The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy - Chapter 405

Capítulo 405: The Beginning Of The End [LXVII]

After trying to get out of Kael’s head the idea that he was the chosen one, they continued walking for a while.

And the space was simply huge!

Unlike the arcade above, which was roughly the size of a decent supermarket, the underground graveyard stretched far beyond that.

Easily twenty hypermarkets put together, maybe even more.

The ceiling disappeared into darkness, and the ground beneath their feet felt endless, broken only by scattered remains of battles long past.

They walked for more than ten minutes, and yet the end of the space never came into view.

Unfortunately for them, there was nothing even remotely comparable to the Heaven Swallowing Sword.

If anything, all they found were scraps like broken hilts, shattered armor plates, warped chunks of divine metal that had long since lost their divinity.

“Fuuuuuckkk!” Kael cursed loudly, kicking a half-buried piece of twisted metal. “Why is this place so damn huge?!”

“Damn… for once, I agree with you,” Tyrian muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.

“It feels like we’re walking in circles.”

As for Aestrea… his eyes were in an almost desperate search for anything valuable that could potentially help him.

Sure… now he could use two swords in combat, but other than that, he didn’t have a life-saving artifact or anything like that.

‘…Even my Divine Sense can’t feel anything out of the ordinary. Tsk, maybe it was a waste of time coming here?’ he thought, clicking his tongue internally.

‘…I mean, the Heaven Swallowing Sword can be very useful if it can cancel authorities, but that’s still just more offense.’

Aestrea’s pace slowed almost imperceptibly.

‘I need something that can protect me… or even save my life in dangerous cases.’

He lifted his gaze, scanning the endless darkness ahead once more.

The ruins remained quiet, almost mockingly so, as if daring him to keep searching for something that might not exist.

“Oi. Hey. Guys.”

Kael’s voice cut through the silence, unusually restrained.

Aestrea and Tyrian both stopped and turned toward him.

Kael was standing a little ahead, his head tilted upward, his eyes narrowed.

His usual carefree expression was gone, replaced by something closer to focus, but not unheard of when something genuinely caught his attention.

“…You seeing that?” Kael asked, slowly raising his arm and pointing forward.

Aestrea followed the direction of his finger, his Divine Sense spreading naturally as his gaze landed on the far distance.

Far ahead, barely visible through the dim light and layers of dust, stood what looked like the remains of a massive structure.

Not scattered rubble like the rest of the graveyard, but an actual ruin that was quite big, as if it had once been a fortress, a sanctuary, or something meant to contain rather than to simply exist.

Even more striking was what stood behind it.

A giant wall stretched from one side of the cavern to the other, finally marking what seemed to be the end of the space.

It wasn’t smooth, nor was it made from a single material.

Instead, it was formed from countless types of rock fused, black stone, pale crystal, veins of metallic ore, and even patches that looked almost organic in texture.

“…That has to be the end,” Tyrian muttered, staring at the wall. “There’s no way this place keeps going past that.”

Aestrea didn’t reply immediately as his eyes narrowed slightly, his Divine Sense pressing against the ruin and the wall behind it.

Unlike everything else they had encountered so far, this area didn’t seem empty, as Aestrea could feel a very faint trace coming from the ruins.

“…There’s a trace of divinity,” Aestrea finally said.

Both Kael and Tyrian froze for a split second.

Then Kael’s eyes lit up immediately, a greedy glint flashing through them.

“Divinity? You mean like, actual god-tier stuff? Weapons? Artifacts?”

“Or a sealed being,” Tyrian said quietly, his expression much more cautious.

That made Kael’s excitement falter just a little.

“…Right. That too,” he muttered.

Tyrian kept staring at the ruin, his brows slowly knitting together.

“This battlefield was from the war between gods and demons. Anything left intact enough to still carry divinity after all this time…” He paused.

“It could be something that survived.”

Or something that was sealed.

“We won’t know unless we check.” Aestrea remained calm, but his hand had already settled on Midnight’s hilt.

“And if it wakes up?” Kael hesitated.

Aestrea glanced back at them.

“Then you don’t use the Void Breaking Spell.”

Both of them stiffened.

“What?” Kael blurted out.

“That thing is literally our emergency exit.”

“If you tear space inside a place like this,” Aestrea said flatly, “you might wake up things that should stay buried. Or collapse the entire structure.”

Tyrian swallowed as he knew Aestrea wasn’t exaggerating.

“…So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“If something happens,” Aestrea continued, “I’ll handle it. You only use the spell if it’s absolutely necessary. No exceptions.”

“You always say that.” Kael scratched his head, clearly uncomfortable.

“And it’s usually true,” Tyrian added, though his voice was tense.

Aestrea seriously looked at them once more.

“Agreed?”

There was a brief silence.

“…Fine, but if I die, I’m haunting you,” Kael sighed deeply.

“Only if it truly comes down to it.” Tyrian nodded slowly.

With that, the three of them stepped closer to the ruin.

As they crossed the threshold, the air changed.

The ground beneath their feet was smoother here, ancient stone worn down by time rather than shattered by battle.

The ruin opened into a wide, circular chamber, far larger than it appeared from the outside.

At its center lay a massive circle carved directly into the floor.

Countless sigils covered its surface.

Some were familiar patterns used in sealing formations and divine contracts.

Others were older, twisted in strange ways, their meanings unclear even to Tyrian’s vast knowledge.

The lines glowed dimly, but strangely, other lines of sigils didn’t.

‘…A Sacred Spirit Demon Sealing Formation…’ Aestrea frowned slighly.

This wasn’t something simple.

This kind of formation was one of the highest-grade seals ever devised, the kind specifically created to imprison monsters that refused to die.

If maintained properly, it could restrain a single 9✯ True God for more than five years without weakening.

Which meant one thing.

If something was sealed here, then whatever it was had to be terrifying. At the very least, it had reached the 7✯ realm, and possibly higher.

As for how to destroy it, it was quite simple, actually.

They only needed to find the point where all the sigils intersected, the crucifix formed by their combined directions, and inject a very small amount of mana into that exact spot.

If done correctly, the balance of the formation would shatter instantly.

The difficulty was not breaking it, but finding it.

To locate that crucifix, one had to carefully analyze the flow and direction of every single sigil, then mentally reconstruct how they overlapped.

Some did this by forming an imaginary crucifix in their mind, while others traced the sigils with mana, letting the flows guide them until the true point revealed itself.

A single mistake meant failure or worse, triggering the seal and trapping them inside as well.

“Uh… can someone explain what that means in normal words?” Kael felt a shiver crawl down his spine.

Tyrian stared at the formation with a puzzled look.

“I… actually don’t recognize this one. I’ve seen demon seals, and I’ve seen spirit prisons, but this exact structure…” He shook his head.

“No. This is new to me.”

That alone made Kael uneasy.

“So you’re telling me,” Kael said slowly, “that this thing is so old and nasty that even you, a walking library, don’t know it?”

Tyrian didn’t answer right away.

Aestrea stepped in.

“It’s a seal made specifically to hold something that can’t be killed easily. Instead of destroying it, the gods who made this chose to lock it away and bury it.”

He looked down at the glowing lines again.

“The formation works by overlapping dozens of sealing laws. Each sigil restricts a different aspect, like power, movement, regeneration, even consciousness.”

“Okay… that’s horrifying.” Kael swallowed.

“Breaking it, however, is not complicated.”

Both Kael and Tyrian snapped their attention back to him.

“Not complicated?!” Kael repeated.

“Yes. But like all formations, it has a core weakness.” Aestrea nodded.

He tapped the air lightly with his finger, tracing an invisible cross.

“All these sigils are arranged around a single balance point. Think of it as a lock with a very specific keyhole. The problem is finding it.”

“You mean a crucifix structure?” Tyrian leaned closer, interest overtaking his caution.

“Exactly,” Aestrea replied. “Every sigil points in a direction. When you follow all of them and align their flows in your mind, they intersect at one perfect point.”

He paused, then added, “If you inject even a small amount of mana into that point, the entire formation collapses.”

“That sounds way too easy.” Kael blinked.

“It’s not,” Aestrea said flatly. “Finding that point requires extreme precision. One wrong direction, one misread sigil, and you trigger the seal instead of breaking it.”

“You’d need to either mentally map the entire formation or trace every sigil with mana and reconstruct the crucifix manually,” Tyrian slowly nodded.

“Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare,” Kael groaned.

‘…Mhm, why am I getting a weird feeling about Tyrian this suddenly?’ Aestrea frowned deeply as he looked over to Tyrian, who was staring at the seal as if it was priceless treasure.

‘…Even the crucifix structure is something only people from thousands of years ago should know, and he clearly isn’t thousands of years old since the academy has a certain requirement of age.’

‘Fuck.’

He tapped the hilt of Midnight lightly.

‘I hope my instincts are wrong…’