Riku led Ashtel straight to the basement of the temple, where a massive magic circle was carved and a five-meter-tall humanoid body of a four-armed person was floating in the air, protected by the magic circle.

Looking at the creature, Ashtel realized that Riku was telling the truth.

The creature did indeed resemble a human a bit too much.

The only difference was the abnormal height and the four arms; everything else was pretty much the same!

The creature’s skin was just the same as a human’s, and when Ashtel used his detection to sense the insides of the creature’s body, even the basic metabolism and organ structure were pretty much the same!

The creature had four arms, so its muscle and upper torso’s muscle and bone alignment were very different from a normal human’s, but, in the end, it still resembled human-like anatomy.

Although the creature was very tall for a normal human, that wasn’t a big irregularity, as awakeners nowadays sometimes end up becoming abnormally tall too.

Ashtel himself was almost 2.5 meters tall and was built like a walking tank, let alone others.

"How did a member of a race that has been extinct for thousands of years and has been destroyed by the sea of miasma end up on our planet? This is simply too bizarre..."

Hearing Ashtel’s words, Riku nodded his head as he spoke.

"Even I don’t know that... we just found this creature lying outside this temple a few days ago, and the creature was holding the adamantium slab in its hands tightly when we found it..."

"It was as if he were a messenger of his race who sacrificed his life to bring out this slab to our world..." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"I wonder if he was trying to convey something to us... We have searched the slab but to no avail... There are no other clues hidden in it. Whatever this being wanted to tell us... we have no way of knowing it now..."

Ashtel walked over to the dead Sortilegan’s side and placed his palm on the other party’s head to better detect his body’s situation with his mana detection.

And as he did so, a deep frown appeared on Ashtel’s face.

"This fellow... he has no wounds or any sign of internal damage... his body is perfectly intact... but then how did it die?"

"He has no signs of vitality and soul fluctuation, so I am pretty sure it’s dead... but how did it die...?"

Riku nodded his head and replied in a solemn voice,

"That’s exactly what I wanted to show you... when we found this creature, it was already dead, but despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to understand why and how this creature died..."

"Its body has no sign of soul fluctuations... it may sound weird, but..."

"I think this creature either never had a soul to begin with or its soul was sucked out of its body, causing its body to turn into a living corpse with no sense of existence..."

Ashtel’s frown deepened even more after hearing those words.

"How is it even possible for a creature to not even have a soul and still keep living?... That would make it an undead, but this fella has no signs of miasmic corruption in its body either..."

"So, this is likely not the work of miasmic corruption at all... as for sucking a creature’s soul out..."

"I only know of two people who have the ability and mastery to suck a person’s soul out without damaging their body in the slightest... One was that demon prince Alverto who died a year ago at Rio’s hands..."

"And the other is Rio himself... and as far as I know, this is likely not Rio’s work; he’s never even been to the Beast Archipelago before. If he had been, he would have told me about it when we were getting ready to come here..."

Riku crossed his hands around his chest as he felt helpless against this mystery.

"The dead body only appeared here just a few days ago... the demon prince Alverto died more than a year ago; I don’t think this is his work either..."

"Sigh... I guess we are stuck with no answers again then..."

Ashtel also shook his head helplessly as he realized that this problem was beyond his capabilities.

"I have studied ancient histories and stuff a lot, but even I have no idea about this unknown race... Our best shot is likely asking the Elf King to contact the main consciousness of the world tree to ask if it knows anything about this..."

The world tree is a very ancient existence, and elves believe that the world tree has existed since the dawn of time.

So, if anyone on this planet might have any clue about this ancient race, it could only be the ancient world tree, and if even it doesn’t have any clues, then there’s no way to solve this puzzle.

"By the way, how did you know that this race was called ’Sortilega’... the adamantium slab does not seem to have any mention of it..."

Hearing that question, Riku scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment as he replied,

"Err... actually, I came up with that name myself; it felt weird to just keep calling them an ancient dead race over and over, so based on their abilities, I just gave them a proper name..."

"The word ’Sortilega’ means a person who predicts the future through drawing lots or cards..."

"With these creatures being able to predict the future with their unique bloodline abilities... I think this name fits them quite a bit..."

Ashtel felt that Riku’s naming sense was decent but not too good; if the dead fellow knew that his race was given such a nickname, he might feel angry.

"Although this creature’s presence here is still a mystery... it’s a good thing you showed it to me. Once the Elf King arrives, I will ask him to cover over here and contact the world tree..."

"Aside from that, we can ask Rio to come over and take a look at this body and see if there are any minute soul fragments left in it or not..."