After nearly an hour of travel, they finally reached the deepest part of the temple—a vast circular hall whose walls were covered in murals depicting the Sun and the cosmos. At the center stood a stone platform, above which floated a strangely shaped key that radiated rainbow-like light.
"The Spectrum Key," Vivi gasped. "It really exists!"
However, they soon noticed something strange within the hall—dozens of corpses lay scattered around the platform. Some had already become skeletons, while others were relatively fresh, yet all were frozen in different final poses. Some seemed to have fallen while fleeing, some appeared to have killed one another, and others still had their hands stretched toward the key.
Most chilling of all, the same expression was frozen on every corpse's face—utter terror.
"These people all came looking for the key," Crocodile analyzed calmly. "Explorers, tomb robbers, perhaps even agents. But they all failed, and none of them died peacefully."
Vivi gathered her courage and approached the platform. "The key is right there. It doesn't seem to have any physical defenses."
"Careful," King Cobra warned. "The ancient texts mentioned that the key has its own defensive mechanism."
Vivi slowly approached the key. When her hand was only a few centimeters away, a powerful invisible force suddenly hurled her back. She flew several meters through the air, but Crocodile promptly turned into a stream of sand and caught her.
"Are you all right?" Cobra asked worriedly.
Vivi shook her head and stared at the key in shock. "It... rejected me. I could feel a consciousness judging me, then deciding I wasn't the person it was looking for."
Crocodile looked at the key thoughtfully. "The ancient texts state that every key has a will of its own and chooses a suitable bearer. It seems the Spectrum Key