Kingdom Bloodline

Chapter 407 The Path to Omniscience
In the dim light, the swords of calamity followed Josh forward, their footsteps echoing faintly.

But the chisel weaved through the crowd and reached Ricky.

“Wait,” Chip asked, looking at Thales, who was being held hostage by Marina, with a puzzled expression. “Are you taking him down with you?”

"You know we can wait for you here, right?"

Thales frowned as he noticed that a number of mercenaries were subtly closing in.

Ricky turned his head and glanced at the chisel.

"You did a great job, you saved us a lot of trouble, Chisel."

He pressed down on the shoulder of the chisel: "But I also know that the reason you are cooperating so well and going to such lengths is all because of the hostage we have."

Chisel's expression stiffened.

"It might not be the same in a different setting."

"Now, you can choose to come with us or stay here and wait for me."

Ricky ignored the grim-faced chiselman, waved his hand, and continued forward.

Samir walked past the chisel, scoffing dismissively.

Thales, watching from the sidelines, hoped the drill would be firmer.

Unfortunately, Chip didn't say anything. He just made a gesture and followed along with several low-profile Shadow Assassins.

And so, Thales continued his journey, escorted by hordes of swords of calamity.

As they went further and further away, the sword of calamity spread wider and wider, and many prisoners discovered the intruders.

Occasionally, patrolling guards would encounter the invading sword of calamity, and unfortunately, they would often be outnumbered and killed in a fierce battle.

The prison of bones gradually began to stir, and the chaos it created far exceeded Thales's imagination:
“Hey, guard over there…yes, you, let me tell you, I’ve made a lot of money reselling weapons over the years, mostly from things they didn’t find. If you let me out, I promise you…wait, you guys, you’re not guards?”

"Damn it... what's going on now!"

"Wow, wow, someone really broke into the prison! Wow, that's amazing... Last time, those guys who snuck in to break into the prison didn't last five minutes before the freaks came and took them all. Williams chopped them up like firewood. This time, you guys better hold on and make sure you last ten minutes!"

"Let me out! I am a devout priest of the Temple of the Night! They cannot lock me up here just because of my artistic creations... and this group, this group..."

"Hey, my friend, let's make a deal. I've been locked up here for four years, I'm going crazy... I don't need you to let me out... I'll be happy as long as you transfer me to the women's prison... okay?"

"Murder! Lalalala! This is awesome!"

"Fuck your father... Damn it, there are so many touts on the street, why did they lock me up here! Crossdressing? So what if I crossdress? I like to wear women's clothes to solicit customers, so what? If you don't believe me, come and touch my chest..."

"Damn it, you brat, come back here! What does breaking out of prison have to do with you? Believe me or not, I'll beat you up again! Hold on tight and don't turn your head or move around... Yes, oh, good boy, harder, ah, that's more like it... Don't worry, as long as I'm satisfied, I won't beat you up tomorrow."

"Please, give me some more happiness pills...please give me some more, please!!! If you don't give me some happiness pills, I'll kill myself right here—I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself, look, I'm really going to kill myself—damn it, at least look at me! What if I really kill myself!"

"Damn the Baron! Damn the Stardust Guard! Damn the Baki Camp! You believe me or not, when I get out of here, I'll tie up that sissy Williams, force him to wear women's clothing, find a hundred big men, and for three days and three nights, take turns pressing him against the wall like this... oh dear, I'm too rough, he's bleeding..."

"Hey, you over there, could you give me a message to my wife? She wrote three years ago saying she'd come to bail me out of prison, but she still hasn't shown up... I'll pay you..."

Holy crap, what kind of place is this?!

The prince, barely daring to breathe, followed Ricky, glancing worriedly behind him: the rope was still binding him, and he, haunted by this place, stared in terror at the infamous prison.

Finally, led by Josh, they descended several flights of stairs and arrived at an empty room without any cells.

The room was large enough to hold a hundred people, almost comparable to a nobleman's banquet hall. Even the noise of the prisoners seemed to be shut out behind them and could no longer be heard.

But Thales also keenly realized that the floor here was paved with carefully fired rock bricks and the walls were quite old, which contrasted sharply with the rough and dirty cells outside.

The room's design is also quite unique, featuring eight walls in total, resembling a regular octagon.

Even stranger, there were four narrow openings on the ground that resembled wells, and the inside was pitch black.

For some reason, as Thales gazed at the deep well openings, he suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

strangeness.

That is……

That is……

Chisel and Russell noticed this as well, and they looked around at the place with some surprise.

Even the Blades of Calamity, including Klay and Samir, seemed to be here for the first time.

Ricky glanced around at his surroundings and stood in front of one of the mottled and dilapidated walls.

"right here?"

Josh nodded and pointed seriously to what looked like a well opening, saying, "Yes, we've observed that the guards regularly bring excess supplies here; they must be dropping off supplies here."

Ricky crouched down, tapped on the "well," picked up a stone, threw it in, and listened intently.

For several seconds, no sound came from the depths of the well.

It remained deathly silent.

Thales understood something.

“Yes,” Ricky brushed the dust off his hands, nodded, and stood up. “This is it.”

"As for the entrance..."

He looked up at Josh.

But Josh just shook his head awkwardly.

Ricky scoffed softly, seemingly somewhat helpless.

“If I were like Williams, I definitely wouldn’t go looking for trouble.” Ricky paced back and forth, looking down at the ground, muttering to himself, “There’s no ladder here, which means it must be somewhere I can reach it while standing…”

Chisel's expression changed.

“Wait, Your Excellency Crassus,” the needle said, frowning.

"He means you want to get into the Black Prison, but you can't even find the entrance?"

Ricky ignored him and, in full view of everyone, took a torch from Clay, walked to the wall, and continued to survey the empty room.

“The Black Prison is, after all, a legend,” Clay said coldly. “No one knows how to get in except those who have been there, and those who have been in…”

“No one has come out,” Samir scoffed.

Russell stepped forward.

"You know we're short on time and don't have time to play a leisurely treasure hunt, right?"

Russell said with dissatisfaction, "Once the camp reacts..."

"Shut up."

Samir interrupted him, the brand on his face appearing even more grotesque in the firelight: "Northman."

But Russell didn't back down; in fact, he seemed to have been provoked by the former Star Guardians: "You know what kind of risks we're taking..."

Just now.

"Aha."

Ricky suddenly spoke up, drawing everyone's attention.

Thales looked curiously at the leader of the Sword of Calamity.

The latter held a torch, facing a wall, and gently patted away the dust and cobwebs with his left hand.

“People in the past probably didn’t think about hiding,” Ricky said with a smile. “As for the Star People, they probably didn’t expect anyone to be able to sneak in here.”

Everyone looked at the wall in surprise and doubt.

As the dust settled, a strange and incomplete pattern appeared on the mottled wall.

Under Ricky's touch, the first thing that appeared was a triangle, with one corner pointing to the left, and the corresponding side concave towards the center of the triangle.

Soon, Ricky brushed out a circle on the right side of the triangle.

At the center of the circle is a circular hole recessed into the wall.

Ricky smiled and continued wiping.

To the right of the circle, a new triangle emerges that is symmetrical to the previous one, but this triangle has one corner pointing to the right and its concave side on the left.

Ricky stepped back and looked at the pattern in front of him with satisfaction: two irregular symmetrical triangles sandwiching a circle in the middle.

"We found it."

But many people, including Russell, looked puzzled: "What is this? An eye?"

Ricky pursed his lips.

Amidst the bewildered crowd, Thales stared blankly at the pattern.

No one knew that Thales froze the moment the pattern was wiped away.

At that moment, he even forgot that he was in danger.

That is……

That is……

Chisel was also puzzled by the pattern, but with his exceptional eyesight, he saw something else.

“Now down here,” Chiselman stepped forward, reaching out to brush away a line of dust beneath the circle:
"It sounds like a sentence?"

Sure enough, a line of strange characters engraved on the wall appeared beneath his palm.

But whether it was Chip, Russell, or Klay and Josh, they all looked at the text with complete bewilderment.

"I don't understand this sentence."

Russell frowned:
“This emblem is strange enough. I’ve studied the coats of arms of all the nobles in the Star Kingdom, but none of them match… And these characters below, they’re not even a common language, nor do they resemble the Imperial language I know…”

Feeling uneasy, Russell looked at Ricky with a serious expression: "Crassu, what exactly is this place—the Prison of Bones?"

Ricky did not answer.

Another voice suddenly rang out.

"Ancient Imperial Literature."

Everyone turned to look at Samir, who was standing on the other side.

The man with the brand on his face looked at the text beneath the design with a complex expression:

"This is the purest ancient imperial alphabet, a script passed down from the ancient kingdom of Chauvin, not the modern imperial language mixed with the common language. It is said to have been created by the first ancient humans under the guidance of the ancient elves. Its grammar is complex and difficult to understand."

Samir walked slowly forward, and the swords of calamity beside him made way for him.

"No one uses it anymore, and even among the nobles of the Star Kingdom, few know how to use it."

Russell and Chip turned around in surprise and looked at the unfamiliar text again.

Samir stretched out his hand with a dazed expression, as if reminiscing about something: "Besides the various lineages of elves, probably only a few archaeologists and historians in Dragonkid Academy would understand."

“I don’t know these words, but I remember the root word.”

His fingers touched one of the words.

“When I was a boy, in order to gain entry into the Palace of Restoration and qualify for the Royal Guard, my father hired that old scholar to introduce me to some people.” Samir’s expression darkened:
"This root word is probably 'total' or 'all'..."

Everyone listened quietly to the words of the former Royal Guard standard-bearer.

Except for one person.

"It is 'omniscient'."

A boy's voice rang out softly from the crowd.

Chisel turned around in surprise, and together with Russell, whose expression was strange, looked at the most unexpected person.

Klay and Josh cast questioning glances at the leader, while Ricky raised an eyebrow.

Even the rope, which was tied up tightly, stared wide-eyed.

“Omniscient, or all-knowing,” Thales sighed, stepping past Marina who was frowning at him, and staring blankly at the line of text:

"That's what the word means."

At that moment, Samir looked at Thales with an incredibly complex expression.

A second later, Samir sighed and lowered his head, saying, "Of course, as descendants of the imperial family, learning the ancient imperial language is a must for the royal family of Radiant Star..."

Thales shook his head.

“I didn’t learn very well; apart from the first few months, I was basically self-taught,” the Star Prince said solemnly, looking at the line of text. “But just looking at the words, I think the meaning of this sentence is roughly…”

Thales said softly, "To omniscience."

Everyone fell silent, pondering the meaning of those words.

Towards omniscience.

Thales slowly raised his head in the silence, gazing at the eye-like pattern.

It felt like I was looking into the eyes of another person.

This made him very uneasy.

But Thales never expected, he really never expected, that what he had searched for in books for years without finding... would be here.

The prison of white bones.

This "eye".

"This is…" "Very well, since that's the case," Ricky said with a smile, interrupting everyone's thoughts:

"Then let us—become omniscient."

As he spoke, he pulled a long, angular, dark green stone from his pocket.

"What is this?" Chisel squinted at the stone that was only the length of a palm and the thickness of two fingers, as if he sensed something was amiss.

This time, Ricky had no intention of hiding anything.

“To open the Black Prison, we need a key that can unlock it,” Ricky stared intently at the object in his hand, his eyes filled with complex emotions. “And the only key in the camp is always on the body of the Baron of the Baki Camp.”

Ricky gently raised the dark green bar in his hand: "Until we found the second one outside the camp."

Russell asked, puzzled, "The key?"

Ricky stopped talking, turned around without hesitation, and pressed the "key" in his hand into the center of the "eye," into the small circle that resembled a pupil.

Geek!

There was a muffled sound.

Thales was startled.

Under everyone's tense gaze, the "pupil" along with the "key" in the middle suddenly bulged outwards by a cylindrical section.

"Tap tap," Ricky smiled, "Spot on target."

He addressed everyone: "The dark cell must be underground... Perhaps you'd like to step back a little and make room?"

In the empty room, everyone quickly retreated until they were against the wall behind them.

The next second, Ricky tentatively grasped the protruding cylinder and slowly twisted it.

Until I heard a "click" from the mechanism.

Everyone held their breath, looking around curiously.

The first person to sense that something was wrong was Thales.

Through his hellish senses, he saw that the four "wells" on the ground were actually drawing air from them.

No, it's air rushing in!

This is……

While Thales was still in shock, a faint sound came from underground.

Rumble…

It trembled slightly.

Everyone was startled and stared intently at the floor tiles in the room.

Rumble…

But they were wrong.

It's not the ground that's changed.

It was the wall.

Rumble…

"No!" Samir turned and roared, "The wall!"

"The wall is retreating!"

Thales instinctively took a step forward and anxiously looked behind him along with the others.

Rumble…

really.

It's a wall.

Eight walls are simultaneously retreating in parallel!

It looks as if the ground is expanding.

Rumble…

To everyone's astonishment, several walls in the room simultaneously receded, revealing gaps between the different walls that were constantly widening!

Fortunately, the disturbance only lasted for about ten seconds before subsiding.

The wall stopped moving backward.

Thales stared in shock at the walls that had inexplicably moved backward, and at the hollow gaps that had appeared on the ground where they had been removed, stretching for several meters.

Viewed from above, it looks like an octagonal room that has suddenly been stretched outwards by a circle.

The part that was pulled apart...

Thales figured it out.

Those were not gaps, but layers of spiral stone staircases, descending from the center of the room.

I don't know where it leads.

Thinking of this, Thales subconsciously glanced again at the sentence under the pattern.

"Oh my God……"

Russell stared in disbelief at the spiral staircase that had suddenly appeared beneath his feet: "I've heard that the Star Kingdom and Steel City are on good terms and that their forging skills are superb, but this is..."

Chisel stared in disbelief at the abrupt change, warily surveying the now-larger room: "Where exactly is this...?"

Ricky laughed.

"You know, the Prison of Bones is clearly a prison for hardened criminals, so why does it only have so few guards to maintain basic operations?"

Ricky switched to a different torch and said calmly, "That's because the real guards of this prison are not living people."

"But rather, they are people who died hundreds or thousands of years ago."

He took the lead, stepped into the crevice, and descended the stone spiral staircase.

"The Prison of Bones is not just a cell, and it is not just for imprisoning criminals."

As he moved forward, Ricky's voice came from underground.

"What it really wants to imprison is the past."

He strode down the spiral staircase that led to an unknown destination, with the swords of calamity following behind him.

Russell was stunned.

"The deceased?"

The former Baron of Exeter frowned immediately and turned to the chisel: "Imprison the past... what does he mean by that?"

But the assassin with the Shadow Shield looked serious.

“In my long career, I’ve seen a lot of strange things,” Qianzi said, staring at the eerie room. “But the most unsettling of them all was the legend that the well-informed Teng told one night.”

Russell was stunned: "Teng? Legend?"

Chisel nodded, growing increasingly uneasy: "Legend has it that before the final war, even before the imperial era, there existed a group of people like this in the world."

"They disregard taboos and authority, yet they possess vast knowledge, superb skills, and are simply unbelievable."

Chisel gritted his teeth and looked up at the strange emblem on the wall:

"They were once the most dazzling people in the world."

"Until the merciless history turned them all to dust, leaving no trace, not even a single piece of paper."

Russell's eyebrows undulated.

The most dazzling existence?

"you are right……"

Chisel shook his head. He saw Thales being taken away as well, so he quickly followed.

Thales followed Samir cautiously down the stairs. It was clear that no one had been here for a long time, so much so that every step kicked up a cloud of dust, forcing the short prince to cover his mouth and nose to avoid coughing repeatedly.

This place gave him a very bad feeling.

In the pitch-black darkness, even his hellish senses couldn't help him.

Only torches illuminated the stone steps beneath our feet.

It's getting deeper and deeper.

It's getting lower and lower.

It's getting darker.

After climbing countless steps, Thales finally stepped onto the ground and breathed a sigh of relief.

“First floor,” Ricky’s voice drifted over, “We’ve arrived.”

The prince of the stars took a deep breath, his curiosity and excitement mixed with a strange unease and fear, and looked up at his surroundings.

The swords of calamity raised their torches and looked around in surprise.

It is still an octagonal, spacious room large enough to accommodate dozens of people.

Unlike the room on the ground floor, the dark bricks here are exquisitely crafted, and the material is unknown. In the very center of the room stands a thick pillar, with a circle of curved stone tables placed around it.

But Ricky paid no attention to the stone pillar; instead, he turned to the eight walls.

Following his torch, Thales then noticed that the eight walls here were not actually "walls".

Instead, it was a fence made up of thin metal pillars running from top to bottom, each covered with a layer of gray dust.

Just like...

Thales looked at the fences and could vaguely see the spaces behind them.

Just like...

Thales thought anxiously: It's like a prison cell.

Ricky, holding a torch, approached one of the metal fences, illuminating the scene behind it.

Thales shuddered and took a step back!
bone.

Exactly.

It's a skeleton.

Human remains.

Ricky held the torch and walked around, illuminating the eight spacious cells.

Behind each "cell" the ground was covered with a thick layer of dried human skeletons, including ribs, arms, legs, and skulls, many of which were covered with faded clothes covered in dust.

I don't know what year or month it was.

Samir stood before Thales, gazing at the ancient skeletons, his heart pounding, and he unconsciously clenched his fists.

“It seems there are no more living people on the first floor,” Ricky shook his head helplessly. “Unfortunately, we still have to go down.”

Russell and Chisel followed closely behind, arriving at the "first level" of the cell.

"This is……"

Russell looked around and his eyes widened: "This is the Prison of Bones?"

The chisel was frowning, seemingly unable to speak.

Ricky snorted and waved his torch at his equally astonished companions.

"of course."

"Welcome to the 'Black Prison'—the true main body of the Prison of Bones."

Ricky walked to the pillar in the center of the room, raised the torch, and illuminated the pattern on the pillar.

That's another "eye".

The same emblem as the room on the ground.

And the ancient imperial script beneath his eyes.

[The path to omniscience.]

“A thousand years ago, this place had another name.”

The leader of the Blade of Calamity looked at the emblem and sighed:

"The fourth branch of the Alchemy Tower—the Imprisonment Research Institute."

At that moment, Thales unconsciously clenched his teeth.

Ricky turned around and looked solemnly at the skeletons in the eight cells.

"And it's also in a little-known part of history..."

His next words made Thales' eyes widen.

"The first batch of anti-demon armed forces..."

"The place of birth".

(End of this chapter)