Without waiting for System to ask, Aura took the initiative to tell him how they could leave the temple. Getting out was actually far less complicated than System had imagined. If he'd known it would be so simple, he wouldn't have let Aura take the risk of communicating with the evil god.

  After System listened to Aura's mental message, he confirmed the method again.

  "So as long as half a month passes and the ring has a chance to fully recharge, we can leave this pce?"

  "If that sleeping god Rafael didn't deceive me, that's how it should work," Aura nodded. He then continued, "From now on, I'm a priest of this demipne's Temple of Shadows. In fact, I'm its only priest."

  After Aura finished speaking, he took the ring back from System and flew up to the ceiling. System, not knowing what was happening, picked up Shava with his tentacles and followed the butterfly into the air.

  Soon, there was a dull rumbling sound, and the floor started to shake, after which the walls around the hall began rotating. Once everything stopped moving, a new corridor had appeared.

  After they flew back down, System followed Aura into the corridor. The three of them turned a few corners and walked about twenty meters before entering a secret room that seemed to be a treasure vault.

  The secret room was about fifteen square meters and contained assorted riches and magic items. Gold coins and gems had been piled up into a massive hill, and they saw thirteen suits of bck magic armor covered with purple patterns hanging on armor stands next to one of the walls. On the wall opposite the armor, there were numerous sharp swords and axes on weapon racks.

  Judging from the size of the armor and weapons, they seemed to have been made for humans or elves.

  System's understanding of the evil god's followers changed after seeing the equipment in the treasure room. Although the ratmen fanatically worshiped Rafael, it seemed like the evil god's followers weren't restricted to only ratmen.

  But before System could continued thinking, he heard a cttering sound off to the side.

  Unsurprisingly, Aura couldn't wait to pounce on the pile of riches, and the butterfly was currently struggling to drill his body into the small mountain of coins and gems.

  Shava quickly followed suit and used the bdes on her forelimbs to dig out gems from the massive pile of riches. Although she didn't try to drill her body into the treasure pile like Aura, she wasn't much better, and she appeared to be having a great time.

  System couldn't understand Aura and Shava's actions at all. He didn't know why the two insects found items like these that could neither be eaten nor spent so fascinating.

  After shaking his head helplessly, System started looking around.

  Simple possessions like these had no effect on System. What truly attracted his attention were books and interesting magical gadgets. After looking around the room, he didn't see any books, but he did find several items lying on a table that seemed like they might be magical.

  Two of the items were rings that seemed to be a pair. One was a silver ring that was covered with gold lines, while the other was a gold ring that was covered with silver lines.

  There were also two exquisite bck and purple metal daggers on the table, as well as twenty translucent balls the size of ping pong balls that shone with a faint silver glow. There seemed to be some type of unknown bck lines inside the balls.

  System could easily activate the two rings using the white energy that powered his [Perception] ability.

  The silver ring could create a bck shadow shield, while the golden ring could create a bck shadow arrow.

  The shadow shield couldn't block physical attacks, but it was able to deflect energy attacks.

  The shadow arrow was an attack ability that had both penetrating and corrosive effects.

  This shadow arrow only had a range of thirty meters, but within that range, System could have the arrow switch from real to illusionary at will, allowing it to penetrate the enemy's armor and directly strike the enemy's body.

  According to his understanding, the power of the two rings should have reached the magical level. Although their abilities were very strange, they weren't actually all that strong. In fact, the energy consumed when he activated the rings was only slightly higher than when he used his [Frost Breath].

  With the amount of energy that System could currently store in his body, these two rings could be activated a total of about twenty times before he needed to stop and recover his energy.

  In addition to the two rings, System also tested the other items that could potentially be magical gadgets one by one, but he didn't manage to activate any of them.

  He even tried using the thirteen magic armors, but he still couldn't get any of those to work.

  After searching through the secret room, System suddenly realized that he'd missed an important detail. During Aura's communication with Rafael earlier, what exactly had happened?

  Aura's remaining lifespan was only about five years. According to common sense, even if he'd sacrificed his entire lifespan to Rafael, there was no way the evil god would have given away all of these treasures.

  Moreover, after communicating with the evil god this time, there didn't seem to be any problems with Aura's body. As far as System could tell, Aura didn't seem to have made any sacrifices at all.

  System quickly moved over to the hill of gold coins and pulled the greedy butterfly out of the pile. He started questioning Aura to find out what had happened between him and the evil god.

  Naturally, Aura was his usual uncooperative self, but after System asked several times in a row, Aura proudly bragged about the details of his conversation with Rafael.

  System could roughly guess what had happened between the two of them based on Aura's story.

  The reason the sleeping evil god had given Aura so many treasures was because he'd recognized Aura's original identity.

  The two of them couldn't be said to be very familiar with each other, but they were still acquainted. After all, the Warren Pins and Lilt Forest were located right next to each other.

  One was an evil god who had been sleeping for thousands of years and was trying to wake up, while the other was a frost dragon who had been on the rise for thousands of years and had the hope of one day becoming a god himself.

  Although Aura had been reduced to a remnant soul possessing a butterfly and had lost his power and memories, in essence, he was still the same dragon.

  So when Aura had proposed to become one of Rafael's followers, the evil god had made an unrealistic promise. If Aura successfully helped Rafael wake up, then Rafael would also help Aura become a god.

  The so-called temptation of the evil god was nothing more than that empty promise.

  If Aura naively believed Rafael's words and helped the evil god wake up, System believed that Aura's only reward would a swift and violent death.

  But Rafael had obviously overestimated Aura's ambitions.

  Aura's worldview had colpsed when he'd broken out of his chrysalis and realized that he was just a tiny and weak butterfly. He'd wanted to die and had ended up sinking into a long depression. Even though he'd eventually recovered, after secluding himself in his underground chamber for more than a year, the dragon-turned-butterfly had completely degenerated.

  Although Aura was very happy to know that he was once a powerful frost dragon, and he'd even proudly sent System several mental messages simir to dragon roars, that was only happiness.

  The current Aura had no interest in becoming a god at all.

  On the surface, Aura would brag to System how powerful he was in the past, and talk about how he might even become a god in the future. However, compared to that illusory godhood, it was clear that Aura was far more interested in shiny treasures. The butterfly was practically out of his mind with joy while he was digging through the pile of riches.

  The sleeping evil god couldn't have expected that the former Lord of Gciers had fallen to such a debauched state and was completely cking in ambition.

  System shook his head helplessly and thought about the mental messages that Aura had just sent him.

  Rafael had made Aura the owner of the Shadow Temple that was located on this demipne, and he'd also granted Aura certain rights. Aura was now responsible for all matters concerning the Warren Pins.

  Rafael had also told Aura about a ratman believer who had escaped from his control—Hessian. It was because of this ratman named Hessian that the pgue had broken out in the Warren Pins and the undead had started to appear.

  Judging by what the evil god had said, it seemed to System that Rafael wanted to borrow Aura's hand to get rid of this believer named Hessian.

  Of course, it was impossible for the current Aura to help the evil god with anything.

  System was able to draw a number of conclusions from Aura's conversation with Rafael. He now knew that the sleeping evil god had very little power left. Rafael might still be able to use a little of his bewitching powers, but he found it difficult to deal with even a single believer who had betrayed him.