It was very hard for Hera to see anything in the water. Everything was a strange green tint that made her feel like she was diving inside a very dirty and grime filled pool. But that wasn't the case. This was something that should be natural, just a lake In Deakoshara. Which might not even be the biggest lake, but still. At least she had Livy's skill to allow her to breathe underwater. Without that, there was no chance the Empress would be able to stay this long in the middle of the poison. However, it also became clear that she wouldn't be able to stay for long. As in her mind, the leviathan spoke up.
"Hera, we have a problem."
"What's going on?" the Empress asked while looking at her relic. It was still pointing down and to the Northeast.
"You know how the poison set is supposed to stop poison from getting into the body? Well, it doesn't work if I'm trying to breathe it. I can feel the poison digging deep into my insides already. But at least I can handle it. For now."
"Wait, what? Stop that! We need to get out of here. Go back up."
"No," the leviathan protested. "We need to figure this out. If something happens to me, just have Filigree using gate of mana to help me heal up quicker. If we don't solve this, we won't be able to look into the MAZE properly. At least some of it, right?"
"I still don't know if this is really what we need to do to stop the poison from growing here."
Hera nodded. "We think that's the case, but we don't have any confirmation. You might be doing all this for nothing."
"I can handle this. Don't worry."
A part of the Ophidianite wanted to stop the titled blade. But at the same time, she could feel the dedication and the drive coming from the leviathan. As a result, Hera simply accepted what Livy was doing, deciding to continue following the directions given by her relic.
They moved quickly through the waters, even if it was hard to tell where things actually were. But at least it seemed like there was nothing in the lake. It was completely empty. Maybe nothing was able to survive inside poison this strong. They continued following the arrow, with the Empress sending out a couple of sonar spells, trying to see if there was anything in the environment that could help her get her bearings.
At least, she wasn't afraid since Livy, being a sea serpent, could more or less understand their location inside the lake itself. She could tell they were not so deep that if things turned sour, they wouldn't be able to reach the surface. In addition, they were nowhere near close to the point where water pressure could be a problem. Even if this was a bit denser than water.
They continued going deeper and deeper into the lake with Hera asking Livy if she was still able to hold on several times during the process. But the leviathan was sturdy. Not just that, she was also benefiting from all the poison resistance that came from the Empress, meaning that she was able to withstand this for a while if needed.
They pressed on for another 10 minutes, the arrow changing from pointing to one specific direction to point down. When that happened, Livy dove as deep as she could as fast as she could. She was starting to struggle already, despite all her boasting. This was not something easy for her to do, and she would still need to give time for the Empress to finish whatever task she had to do before they were able to come back to the surface. Either that or Hera already had to find a way to protect herself while underwater before they could come up.
Eventually, the Empress's relic picked up something below. A structure almost like a pyramid. Something that was half buried at the bottom of the lake. Hera climbed off of Livy and continued to breathe normally since the leviathan could breathe for her. The Empress cast a light to see better and was surprised by what the spell revealed.
The pyramid that was buried in the water was actually a gigantic crystal. Moving closer to it, the Empress could see the staggering amount of mana inside it. And it didn't take her any special abilities to do that. She could actually see the particles refracting the light created by herself. As a matter of fact, it was a reminiscent situation from what the Empress saw back when she was having a vision to save Alex from the curse. But to a lesser degree. She wasn't seeing the mana particles out in the open but instead only inside that crystal. And they seemed to be able to go down lower than what Hera was assuming was the end of the structure.
She gestured to Livy to tell her that they needed to clear the area and watched as the Leviathan used a skill to push the water away. That power was already effective on land, but here, in the bottom of the lake, it became even more powerful. In just a few moments, with Hera holding on to the leviathan so she wouldn't be washed away by the powerful current, they cleared out the crystal structure.
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That gem itself was sitting in the middle of it with a snake's head holding it by biting the base of this diamond shaped mana crystal. The snake continued forming the platform, making a large circle around everything. At the edges of the platform, there was another set of smaller crystals. But these didn't seem to be mana crystals. Instead, they had some different function that Hera couldn't wrap her head around just yet.
She could tell that the mana was flowing underneath the altar and going towards those smaller gems, but she still couldn't understand what exactly was going on. And that happened for a number of reasons. First, she couldn't actually see the spell circle itself. Second, there was no guarantee they would help. After all, she was dealing with a very ancient civilization.
She had studied the Naga extensively. And probably, aside from Shane, she was the foremost expert on their people. But even then, they were never able to find books, scrolls, or anything related to the more advanced spells. She could understand some of the basics and the structure of their spell circles was somewhat similar to what she was used to. Although they tended to create a spell circle going from the center to the outside instead of the modern way of using it from the outside going in. But that meant very little when the topic was understanding exactly what a spell circle would do. And more importantly, doing that kind of thing without even being able to see the spell circle was borderline impossible.
However, there was one more aspect of the Naga civilization that could be working in her favor. For the Naga had a very unique interest in tunnels and making things that could pass through other things. For instance, they instead of just making a well inside a mountain or something would make an aqueduct going in from a mountain spring to their homes passing through the mountain. And, instead of just sending the water into a main square or into a few wells, they would make the water pass through the ceiling and the entrance of that specific city. Only then they would send it back to the main fountain and all the wells.
Neither Hera nor Shane were able to identify any actual benefits from doing so aside from bragging rights, or the ability to cool off the internal structure of the city. But that wouldn't really function that well in a scale that big. After all, in Zaxalam, they already were underneath a mountain. There was no need to cool off even more the area. Which, in the end, gave her some hope. Hope that she would be able to understand the spell circle without having to dismantle the entire altar.
Taking a deep breath and sending her blades all around the altar very quickly, she activated echolocation from all points, making sure that she could cover every single molecule present on the altar. The spell went off as Ariadne flashed with mana, and while the spell came out of her blades, the Empress dismissed all of them to avoid damaging the court too much. Livy being the only one who was not recalled to the palace just in case something were to happen and she would need to run.
As the waves of mana were crashing on top of the structure, for the most part they just bounced off and flew into the waters above. But a small handful found something. Small gaps that were thin enough to form a seal while touching the crystals that stopped any of the water from getting inside. Once the mana pulse entered that area, it started bouncing off wildly all over the altar. In the matter of minutes, the entire spell circle that was created like a tunnel inside the altar had been mapped out in Hera's treasure map.
The Empress stared at it for a moment, knowing well enough how little time she had to actually study this, and eventually she started to understand what this was doing. The spell circle was converting water and moisture into poison. However, there were no stopgap measures in case the water has been fully converted. Meaning that right now, it was converting poison into more poison, which created a concentrated version of the first poison and then it started to repeat that over and over and over again.
She couldn't really tell how long the process took and by the movement of the mana, it was struggling to make anything even more concentrated. Maybe it had reached the natural limitation of the poison altar or of the magic itself. If she were to break this spell circle right now, she would just stop the conversion. Which, after some time, would solve the issue of the poison in Deakoshara. But, she had no idea how long that would take. Could be just a couple of months more or it could take years and years. Especially considering how long it had been since it all started.
But alternatively, she had a different option, if she was capable of reversing this. Making it turn the poison into water, maybe she would be able to speed up the process. After all, the giant crystal was not just there as a battery but also as a way to convert the natural mana of the environment, the natural poison mana, into power. Considering how much poison was in the lake, that could make the spell work very fast until its battery was depleted.
But that was something she was not going to be able to do right now. She tugged at Livy once more before the two of them swam up to the surface. They came out in the middle of the lake near an island that existed inside of it. Livy was clearly not doing well and yet she still pushed through to take Hera out of the water before being sent back to the palace.
When that happened, Hera simply called Nimbus and told him to take her back to the doorway. She wasn't going to stay here to try to fix that altar. Instead, she was going to call for the big guns: Helena, Bonnie, and Shane to see if they could come up with a solution to revert the spell circle.
She was just a handful of meters away from the lake when a notification appeared in front of her.
You have discovered an Explorer exclusive quest.
Deakoshara, the ancient Paradise of the Naga, was corrupted by the last members of the civilization that lived here.
You have uncovered one of the sources of corruption, find and remove all the sources of corruption.
Key to dungeon 'Naga's Foley.'
Seeing that, Hera couldn't help but smile. It had been a very long time since she got an Explorer exclusive quest and to her, that felt like the system telling her that she was on the right path once again.