World Keeper
Chapter 1268: Accursed Halls

Sure enough, after Tsubaki signed her own contract, she could immediately feel it reaching out, the power of the contract stretching to cover the entirety of the Myriad Beasts Guild territory. As Lyrica had said, Tsubaki’s words had become absolute, her power within those universes no less than Udona’s within Deckan.

She had never expected that she had suddenly gained this level of authority, and wasn’t entirely sure how she should feel about it. Regardless, there was nothing that she could do about it at this point. Even if she tried to give the title back to Lyrica, she knew that the other woman would refuse.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem like she would really need to do too much with this new authority, unless she saw something that she was determined to change. As she was thinking about that, she saw Lena poking her head into the room, an anxious expression on her face. “What’s wrong, Lena?” She asked curiously.

“There aren’t any other major problems regarding Hal Tua that I need to worry about, right?” She asked, and Tsubaki shook her head. Lena let out a relieved sigh, patting her chest. “Oh, good. I was getting sick of being cooped up in that tower all day. Every time I tried to get ready to leave, a new issue cropped up…”

Tsubaki couldn’t help but blink at that, before shaking her head. “No, there shouldn’t be anything like that now.” She said in a calm tone.

Suddenly, a digital voice spoke up, Hermes announcing that a guest had arrived. When Tsubaki heard that it was Chelsea, she directed the AI to guide her to them. However, when she glanced back to Lena, she found the petite kitsune to have suddenly vanished.

Tsubaki arched her brow, but didn’t pay too much attention to this. Instead, she waited for Chelsea to arrive, sitting down while Lyrica returned to her normal duties. A few moments later, Chelsea entered Olympus with a small smile, glancing around.

“Can I help you with something?” Tsubaki asked in a respectful tone, and Chelsea nodded her head slightly.

“Yes, I think you can.” She smiled, before explaining. “We’ve gotten the new code for Hal Tua set up. It’s not perfect, but it optimizes all of the current system code and releases the first batch of upgrades, such as the Digital Conversion system and expands the current virtual reality to cover their universe as well.”

Tsubaki blinked, but nodded her head in understanding. “I see. You worked quite fast. In that case, may I ask how it is that I can help you? If you already have all of this finished, I don’t know what there is for me to assist with.”

Chelsea simply chuckled. “It’s the tower. It serves as the core of Hal Tua’s system, and is the only place to make such a large-scale system change that will spread to the other universes. However, it’s designed in a way to prevent Origins like us from entering, so I can’t go in to apply the update myself. I need someone with the authority to enter the tower.”

Tsubaki paused, before letting out a long sigh. “Lena… I know you haven’t gone anywhere…” She said to the empty air, hearing a low whine from a vacant space near the wall.

“But I just got back!” Lena complained. Her body seemed to fade into view, with neither Chelsea nor Tsubaki having been able to sense her presence just moments prior. “Do I really have to run off to that tower again? It feels so… wrong in there.”

Chelsea offered a wry smile. “Sorry, but this should be fast. According to the information you’ve sent back, you will just need to replace the system core at the heart of the tower with the new one that we’ve developed. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to return safely.”

Lena grumbled, but walked over and held her hand out. Chelsea passed her a blue, egg-shaped stone with glowing white lines criss-crossing along it. “Can’t believe I have to go through that stupid statue hall again…” She muttered mutinously, turning to walk out the door.

Chelsea simply blinked, looking back at Tsubaki. “Statue hall?” She asked, having not heard anything about this from Lena’s earlier reports.

Tsubaki nodded her head. “It’s one of the early security systems of the tower. A row of humanoid statues line either side of the main hallway. Typically, they are inert, but this changes once a sentient being acknowledges their existence.”

“Once they have been acknowledged, typically by someone’s gaze passing over them, they have an effective lethal radius of ten meters each. If, at any point when the target is within ten meters, the statue is not observed by any conscious entity, the target will immediately be attacked by force equivalent to a level two-thousand expert combatant. Speed is irrelevant, as it seems to be an area-based attack.”

Chelsea arched a brow, curious. “That sounds like a defensive memetic construct. But, wouldn’t memetic constructs like that be disabled in the tower?”

However, Tsubaki shook her head. “It’s not memetic, just advanced enchantment. We learned about it prior to our assault on the tower in our invasion, because we discovered that the tower had purchased these constructs in bulk after their invention.”

“Thankfully, it’s not that hard to deal with them. All you have to do is walk through the hall with a blindfold in a straight line. That’s why we just called it the Blind Hallway in our report. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really apply to Lena anymore.” Tsubaki said with a sigh, and Chelsea blinked curiously.

“Why not?” She asked, tilting her head.

“She looked at them in our first invasion, being our scout. We didn’t know where in the tower they were stationed, so we needed one of us to keep a lookout. Lena volunteered, confident that between her domains and the white energy of the White Shadow, she would have been able to avoid their attacks by resetting their awareness of her.”

With another sigh, Tsubaki continued. “However, the act of resetting their awareness triggered them again as a form of acknowledgement, and we didn’t find another way to disable their attacks before continuing.”

“If that’s the case, how’s she going to get through the hall?” Chelsea asked, her eyes going wide.

Lena grumbled to herself, holding the system core in her hands as she approached the hall. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes, preparing herself. Teleportation abilities were blocked within the tower, so she couldn’t just teleport herself to the end of the hall.

In the back of her mind, she mentally mapped out the locations of the five statues which she had previously triggered, and knew that there was no way to pass through the hall without entering their range. After all, the hallway itself was only four meters wide, and five tall. Even if she clung to the ceiling, she would be within their attack range.

If there was anything beneficial, it was that the statues themselves couldn’t move. Their physical forms were anchored in place, and they could only send out an instantaneous projection of their power when their conditions were triggered. Lena had even tried to completely alter or hide her presence before, but it wasn’t enough to stop the statues from identifying her.

I swear, whoever made these things should get their heads checked! She complained inwardly, knowing that they likely were equipped with something similar to World Sight to identify targets.

Walking forward, Lena noticed that she was about to enter the range of the first statue. This statue was that of a tall, muscular human wielding a giant axe. As soon as Lena stepped into its range, she felt the blade of the axe crashing against her side. Without hesitation, she tossed the system core upwards to avoid damage, and dissolved the middle of her torso.

The phantom axe passed through her body like smoke, and she quickly caught the egg again, continuing to walk forward while healing her side where the axe had struck. That’s how these statues were… they would only strike each target once whenever they entered their range, and would then become inert until the next time they entered.

As long as Lena’s timing was perfect, she could minimize damage by responding appropriately to each attack. However, because she couldn’t see the attack coming, and couldn’t extend her senses outwards to predict it, she had to wait until it was already on her before reacting.

This made it especially difficult, and ensured that even Lena herself could not pass through this hall without suffering damage. Thankfully, Lena had memorized their attack styles. The next one was a man holding an open book, which Lena knew was a mage.

It’s either fire, ice, or lightning… She thought to herself, taking a deep breath and pre-emptively throwing the system core into the air again just as she stepped into its range. Sure enough, she felt a dense bolt of magical lightning crash into her body, and she immediately used her divine power to transform into stone.

As the spell ended, she caught the egg again, returning her singed body back to normal. Her health bar dipped slightly, showing the amount of damage that she had been forced to take. Honestly, the ninja clan would love things like these. They’re traps that even I can’t completely avoid.

Of course, if Lena really wanted to, she could just destroy these statues. They were reinforced, but it wasn’t to the degree of making them indestructible. However, doing so would trigger a lockdown on the hall itself, sealing it with the power of a reinforced world barrier for ten years according to the information she obtained while managing the tower.

This was likely meant to be a safety mechanism of Sanction’s. If someone burst through and entered the tower during an invasion, destroying these statues, he would have plenty of time to calmly wait until the next annual meeting to get a defense ticket. Unless that individual had the strength to destroy a thousand universes with one attack, they would be helpless against Hal Tua’s reinforced barrier.

Thus, Lena had left these defenses intact, not having an easy way to get rid of them without creating more problems. As she was thinking this, she tossed the egg again. This time, she felt a large, blunt object smashing into the top of her head, and transformed her entire body into smoke for a split second. Three down. She muttered to herself, changing back to normal just in time to catch the egg.

The problem now was the last two, which were a form of trap. They were placed right at the end of the hall, on either side of the door. This meant that their effective attack radius actually extended out into the next corridor by several meters. Lena had been tricked by them once before, her body cut into three parts before she realized what had happened.

With wary steps, she moved forward, making sure to guide herself to enter both of their ranges at exactly the same time. That way, she didn’t have to risk one of them destroying the system core while it was falling back into her hands.

At the last moment, she threw the core up, feeling two swords striking her body. One of them went for her neck, and the other pierced her chest, forcing her to rapidly dissolve those parts of her body. I hate this hallway!

Hearing Tsubaki’s explanation of Lena’s strategy, Chelsea only seemed more confused. “If they can be avoided like that, why doesn’t she just transform before entering their range to begin with?” She asked, as if that would be an obvious solution.

Tsubaki nodded her head in agreement. “She tried that once. Apparently, they react to the form that the user has when they enter the designated area. So, if someone is in a nonstandard form, they will use a different attack pattern to target those forms. When she tried to go through as a cloud of smoke, one of the statues attacked with a vacuum blade to destroy her smoke.”

Chelsea blinked, nodding hesitantly. “Yeah… that would make them tricky. I kind of want one now… for reasons.”