It was tremendously odd...
They couldn't help but recall the rift that happened once in his Space of Consciousness. If his wounds were more severe, would he end up this way?
Benjamin shook his head and entered into the pit. He thought it through and first dug up the crystal balls that were deeply embedded into the ground, gave them a rub or two before stashing them up for any future use.
Then, at this same moment, a voice was suddenly heard from behind.
"You... killed all these monsters?"
It was a weak voice, mixed with fear and anticipation. Benjamin turned around. The prison was deep within the pit and because of the protective screen, it was not damaged from the battle.
Around ten people that was trapped in there were anxiously staring at Benjamin.
Benjamin came to a realization.
These were the mages that were previously imprisoned?
"Who are you? Why are you locked up here?" He still had to confirm their real identities just in case.
"We... We are just regular mages." The head mage hesitated, "At first, we and some friends went into Candela Mountains to take up residence. In the end, we were cheated by these monsters! They... They said they were our friends and welcomed us to stay but ambushed us and captured us by night. They even ate a lot of our companions."
It could be seen that these ten over people were disoriented, like they have been locked up for a long time. Benjamin could not sense any gloomy temperament that of cannibal mages from them.
Therefore, Benjamin nodded and chose to believe them.
"Don’t be afraid. They’re all dead. I will rescue you guys now."
He came to the door of the prison and split open the lock with an ice blade to open the door. But these mages were weak to the degree that they couldn’t walk. Benjamin then could see clearly that there was a weird nail pinned on their shoulders.
"This..."
A mage responded, "After they locked us up, they pinned this on our shoulders. We don’t know what it is but after it was nailed through, we could no longer sense our own Spiritual Energy."
... A magic tool to seal off the Spiritual Energy?
Benjamin raised his eye brow.
The black technology in this little village seemed like quite a lot.
After all it was nailed in pretty deep so it wasn't advisable to remove them right away. He used the water steam to carry these mages out one by one like a stretcher — The time spent on the experiment, he has recovered some of his Spiritual Energy.
Carrying over ten people would not consume a lot of energy but after these mages came out of the deep pit, they immediately saw the big black ball in the sky.
At that moment, their expression was to that of relief.
"That... Isn’t that the Door of Oblivion?"
"Yes." Benjamin sighed, "To add to that, it is a Door of Oblivion that is out of control."
All of them were speechless.
They were filled with despair, as if saying, "Bro, what was the point of saving us? It was better to just leave us."
Out of a tiger’s den and into a dragon’s pit. They were having mixed emotions.
"Don’t give up. It’s better to figure out ways to settle this thing." Benjamin could only comfort them, "The time you’ve spent here was long. You probably have some understanding on their tactics? The Door of Oblivion was summoned by that two elders and now they are dead but the magic did not disperse. Do you know why?"
"About this..."
The mages locked their brows in a frown and fell deep into thought. Benjamin took them away from the danger zone to avoid having them sucked into the Door of Oblivion as it continued to expand.
"I recall hearing them saying something about death." Suddenly, one mages spoke up and doubtfully mentioned, "They said, death was not the end as the will of the flesh and blood forever lives on."
The other mages nodded to indicate that they did indeed heard of the same.
Benjamin was struck by the statement.
Death was not the end...
Then what was the end then?
Obviously this sentence meant that even if they have died but they didn't really die. Hence the continuance of the Door of Oblivion. What grind their balls was how they could diminish this "will of the flesh and blood"?
The mages demonstrated that they weren’t sure.
"Isn’t this simple?" Just as Benjamin went quiet in his thoughts, the System suddenly exclaimed, "Think about what this village believes in. To destroy the will of the flesh and blood, isn’t that to eat someone up?"
"..."
Benjamin fell silent.
The answer, although shocking but... it made sense?
He turned to look at the corpse of the two elders. The corpses remained there with the blood form their wounds have dried up. Their faces were green and just a glance at them were enough to make one sick to their stomach.
To eat this up?
"The remaining cannibal mages have lost their consciousness. No one is able to stomach this." Benjamin fearfully exclaimed in his heart.
The System suggested, "Then... Why don’t you find a beast to try it out?"
Benjamin sighed with relief upon hearing that and nodded in acceptance of the suggestion.
There was no call to delay due to the urgency of the matter. He ordered his subordinates to look after these mages while he left the mountain quickly. He activated his water element sensing technique to capture a lone wolf out in the wild — It was a hungry fellow with green gleaming eyes. One look at Benjamin and it started howling crazily.
"Aren't you hungry? Don’t rush, I'm gonna give you something good." Benjamin revealed a friendly smile and blew the wild wolf with water steam to bring back to the mountain.
Within the mountain range, the mages were busy tossing grenades of holy light at the Door of Oblivion. They were in a cloud of confusion when they saw Benjamin carrying a wolf back.
"What is this?"
Benjamin build an igloo and tossed the wolf and the two elders’ corpses in. He sealed the entrance and turned to answer,
"This is the wild wolf that’s gonna save the world."
Just like that, the door of the igloo sealed up. When the wolf saw the elders’ corpses, not only did it not hover over them, instead it looked fearful and unwilling to eat. Benjamin then summoned ice blades to slice pieces of meat off the corpses and forced it into the wolf’s mouth with water steam.
After much effort, the wolf finally swallowed the food and in the end, without Benjamin’s help, it started to devour the flesh of the elders.
But... Its appearance started to turn all weird.
Its brown fur started to turn black and its body became big, its fangs and claws grew long... It was originally a regular beast and now looked like it was progressing towards a magic beast. The dark elements around trended towards it.
Benjamin was taken aback but at the same time, pleasantly surprised.
This type of change, could it mean that it worked?
He looked at the Door of Oblivion in the sky with anticipation.