Temple Ruins

When they arrived at the foot of the mountain, they saw a stream rapidly flowing inside the mountain through an arched opening of five feet in height and as wide as the stream. The opening appeared as a perfect semicircle.

When Leo saw such a perfect semi-circular opening, he was sure it was man-made. It is almost impossible for it to be naturally formed. When he looked inside, he couldn't see the end of it, after some distance, there was only the darkness. It was practically a tunnel.

"It's here." Bolt screamed in panic.

Leo turned back and looked in the direction from which the tiger was coming. The tiger was arriving, he could see the tops of trees shaking violently, he could hear the sound of breaking tree branches, and he felt the ground underneath his feet trembling.

Leo still wasn't a hundred percent sure that the tiger was coming for them. Even though the tiger was just a few moments away from them, he was calm, as he already thought of the escape route, but it was better if that tiger was coming for something else rather than them, as he didn't want to enter that tunnel, who knows what lay ahead in that darkness.

But that was just his wishful thinking.

After a few moments, the tiger came out of the trees. Finally, they saw the tiger with their naked eyes, it was gigantic, almost tall as two adults, its pure white fur had black stripes on it, two long sharp-pointed fangs looked as if there is nothing in the world that could obstruct them, and its muscles were full of ferocity. It looked at them with its large eyes and roared.

"Roar!!"

The gust of wind blew at them, it pushed them back and filled their nose with a bloody odor. With their strength it was impossible to even imagine fighting with this monstrosity, just the gust produced by its roar was enough to push them back.

"Leo! Leo! What should we do?" Bolt was trembling in total panic, he was on the verge of wetting his pants.

But Leo was calm now because he knew they could easily escape from it, but he was worried about entering the tunnel, that darkness felt eerie to him, he felt once they entered, they will forever be trapped inside.

"We are heading in," Leo replied.

"Are you sure?" Same as Leo he was also feeling that entering that tunnel wasn't any safer than facing that tiger.

"What choice do we have? This tunnel is filled with uncertainties, who knows we might come out of that alive." There was hope in Leo's voice. "At least it is better than this hopeless situation."

Tiger jumped at them, both of them felt as if the air itself was pressing down them.

"Now!!" Leo yelled and jumped in the stream, Bolt also followed.

Tiger crashed onto the mountain wall. The opening was too small for the tiger to enter, after losing its prey it kept roaring at that opening.

Even though they got away from the tiger, there wasn't even a little bit of relief on their face.

Now they were heading toward some unknown danger.

The water was cold, they slowly swam inside. The wall of the tunnel was covered with green moss. As they swam further inside light begin to fade, and after some time there was only the pitch-black darkness, they couldn't even see their own hands.

As eyes became useless, Leo's second brain started creating the images with the help of other senses. Leo didn't find anything unusual. Inside the water, there were just usual organisms, and outside there was only the wall covered with moss.

For some time their journey was surprisingly uneventful. Other than the darkness which seemed a bit scary there was nothing else.

"Leo, where are you?" Bolt was worried and scared as he couldn't see him.

"Don't worry, I am here just by your side," Leo answered.

Bolt heaved a sigh of relief, his fear of the unknown lessened a bit. "Fuck, where are we heading?"

"This stream must be going toward some larger source of water, maybe toward the sea." Leo speculated.

"I hope you are true." Bolt prayed.

After some time Leo noticed the speed of the stream gradually increasing. They were swimming, trying to keep themselves afloat, but as the speed increased it was getting difficult.

At some point speed increased so much that it completely took over them, they got submerged, they lost control over their body. Water pushed them forward in an uncontrolled manner.

They were getting out of breath. If they remained inside the water any further, the only result would be death. But thankfully that didn't happen.

The darkness inside the tunnel started fading. They noticed faint light entering the water.

Just a few moments after they found themselves falling from the high altitude. Leo complained inside, "Is drowning wasn't enough? Now we are even falling."

"Splash!!"

"Splash!!"

Their bodies fell onto the water surface and then went inside. Now they regained their control over their body, they immediately swam up, and as soon as their head came out of the water surface they gasped for air. Finally, some air to breathe.

After taking a few breaths they hurriedly came out of the water. Both of them felt relieved for being alive. When they looked around everything looked strange to them. "Where are we? Are we still on our island?" Bolt felt today was really an unlucky day, they were finding themselves in dangerous situations one after another. If this was the adventure, it was too much for his heart to take. He hoped at least this place was safe, or else he would just kick the bucket.

Leo looked at the place from where they fell, high on the wall there was an arched opening, same as the entrance of the tunnel. Water was getting spewed out of it at terrifying speed, and then it fell into the pond below, from which they just came out. From the pond, water flowed into another arched opening, Leo assumed that to be their exit from here.

They were inside the cylindrical enclosed space large as half a football field. When Leo looked above, he felt as if someone hollowed the mountain from the top to its center on the ground. Sunlight was coming from the large circular opening at the top of the mountain.

Leo looked at the ruins near the pond, few trees were surrounding it. Ruins seemed to be of some temple. There were two broken statues of lions sitting on each side of long and wide stairs. Temple's walls and door were completely destroyed. From their position they could see inside the temple, they saw a tall statue whose upper part was missing. It seems that was the statue deity that was being worshipped here.

They climbed up the stairs and went inside the temple. From the clothing of the half statue, the deity seemed to be a female.

Just then his senses informed him of the pedestal on which the statue of the female deity was standing of being hollow. The second brain was showing the black and white image of stairs going down behind the pedestal wall.

"Bolt, I think I have found something interesting." Leo was excited, he thought there must be some treasure hidden inside.

"Ahh... Okay." There comes a totally unenthusiastic response from the Bolt lying on the floor, he was dead tired and hungry, he just wanted to go home as soon as possible.

Leo did not mind him. He started looking for the hidden mechanisms to open the wall. "It must be somewhere around here."

Even after a long search, he didn't find any mechanism. Leo didn't know how exactly old this temple was, but it seemed time had made these pedestal walls weak. So he took the large stone and started bashing on it.

It took him almost half an hour to break down that pedestal wall.

As soon as the wall crumbled, torches lining up on both sides of the stairs lit up one by one. The bright yellow light illuminated the stairs. Leo was shocked at this, "These things are still working? And how the hell do they light up on their own? This is spooky." Leo shivered, and Bolt was the same.

Bolt looked at the stairs going down. Seeing Leo getting ready to enter he asked, "Is it okay to go down there? What if there is something dangerous waiting for us?"

"Don't worry, just follow me." With that Leo stepped onto the stair.

On the way down, they cleared many spider webs obstructing their path. About five minutes after they arrived at the end of the stairs.

There they saw a giant ancient door, on which pretty weird creatures were carved, like an elephant with a lion's head, the snake with wings, a mixture of rat and cat, and many more. Each of them looked almost alive, staring at them. Bolt's body trembled after seeing them. "Leo, this is too creepy. I think we should get away from here as soon as possible."

"Don't worry they are just carvings." Leo did not give much thought to those carvings, his mind was busy imagining the treasures lying behind that door.

"Let's see, how should we open this door?" He thought for a moment and then started looking for a hidden mechanism to open the door, but he didn't find any.

He took a long and hard look at the door. "I don't think I can bash it open, this looks tough." Then he looked at the words carved on the top of the door.

"Welcome O Destined One. Thy Command Obeys this Door."

Initially, when he saw them, he thought they were just random words. He thought whoever built this was just trying to appear mysterious.

"Could there be some hint hidden in those words? According to those words, we should be the destined ones, and this door should listen to us." Leo looked puzzled, those words were too straightforward, anyone could understand them; there wasn't any mystery to solve.

"Ridiculous, if this door could "open" just at our command, was there any need to build this do - " His voice stuck in his throat because the creaking sound started coming from that door, the door started slowly opening. Leo rubbed his eyes and looked at it again, he thought he was seeing wrong. "Fuck, it really is opening."

"What is happening here? If this was so easy to open this door, why did they build all this? They should have just put their treasure out in the open."

Bolt wasn't excited at the opening of the door, instead, he became alert. He thought some creature similar to those carved on the door might come pouncing from behind that door.

"Bam!!" The door fully opened.

But even after some time, nothing came out of it as Bolt thought.

As soon as the door opened, torches lit up one by one in the room behind it. Both of them slowly entered inside. This time Leo wasn't as shocked as earlier at the fully automated lighting system.

It was a spacious hall with a high ceiling. When they looked around they found it completely empty, yes, completely empty, except the altar in the center of the hall, on which a treasure chest was sitting, waiting for them to open.

Leo was a little disappointed, he expected the whole hall to be full of treasures, but there was only a small treasure chest. Nonetheless, he was happy, at least he wouldn't be returning empty-handed.

As for Bolt, he didn't care about treasure, it was okay for him as long as there wasn't anything dangerous inside.

Bolt and Leo came near the altar.

Leo looked at the treasure chest, he was excited and nervous. After all, this was his first treasure chest opening in the One Piece world. He prayed for something very valuable to be inside.

His shaky hands slowly reached to the treasure chest. The cold metallic touch made his hair stand. His heart was beating faster.

"Click!!"

When the chest was opened, Leo's eyes almost popped out, and his mouth remained open for a long time, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. When Bolt looked at the thing inside, he couldn't understand why Leo was so shocked.

"Is he shocked because he hoped for some valuable treasure, but only found some weird fruit?" Bolt felt pity for him. "I should console him." He thought to himself, and then started slowly patting on his back. "It's okay Leo, don't hold in you can cry as much as you want. I am here for you."

"Poor Leo." Bolt felt sad for him.