They reached the small hill a few minutes later and chose to camp in the plain area. As others started to build the tents and gather woods for the campsite, Abium moved away from them a little and sat on a block of broken birch wood.
Then, he placed a scroll, a wooden sheet, a quill, an ink bottle, and a few low-tier magic stones on the grassy ground. After that, he took out the magic lamp from his space ring and hung them on the nearby tree branch.
"Let's see if I can put the rune knowledge into practice."
Muttering, he placed the wooden sheet on his lap, then put the scroll on it and started to draw the primary creation array circle using the quill.
Once he drew the basic array circle, he took out the low-tier magic stone, placed it at the center, and drew a small binding array.
As the sky darkened, he noticed that the magic array circle, rune characters, and the magic stone inside the circle started to glow in golden color. He quietly dipped the quill brush into the ink bottle with a nod and continued to draw the magic array circle for the next thirty minutes.
Alas, he made a slight mistake when writing a rune character, which resulted in the whole scroll being burnt in the fire!
Thankfully, he made a swift decision and threw it on the ground along with the wooden sheet.
'Even a slight mistake can lead to a failure, huh?' He pondered for a moment and decided to try again.
But he failed more than seven times miserably and only managed to complete half of the primary creation array circle.
It was around midnight!
Once again, he took out an empty scroll, placed it on the wooden sheet, and started drawing the primary creation array circle. Then, he began to inscribe mana control runes and added 'mana manipulation runes' in the array circle. Next, he wrote another few runes to maintain the connection between the low-tier magic stone in the center and the array circle. When he finished inscribing the magic array circle, a dim yellow light appeared on it.
Success! He curled his lips upward and was about to shout in joy. But he soon stopped as he noticed the stability of the mana in the array circle went wild. The elemental stability in the scroll began to change and was quickly accompanied by an elemental fluctuation.
'It's going to explode!' A strange sense of danger appeared in his mind.
Without any hesitation, Abium blinked from there and reappeared a few meters away from the wooden block.
Boom!
The next moment, a massive booming sound echoed from that scroll, waking everyone up from their deep sleep.
The explosion almost burned the surrounding one-meter radius weeds and destroyed the broken birch wood, leaving only black ashes behind.
'The effect is almost similar to zero tier spell.' Abium wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and breathed a sigh of relief.
'Thankfully, I teleported earlier; otherwise, I might have gotten hurt.' A forced smile appeared on his face.
"W-What happened?!" Soon, Helena's startling shout came from one of the tents on his right side as he stared at the burnt area with a frown.
Upon hearing her shout, he turned around and soon realized everyone was walking out of their tents.
"Sorry, I made a mistake during an experiment." He could only apologize for disturbing their sleep and added.
"You guys can go back to your sleep."
Although they got curious about his strange experiment, they didn't ask any more questions and returned to their tents, leaving Abium alone outside.
"Let's do another try."
Nodding, he quickly moved a few meters away from the tents and started to recall what mistake he did earlier.
After finding no clue, he took out the rune book and checked if he had missed anything. But soon, he frowned as he noticed that he did everything perfectly!
'But what caused the failure?' He asked.
'The weather, lad. The magic tower has a stable environment, but you are out in the open.' Azolla's voice echoed in his head.
'Weather can affect this?' Abium raised his eyebrows and drew a few extra rune words to adjust the temperature.
Alas, he made another mistake and failed.
But unlike before, he didn't ask for Azolla's help and decided to find the reason on his own.
As the dawn arrived in the eastern sky, he also completed the magic array circle and noticed that the magic circle, the rune characters, and even the magic stone glowed in golden light and disappeared from his eyes.
"Success!" He couldn't help but exclaim.
But before he could celebrate the joy, strange dizziness appeared out of nowhere and clouded his vision.
'Assassin? Azolla?' He asked in his mind, but no reply came.
He also felt that his body slowly landed on the ground with a loud thud and got anxious.
Before he could understand the situation, some invisible force appeared and pulled him somewhere.
No, he felt something was pulling his soul out of his body!
'What is this?!' He was deeply startled as he noticed the darkness starting to break like glasses and was soon replaced with a complete white tile-like floor, walls, and ceiling.
Slowly, Abium glanced around and noticed a tall fountain filled with mysterious white clouds ahead of him. It had five unique branches, almost like lotus pedicels peeked out of the white clouds. Each of those large pedicles stood in each corner, giving off a mystical vibe.
As Abium looked at one of the unique pedicles, he saw a large palm-sized white petal attached to it and emitted dim white light.
'Where am I? What is this strange fountain? Petal?' He frowned a little and moved closer to the fist-sized white petal.
'Is it somehow related to the 'Time Divinity'?' A thought crossed his mind.
After slightly hesitating, he took a step forward and tried to touch the petal with his right hand.
Spark!
A second later, a one-meter wide rectangular mirror appeared in front of his face, giving him a slight scare. But he wasn't able to see any reflection in that mirror.
Instead, all he saw was nothing but darkness.
His thick eyebrows arched upwards as he walked closer to that glass-like material and fell into deep thoughts.
'I'm sure this is not the spirit realm. It's almost like I'm inside a dream. No. I'm not inside a dream but somewhere else.' He still felt a strange connection between his soul and his body.
'Tch, it's just a mirror-' He was about to dismiss the strange rectangular mirror but suddenly got stiffened up.
'What is this?!' Abium drew a long breath as he stepped backward and gazed at the mirror in shock. At that moment, he saw a humanoid girl's appearance in the rectangular mirror instead of a dark void.
'She is not a human being.' His amber eyes squinted as he observed the unique image. It was a human-faced girl child with purple color fish scales on her cheeks and hands. The girl child was laid on the concrete-like ground, and her hands and legs were chained entirely. But what made his expression freeze was that a thick black rod pierced the young child's chest region and pinned her to the floor.
'Is it a power of time divinity? Is this mirror giving me some clue?' He quickly raced his thoughts and tried to figure out any clue from that picture.
He started to recall any memory of this female child but couldn't find any.
He rubbed his chin and soon noticed that the image started disappearing, leaving only an empty blackness.
The next instant, a slight vibration appeared inside the strange white-tiled room, followed by an invisible suction force.
Before he could even blink, Abium felt that his consciousness was being sucked out.
A moment later, he felt fatigue feeling and went unconscious.
'Are you alright, kid? You should've taken some rest.' Azolla's voice echoed in his head a few seconds later.
Slowly, he woke up in the real world and noticed that the sky hadn't brightened fully yet.
'I'm alright.' He muttered inwardly and looked around.
At that moment, he saw a middle-aged man squatting beside him and splashing water on his face. He had messy black hair, downturned deep brown eyes, barely visible eyebrows, and a square face. He wore a plain linen shirt and pants and looked leaner.
Noticing Abium walking up from the unconscious state, the middle-aged man breathed a sigh of relief and asked.
"Are you alright, My Lord?"
Abium recognized that this man was the coachman of their carriage and nodded his head.
"I'm alright."
Saying so, he stood up from the ground and patted the dust away from his shirt and pants.
"Please take some rest, My Lord." The coachman suggested.
But Abium quietly sat on the nearby broken wood, shifted his eyes towards the middle-aged coachmen, and asked with a frown.
"How long have I been blanked out?"
"Only around for 30 seconds, My Lord."
Abium breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the coachman's reply and asked.
"What's your name?"
"My name is Orson, My lord." Coachman replied in a nervous tone.
"Hmm, you can go back now," Abium said calmly, dismissing him from the guard duty.
After that, he closed his eyes and soon started to think about what had happened earlier in the strange fountain room.
'I have no idea what that room was, but it seemed related to the time divinity. Hmm, should I ask Azolla about this thing?' He paused for a moment and soon shook his head.
'I will tell her once I confirm what that dark room is.'