The corpses sprawled across the ground all had sparse white hair, withered and wrinkled skin marked with obvious age spots.
They looked exactly like people in their twilight years. There were no visible wounds on their bodies; they appeared to have simply died of old age.
But no matter how you looked at it, the exploration team that entered the tomb chamber shouldn't have been a group of elderly people!
The only explanation for this situation was that something was seriously wrong with this burial chamber.
Silas instinctively glanced at the emblem on the stone door: the clock that symbolized the authority of the Amon family.
Was the Amon family's authority over time?
Had the tomb's occupant stolen away these explorers' life force and remaining years?
As a successor exploring the same tomb, seeing the miserable deaths of his predecessors left him with complicated feelings.
Silas briefly scanned the corpses on the ground before shifting his gaze to the burial chamber itself.
He noticed that murals had finally appeared.
Inside the main chamber, elaborate and exquisite paintings covered all the walls, their colors extraordinarily vivid.
Just like those candles, they remained in the same state as when they were first painted.
Silas stared at the wall directly opposite the chamber entrance.
It displayed a single continuous mural that extended upward to the domed ceiling.
The painting's focal point was a majestic, rolling mountain range. At the peak of the highest mountain stood an enormous cross.
That cross was taller than the mountain itself.
Silas froze, then stared at the cross as his expression grew distorted.
It resembled scenes that had appeared countless times in his maddening hallucinations: rolling mountains with a cross so massive it seemed to prop up the very sky.
However, the cross in this mural differed somewhat from the ones in his visions.
The mountains were normal, not pitch black. The cross stood upright rather than inverted.
It radiated layers upon layers of ethereal light, appearing incomparably holy, with no trace of that terrifying, corrupted figure nailed to it.
At the base of the cross, a tall and noble figure stood faintly visible.
This figure was the absolute center of the entire mural. Mountains lay beneath His feet; the cross served as His backdrop.
Winged angels surrounded Him, devoutly offering their blessings.
Giants bound in chains knelt before Him, and proud dragons bowed their heads to Him.
His existence seemed to embody the very truth and salvation of this world.
Compared to Sequence 0 true gods, He was clearly even more advanced.
Silas stared blankly at that blurred figure with only a vague outline.
"This is... the Lord?"
Not that corrupted and twisted mad god who turned believers into extreme fanatics.
Nor the mythological Original Creator who transformed into everything in the world, creating everyone from gods to mortals.
The being depicted in this mural more closely resembled that light from his hallucinations: the one who led the ancestors out of ancient times, defeated the various Ancient Gods, and brought peace and stability to the mortal world.
So that Lord wasn't just his hallucination but had actually existed, or at least had existed at some point.
This Fourth Epoch mural seemed to prove it. Yet in the current Fifth Epoch, historical records contained no mention of such things.
Filled with both dread and confusion about this hidden history, Silas continued examining the rest of the mural.
He saw that at the foot of the rolling mountains, two angels with twelve pairs of wings each held an infant, humbly ascending toward the mountaintop.
The infant on the left had slightly curled black hair and pitch-black eyes. The infant on the right had pale golden hair and golden eyes.
These two infants were the mural's other focal point. The painting's theme appeared to be the birth of these two infants.
Considering the mural came from the main burial chamber, it likely depicted the tomb occupant's life story.
For twelve-winged angels to display such an attitude already spoke volumes.
In other words, the Amon family's ancestor was this "Lord's" offspring. So which infant was Amon? And who was the other infant?
Silas continued staring at the mural.
His gaze couldn't look away.
The spirituality within his body showed signs of churning restlessly.
His body trembled, a buzzing sound gradually filled his ears, and countless hallucinations rose up, surrounding him.
"Boom..."
The scene from the mural became reality. Atop the majestic mountain, that being's holy radiance spread across the world.
"Praise the Lord, for His loving kindness endures forever..."
Heaven and earth filled with joyful hymns.
Angels sang and blew their trumpets, offering blessings for the birth of the Lord's offspring, watching as the two angels at the mountain's base brought up the infants.
Silas saw that being shift His gaze, letting it linger on the infant to the right.
"Adam."
His voice reverberated between heaven and earth, and the pale golden-haired infant's body began radiating holy light, receiving the Lord's blessing.
The infant's eyes opened slightly, revealing golden irises of incomparable purity, holy and flawless.
"Amon."
That being then looked to the other side, bestowing a name upon the black-haired, slightly curly-haired infant.
This infant had pitch-black eyes that kept moving nimbly after hearing its name, appearing much livelier.
So this black-haired one was Amon?
Silas saw the young Amon's pitch-black eyes rolling about before suddenly stopping and locking onto him, as if discovering his observation from outside time itself.
Then this black-haired infant smiled.
Silas stared directly at that smile, unable to control himself as he locked eyes with the infant...
"Whoosh!"
Just then, a bone-chilling cold wind suddenly blew against the back of his neck, making him shudder and snap out of the hallucination.
Was that Sharron?
"Ahhhhh!"
As Silas was thinking this, he suddenly heard a desperate wail.
Opening his eyes, he saw that Best had somehow already appeared inside the burial chamber, his body affected by an invisible force and aging rapidly.
His life force and physical time were being drained simultaneously.
Not only Best, but that middle-aged gentleman Soroa had also collapsed to the ground, his back covered by a massive wound.
He was dead too.
And the one who killed them both was undoubtedly that female warrior Kate, currently fighting with Sharron, swinging her greatsword with whistling force.
It seemed she had launched a surprise attack during the gap when Silas fell into madness, kicking Best into the tomb chamber's area of effect while also killing Soroa.
With Silas going mad on the spot, that left her with only Sharron as an enemy.
And Sharron's "Wraith" abilities happened to be countered by the opponent's "Light of Dawn."
Although the two Sequence 5s temporarily maintained a stalemate in battle, one side's disadvantage was very obvious.
That's why Sharron used the cold air to wake Silas.
"Boom!"
Seeing Silas awaken, the female warrior showed no panic at all. She simply swung her greatsword directly at him with a slashing strike!