"Alright," with a complicated map drawn before him, he took a deep breath and started recounting everything.

"C1R leads to C2, C1L leads to C4." There are four corridors here in total, and the doors that come after the first corridor lead you to the second or the fourth corridor.

"C2R is C3 and C2L is C5R." The corridor that comes after the second corridor connects to either the third corridor or the right door that comes after the fifth corridor.

"C3R is C6R while C3L is C1R." Somehow, the doors after the third corridor are either the first corridor's right door, or the sixth corridor's right door.

That means when you go through the right door after the third floor, you will find yourself in the sixth corridor and after going through the left door, you will find yourself back to the first corridor.

Technically, the two doors are separate, but this rine somehow makes the both of them seem the same.

The side you go through decides where you will end up.

"C4R is C5 and C4L is C6." The two doors after the fourth corridor are somewhat simple. They both connect directly to two different corridors.

"C5L is C6L which is really complicated if you miss the small details since C5R is, again, C2L."

The last two corridors seem simple on drawing but they make things complicated for those who are actually trapped inside this ruin.

"Lastly, C6R is C3R and C6L is C5L." Which means when you open the right door of the third corridor, you will find the right corridor of the sixth corridor open as well.

When you pass through the right corridor of the third floor, you will pass through the right door of the sixth corridor and end up in the sixth corridor, and same when passing through the doors for the fifth floor that connects both of their left doors.

The structure of the ruin isn't as complex as it seems on paper, but when you actually have to find your way out of this mess, you will realise there is nothing 'outside' of these doors.

"Let's say there actually are 12 doors in total. There are six corridors and each of the paths are individual instead of being interconnected.

The corridor areas are individual spaces that are somehow incorporated into a system that moulds them to appear two dimensional but is, in fact, three dimensional."

Instead of thinking this entire ruin is a flat, one zone structure, if they think there are different floors to this place, like they had in the dungeon, then things start making sense.

"The different nodes (corridors) are connected to pathways that seem identical but, as we have seen, are not the same."

KiRA spent three days marking different corridors and the pathways that connected them and at the end, he was surprised to see all of his markings on the wall area vanished every time he finished a 'cycle' or passed from C1 to C6.

Once he got out of the corridors after C6, he was met with an entirely new set of walls.

It wasn't that the walls were getting cleaned magically, there seemed to be a mechanical reset of a kind.

"This place itself is the trial left behind by the Tatar people." If that wasn't the case, he did not know just what kind of 'trial' they had left for someone who didn't even know much about them.

"Knew about them…?" A light flashed in his eyes when he thought about this.

The Tatar civilization.

Until now, he was thinking about this place as the place the people of Tatar had left behind when he should be thinking from the perspective of someone who had never known anything about them.

"The quest and the dungeon limited my horizon, but now that we think about what we have observed and found directly, we can say this place is like an interconnected network."

The different corridors connect with each other. There are doors and there are paths. But, why did they make it like this?

They were great architects, yes, but why did they make this place in the first place and why did they make it specifically like this?

"They didn't want to confuse the challenger. They wanted them to find something here."

This is a ruin. This place had been here only ever since the world changed, but it was at least a few thousand years old.

The people of that time wanted someone to remember them… they needed to move away after receiving the revelation from their god.

What they left behind was for their faith, for those who were also supposed to follow their faith.

"The Light attribute." The fact that he received the quest when he overused the skill that represented the goddess of light meant the objective was related to the goddess of light and purity as well.

"The Tatar people worshipped their god who represented Light as it is depicted in each of the temple murals around the six corridor domes.

They are clearly showing the people bowing down to what is represented as the Sun, the source of light and warmth. For them, this entity is the supreme deity."

Thinking that, KiRA now started thinking how light played a part in this ruin.

"The balls of energy or light in the dungeon weren't something that the manager directly picked up from this dungeon. There's something else."

The dungeon was inspired from the ruins. One can also say that the ruins were so inspiring that the manager made it the entire theme of the dungeon.

If so, what about the escape route of this ruin?

How did that correspond to the dungeon if it actually did. Or if it didn't, what was the right way to get out of here.

Or, did he have to 'get out' in the first place.

"Hmmm…"

The questions clouded his mind as he thought deeply about what he was supposed to do now.

"Unity, can you go and check the magical lights placed above throughout the corridor? Don't touch them, just, check if there's anything unusual about them."

There were lights placed on the ceiling throughout the six corridors.

They knew the corridors remained the same but the paths were different as if they reset.

If these clues connected to anything, there's going to be something that connects the whole puzzle together.

[{ I'll go check them, master. }]

Uni was bored after all this time as well. There was nothing to do here aside from memorising the trap formations and dismantling them.

It has been a day since they removed all of the traps and emptied the corridor areas to make them safer.

Now they did not have to worry about the corridors either, but then again, they did not know whether there were any hidden traps present anywhere.

"Haaa…" As KiRA watched attentively, Unity flew up and reached the destination.

Flipping her wings right before the magical light, the triangle crystals placed in a uniform distance, she observed the bright crystals of light from up close.

[{ Master's there's nothing unusual about them. }]

She could not find anything different or wrong with these light sources. They were just lights.

[{ "I see. You can come down now." }]

The attempt was hopeless but at least they tried.

Unity felt sad as well but started flying down back to her master. There was nothing here…

"I guess we will move… hmmm? Wait." He was about to look away from Uni but his eyes suddenly caught onto something unusual.

[{ "Uni? Can you go back there?" }]

[{ Hmm? Yes master. }]

She did not understand why he was asking her to do that, but perhaps he had caught onto something.

She could feel the anticipation that he was feeling right now so she hurried back up.

[{ "Ok ok, just wait there. Move from left to right. Also, get as close to the lights as you can. Try touching them with one of your feathers as well. See if it's safe." }]

He was nervous something might happen to her, but she followed his instructions without hesitation.

She moved from left to right, took out one of her feathers even though it was painful, and tried touching the simple looking lights with it as well.

-Zaaap!

When the feather touched the light… nothing happened. But, there was something interesting that followed when the feather covered the light.

"That's it." There were no shadows throughout the six corridors.

Even though they had gone through many traps many times, he had just realised there were no shadows in these zones.

He had unconsciously believed they were because of all the lights present all above them, but that wasn't the case.

When Uni flew close to the lights, there was no shadow of her preset on the ceiling where it should have been either.

"The closer the source from the angle of the light's origin, the bigger the shadow." Still, the feather did not cast as big a shadow as it was supposed to even when the feather was placed in the right distance.

Instead, it somehow turned off that particular crystal of light for a moment.

When the feather was retrieved, after a moment, the light came back, and, the blank spot that was made on the ground because of the absence of light, was lit back up again.

"Looks like we will have to turn off the lights, Uni." A new smile bloomed on his face.

And this time, he was done with all the necessary preparations as well.

[{ Did you find the answer, master~? Yei~! }]

She jumped up happily when she came back to him.

They had the map of this place, they knew all the visible differences, and now, once they start turning off these lights, they might just find what they had been searching for all this time…

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