter their bodies, but was being blocked by their skin.
Nero suddenly became very conscious of the fog entering his nose as he breathed, but nothing untoward happened. He looked at the others, and they were being just as careful as him, if not more. Remi was visibly trembling from fear, though she was doing her best to keep following.
Someone like her really shouldn't have joined them, but that was completely irrelevant.
"Everyone, maintain peak vigilance from here on out. We can expect a curse at any time from here on out, not to mention there's no way to know what obstacles the Eldrim have left behind."
"I thought you just got access to the lower floors," Harold said, looking around vigilantly. Even he was not in a joking mood right now. "If you have permission, why do we still need to watch out for their stuff? Shouldn't you be allowed to do whatever you want?"
"Who knows how this works?" Nero said, finally reaching the base of the stairs. They had reached the first basement level, and the stairs leading further down were right beside them but Nero didn't head towards them yet.
"Let's explore this floor and familiarise ourselves with it," Nero said, cautiously stepping forward. "Logically speaking, the size or layout of the floors below this should all be similar."
The size of the basement was twice or thrice the size of the cathedral itself, which was less than ideal for their purpose.
Exiting the stair hall, the group entered into a room that looked like a lobby, with a single corridor leading deeper into the basement. On each side of the corridor were rooms with glass walls, oddly enough, so everything was visible from the outside.
A couple of the rooms looked like small study rooms, while one looked like a lecture hall. The rest, though, were filled with machines and obstacles Nero could not recognise.
"You said this floor was filled with curses too? How did they kill all of them without breaking any of this glass?" Harold asked, knocking on one of the glass walls.
"This is not glass," said Jackal, speaking for the first time. "These walls have been enchanted or treated with aether somehow to make them see through. In actuality, they're very tough. Such walls are used very commonly in Eldrim research facilities, which means that they're actually very strong."
As if to show what he meant, Jackal shot out a stream of yellow fire from his finger at the wall. But the wall seemed to resist the flames easily, and was not even charred. Everyone else tried to attack the walls as well, Nero included, but could not harm it in any way.
They continued to explore the rest of the floor, but found nothing worth noting at all.
"Remi, since you're here to use some of the Eldrim machines for us, why don't you try on some of the machines here," Nero said. "It's better to familiarise yourself with the situation now rather than on the lower floors where we'll need to be more careful."
The trembling girl stepped forward, and to her credit, did her best despite how clearly frightened she was.
She touched the various machines with her index finger, for a few seconds before moving on.
"These machines are mostly just analysis machines. They record various things like aether fluctuations, radiation and such. From what I can tell, most of the stuff here is used for research," she said, explaining to Nero.
"This place seems more like a research lab than a cathedral," Harold commented.
"Who knows what they used to do in cathedrals back then," Wendy said. "Maybe studying and doing research was a form of worship."
Nero tried to imagine the emperor snooping through the ruins like this one thousand years ago. Did he discover the cards in a research facility like this?
Once they had completely explored the floor, and everyone was no longer as subdued by the pressure of being in Eldrim ruins, Nero decided to head further down.
Although there was no gate or blockage stopping them from descending lower, none of the others were able to step down the stairs. It was as if there was a wall of solidified air, blocking their path.
When Nero tried, however, the wall dissolved. Even a single step down, the lower level seemed an entire world apart. Not only did the fog immediately get slightly thicker, but Nero immediately felt countless curses assault him.
His internal aetheric pressure failed at resisting them, and Nero had to immediately surround himself with his blue flames to prevent himself from being cursed.
"The cursed energy is extremely thick down here," Nero said to the others, who were able to follow him after he dissolved the blockage. "Protect yourselves."
Each member, save Nero, had come equipped with a card that could block cursed energy from entering their bodies so they were fine for the moment, but with each step, Nero felt the concentration of cursed energy rising.
Nero used Aether Pulse, just to be sure there were no camouflaged enemies waiting for him. It had been a purely precautionary measure. He was expecting to find more curses only after he reached the second level, but immediately a number of curses were revealed.
They were like vapours in the air, without a solid body, several of them had wrapped themselves around Nero's body, and dozens more were drifting up the stairs towards him.
No wonder he felt like the cursed energy was so dense!
Nero immediately increased the flames around him, while the rest of his team acted as well. Flames, aether shockwaves and various pure aetheric attacks shot out from behind him, targeting the curses. They were effective, to a degree.
The vapour curses just dispersed their bodies whenever an attack would touch them, minimising their losses as they reappear somewhere else.
The sudden attacks had only aggravated the swarm, so while they had previously been approaching slowly and stealthily, the curse vapours shot through the air towards them, as if they were birds diving down to catch their helpless prey.
After blowing away the initial batch of vapours surrounding him, Nero actually reduced the flames around his body, and instead used his card Double skin to provide protection for himself. He would not be able to last long if he kept wasting aether on careless use of his ability. But Nero did light the tip of his spear in cryoflames. He also used Radix Augmentation on himself.
He hadn't had the opportunity to see if killing curses helped raise his absorption level as well, and this was the best way to find out.
"Form a defensive line and maintain pressure, but no need to go all out," Nero ordered his team. "Don't waste aether when you can conserve it. Remi, you stay in the back. Jackal, try to make your flames as widespread as you can."
Jackal's innate ability was to manipulate common fire. It was not the strongest or hottest flame, and consumed a lot of oxygen so it was not actually the best idea to use it underground. However…
As soon as his flames spread across the hall, Jackal immediately withdrew his flames while Nero summoned his own!
In a flash, the fire went from yellow to blue, and the heat that had begun to accumulate suddenly turned to freezing cold.
For Nero summoning and maintaining his flames consumed aether, and if he expanded them using himself it would also eat aether. But if his flames grew on their own, absorbing excessive heat, then the burden of their expansion was not transferred to Nero. He only kept using the same amount of aether he did initially to summon them.
Without expending much aether, Nero expanded his flame rapidly, cooking all the curses. They shrieked and attacked more aggressively, but by now his team had erected a protective aether wall around them, keeping them safe.
Just as drastically as the attack came, it ended with all the vapour curses being burnt in the blue flames.
Nero looked down. He had only descended a couple of steps down, and they had already faced a horde of invisible curses. This was going to be a very long mission.