My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World-Chapter 443: One-Thousand Torches

After we took down the zombie responsible for controlling the living flesh on the staircase, we waited for the rest of our group to catch up with us.

When I told Jackson that it was a zombie and not a demon, he came to the same conclusion that I had, muttering Drakzen’s name under his breath.

The 51st floor looked similar to the 50th. The buildings had an elegant air to them, as some of them seemed to have golden frames on their walls, which made me believe that it was the place where the "high-class" families lived.

Still, somehow, half of the town on the 51st floor seemed to be demolished, leaving a large open area where only debris and stone remained.

Realistically speaking, every single floor should have been utterly destroyed and in ruins, considering the long time that the tower spent under the sea. However, seeing so many levels that were pristine with barely any signs of damage made the destruction we found on the 51st floor a little more impressive.

Thanks to most of the buildings being a bunch of debris on the ground, our companions were able to locate the next staircase with ease, so we kept moving forward onto the next level.

Floors 52 to 58 were completely riddled with ancient fiends, and we even saw another version of ancient demons, which Jackson called "ancient harpies."

The harpies resembled the fiends in terms of facial features and skin color, but their bodies were generally skinnier. However, harpies had a set of feathered wings on their backs, and I was quite impressed when I saw how fast they could fly.

Nevertheless, our team at that moment was way too strong to struggle against the demons’ forces. So, while it was a bit more difficult to advance, our pace didn’t suffer any delays.

When we reached floor 59, we stood still at the entrance for a moment with a bit of shock.

Every floor in the 50s range had the same facade of elegant buildings, although most of them were in ruins. However, floor 59 was completely different.

"It’s... Just a hallway?" I pondered aloud.

There was a single path before us. A hallway that stretched into the dark, seemingly without end.

The walls and ground had white marble on them, and we could see numerous torches hanging on the walls, though none of them were lit up.

To test the length of the hallway, I pointed my finger forward and shot out a thin light beam that slightly illuminated the surroundings as it traveled forward at high speeds. Still, by the time the beam dissipated, it didn’t reach the end.

"Hmmm, how about this?" Melina said aloud, using wind magic to slightly levitate as she got closer to the wall.

Closing one eye to perfect her aim, Melina made a finger-gun gesture and pointed it straight at the first torch hanging on the wall, shooting a beam similar to the one I used. However, she used fire magic instead, lighting up a big chunk of the row of torches.

Of course, her spell didn’t reach the end of the hallway either, but Melina didn’t seem bothered by it and said that she would simply light up the rest when we got there.

As we walked through the empty hallway, I kept flicking my fingers and lighting up the torches we passed. I wasn’t doing it for any other reason other than boredom, and it was nice to look back and see the path fully illuminated.

At one point, we even started running and flying forward since walking made the hallway feel even more endless, and more than an hour later, we managed to reach the end.

There was a large double door blocking the entrance to the staircase, and the material seemed to be made of the same obsidian stone outside of the tower, which was highly resistant to magic, so I could tell I wouldn’t be able to destroy it—at least not without blowing away part of the entire tower.

"Ichi, look..." Melina commented, pointing above the double doors, where we saw a rolling-numbers counter, similar to what I would have seen at a casino slot machine in our past world.

The counter showed the number "0999," but there were no levers or buttons around that we could press.

Suddenly, Melina approached one of the torches and blew the flame away with wind magic.

*Creeeeak!* The sound of a rusty contraption drowned our ears momentarily, prompting us to turn our gaze back to the counter, which showed the number "0998."

"It’s counting the amount of lit-up torches..." I commented, quite shocked that we had almost reached a thousand since I wasn’t counting.

"Hmm, but what’s the amount that we need?" Melina pondered aloud, placing a hand on her chin.

I thought that we had lit up all of the torches by the time we reached the double doors, but reflecting more on it, I realized it would be strange to have a total of 999 torches, as it was an odd number.

The torches on the walls were perfectly lined up in front of each other, so there was no way that one wall had one less torch.

"Well, you did miss the very first torch..." Vespera casually commented.

"Wait, what!?" I asked, taken aback by my companion’s words.

"I noticed that you missed it, but I didn’t think it would be important," Vespera explained, and to be fair, she had a point.

We didn’t know that lighting up the torches would be essential to open the hallway’s door, so she didn’t mention anything about that one single torch I missed.

"Hmmm, if you say it was the first one, then I’ll just teleport to the beginning of the hallway and come back..." I said to my group.

I was able to teleport to places I had seen before, as long as they weren’t incredibly far from my position. The main problem with the teleportation spell was that it used a lot of MP, so it wasn’t really something I’d want to use in battle.

Since there were no enemies in the hallway, and we had tons of MP potions in our void pockets—teleporting to the entrance and back seemed like the best choice.

I closed my eyes and focused on teleporting. "I’ll be right back," I said to my group. However, after a few seconds, nothing happened.

"Uhh..." I hummed with confusion and a bit of embarrassment since I told my team I would be back, but I was still standing there.