Then Pay With Your Blood!

Because the Wills had discovered many traps while they flooded the halls earlier, they happen to know where all the spatial barrier traps are. Remembering the times their commander has been trapped by these golden barriers, Kaalhyme makes sure to lead Haalfrin along a path that dodges them all.

After several minutes, Haalfrin finally sees the outside door, which has an eerie, greenish-blue glow on the other side. He slams into the door and emerges on the outside.

For just a moment, Haalfrin stops and looks up in wonder at the ceiling.

It appears that the Threshold is in a gargantuan cavern. The entire place is underground, so there's obviously no sunlight.

Instead, what lights the place are what appears to be naturally luminescent lights embedded in the ceiling.

Being so old, Haalfrin knows a lot of trivia… and among that archive of useless knowledge, he knows what the glowing stones are.

Spirit stones look like normal ore, and their only property is existing in the Spirit and Physical Realm at the same time. However, it's also said that Spirit stones will begin to glow when strong enough spirits have touched it for long enough - like the Rehkin.

The Rehkin tribes hold glowing Spirit stones as sacred, since they usually pop up around places many people have died. They believe that spirits leave traces of themselves in these stones; thus, they can be closer to their ancestors when hoarding these gems.

…Evidently, this Fortress has seen a LOT of bloodshed over the years; with so many deaths and spirits leaving their bodies, even the spirit stones on the ceiling and in the walls have begun to glow.

…Now that Haalfrin thinks about it, all the stone hallways were faintly glowing too; he thought it was the enchantments, but perhaps it was actually the trace of spirit stones in the walls bearing testimony to past battles.

---------------------

Haalfrin doesn't have time to reminisce too much about the beautiful, glowing Spirit Stones, as he's interrupted by Kaalhyme's frantic warning.

At the last second, Haalfrin jumps out of the way of a deafening explosion. Despite the fire from the mana cannon burning white hot, there isn't even so much as a scorch mark on the stone floor where he was standing just a moment ago.

As Haalfrin issues a flight spell and flies as fast as he can away from the fortress, he can't help but think, "If I let that cannon hit me, would I have been injured at all?" He knows he has a tough body, but he doesn't know HOW tough.

Haalfrin ends up flying some distance away from the Threshold, and he sees the fortress in all its glory. Because of the enhanced Spirit Stones built into the fortress, the entire structure is glowing with a corpselike tinge.

"How eerie."

Lining the walls are countless flashing lights in the distance, which are the mana cannons all aiming at Haalfrin.

What Haalfrin finds strange is that no matter how quickly he zips around the fortress, all the cannon shots seem to be automatically drawn to him.

After switching on his Spirit vision again, he sees countless copper spirit threads drawn between himself and all the cannons.

It appears that the energy blasts are following along the Threads, ensuring that they're far more accurate.

In fact, it's a miracle Haalfrin could dodge for almost a minute before being hit the first time. A white bolt of energy hits him squarely in the chest, and he's knocked out of the sky – only stopping when he splats on the outer wall.

Other than being dizzy and bruised, Haalfrin feels…perfectly fine. "Haha!" he laughs, "Why bother dodging!?"

He then looks at the wall he smashed into, and he sees it cracked and broken. "So the outer walls aren't time locked too. I'll just leave through here then."

Furiously, he ignores the bombardment of mana bolts on his back while he swings his fists faster than the speed of sound – punching huge chunks of rock out of the way.

With dozens of bolts hitting him in less than a second, he's already spitting blood, and he feels his bones creaking.

At the same time… Haalfrin DOES have the strength of a 4 horned dragon in his body. Despite there being hundreds or thousands of feet to smash through, he only takes a few seconds to almost reach the end.

(He only knows how far he has to dig because of a type of sonic technique he learned from one of his former prison mates back at the Pit. This spell uses sound waves to build images in your head. By beating the side of the mountain, he made vibrations that gave him an accurate reading of the mountain's shape.)

Just when Haalfrin is about to escape, he feels an incredible sense of danger. However, he's already in a tunnel with nowhere to dodge.

The first shot misses, but Haalfrin sees a giant, spiked metal rod slam into the rubble right next to him and dig deep into the side of the mountain.

Seeing the copper Spirit Thread connect with his chest, he knows exactly where the next spike is going to go. Honestly, that spike startled him, and he has the feeling he'll have to dodge the next one.

So, he jumps up, just in time for the second spike to hit the ground where he used to be.

However, because his tunnel isn't very tall, he couldn't jump completely out of the way. Instead of missing him, the spike rams into his left leg and completely… rips it off.

Indeed, these spikes are called "penetration rods" for a reason; they're designed to rip through even the toughest armor. No dragon's flesh can withstand these things, much less Haalfrin's skin – no matter how enhanced they are.

"AARRG!!" Haalfrin screams with guttural fury as he keeps punching the wall on his way to freedom. He can't afford to keep dodging those spikes, so he has to get out of here!

Just before the third spike hits him, his fist enters the other side of the mountain, and his entire body tumbles out the side – just in time for another rod to graze his back and rip a piece of his shoulder blade off.

Haalfrin's momentum carries him a little ways out of the hole, and he sees that he's emerged out the side of a cliff. Roaring in pain and confusion, he falls to the grassy plain hundreds of feet below him.

Once he hits the ground and smacks the back of his head, he finally blacks out.

---------------------

"Krea!" calls one animal-eared man, "Look at this! There's a wounded man below the human's mountain."

Krea waddles his fat body over and looks at the injured man below him. The first thing he notes is the man's missing leg, and the thick blood oozing out of the stump. He has plenty of other injuries too – most of which are on his back.

'He looks like a human… but he smells like a dragon.' He scratches his head and wonders if he knows of any dragons which had perfected their transformation art enough to hide their scales and horns.

"Let's take him with us!" Krea tells the rest of his merchant caravan.

One of his business partners shuffles his feet and protests, "Krea! This man is injured just outside the Threshold! The humans are our business partners; it's not a good idea to take their enemy away right at their doorstep."

"Can't you smell that?" Krea reminds them all, "This man smells like a dragon. We can't afford to offend the dragon clan."

This shuts the rest of the envoy up. The next moment, Haalfrin's leg is bound tightly, and he's gingerly placed on the back of one of the carts.