The Dawn of the New World

"Lord Third Guardian!"

The young man was staring at the purple jewel in his hand and didn't even bother turning around.

His short black hair moved with a gust of wind exposing a pair of crystal eyes that shone with their own light in the dark of the night. His pupils were twice the size of what an ordinary human's should be.

Perhaps it was this way to compensate for the crimson pattern within the pupils, the rotating spiral pattern that was the source of the carmine light.

He waved his hand and the jewel disappeared, seemingly stored away in some sort of spatial device even though one could not be seen on his person. He then closed his eyes for a short moment before opening them again. The spiral pattern had disappeared.

"What do you want?" he asked blandly, without a hint of emotion.

The blue-haired girl bowed again as a show of unwelcomed respect, "We have found a settlement nearby. They seem to be mostly human. Should we make contact?"

The young man turned around to peer in their direction for a moment before lightly tapping on the ground.

A loud whooshing sound came from behind him and he shot up into the air with a pair of dark red avian wings.

"Do whatever you want. Do not bother me again," his words echoed in their mind but before either of them could say anything else the wings flapped once and he was hundreds of meters away. And with another flap, he completely disappeared from their sights.

The blue-haired girl obviously didn't expect that and was left standing with her hand outstretched. All she could do was dumbly stare in the direction he had gone off to.

While Henrik couldn't be less fazed. He moved the lock of hair behind his ears and turned around to walk back in the direction they had come from.

"Told you, Ms. 'We need somebody in charge'. Made me run for no reason," his words woke the blue-haired girl from her stupor. She turned around as well and followed after him with light steps.

"But he is the third guardian, we are supposed to-"

"Forget what you're supposed to do. We are so far away from walking city that even if we wanted to there was no way to go back. We can't even get in touch with them until Lord Dai Zhi comes down here himself, but that won't be anytime soon."

"But still-"

"Argh, I should have never brought you with us," Henrik cut her off again. He seemed unusually annoyed with her for whatever reason and she knew it as well.

She stopped in her tracks. Her brows knit together as she picked up a stone and threw it at Henrik's unsuspecting head.

*Thonk*

"OUCH! What the hell?!" he turned around with clenched fists but upon seeing her expression that basically screamed 'Go ahead, try it', Ryfon's face flashed past his eyes making him shudder.

She knew Henrik would never do anything to her because Ryfon would break him in half if anything happened to her.

Henrik took a deep breath to calm his thumping heart and swallowed the desire to punch her face in, "Ms. Gong Yun, please mind your manners. Just because you are close to my cousin does not mean you can do whatever you want."

Gong Yun flashed a smile and skipped towards him, hugging his arm lovingly and letting it rest in between her chest. Even if Gong Yun was only 18 years old right now, her figure was 'developed' enough to bring shame to many mature women.

"I would never dare. I don't know what came over me just now," she said coquettishly.

Maybe that was one of the reasons why Ryfon enjoyed her company so much but Henrik didn't seem as interested. Not to mention if it was just a competition of looks, he had her beat by a mile, but that was also true for 90% of the other females.

***

Back inside the Pyramid the Barbarians had been making excellent progress. They had been moving for close to 40 minutes now and had crossed numerous interconnected halls and strange, mostly empty chambers littered with various organic waste materials.

They did come across a couple of threadworm-controlled creatures but other than that it had mostly been silent.

Hao Xuan and Burak had moved to the back of the party once again while Isak led the charge. Hao Xuan looked left and right at his surroundings while his eyes shimmered with a blue light due to the nanites that had been scanning and recording everything for Baracus.

"Trace amounts of ether crystals found within the engravings.. The whispers were right yet again," Baracus's voice came into Hao Xuan's ears.