"What are you doing? You will bungle up the formation and then the entire thing will be destroyed! What are you doing?!!! Stop!! You BRUTE!"
Liam heard someone shout from behind him but he was too focused to care. He was just a moment away from cracking this formation wide open.
The thing was he knew nothing about formations. Well, he knew a little. Just the bare bones. The basics. But definitely not enough to tackle a formation in a place . This formation was a behemoth. It had numerous traps within traps and everything he touched was a minefield.
Heck, he did not even understand it enough to know where all the traps were. Even if he spent a thousand years in this place he would not be any closer to figuring this out. This was why he never planned to come near this dangerous building in the first place, but then he saw something.
A small oversight that he can maybe take advantage of.
For the past several hours Liam had been dismantling these buildings. Even if he did not have in-depth formation and runic knowledge, he could somewhat observe the many patterns. Especially after he started absorbing the unique soil essence from these buildings, he could somewhat guess where the weaker points in the formation lay.
And this building—this centerpiece of the entire settlement—was no exception.
Liam wasn't some master formation expert. He had seen the patterns, had watched exactly how the lesser structures reacted when he drained them. And when he saw the small imperfection—the flicker in the formation's flow—it was like spotting a crack in an otherwise indestructible wall.
A small flaw. A moment of vulnerability.
His fingers moved with purpose, slamming a surge of mana into the weakest link of the formation as he pried open a couple of bricks and tiles. He had no idea what he was doing in a theoretical sense, but practically? He was exploiting what worked.
The runes shuddered. The entire building groaned, like a living thing struggling to resist.
The energy from the runes in the section completely drained. The only flaw in most formations was exactly this. Every formation required many key points and if someone identified those key points then they would be able to manipulate the formation even if it was just for a few seconds.
These few seconds were all Liam needed. He instantly blasted a hole in the building and shot forward inside the mysterious tall structure.
Behind him, a woman continued to shout. "STOP! Stop! You are ruining everything! You cannot break the formation in this manner. What idiocy is this? You are committing blasphemy! The formation will reform! Everything will explode! This world will not withstand the aftermath!"
"You damn fool! I command you to stop!"
"What buffoonery is this! You blasphemous pig!"
Liam's face twitched. He ignored the hysterical woman behind him. He had seconds before the formation reassembled itself, and he was not about to waste them listening to someone whining about rules and proper techniques.
He darted through the jagged hole, the momentary lapse in the formation's structure allowing him to slip inside. The interior of the building was vast, far larger than it appeared from the outside—proof that spatial manipulation was in play. Ancient carvings lined the walls, pulsing with a faint golden glow, though many flickered erratically, damaged by his forceful entry.
Liam didn't have time to admire the details. His instincts screamed at him—something powerful was here. Something waiting.
His eyes locked onto the center of the chamber. There, floating above a raised pedestal, was a cauldron.
It wasn't just any cauldron. Intricate golden runes slithered along its body. Just staring at it made his head spin and he felt something tugging at him.
Liam frowned and then his eyes widened in realization. The image of the stone tablet flashed in his mind and all of a sudden he just knew. Without any doubt, he just knew that the tablet was reacting to this cauldron. It was asking him to take it.
"I know. I want it too." Liam gritted his teeth. He only had a few seconds and he had his backup plan already in place. The reason he even dared to come inside without fearing the impending explosion was because of this backup plan.
However, he was still hesitant to simply reach forward and grab the cauldron. Something was odd. Something was bothering him. It didn't feel right.
Liam shook off the uneasy feeling and went in for the kill. He had to try. He had come so far. He had to try. He reached forward and grabbed the cauldron.
The moment Liam's fingers grazed the cauldron's surface, a surge of energy ripped through him like wildfire.
A deafening pulse echoed through the chamber, sending a shockwave outward. Liam felt his mind split—his body froze, and suddenly, his consciousness was elsewhere. A vast black void stretched endlessly before him.
No sound. No light. No presence. And then— A voice. Ancient. Unfathomable. Layered with countless echoes.
"Unworthy." Liam's body tensed. He couldn't see anything, but he felt the pressure bearing down on him, as though the entire void itself was judging him.
The word resonated again, this time deeper, shaking something within him. He could feel his very soul being scrutinized, laid bare before something that had existed long before him—perhaps long before even this world.
Liam clenched his fists, forcing himself to breathe. The void rumbled. Then, without warning, a golden light exploded before him.
It wasn't a person. It wasn't even a being. It was something beyond form, beyond flesh. A shifting mass of pure divine energy, pulsating with runes that Liam instinctively recognized.
"I sense her aura within you." The tone of the voice changed. It seemed softer now, more gentle. The pressure on him immediately lessened. "Why do I sense her aura within you? Who are you?"