Out of all the groups that were sent out to explore the wandering ruins after being organized by the Golden Gorilla Union leader, the one sent to the Hall of Glass Warriors was the least unified.
Consisting of warriors native to the region, Olstenna, Luther and Antonio were thrown together with the thought that they’d be able to coordinate and communicate better due to sharing a mother tongue.
However...
"So, just to double check, how much do you know about Zhen Liu?," Antonio asked.
"Enough to know that those puppets of his are actually legendary warriors that could flip over entire continents," Olstenna answered while gesturing to the zako that was working as their porter and communications hub.
"Are...are you sure about that?," Lythero asked, while recalling how for the last few days, he saw that the Kaijin were less like walking, talking forces of nature and more like...they were just children with way too much power at their fingertips.
As if the universe was proving this point for him, the aforementioned zako suddenly got distracted by the presence of a glass-like butterfly suddenly landing on its face.
"Yes," Olstenna answered with certainty.
...Lythero and Antonio knew very little about Olstenna, with their only shared point of "interest" being a guy who wasn’t even present at the moment and his army of handmade monsters.
But it was better than nothing, so they decided to work with it.
Besides, it was going to take awhile for them to get to the [Hall of Glass Warriors], so they might as well try to get to know each other.
"Alright, so what’s your deal exactly?," Antonio asked. "Because I may have met you last night, but the only information I got was that you tried to kill Zhen Liu too."
"Wait a minute, what?"
"Too?," Olstenna repeated in an intrigued manner.
"Before you ask, no I didn’t duel him, I watched as he basically beat my old leaders black and blue with this guy here," Antonio answered while pointing towards Lythero over his shoulder.
This would’ve been the part where Lythero exchanged greetings, but he was still a flabbergasted over the fact that Zhen Liu was somehow okay with working with people who had tried to kill him in the past.
Was this the privilege of being strong?
"And I tried to stab him in the back for the sake of dirty fortune and glory. Fortunately, somebody stopped me before I could do something that would’ve probably ended in my death," Antonio admitted.
"Ah...so you’re a coward."
"Not even ashamed to admit that, yeah,", Antonio nodded. "But I’m trying my best to no longer be one."
"Admirable."
Silence fell over the group as they continued to walk to their destination, as Olstenna didn’t say anything further to the duo after making that comment.
Antonio didn’t mind the silence, as he figured Olstenna was the type to only talk when needed to.
Lythero, on the other hand, did mind.
"You know this is the part where you’d explain why you tried to go and kill Zhen Liu,right?"
This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.
"What’s there to explain?," Olstenna replied. "He’s the inheritor of a legacy that rocked the world several times over, and I wanted to see how I matched up against that."
"And you lost?"
"No," Olstenna answered plainly. "A freak accident occurred that forced our duel to come to an undetermined end. Once this is over and he’s all healed up, I plan to fight him again. No holds bar."
"A ceasefire for convenience...I get that," Antonio nodded in approval.
"..."
Lythero wanted to make his disapproval more vocal at this point, but was stopped before doing so.
Not because of anything fatal, but because the group had finally arrived to their destination.
The Hall of Glass Warriors.
"It doesn’t look too impressive from out here," Olstenna commented while staring at the squat stone building before them.
"It’s probably more impressive on the inside."
...One short walk later...
"Told you."
Living up to its name, the Hall of Glass Warriors was absolutely loaded with glass statues of warriors dressed in a variety of armor styles and armed to the teeth with glass recreation of all sorts of weapons, all surrounding a pristine looking pool of water that was in the dead center of the room.
This place would’ve looked beautiful in the sunlight, but the hall was an enclosed space.
The only source of illumination were these strange floating aether lanterns that hovered everything like lazy fireflies.
It wasn’t enough to bring out the full splendor of the glass warriors, but it was just enough for the trio to make out some details.
"Why do these things look so...realistic?"
Some of the warriors were dressed in plate armor and armed with halberds, others wore scale mail while wielding glass swords, while others were wearing crude leather armor and armed with heavy looking hammers.
This by itself wasn’t the weird, but the fact that some of the warriors had incredibly detailed faces that made the whole thing feel incredibly eerie.
A feeling that was made worse the moment they sensed movement.
"Hold," Olstenna said while raising his hand and suppressing the flow of his aether.
As warriors of some skill, Lythero and Antonio knew better than to argue when danger was clearly present.
As such, the two of them began to suppress their aether in the same manner while drawing their weapons.
Even the accompanying zako acted in the same way, growing as still as a statue.
The only sound that could be heard at this time was their own breaths.
Or so they thought.
At this time, the trio had paused their movements while hiding amongst the rows and rows of glass warriors statues, assuming that they weren’t the main danger of the room.
Evidently, they were wrong.
Unbeknownst to the group, the glass statues behind them were starting to move in ways that suggested that they were going to strike.
Normally, such movements would be easily detectable by someone at the Aether Lord class, like Lythero.
But...
"Do you guys sense anything?," Lythero asked via an aether cloaked whisper.
"No, not a thing."
"Then why do I have this ominous feeling looming over me?,"Lythero asked as the statue behind raised a glass spear in preparation to impale him on it.
...this sensitivity was dependent on being able to detect aether.
And whatever was causing these statues to move, wasn’t aether.
"BO!"
"Huh? Ba!"
Without warning, the accompanying zako had sent Lythero several steps backwards via a flying kick.
The swordsman was, understandably, angered and confused by sudden act of aggression, until he saw the reason why.
The glass statue that was directly behind had brought it’s spear down and had impaled the zako’s leg to the ground.
"BO!"
"Holy shit!"
The wound wasn’t fatal, as the zako hadn’t been dismissed from the attack, but it had definitely caused damage.
"You glass bastard! [Sparking Slash]!"
Lythero hadn’t brought out any of his masters’ swords at this time, because they were still being carried by the zako, but he did have his regular sword in his person.
Channeling as much aether as he could into the blade, Lythero released a slash of flames that rapidly melted and tore the spear wielding glass warrior into two molten pieces.
"Wait, what?"
Lythero should’ve felt good about defeating his would-be attacker in a single strike, but something about it felt...incredibly wrong.
It was like the moment his blade had made contact, whatever was causing the glass warriors to move had suddenly disappeared.
And he wasn’t the only one to notice this.
[Fist of Fire!]
[Boulder Breaking Palm!]
Thanks to the nosie that Lytheor had caused when he was being attacked, Olstenna and Antonio were alerted to the fact that they were about to be ambushed by these glass warrior statues.
As such, they were able to react in time and unleash hell on these bastards.
But just like with Lythero, something about their counter attack felt...wrong.
"What’s up with these statues?"
"It’s like punching...glass."
That sounded obvious, but there was a reason for this discrepancy.
Anything infused with aether had this quality to it that could be felt when struck or acted upon, and practically everything had aether in it.
Even the most mundane pebble had a little smidgen of the stuff.
These glass warriors, whatever they were, didn’t feel like they have any aether to them.
The group had briefly thought they were dealing with [Chaos], but the fact that their aether arts worked entirely unimpeded meant that this couldn’t be the case.
(Un)Fortunately, the trio was about to get a lot of live examples as to why this was the case.
"Is everyone alright?"
"Yeah."
"Mostly."
"Good, because we got company!"
"Fuck!"
"Alright, it’s time for the big sword!"
All over the hall, more and more of these weird glass warriors began to sprang to life in ways that were similar to aether puppets, but lacked that same feeling.