Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 142

Chapter 142: The Top
His body was on fire, lighting up the whole lake.

But that didn’t last long, as the flames began to spread, attaching themselves to the cursed water.

A fire that burns water? No, it was a fire that burnt everything’s that categorized as evil.

{purgatory’s flames}(tier-7)

The blazing fire slowly started eating away the lake’s matter, and the beast, scared by the attack it had never seen, turned around just before it could clench its mouth around Hans’s body.

The level of the lake was quickly lowering, as the fire’s spreading was becoming faster by the second.

In just a dozen seconds, half of the lake was burning, and the beast, not knowing where to run anymore,

Decided to kill the source of this threat to subdue it.

It was still too scared to cross the fire, so it instead jumped out of the water and landed on the surface right above Hans.

The monster then broke the little ice island with its paw before submerging itself once again as quickly as it could.

It was certain that once killed the human the spell would cease, so it gave it its all, and swimming incredibly fast toward Hans, it hadn’t even thought that the human might’ve been prepared for its arrival.

When Hans, inside the once pitch-black water, saw the beast arrive from above, he thought one thing:

‘Got you’

Hans closed the spell on the beast, completely surrounding himself with flames to burn it alive.

And it worked, the monster let out a last suffering whistle in the excruciating pain of being burned alive, before stopping its movements forever.

Since he couldn’t move, Hans had to wait for the fire to burn down the whole lake before getting out of there, and that took a couple of minutes, during which his mana steadily decreased.

When he could finally breathe once again, he only had half of his mana left.

‘I hadn’t ever used it in combat before.

It sure did what it was supposed to.

Pergatory’s flames… in the legends these are supposed to be the flames that wash away the sins of the sinners before they can pass to paradise.

But in reality, these flames only burn things with an evil attribute, extremely specific, but extremely efficient considering that the only monsters I fight are the definition of evil.

Anyway, to think they could burn a lake this deep…’

Hans looked up and discovered he was almost a hundred meters below the surface.

Glacial lakes are known to be deep and narrow, so it actually wasn’t the worst he could’ve found.

Because he was protected by the hole’s tall walls, there weren’t any strong winds down there, allowing him to lift himself to the surface with the help of {telekinesis} and {repulsion}

Once back up, he decided to leave the place.

The first encounter had left him with no more than half his mama, and he hadn’t even fought a miniboss, just a normal monster, he feared what might’ve been waiting for him beyond the remnants of that lake.

He had a promise to uphold, and before all, he didn’t want to die.

He left the gate and returned to camp, even if just less than three hours had passed since he had been gone.

But something else was bothered by his actions…

Hundreds of meters away, sitting on an ice throne on top of a mountain, a skeleton hidden behind a hooded cloak heard the last scream of the monster.

“Khalin… died?!”

…

Caleb had just finished explaining to his fellow team members that they would remain in that place for a few more days when Hans appeared in the distance.

He quickly hurried towards him to see if everything was alright, and it was, but the mana he emanated was lower than usual, for Caleb, who had spent the last seven days with him, noticing such a change in his mana was normal.

When they got inside a tent, Hans sat down, ready to tell the curious Caleb what he had seen inside the gate.

But at that moment, a woman rushed inside the tent.

Lily Adams, the science teacher.

“Oh, you are here too!? That’s good”

She looked upset, so none of the two dared ask what was going on.

“Tell me! What the hell are you thinking right now?”

She grabbed Caleb by the collar.

“We don’t have the resources to survive more than four days here, if we stall for time right now we may find ourselves without any food before we even get to kill the boss.

You are dumb, but I know you aren’t that dumb.

Tell me right now! And don’t even think about lying.”

Caleb was panicking, he didn’t know what to answer, and most of all, Lily Adams was extremely close to him, making him uncomfortable.

“Could you… let go please?”

Said Caleb.

Realizing what she had done, she immediately released her hold and distanced herself.

“I-I’m sorry, something got the best of me”

Hans watched the two of them shocked, while his mouth remained open.

‘Were these two…. Always a thing?’

“Ahm ahm”

Hans cleared his throat to let his presence be noticed, and they both turned their heads toward him before apologizing for the show.

“Haha… how long has it been?”

Asked Hans embarrassed.

Replying was Caleb since he was the only one of the two who felt comfortable speaking with Hans.

“This… about a couple of months, after work ended she finally had a bit of free time so we started going out”

“That’s… good”

The situation had just become extremely awkward, and since none of the three people wanted to continue talking about the same thing, Hans took the chance to explain to Lily what was happening.

She was considered one of the most renowned world experts about gates and their particularities, so having her as a helping hand wouldn’t have been a bad choice.

Hans talked about the gate hidden behind the wind wall, and then about his encounter with the beast inside it.

He referred to it as an irregular gate, since that was the closest description he could find.

Lily’s passion for analyzing the gates was immediately set on fire, as she questioned every little detail she could think of.

They even ended up taking her to the gate to let her analyze it, but she still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it.

In the end, the whole day was wasted in research and chatter, and Hans’s night was passed meditating, to speed up the recovery of his lost mana.

The next morning, he left without saying goodbye to anyone and entered the gate just as the sun began showing itself.

The cold persisted, but so did he.

He passed by the place where the burnt carcass of the beast should’ve been but it had disappeared.

However, Hans had no time to investigate the matter.

Based on Lily’s words, the five days of waiting promised by Caleb weren’t possible, he had to hurry up and close the gate.

So with a set goal in mind, he continued heading forward towards the strange power he felt.

It was similar to his mana, and yet it felt completely different.

As if it was a cold flame compared to his fire.

He had started feeling it from the moment he entered the innermost part of the blizzard, and it became more intense with every step he took.

He encountered another obstacle in his way:

A frozen mountain.

There was a staircase carved in the ice that seemed to lead all the way to the top, even if he wasn’t sure because the blizzard limited his sight.

He was now sure of it, humans once lived in this place.

The monster he fought the previous day not only had a name, that could’ve been given to him by a highly intelligent monster but also a title.

Hans knew that the title didn’t represent strength, but fame.

The fact that it had a title, meant that someone feared or respected it.

Now that he knew about it, he started worrying.

What would he have done if the source of the power was a human?

Should he have killed them? Or should he have tried to reason with them?

They would not even speak the same language.

He didn’t know, but one thing was for sure…

He had to reach the top, and he had to start immediately if he wanted to do it before sunset.

He got to walking and faced the strong winds that tried to push him off the cliff or against the mountain many times.

He proceeded, step after step, hoping to soon reach the top.

When three hours had passed, his mind was confused, he didn’t know how long he still had left to go.

But he had no choice, he walked for what seemed like an eternity, and many hours later, he finally made it to where he could see the end.

The air was scarce, and his breathing was heavy.

It must’ve been thousands of meters above sea level for it to be so hard to breathe.

He could see the sun setting since the clouds had stopped obscuring his view a couple of hours earlier.

He was tired, extremely tired…

but…

he had finally made it to the top.