The old half-orc chief led the group to the altar located in the central plaza of the settlement.

"This is it. This is the thing that’s been haunting our people for so long... That poor Yasna... I hope she doesn’t have to suffer like that anymore..."

Nodding her head at the old chief’s words, Lia looked at the altar and the five statues with her unique ability and assessed the strings of destiny connected to the altar.

And soon enough she came to realize that things were far more complicated than she had expected.

"The strings of destiny that are filled with overwhelming luck and seem to be blessed with the power of the heavenly luck itself are overflowing from this altar..."

"The strings of destiny of these five statues are interconnected and gathering all the power through the strings of destiny of this entire planet in one place and pumping it all into the altar too..."

"This Altar... it’s sucking the entire planet’s luck and fate; moreover, these strings of destiny that have the aura of heavenly luck around them... they seem very familiar for some reason..."

"Collecting so much luck and fate and condensing it one single place... whatever the master of this altar is trying to do is definitely not a small matter..."

Lia had no idea about Alverto’s true plan, as Rio never told her that Alverto had used Fade’s luck to try to change the natural world order.

Thus, Lia failed to realize that the situation of the altar was pretty similar here to the spire of ascension, but she could instinctively feel that something was definitely not right with this altar.

"A gauntlet, a sword, a bow, a wand... all four of them seem to be representing the four awakener classes each... but what is that crown trying to represent then?"

"The universal symbol for the healer class should be a ’potion,’ not a crown..."

Link’s murmurs made Riya frown as she also found it weird that the statue for the healer class was not being represented properly.

"I have never heard of a healer that wore a crown on their head... not even Astra the first healer had such an artifact in her possession..."

"Is this statue trying to represent some rare class that we don’t know of?"

Hearing Riya’s words, Lia and Link also felt that might indeed be the case.

Nobody in the world knows how many rare classes exist in total, as they are just too rare and thus have never been recorded properly.

*Ouuuuggggggg!!* *Ougggggg!!*

Just when the trio was investigating the statues and the strange altar, a weird and eerie voice entered the trio’s ears, and they all looked in the direction of the old village chief and the big half-orc.

The old village chief and the big half-orc both had fainted at some point, and their eyes had rolled back unnaturally; moreover, a weird grin that seemed to radiate an evil and corrupted aura appeared on their faces.

*OUUUUUUGGGHHH!!!* *OUUUUGGGHHH!!!*

As if resonating with each other, dozens of other half-orcs walked out from all directions and gathered around the altar while walking like puppets controlled by someone.

All of them were unconscious, and all of their faces had the same weird, unsettling grin etched on them.

Their bodies twitched continuously over and over, and as if someone were scratching on a chalkboard with their nails, an extremely irritating noise rang out from all of the fainted half-orcs’ bodies.

*kkrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!*

[Divine Spirit’s Blessing: Mind Barrier: Spiritual Damage Immunity!]

Without wasting a single second, Lia cast her spirit magic on herself and the other two, immediately blocking the powerful mental attack that was blasted in their way through that irritating sound.

"Such powerful mental attacks..."

Link massaged his temples to calm his heart down and held Riya’s palm tightly.

Unlike Lia and Riya, mental attacks were his weakness; he had to be more careful against that.

"It’s this powerful because a powerful being is boosting it with their own power... all of these half-orcs seem to have become that powerful being’s puppet; the other party is controlling them through the string of destinies..."

Yasna was not the only person whose strings of destiny were being assimilated by the strange altar; the other half-orcs were also being affected to some extent too.

It was just that they were all not as talented and interesting as Yasna, and thus the powerful being was likely not absorbing their measly luck and was keeping them alive to do small errands.

’Whoever is behind all this... is very strong and cunning...’

Just when Lia and the group were thinking about their next move, a portal appeared in front of them.

The portal didn’t try to forcefully suck them all inside, and it didn’t even try to do them any harm; it remained stable and motionless.

"The other party is inviting us into his realm... How bold and fearless! They have absolute confidence in their strength it seems..."

Hearing Kai’s words, Lia frowned as she spoke.

"I don’t know about the confidence but the strings of destiny are telling me that if we want to solve the mystery of this place and do something about the trouble brewing here..."

"We need to go inside this portal and confront the being on the other side ourselves..."

It was an open challenge; the other party was openly mocking them and asking them whether they all dared to gamble their lives to find the truth or not.

"Hah! Finally, the fellow decided to come right in front of us and stop playing hide-and-seek! Let’s go!"

"I want to see who’s so bold that they dare openly challenge Team Astra!"

Riya nodded her head at those words too.

There was no point in standing here and wasting time; if they wanted to get to the bottom of the matter, they would have to take at least some risk too.

With determination etched on their faces, the group headed inside the portal fearlessly.

Lia glanced at the sky, and seeing that Rio was still busy, decided to enter the portal too.