Ch 12-The Secret of Harimu Ruins

"Brother, what do you think of those punches I just made? Aren't they cool?" The hip-hop man, who had just forcibly opened the door, walked over to Ronnie's side.

Although he tried to lower his voice, any sound in the sealed cave was amplified. The others heard him clearly.

"This... is indeed cool," Ronnie said with a genuine smile, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the thick eyebrows of the hip-hop man.

In truth, Ronnie had to admit that the punches were impressive. Still, at this moment, he couldn't help but feel an overwhelming urge to laugh.

Hearing Ronnie's approval, the hip-hop man's eyes lit up, and he eagerly began chatting with him. He had clearly found a kindred spirit in Ronnie, someone who appreciated his strength and style. Their conversation filled the cave, with Ronnie occasionally chiming in, though he remained mostly focused on their surroundings.

With the dim light provided by the glowing beads scattered throughout the cave, Ronnie's sharp eyes caught sight of something intriguing. Along the stone wall to their right, murals adorned the surface. Unlike the reliefs on the exterior of the ruins, these murals seemed to tell a different story altogether.

Ronnie had a strong feeling that the truth the countless archaeologists had sought for so long might lie hidden within these murals. As he looked at them intently, the others continued on, mostly focused on the treasures and antiques that seemed to pop up sporadically along the path.

However, the man with glasses, noticing Ronnie's deep focus on the murals, glanced over more than once, intrigued but still distracted by the prospect of finding treasure. For the rest of the group, who were seasoned treasure hunters, their focus was more on the material wealth surrounding them than on any historical insights.

But Ronnie wasn't one to ignore what might be crucial to their understanding of the place they were exploring. As he studied the murals, the leather-clad woman noticed his concentration and approached. She frowned, then kicked the hip-hop man, pulling him away from Ronnie's side.

"Stop bothering Mr. Ronnie, really!" she scolded him, her tone a mix of frustration and apology.

The hip-hop man simply laughed sheepishly and scratched his head, offering no more interruptions.

As Ronnie continued to study the murals, the group ventured deeper into the cave. With each step, the story depicted on the walls unfolded more clearly before him. It was a dark and sinister tale, unlike the optimistic images that had been depicted outside.

The murals painted a picture of a time long ago, when a group of explorers stumbled upon a mysterious round altar during their travels. By chance, they discovered that sacrificing living creatures at the altar granted them a strange and immense power. This power allowed them to control emotions, transforming them into physical manifestations that took the form of monsters made of pure thought energy.

Ronnie's eyes widened as he saw the same monstrous figures depicted on the murals—beasts formed from the very emotions of those who sacrificed life to gain power. They looked eerily familiar, resembling the creatures seen in the murals on the stone door earlier.

The more Ronnie studied, the clearer the story became. The altar, it seemed, was a source of unimaginable power. The power to control emotions, and more terrifyingly, to turn them into monsters that could attack others. This discovery was perhaps what gave birth to the kingdom depicted in the murals—the royal family and their growing dominion over the land.

However, the kingdom didn't remain peaceful for long. As the rulers' need for more sacrifices grew, they eventually turned to human lives. The royal family discovered that human emotions were far richer and more potent than those of animals, making them far more effective in fueling their dark magic. Sacrificing humans didn't just provide power—it created unimaginable monsters born from intense human emotions.

Ronnie frowned as he continued to piece together the history written on the walls. Every sacrifice made at the altar had darkened it, making it increasingly corrupted. The murals depicting these sacrifices grew darker and more disturbing, showing figures of monstrous proportions and horrible emotional outbursts.

The kingdom grew larger, and the royal family continued their bloody rituals, feeding their lust for power with more and more lives. As the sacrifices increased, so did the intensity of the emotional monsters that emerged from the altar. These creatures, born from fear, anger, and hatred, wreaked havoc across the land.

The murals hinted at the downfall of the kingdom. Ronnie could see it clearly now: one particular king, obsessed with the pursuit of power, began to sacrifice humans on a massive scale. His greed and hunger for control consumed him completely, and the evil power he had unleashed turned against him.

The last murals depicted a catastrophic scene—emotional monsters spilling forth from the altar in a rage, destroying everything in their path. The king, having opened the floodgates to pure emotional chaos, was consumed by the very forces he had sought to control. The kingdom crumbled under the weight of its own darkness.

Ronnie couldn't help but reflect on the nature of the world he was in. The story of the Harimu Ruins was a tale of hope and disaster, of creation and destruction intertwined in the most tragic way possible. It seemed that the principle of equivalent exchange, a concept Ronnie had come to understand well from his own experiences, was at the core of everything.

The power to control emotions, to shape them into monstrous beings, came at a cost. The more they sacrificed, the more their kingdom and their very souls were destroyed. This kingdom's downfall was inevitable, a direct result of its rulers' insatiable desire for power.

There was still one mystery left to unravel: the altar itself. Ronnie's intuition told him that it was connected to something far darker and more ancient, perhaps even linked to the Dark Continent. The aura of evil that emanated from the altar was unmistakable, a palpable force of corruption that left him uneasy.

But there was something that didn't sit right with him. In the murals, whenever a sacrifice was made, the altar would be completely blackened, as though a piece of it had been dug out, leaving behind a hole in the center of the image. Ronnie couldn't quite understand why the murals depicted the altar in this way. Was it a symbol of its corruptive power, or was it something else entirely?

The story in the murals came to an abrupt end, with the last image showing the emotional monsters breaking free, wreaking havoc, and destroying everything in sight. The king's greed had consumed him, and the monsters born of emotion ran wild, destroying everything.

As the mural ended, Ronnie couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the kingdom after that. The paintings suggested a total collapse, a complete annihilation of the once-great civilization.

But even though the last mural felt unfinished, Ronnie was certain he could guess what came next. After the kingdom's fall, the monsters continued to rampage, leaving the land barren and lifeless. With no living creatures left to sustain them, the emotional monsters dissipated, their power fading with the death of the kingdom.

The Harimu Ruins, once the heart of the kingdom, had become the epicenter of the disaster. It was now surrounded by strange thoughts of death, the remnants of the emotional monsters and the tragic history that had unfolded here. The ruins had earned their reputation as a "death place," a cursed land that haunted the living with its history.

As Ronnie and the others passed the final mural, their journey through the murals came to a close. They continued through the narrow passage, eventually arriving in a vast, empty cave.

And there, before them, lay the treasure they had all been seeking—countless gold and silver jewels, shining with an almost supernatural golden light.