Chapter 106: Blood Is The Clue
3rd Person POV
Mark made his way to a nearby shrine of the autumn goddess at the village of the Paradis tree, the pope made his reports and everything, but Mark was requested of a different task, which was to make sure his goddess receive a letter and a message from Perseus.
He asked for a private space and made his prayer at the shrine, after a moment of silence, the letter disappeared from the shrine meaning that the goddess gotten the letter.
"Thank you, Mark." a female voice whispered in his head "You've done a fantastic job, I understand that he wasn't easy to work with."
"As long as it's your wish, I'll do anything, is there anything else you require?" Mark asked
"Just for you all to rest, please take care of yourself now."
After Mark finished talking to her and finished his prayers, he left as maple took the letter and ripped it open.
'IOU 2 dates.'
"Damn him, just when I thought I'll receive a normal compliment or a normal thank for once." she cursed under her breath before realizing that there's an invisible ink.
It's very subtle and can only be realized that it's there if you have a deep understanding of magic, it's hard to write since it's hard to see, once the writings are revealed, it can no longer go back to being invisible, so it must be from one of her sisters since they wouldn't want to waste such an expensive ink.
She then used mana to reveal the writings.
'Hah, you thought it was going to be one of your sisters, but KONO DIO DA...anyway, I'll give you the normal thank you at our future date, I asked Leila to write this since I have terrible handwriting and Ruka refused to write a flirtatious letter.'
She then burned the letter and make a note to herself to never expect anyone in her immortal life to be normal ever again, her siblings are weird in their own ways and the person associated with them are going to be similar.
Her self-awareness that she's the most normal one amongst her siblings is now dawning on her.
*****
Perseus POV
As I walk around this temple, I can't help but feeling like I missed something, I had Leilah and Ruka discussed with the archeologists on sight as I make my own investigations, but there's nothing much to it.
So I studied the entrances and again, the same, no difference, so why would there be 2? Maybe it can only be accessed by 2 heroes? I got some of the so called heroes blood with me in vials labelled after each of em when I secretly took it without any of their consent when they were in the recovery room, I took like 3 large vial each.
Because there's no way the first demon lord did all this just for it to be impossible to reach, well unless this was all a huge prank and there's actually nothing inside so that it'll make us feel betrayed like he worse, just not as hurtful compared to him, but that's too much effort for just a prank even for him, I mean a prank did almost accidently set off world war 5, but that's another story.
World war 5 did happen funnily enough, just for an entirely different reason. You'd think after 4 devastating wars, a world war shouldn't be considered an option anymore, but here I am saying that a 5th one exist.
Anyway, the door is resembles something and it reminds me of one of those old wooden doors that leads you inside some sort of ancient catacombs even thought it's not made of wood, but it's shaped like one. I then made my way back to the rose guardians where they told me some of the things they've learned.
"So acid spray and bacon grease don't work either? And why do I hear these 2 unrelated things in a sentence, if acid won't work, why would anyone think of bacon grease?"
"Desperation." Ruka answered with a shrug "If nothing ordinary work, think outside the box till something will, they even tried blood, heck, we're standing on the spot where they used to do a human sacrifice."
"So we can splash and put anything on the doors if we want?"
"Well yes, the others tried everything, so it's basically our turn, since they're instead trying to decipher the secret message behind the writings, maybe the temple crumbling after we reach the treasure is some sort of clue."
I then just took of of the vial of blood which earned a sigh from some of the more hopeful guys. I took half of the heroes blood in it and use magic to splash on the door, it showed no reaction, so we deciding to walk around together and fly over it to see if there's any noticeable changes.
But when we walk around about 20 minutes later, we heard shouting and ran back, sure enough, red letters appeared atop of the entrance I was at.
'My fellow brethren, thanketh thee f'r thy blood on this entrance as t shalt leadeth to a treasure of mineth. '
"My fellow brethren, thank you for your blood on this entrance as it shall lead to a treasure of mine." Ruka translated
"I keep forgetting that you're actually super old, but this kind of language...was the first demon lord a poet or something?"
The blood of a fellow hero...huh, so all that overthinking for nothing, so why have no heroes thought to open it with their blood in the past? I'll never know, maybe cuz they didn't have protagonist luck, well I wish I can say that, but apparently most heroes only observed the other entrance since if one of them come, they have the privilege to occupy one side for themselves till they gave up, it's the more probable guess.
But luck does factor in me being the first and all of them were dumb to try both sides. We got to the other entrance and this one didn't have the red letters...but I now know that blood is a clue