Enigma of Sin

As soon as Kayn took his first step into the temple, he could immediately feel waves of electricity that were formed from mana trying to fry his body. However, rather than fry him, it was nourishing and his body was greedily absorbing it like a starved beast.

Kayn could tell that the lightning was tempering his body and also allowing him to restore some of his diminished mana reserves. It wasn't pure mana like he would normally absorb, but it was good enough for his Demonic Dragon Heart to convert it into his own mana.

He ended up walking around the temple area until he eventually came upon a room where the density of electricity in the air was the highest.

In the middle of the room, Kayn could see a formation drawn onto the ground, covered in lightning that flickered from one point to another. He tossed a pebble into the formation to see what happened, but when nothing occurred, he deemed it safe enough to try out.

Kayn sat on the floor next to the formation and placed just his hand inside of it. Instantly, he could feel a tickle of electricity flowing around on his skin and inside of his tissues. It didn't necessarily hurt, but he felt something happening, even if he didn't know what.

However, even if this formation didn't give him any gains, just the fact that he was slowly but surely recovering his mana reserves was enough reason to call this a successful visit.

Kayn kept his hand inside the formation and when he had enough mana, he cast his Void Eye technique on himself to see what was happening in his hand.

Kayn was astonished as he noticed there were little electrical bolts shooting around his hand tissues, eliminating something. Smoke started to come out of his hand as more and more of whatever was being destroyed was burned to a crisp.

He lifted his hand out of the formation and gave it a good look before clenching his fist several times, noting that his hand felt a bit stronger than before. When he tried to push mana through his tissues as he usually did to cast a spell, the flow was even smoother than before.

Kayn blinked in amazement as that could only mean that this formation was removing impurities or blockages that he had no clue about which weren't already expelled from his body.

Deciding to take the risk, he stepped into the formation and sat down in a lotus position. Immediately his entire body had the tickling sensation and not long after smoke started to rise from him.

Once he felt assured that nothing bad was going to happen, he began casting the Void Star technique to further refine his core with this unique wind-lightning attributed mana.

Kayn closed his eyes as he felt the process start, and the more mana he absorbed the more understanding he began having about lightning and wind. It was as if he was being flooded with insights into the two, he couldn't help but get lost in them as he continued his technique.

…

Hours passed, then days, and finally on the 17th day of Kayn entering his meditative state, he was interrupted by loud noises of people talking in the hallway just outside of the room he was currently in. He also noticed that the formation was no longer glowing or even visible, and the dense mana of the temple was now completely gone.

Kayn was so engrossed in the new insights he was receiving and meditating on that he had apparently completely emptied out the temple of all the mana, thus allowing the humans who were trying to explore to enter without dying.

He could hear the footsteps and voices becoming louder, so he quickly snapped out of his reverie and cast all of his concealment spells. There was no light in this place now that the lightning wasn't snaking the walls, but he couldn't risk being seen regardless.

As expected, the researchers were holding massive lights that illuminated everything around them. They were holding scanners and mapping out everything here and there and also testing for any of the odd signals that they were getting before they suddenly vanished not long ago.

Kayn was now completely hidden from them even if they shined the light on him as he had grown accustomed to bending light around him, but he decided to stay in the room and see what they were doing.

They weren't speaking English, so he didn't understand their words, but he could follow their actions and try to discern what they were doing with their gadgets.

One of them was turning here and there while scanning the entire room until she finally stopped, pointing her device directly at Kayn with excitement evident in her expression.

Kayn didn't like the fact that she was pointing directly at him, even if she couldn't see him, so he stepped to the side. However, when she realized that she was losing her signal, she turned along with him.

No matter where Kayn circled around in the room, she was always turning to point the device in his direction somehow. Kayn sighed as he couldn't risk it, so he directly bolted out of the room and the temple, quickly arriving at the edge of the island.

Now that he knew there were gains to be had in these temples, he wanted to plan out his next destinations.

…

Meanwhile back in the room, the woman with the device frowned as no matter where she turned, the device didn't spike in readings again.

"Hey Dr Elaine, what are you doing?" One of the others asked as he was curious about her movements and continuously changing expressions.

"I just had a reading. It moved around the room for a while, then completely vanished. While we don't know what is causing this or what it is actually reading, this device used to spike in readings just being near the temple." The woman named Dr Elaine frowned as she spoke, but continued with her findings.

"Just now, I was able to follow an anomaly of spiking activity around this room, before I lost it near the entrance to the room. I even went into the hallway, but nothing. It just vanished as if it was sentient and didn't like being tracked. I don't know how to explain any of it."

The man who had questioned her placed his hand up to his chin as he began pondering on what she had just revealed.

"Hmmm, let's spend a few more days here to see if there is anything to discover, then we will head to another location and see if the meter spikes there as well."

Dr Elaine only nodded and proceeded to explore the rest of the temple with the group that had entered. She and the man she spoke to were not archeologists or anything of the sort, they were United Nations Tactical Alliance researchers.

Their job was to see if there was anything in these newly discovered temples that could help them to revolutionize their technology or not and to help them win the war. The device was meant to pick up certain energy signatures, however, they didn't know what exactly this new energy was yet.

Now that they knew these temples, or at least one of them, had some mysterious energy inside of them and the energy could even move around, they needed to harness it to their advantage. If they were able to convert and weaponized it, they may be able to change the entire course of the war.

…

Kayn, who was completely oblivious to the situation of what he thought were harmless history fanatics, decided to fly to another deserted island nearby using his wings.

It was a freeing feeling, being able to utilize his body and mana without pain or worry. But he restricted his mana use as he knew it couldn't be replenished until he arrived at another temple. For now, he could only rely on his body and its stamina, which wasn't anything to scoff at.

However, he did notice an oddity in his body. His mana felt different, denser and more powerful, but at the same time he wasn't able to hold as much, even if he felt that his core was full. It was something he would definitely need to look into soon.

In the meantime, he arrived at another island and pulled out the Wanderer's Villa and his electronics. He started going through the potential list of temples that he wanted to visit, trying to make the best decision in the case he only got to go to a few of them or if not all of them had mana like Zeus's did.

There were a few temples that were relatively close to his location, but in the case that he was limited to how many he could visit, he wanted to make the best choices possible.

If he based his judgement off of his experience just now, he needed to select a temple of a god with known domains or elements that they specialized in. Only after he scoured all of those god's temples would he explore some of the more abstruse gods.

A lot of the temples that had been discovered were related to gods who were typically known for powers that were lightning related. There was one temple that was close that people hadn't even attempted to enter into yet though.

They hadn't tried because of how dark it was. Not even the strongest light they brought was able to shine beyond the entrance to the temple. Kayn knew that this had something to do with darkness, and the goddess that the temple was dedicated to told him the same.

It was time to visit the once hidden temple of Nyx.