As the warrior lay on the floor, my ally stepped closer. "You could have finished it much quicker, but you decided to show off..."

  "I could have," I replied. "But if I did, I wouldn't have been able to adjust to my empowered body, and I would have gained less respect from them."

  "Respect is for the dead. Win, and then you can play nice."

  "I got it my way to work, and I will keep doing it that way."

  "You will die for it one day..."

  After that, no one tried to stop us, and we went into the main city of this temple. We saw hundreds of buildings and a few farmhouses; half of the places felt... empty.

  He walked up behind me. "This place used to be filled with beings of every kind, until elves, humans, and dwarves decided that they are better than others and left to build their own kingdoms."

  "Makes a lot of sense, as elves are either ignorant, full of themselves, or just don't like other races. I never saw or heard about orcs, dark elves, or people that were half-beasts ever entering their lands. And humans... and humans... I don't think I need to think about it further. Everyone knows."

  As we look around, we see multiple places that could have been blacksmiths, leather workshops, or alchemy labs. Some places hadn't been touched for years; others seemed pretty lively, with food on display and some shopkeepers looking for customers. As we traveled through what I expected was the marketplace, I saw a few orcs and dark elves following us from the gate where we fought. They were clearly unsettled by our appearance here, and it made sense since we had killed their defensive monsters and beaten a few of their warriors to a pulp, not even mentioning their captain, leader, or king—whoever he was.

  Then, something hit me: if they lived in here, then for sure they sometimes had to leave this temple without the monsters going berserk while waking up. I turned around and moved towards the guards.

  "What are you doing?!" my confused, dark-robed ally asked.

  "Surely we are not the first ones that entered the temple in the last years. I am trying to figure out if we missed something."

  As I started approaching, the warriors stopped and clearly started getting more and more nervous the closer I got. When I was right in front of them, I pointed at the gate and at the monsters and raised my brow. They were clearly confused, so I just lifted a corpse through the gate and pulled it back in. When it crossed the gate, it slammed down behind it. I gave them a look again and lifted my brow expectantly. Most of them were as confused as I was. That was fair; they were probably guardians that chose to protect this place for a longer time than normally possible by turning to stone, but there was one that clearly looked a little bit uncomfortable.

  Gotcha, bitch.

  As I look at him smiling and wave my hand for him to give me something, it clearly looked like it was going to be more annoying to get him to do it, as he really disliked me. I looked closer at him and I saw why. It was the same dark elf I had set on fire and punched in the face—haha. He had new clothing and armor now, obviously, but his face still didn't look pretty, and he was clearly mad at me. As I started to smile, I heard an explosion far behind me in the temple. A minute later, I saw my ally walking out of the temple with his cape half-burned, his boots half-destroyed, and a really mad face.

  I greeted him, but he instantly barked at me to shut up, clearly not happy about the outcome.

  "You got anything out of these piles of garbage? They probably have a fucking key or talisman so traps won't be this much of a bother." He looked at the elf who was smiling now and punched him in the face. "Something funny, piss-worm?!"

  "Hmm, you might need to leave him more intact. It seems he has something that will make our lives easier."

  "I don't fucking care if he has stuff that will disable these fucking traps! I will beat him up and burn his ass like a well-done kebab until he fucking gives it to me!"

  I just shook my head and looked at the elf again and extended my hand. He clearly realized that he would not be enjoying his time with an insanely mad wizard if he didn't give him what he wanted, so he just gave me a talisman.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "There we go."

  "Give it to me," my ally said in anger, but I just pulled my hand back.

  "Nah-ah-ah. I was the one that found out what we need to look out for, so it's mine. Also, I don't want you to go back to the temple with half-burned boots, a cape, and smelling of burned clothing."

  He slowly calmed down and agreed. We looked at the warriors, and he slowly showed his cape, then the previous dark elf, and then again at his cape. They nodded, knowing there was no point to argue and that it was better to keep us semi-happy, as we could achieve the same thing but in a lot less appealing way.

  We crossed to the left from the market and walked for a few minutes, crossing the crafting district. After that was a district with cages and monsters inside of them, and if we crossed to the right, we would eventually cross the bidding section. It was not our goal, so we proceeded forward. We encountered housing districts with a few inns and some mercenary buildings with a few guards. This district alone was the biggest one yet, and we needed twenty minutes to finally pass it.

  We started to get closer to our goal as we saw some fighting grounds and something that looked similar to a mage college. We proceeded to the building and entered. Upon seeing us, a dark elf blinked, stumbled a little bit, and, confused, started talking with a few of them. They talked for a while, and at one moment, an orc pointed at the burned robes of my companion. The dark elf shook his head and sighed before uttering a few words. After that, they exchanged greetings, and we walked out of the building. The orc motioned for us to follow him, and we moved for a minute.

  We saw something that I immediately recognized as an armory. We moved a little bit further and entered the building. He moved his hand towards something in the darkness of the building, and I already prepared to melt him with a ball of fire and electricity, but the light turned on... Oh. Never mind, I guess they used magic to light up the place. I guess it's more efficient than trying to find a torch, trying to light it on fire, and then searching for stuff in half-darkness. This way, we were able to see everything, and we proceeded inside. We saw a lot of steel, iron, and silver armor and some material I couldn't recognize. We followed the orc and found ourselves in the robes section; they also had a little bit of enchanted armoring in some places.

  "That's decently much better than what I had before. Fuckers had decent stuff."

  I nod my head and look around. There were a lot of enchanted weapons as well. Some looked like they were made of pure light; others were fully dark. I saw two that caught my eye. A khopesh was a weapon that I always used in my dreams, killing everything in there. I remember every moment just as if it were real—maybe it was, in a different reality, a different place. I picked both of them up, knowing that it might be a little bit hard, especially since I usually fight with a short sword with a shield and a longsword.

  We exited the building and started walking towards the center of this temple. We got many looks along the way. Its residents didn't really know what to think about us; some drew their weapons slightly, some entered their buildings and closed their doors, and some were curious, looking at us and thinking about what they could possibly gain from this situation.

  We continued walking, and half an hour later, we reached our goal. The entrance to the center had a dangerous—many would even say horrific—look. It was constructed of bricks built from stacks of bones and skulls that were later flooded with molten steel to make them more steady. There was no door, so they were very confident in their traps, and likely for a good reason.

  As we walked through the first room, nothing happened. But the second we reached the middle of the second room, darkness fell upon us. We created fireballs in our hands, lighting up the room, and to our eyes, dark shades with blades of darkness appeared. I threw fireballs onto four of them and turned to the shades on my left, but they were already destroyed by my ally. I looked at him, and he just shrugged.

  "I was already there before. It seems that even though that talisman might help a small amount, we still need to get through this shit the same way."

  "Where was the part your cape got burned?"

  He pointed to a door before the next room. I nodded, and we opened it. We walked in, and as we ventured through it, fire slowly started building up and the doors behind us closed. I looked at him, and he showed me a vent above us.

  So that’s how you got out.

  I eyed the room once more and saw a pillar that had a hole in it, similar to the shape of the amulet. I grabbed him and showed him the pillar. He understood, and we started moving up. The pillar's floor was burning, and fire started to shoot out of the walls in some places. Not only that, but on the platforms we had to jump to, there were pressure plates that activated bolts of fire we had to dodge. At least they didn't increase the rising speed of the fire.

  We jumped to another platform, activating a pressure plate, and fire fell onto our heads. I blocked it with a barrier and searched for the next platform. There was no new platform we could see, but my mind was telling me there was. I focused on this feeling, and I jumped left... Instead of falling into lakes of fire, I was standing on something rough but transparent. No pressure plates this time—it was a test by itself. My ally followed my movement, and I tuned into my feelings again.

  I jumped diagonally to the right, then to the right, back, right, right forward, and forward. While it seemed it was still so far from the floor that the pillar was on, I had a strong feeling to jump. I was about to jump when he screamed.

  "What are you doing?! You are not going to make it! Are you crazy? We can just force parts of the building to create the road for us—the building be damned!"

  I ignored him and jumped.