After coming out of the pyramid temple, kaidrix was very happy. He decided to go further down in the cave. After exploring the pyramid temple, he found an altar, and he saw a mini tower on the altar shining brightly. Kaidrix felt joy in his heart, that he is going to have all the mini towers in this cave, kaidrix just rushed forward to grab it, without examining the alter or the surroundings, but when he tried to pick the tower up, his hand went through it, kaidrix was shocked, He cursed, "dang it... is it an halo gram?... illusion?... Danm... I have the worst luck." This altar was a bit unique; it had a weird pattern all over it, and at its base, it was connected to a big formation. Which was already glowing dimly, giving the feeling that it would run out of fuel soon. The alter was some sort of metalic and ancient mechanical gears, stacked on one and other, and it was a set of four gears in total, The bigger one at its base and the smaller one on top, at the top of the last gear hovers, halo gram of the Tower; every gear has a dial around it. And each is packed with diagrams of the moon, changing forms.
A stone slab on the right side of the altar, with words on it, a riddle perhaps!
"Eight faces I wear, yet none are mine.
I wax and wane, but never in time.
From dark to light, I guide the night,
But touch me wrong, and I vanish from sight.
Stacked in silence, the gears align,
Solve my dance, and the tower is thine."
After some investigation of the moon diagrams on the gear dials, Kaidrix concluded that this riddle is connected to the moon and its shape, judging by the shape on the dials, every dial has eight diagrams on its surface, and every gear has eight dials around it. Moon's changing forms, from the new moon to full moon and from the full moon, back to the waning crescent, completing a cycle of moon changing forms.
The moon undergoes eight distinct phases as it orbits Earth. These phases, in order, are: new moon, waxing crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, waning Gibbous, Last Quarter, and Waning Crescent.
But there were a total of four gears for aligning the moon shape. Kaidrix did further investigation and discovered that every diagram can be changed freely into eight moon shapes, so it means that he has to align every single shape into some kind of cycle.
Yes, there was a visible bright full moon diagram in the middle of the last gear. Seeing Kaidrix immediately understood that he had to align four changes of the moon to one side and the remaining ones to the other side, like drawing a straight line in a circle. kaidrix quickly changed every shape and aligned them from bottom to top and then top to bottom to the other side. When Kaidrix finished, the whole altar turned red and randomized all the shapes on the dials, becoming the evidence of an obvious failure, then a light green gas came from the bottom of the altar, completely silencing the formation under the tower.
The gas was hard to notice. It was too late when kaidrix noticed something had happened. He knew he had messed things up. Now, kaidrix was facing the vicious side of the alter defence, with the last breath of its defensive formation... At first he only felt weird tingling feeling on his body, afte sometime, he started feeling itchy everywhere on his body, Kaidrix felt the urge to scratch his body, it was unbearabale, he had to scratch his body, he noticed with every scratch his nails are filled with his skinn, later he found out the dangerouse reallity, that his whole body is falling apart, like some tiniy creatures were biting and cutting his skin, it was giving the smell of puss and rote, after in its final stage his body turned into black smelly liquid bit by bit. He died again miserably. Surprisingly thing was he did not feel any pain during this whole event. Kaidrix was horrified. He was again in his spirit form, and from the look of it, even his spirit was being affected by this poisonous gas. What a terrific and horrible end. He looked towards the altar, as it was the most dangerous object in the whole cave. Sensing Kaidrix's Soul in danger, his Dantian sucked him in the Dantian, this whole process was not in kaidrix control.
His Dantian glowed with bright blue light, and Kaidrix was in a drowsy state. After an unknown period. kaidrix felt his body being rebuilt, and all the poisonous gas was turned gray and fell on the ground like dust. It was very weird for kaidrix. How can a poisonous gas have something that his body needed? His body repeated the same process; he was back to his black metallic sand form. With very little fleshly feeling. It was second time he died in this damned cave.
Kaidrix felt lucky to be born with this body; if he were not an immortal chaos body, then he would have died by that hymn in the tower. Yet he was still alive, kaidrix felt he was the most mysterious thing than anything around him. he remembered the book Old Ghost gave him; he needed to drop blood on the book, but he was again with no blood. A sandman. He sensed that if he practiced his spiritual arts, he could recover, but it was a very slow process. The fastest way was to consume beings with flesh and soul. But he dismissed all the ideas from his mind and focused again on the altar. He decided to further investigate the altar. Then, later, he discovered, the shape of the moon is different on every dial, making each dial four separate cycles, with four gears, with the moon's eight changing forms around them, making every gear a complete cycle of the moon changing forms.
kaidrix was confused; it was really hard to tell a difference between the diagrams; they looked exactly alike, but some shapes were rotated, and the while cycle was rotated to that angle, and this way, it was a total of four cycles kaidrix discovered. He felt confused. After some time, kaidrix remembered that he had read an article on the internet. The post says that Earth has a north pole, a northern hemisphere, and then the equator, which is the middle of the Earth, a southern hemisphere, and the south pole. From all these places moon gives you slightly different angles but the same shapes.
kaidrix started from the bottom, tried to remember correctly, he tried, and put a random angle and aligned all the shapes of that angle on the first dial, the first dial, which was biggest and at the base of the altar, glowed with a faint green light. kaidrix felt happy; he just randomly selected an angle. He had no idea of which location on earth you can see the moon at this angle, so he carefully selected another angle and aligned all the shapes of that angle on the second dial. Nothing seems to have happened, kaidrix began to observe the diagrams again. he noticed two pairs have opposite angles, and there is one other angle which does not have any pair. kaidrix was confused; he knew Earth had five positions, two poles, two hemispheres, and one equator. The north pole and the north hemisphere have slightly different angles in one direction, and in the other direction south pole and the south hemisphere also have slightly different angles in one direction, but exactly opposite to the north pole and its hemisphere, like a mirror effect. So they all form two pairs of opposite angles; only the equator has different angles of course, in one direction, with no opposite and similar pairs.
But there are only four gears. Should I form opposite pairs for each angle? kaidrix decided to test his theory, and he aligned the opposite angle to the first dial on the second dial, and the second dial lit up green. The light intensity was a little brighter this time, kaidrix then chose the angle with the same direction as the first dial for the third dial. The third dial also lit up, and then he chose the opposite for the fourth. All the dials lit up green, and the gears started rotating in opposite to each other. And in the reaction, the Top of the fourth gear opened, and a slightly smaller gear came up floating on top of the tower's Halo gram, kaidrix understood. This is the final phase of this puzzle. He can't go wrong here now, all the other diagrams vanished from sight, so he can't see them again. he knew that he only needed to pick the equator angle now, so he was focused, he knew what shapes he had aligned before. So it was easy to figure out the equator angle.
The whole mechanism began to rotate and shake the whole cave with it. kaidrix was vigilant and scared. This cave gave him a lot of surprises; he did not want anything unknown to happen to him. But despite bing vigilent kaidrix still lost a lot of soul power sucked by the mechanism reverting his soul to transparent state. kaidrix felt exhausted. After a while cave stopped shaking and the mechanism turned into a small sphere with a unique pattern on it. This time, the ball was not of a crystal but of iron sand and was not completely solid; the pattern was the only thing maintaining that iron sand in a sphere. From the look of it, this pattern was also a special sand forming a pattern.
This sand ball entered kaidrix brows. Making him immediately feel dizzy and pain in his head, the ball gave kaidrix a lot of information after a while. He felt pain lessening; the information was a series of fragmented memories. The memories that were given to kaidrix by the ball were an incomplete universe map, and this ball was only a piece of the universe formation, which allowed its wielder to travel across space instantly. But to use this formation, the user has to be very powerful in spiritual cultivation because it requires a lot of spirit/soul energy. In other words, your soul will be drained of energy, causing irreparable injuries or even death. There is a chance of becoming stupid, too. Which sent shivers down kaidrix's spine. And from the look of it it already sucked a lot of soul power from kaidrix.
As he was thinking, kaidrix felt something pulling him from this location into the space. Later, he came to his senses. he was kicked out of the cave. kaidrix cursed. He had not fully explored the cave yet. This whole event for him was really weird; his going into the cave and then all the events in the cave felt unreal. He saw his surroundings and later discovered he was lying at the base of the hill. It was the time of evening. He sucked all the air around him in his lungs enjoying the feeling of fresh air.
It all felt so unreal, but the evidence was there; kaidrix still needed to recover his body, so kaidrix sat down near a rock and started practicing his spiritual arts. It took all night and the nearby vegetation and its habitat to recover kaidrix. When he opened his eyes, the area was devoid of life, there was no color, and the plants turned to dust. This area of fifty to sixty feet was like a desolate place, giving a really sad vibe.
Planet Earth has too little spiritual power, so it is impossible to recover body and soul in one night, and on top of that, recovering a soul is an impossible job because there are countless variables in recovering a soul. But Kaidrix was a different case; his soul and body were different from other cultivators. So, recovering his body and soul was just a matter of time. His Dantian could recover any part of his body and soul. It was like a beast core where all the data is safe, but the difference between the beast core and the kaidrix Dantian was beast core could not function like the kaidrix Dantian. Yes, it can store a beast's soul, but it can't recover it, and also it can't rebuild the beast's body.
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The first ray of the sun touched kaidrix face, giving him a warm feeling and a sense of life. He stood on his feet and, sighing heavily, gave the final look to this recently turned desolate area, and he started walking back to the city. In all these events, kaidrix lost his bag, which he purchased for his journey, and was with him, he decided to purchase the things again. And thought this was the last time he was going to use the money on earth, but who knows what destiny has planned for him?
Time passed, and Monarik was still preparing. For the journey to leave Earth, Monarik was preparing a formation on a desolate place where, hopefully, they won't be interrupted during teleportation. Kaidrix and Lumina decided to spend some time with each other. So they decided to travel. The first thing they visited was an Amusement park. As they entered the park, an old man who looked like someone from the staff of the park came running to kaidrix, "Young man, you look familiar." In surprise, Lumina shouted, "Uncle fatty.." The man was not fat at all, actually the opposite of a fat guy. Giving a shy laugh old man spoke, "Little Lumina is still as blunt as ever." "Now I remember this must be our little devil kaidrix, "judging by you two are together and both seem to resemble your little selves in my memory. Two little mischievous devils, who always caused trouble in the park back then, are still together even when grown up.
The old man looked happy, and from his expression, he seemed to be reminiscing about past events. You always come to the park now and then with your mother. You have grown big now, if you had not come with little miss, I would not have recognised you. Hmm, kaidrix, where is the young lady who always brought you two to the park? kaidrix was confused. Senior, I am sorry, I do not remember anything. There was an accident while I was a child, and I lost my memories of that time. And.. and the young lady you mention was my mother, she, she passed away.
Kaidrix turned very sad. A shame she was a kind and beautiful lady, I am sorry, young man, for your loss. The old man with his sad face put a hand on kaidrix shoulder and tried to comfort him. kaidrix, with a saddened face, replied Senior, it has been a long time. She passed away, so I have come to terms with it. "Living must live on," after saying old man went away.
Lumina said kaidrix, you loved coming to the amusement park with Aunt, and sometimes she brought me along with you to the park. I was lonely after my mother died, and Auntie was there for me. And you were my best friend. We had too much fun when we came to the amusement park. Your favorite dessert was ice cream, and every time you got one, you were always a drama king, dropping your share, and eating mine. We shared too much ice cream. You were a little bully in my life. And also my protector, you always protected me from the bad kids, who wanted to beat me and steal my things.
Let's go and buy ice cream, let's eat like we did when we were children. Lumina purchased a single cone, staring at the cone and staring at kaidrix, her cheeks flushed red, she tried to back down her words, I think it is different now we are not children anymore, kaidrix said, No, I want to experience that feeling again, I have forgotten what it was like. Then he grabbed Lumina's hand, which was holding the cone, and he licked it. Then he made Lumina lick it. Lumina was blushing, her cheeks were red like flowers, and kaidrix also felt his cheeks go red. It was a new feeling for him.
After some awkward moments, and trying to avoid each other's gaze, kaidrix maned up and held Lumina's hand. It is not that bad a feeling, I like it. Lumina node, in agreement, yes, it is not a bad feeling. lets continue