Retracing Steps.

Seth and Silva soon took off on a return journey to the other end of the ravine, it took Seth more than a week to pass through to the castle from where he revived before but that was when he was slowly searching the place and taking care while climbing any terrain or fighting anything, so it shouldn't take as long on the return trip.

"Oh, fuck, I forgot about this"

The duo was stood facing a large gap which contained many bones, it entirely slipped his mind while he was inside due to the splendour of the treasury but the grim atmosphere once more gripped his mind as he reluctantly looked at the horror that is the moat surrounding the castle.

"I really don't want to walk through that again"

("What, wouldn't it just be a family reunion?") Silva said jokingly, but Seth wasn't exactly happy about that.

"Stop it, I may be a skeleton in body, but I still at least have most of my human sensibilities, seeing this makes me sick to my core." Seth glared un-characteristically at Silva who coughed and reflected for a moment before replying.

("My apologies, anyway you'll need to think of another way across if you don't want to walk through it")

Seth nodded as he scanned the environment trying to find something the could be of use, before he didn't take the time to properly observe everything before he moved forward but he soon found what looked like the remains of what would have been the drawbridge, it seemed to be the skeletal foundations of a reinforced bridge that was mostly composed of a type of metal that acted as a core to the wooden bridge, although it was mostly rusted it still stood upright at a length easily surpassing the breadth of the moat.

"I guess that will work, only problem is how do I get it down?"

("There should be a gatehouse here, right?")

"Yeah, I think that's it over there, the controls to lower it may still be working" Seth mentioned with hope as he approached a smaller room that existed in the walls next to the upright bridge, entering the room there wasn't much inside much like the rest of the castle, most of it was ruined and marked with the scars of battle, unfortunately they found what they were looking for and it wasn't in good shape.

"Well, there goes that idea, the thing is busted beyond belief" The metal lever looked like it had been melted then smashed with a ten-tonne hammer along with the mechanism, there was no chance of it working.

Seth left the gatehouse and approached the ruined bridge giving at a long look trying to think of a solution, what was holding it in place were two chains attached to the top end, luckily one of them seemed to have broken apart so there was only one of them holding up the bridges weight.

"So, we can either wait for it to rust or break it ourselves" Seth murmured to himself, obviously the first option was beyond stupid as it would take a ridiculous amount of time so his only option was the latter, but he wasn't sure if he could break it easily since it was about as thick as an average adult's arm, so he stood still staring at the chains trying to brainstorm an idea.

("You want to break it; I could probably help") Silva spoke seeing how Seth was stumped.

"You can? I thought you were still recovering?" He said surprised at the spirits offer.

("A little chain like this won't take much, I'll just use my electricity to heat it up and you just need to land a good strike to split the hot metal; You should be able to do that right?")

"Hmm, with my current strength at 33 and [Reinforcement] it should be doable"

("Alright then, take a step back for moment") Seth did has Silva said and Silva *Popped* into his full form albeit slightly smaller than before barely reaching Seth's waist, a small stream of mist left the capybara's nostrils and surrounded the chain before his fur stood on end creating a bolt of thunder that remained for a few seconds, making the portion of the chain surrounded in mist turn a bright red before turning in to an almost blinding yellow, as soon as it seemed to soften enough from the heat he stopped and yelled at Seth "Do it now!"

Seth quickly responded, he pulled the [Luminite Gladius] out of his storage and held it like a javelin, he activated [Reinforcement].

[Strength 77 (33 + 44)]

A surge of power filled his body as he steadily took aim and lobbed the gladius at the heated chain, it flew at a surprising speed backed by Seth's increased strength before the tip impacted directly on the top portion of the chain splitting in in half, unfortunately the gladius also shattered at the same time though Seth did expect that based on the durability he had left.

Although he only struck the top half of the chain link, the weight of the bridges remains wanting to fall along with the weaker structure from the heat caused it to bend and detach from the rest of the chain causing the bridge to slowly but surely being to fall.

("Not bad") Silva praised as he returned to his smaller form.

'Thank god I didn't miss, that would have been embarrassing' Seth thought in his head as he watched the bridge collapse with an almighty bang that echoed throughout the ravine, some of the metal structure collapsed into the moat leaving a twisted metal structure that managed to create a make-shift bridge that connected the two sides of the gap.

"Well, looks stable enough so it should do, let's move" Without hesitation Seth stepped on to the metal pole wide enough for him to walk normally and for a bunch of people to walk single file, although it was slightly rusty it didn't seem to budge much when he was crossing, and it wasn't long before he reached the other side completely in-tact.

"Much better!" Seth said while glancing backwards towards the moat, at least he wouldn't have to touch that place again with this bridge here now.

They quickly made their way through the rest of the ravine without much resistance, here and there Seth and Silva encountered a skeleton and rarely a bone swine but nothing else, as they passed through the area with the church Seth made a decision to see the statue of the Divine again in hopes he could get some answers, unfortunately even after kneeling for a good 10 minutes nothing appeared which disappointed him, then he glanced at the statue and a thought popped in to his head.

'I don't know if I'll have access to one of these once I return to the surface, and it's not like anyone is using it right? It should be okay right?' He reassured himself in his mind before holding out his circlet towards the statue, a circle enveloped the statue and seemingly consumed it from top to bottom making it disappear, Seth had clearly stored the entire thing in his storage circlet.

"Hehe now I can use it whenever I want and keep trying, maybe if I bug them enough, they'll reply to me"

("If the 'Church of the Divine' saw you doing that they'd have you skinned and lynched!") Silva sighed, completely exasperated at the gall of Seth's actions.

"Pfft, they can try skin and lynch me all they want it won't do anything, anyway I'm just putting it to use rather than letting it build up dust here no-one will complain!"

("Haa, whatever we should keep going") Silva couldn't be bothered arguing since he did have a point.

Doing as Silva said they continued on their journey though it was as uneventful as before, even when searching with Mana, Spirit and Life vision there wasn't anything of interest to be found, after a little more than a day of fast paced travel Seth reached a familiar point.

"Ah, I know this place"

("It looks like any other point in this dreary place to me though?" Silva questioned, confused as to how Seth knew it when there wasn't anything interesting.

"That cave over there, it's where I woke up for the first time" He pointed to a hole in the wall barely larger than an adult man twice over, although it wasn't that distinctive to Seth it was basically his birthplace of his third life, so it was ingrained in his memory.

("Oh, can we take a look I'm kind of curious") Silva said, surprising Seth who didn't think it was that interesting of a place.

They made their way through the extended cave and came to a small cavern with a tiny amount of sunlight flowing in from the cracks in the roof.

"See, there isn't much here but a pile of bones and that corpse" Seth said as he pointed at the pig corpse from his first enemy that was in the process of decaying, he glanced towards Silva but what he saw was unexpected.

A dark look crossed the small spirits face as his eyes glowed, he quickly yelled at Seth ("You fool, use your spirit vision!")

'What?' Seth was inwardly panicked, was there something here? He did as he was told, and the sight made his mind spin.

Black tendrils of corrupted spirit energy were crossing all over the walls of the cave and passing through the ground, the bones were seemingly coated in the dark film as it flowed to somewhere outside, up through the cracks in the roof.

("A cave this deep is odd in the first place, the cracks up there giving off light is odd in the first place, remember how deep we are? There's no way normal sunlight can reach here without a direct route")

"Then what does this mean?" Seth was flabbergasted, the place he thought was a normal cave turned out to be anything but.

("If I'd have to guess, while it has probably long since collapsed, a structure used to exist underground at this place and this cave, based on the massive amounts of bones both above and under ground it's likely a disposal point")