"Hah, looks like he saw through it. And here I thought I pulled it off rather well," muttered Riley, staring at the abandoned bar.
The reason he had come to that conclusion was simple. This was literally the third day since he had woken up here, and his captors had yet to show up. This didn't mean he had remained in the dark underground dungeon the entire time. At this point he had probably memorized the entire layout of the place, given how much he had been roaming. Empty. It was all empty, and from the looks of it, the previous occupants had left in a hurry.
So his conclusion was this: those men from before, and whoever had been living up here, were ordinary people. Ordinary in the sense that they didn't have ether, or rather, hadn't awakened. They must have realized he was dangerous given that he had come from Ember Mountain and survived a treacherous fall, and so they had probably guessed he could manipulate ether and made a run for it. A fight between an ordinary person and someone wielding ether was like comparing the distance between two planets from different galaxies.
It was just that stark.
But something felt wrong about how quickly they had gone. Riley had a nagging feeling there was something more to it, something that transcended the fear of someone able to manipulate ether.
"I'm out of food. I can't stay here any longer," he muttered, taking in his surroundings.
From what he could tell, the place had been built underground, the dungeon he had escaped from going even further below. It was like a colony of ants, the interconnecting tunnels forming compartments of all sorts, something of a maze. Given he had already spent so much time here, he had to figure out the exit, and that was precisely what he was staring at now. Something covered from above, with no ladder leading up. From the looks of it, those men had taken the ladder on their way out, probably to trap him here.
"Fire glyph and wind. That should do it," Riley muttered after some thought.
He stretched his hand forward and instantly a strange collection of symbols forming a circle appeared around his wrist, rotating. Something he had never seen before. However...
"...Hmm."
That was his only comment before he focused back on the ceiling. That was another thing Riley had noticed these past days, an overwhelming apathy so intense it felt as though he was turning into a machine. He couldn't feel anything. Not sadness, not happiness, not pain. Nothing. Well, there was one thing. A compelling, inexplicable need to kill the protagonist, the heroines, and the entire band of them. Jayden, Diana, William, Jeremy, every single person he felt had brought him to this point. In fact, the entire Empire was going to pay. It was like a program running in his mind, a single command he was willing to do anything to carry out.
"Blow."
A single word, and a series of lines began forming out of nothing. Two triangles stacked upon each other in opposite positions, intertwined with lines and circles, expanding outward and...
BOOM.
The entire ceiling was blown to bits.
[Ether: 180/500]
"I overdid it," he muttered, staring at his palms with mild fascination. His ether output was now at an unprecedented level. "Is this just because the system activated?" he whispered to himself, but there was no answer, so he let it go.
He aligned both hands to his sides, palms open and facing down, and said, "Rupture."
The next instant a blast of wind so condensed and compressed that when it met the ground beneath him...
BOOM.
He shot upward in a sonic blast, tearing through the air, and within moments he was out of the ground and well into the sky, suspended for a breathless instant at maximum acceleration before gravity began to reclaim him.
[Ether: 20/500]
Would have to do.
He focused the remaining ether into his legs and whispered, "Rupture," and launched himself forward.
But just then he noticed something.
When he had first looked up from underground after blowing the ceiling off, he had assumed the sun had simply set. But now, fully above ground, he could see it clearly.
A red sky.
"Where the hell is this place?"