Aidan sent his shortsword flying into the room, making some twirls here and there to draw attention away from any possible trap within. Since nothing occurred, as planned, Van went in first, followed by Aidan and Haley.
The moment they entered the room, it was clear that this place felt different than the rest of the floors combined in his senses.
Aidan sensed that each floor belonged to its own realm, but this room in particular had the strongest remnants of will left behind compared to the other floors.
The spirituality of this room alone spoke of power and reverence, something that went beyond mere mortal understanding. He looked around the room, being completely circular with nothing around them. However, the walls seemed to glow with a faint shimmer of energy that Aidan couldn’t understand, and his scan didn’t show anything that would tell him of their makings.
The only thing that was in the room was the pillar at the center. It stood up to his waist, completely dark in appearance except for shimmering silver linings that went down its surface. Those same silver linings also flowed around at the surface the top of the pillar, becoming some form of insignia that was hard to decipher. He hadn’t read anything like this in the books he commandeered from the library, so he was out of his depth here.
“What’d you think this is?” Haley said as she approached the obelisk but wouldn’t dare get within a few feet. Even she knew not to tempt fate in this dungeon. “I tried scanning it, but nothing’s working.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of control unit?” Van suggested. “You know, like the ones that control the lighting of our house and all that? Maybe it’s the breaker.”
Aidan should’ve figured they’d have something as advanced as breakers in this world, considering that the arrays had to be powered by something in the building he lived in as well. He approached the obelisk, noticing that at the center lay a small indent, as though something could be fit inside.
He grew curious at the size, then pulled out the quartz gem in hand. He moved it towards the indent, and to his shock, it matched the size perfectly, right down to the facets on it.
“Does this quartz… belong here?” Aidan muttered, looking back at the quartz in hand.
“You mean someone took that out of this?” Haley pointed at the obelisk. “Does that mean that the Red Riot actually got this far down?”
“Then maybe it’s some kind of valuable treasure,” Van said. “It’s not surprising. Red Riot’s famous for hoarding powerful items and selling them high in the black market. It’s no wonder they were desperate to find this.”
“Yeah, but it kinda makes me wonder what would happen if I put this back,” Aidan said, pursing his lips in thought. “What’d you say? Who wants to find out?”
“What if it’s another trap?” Haley mentioned. Van pointed at his sister in affirmation to her worries.
“Mmh… good point. Then you try,” Aidan turned around to hand the gem to Van. He instantly wilted, then grabbed the gem and stood next to the obelisk.
“I should’ve expected… just stand back from me. Aidan, can you make sure my sister is safe?”
“You got it.”
Aidan pulled Haley’s shoulder to stand next to him, then used Craft to remake the earth. To his surprise, the earth didn’t bend, not even a little bit. He hoped that he could also bend steel or metal, but from the looks of it, this type of metal was impossible to use with magic.
Still, he kept Haley by his side, deciding to use his body instead.
Van nodded to Aidan, figuring that he would do something before anything could happen. He took in a big breath, then slotted the gem onto the top of the pillar. The surface began to glow with its crimson light, the same as the quartz’ color, before it ran down the pillar and spread throughout the floor and up the walls.
Lines of glowing crimson red spread like spiderwebs around the room, making it glow in short intervals as though waves of energy were passing through each line at different times.
They watched in awe as the room kept going through its energetic process of transferring some kind of signal down to its source, which started to coalesce in front of them as the energy traveled down the walls to the northern section, the color becoming deeper as they formed a rectangular shape. It glowed bright hot for a second, becoming blindingly bright before it revealed another twin set of doors, this time being bright gold and red in its markings on the surface compared to the silver doors behind them.
“Whoa…”
Each one let out in response to the sudden doors appearing, and after another few still moments of silence, everyone became relieved as they relaxed their stiff postures.
“No traps,” Aidan said, pointing at the door. “It looks like it opens up into another room.”
“Well, same as before,” Van said, cracking his neck. “I’ll go in first.”
“Admit it, Van, you’re just excited to be the first one in.”
Haley let out a sly grin at her brother, and he had the audacity to make a small grin back at her as he went in without hesitation. Aidan only shook his head at the two, glad that they weren’t scared in spite of all this.
Van pushed open the golden doors with force, taking extraneous effort as he grunted while pushing through. The doors were opened wide, revealing a sight he never expected to see.
Inside was a room made entirely out of cyan-colored alloy that was different from any metal he saw before. Markings sprawled throughout, creating a heavy atmosphere that seemed pressed down by an unknown pressure.
At the center stood a floating sphere made entirely out of clear crystal at a glance, held up by a circular pedestal that continuously sent out waves of unknown power that seemed to resonate with the markings on the walls. There were also other strange objects within the room, each one glowing differently than the markings and the sphere itself did. They looked more like consoles rather than just magic stones, something that immediately caught Aidan’s interest.
“What is this…?” Haley asked, keeping herself in check from entering.
Aidan scanned the sphere floating at the center, but what he got in response didn’t exactly answer many questions.
Ancient Merunian Fulcrum Device (Epic)
A powerful construct built by the people of Merun in a long forgotten age. It contains, fortifies, and releases vast waves of energy that travels beyond the physical realm into outer planes of existence. It is also capable of stabilizing the area around itself to keep most powered constructs in check.
Most of that information completely swept past Aidan’s head, but one thing was for sure.
“We ain’t taking that,” Aidan answered, leaving the other two to look back at him.
“You sure?” Van asked. “It looks pretty valuable. Isn’t this what that Key Slinger wanted you to bring?”
“Not bring, but find out,” Aidan corrected. “And you have any idea how to store this thing into the bag? Without it complicating things and probably blowing it up?”
“...Good point,” Van said with an awkward frown. “Sorry. I guess I let the gold speak for me.”
“Honestly, I don’t even know what this is used for, but it’s way beyond our pay grade,” Aidan said, stepping into the room after sensing it for any possible danger. The moment he stepped in, the siblings followed suit, keeping it to themselves as they paced around the energy-fied room with wandering eyes.
“Maybe we can bring the other stuff that’s in here?” Haley said, and after stopping herself in front of a small console-like device, pointed at it. “Like this thing.”
Aidan noticed what she was pointing at, and scanned the device in question.
Ancient Merunian Freezer Module (Rare)
A powerful artifact made in the Merun time era that controls the freezing temperatures of an area within its limited range. It can vastly control the temperature to keep it below negative hundreds of degrees in a matter of hours.
“That’s a glorified freezer if I ever saw one,” Aidan muttered. “The hell is Merun and all this Merunian stuff? You guys know anything about this?”
“I heard that they were incredible geniuses that created a whole bunch of amazing stuff from some of the things I read about from the adventurer’s guild,” Van said. “There are ancient temples and guarded areas where the Merunians kept their best stuff, something that goes beyond our normal understanding. It’s something that most of the major organizations around the continent were hunting for.”
“Seriously?” Aidan’s eyes lit up.
“But I also heard that having this stuff around is banned in most major cities,” Van said. “It’s so important that the people from the kingdom would demand you to return it and keep it in check so that they can investigate themselves. If anyone tries to take it anyway, it’s enough for it to be called a treasonous act.”
“W-Wait, doesn’t that mean we’re already in big trouble just by being here?” Haley asked, her eyes turning frightful at the idea.
“As long as we don’t take anything from here, it should be fine,” Van said to calm her down. “Plus, look.”
Van stepped up towards the very Freezing Module Haley pointed out, putting his hand on it. After checking its weight and bending his knees, he tried to lift it with a humongous grunt.
He managed to lift it up, but then a coil of electricity flew out from the bottom of the device, and before Van could lift it up any further, the device flew right back down to the same exact spot it had been, upending Van and making him fall.
“Ouch…” Van muttered, with Haley by his side to see if there were any injuries. He nodded to her in thanks. “See that? It’s impossible to take any. I read some more about this stuff, thinking if I knew more about it, I can pick up some stuff that won’t get me in trouble. I heard that the kingdom uses some pretty top-of-the-line array makers to make tools specifically to get this stuff out of here. These are all fortified from leaving in place without a specific key.”
“Like how we used the quartz to get in here in the first place,” Aidan said, stepping up to Van to see if he was alright. After showing that he was, standing up to his feet, Aidan kept glancing about in the room. “So is there anything we can take from here that wouldn’t blow up in our faces?”
“Let’s keep checking and see,” Haley said. “I’ll try to see if I can pinpoint anything of value with my talent. I never tried that before, but it’s better than nothing.”
The group split off then, searching around the prestigious room filled with possible valuables that might as well be worth jack shit in their current situation.
Unfortunately, no matter how much they searched and scanned, there didn’t seem to be anything of note to take. All of them, as Van had shown, refused to leave their spot, as though they were magnetized to stay in place. Aidan tried figuring it out using Craft, but he sensed a major pang of danger that made him falter.
It was his Sense Vibrations. It was the first time he ever sensed something so dangerous to his own life that carried no hostility whatsoever. It pretty much told him that meddling with whatever array that made this complex stuff the Merunians made would only end up with him having a bad time. That same sense of foreboding seemed to have stemmed from that quartz earlier as well.
“Seriously, what the hell are these Merunians?” Aidan wondered aloud. “Are they like super advanced people from a long time ago?”
“That’s what the books mentioned in the guild said,” Van stated, surprising Aidan that the guild even had books. “But it’s said that they got too powerful, and the kingdom from long ago banded with the other nations to take them down when they were risking everyone’s lives on some super project.”
“In the kingdom, it all comes down to the fact that the Merunians grasped too hard and were gonna bring everyone else down with them, so they had no other choice.”
“You guys keep mentioning the kingdom,” Aidan said. “Were you from there or something?”
“We were,” Haley said. “But we left due to some circumstances.”
“You planning on going there someday?” Van asked, seemingly wishing to step away from that topic. Aidan could read enough to know when to step off.
“Nah, but what’s this kingdom called?”
“The… Ghalea Kingdom,” Van uttered slowly, as if confused himself. “How do you not know? Everyone knows it.”
“Uuh… I just recently came here,” Aidan said, wishing to step off the topic himself, but apparently Van wasn’t as keen on reading the room as he was.
“That reminds me. It feels like you really don’t know anything around you. Where did you say you come from?”
“Van,” Haley hissed, grabbing Van by the arm. “Enough. Don’t you see you’re making him uncomfortable?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Aidan waved it off, not wishing to make this entire matter into a scene. “So, nothing here we can take?”
“Not without using something to help take it, like a key,” Haley shook her head. “Maybe that’s why the Red Riot didn’t do anything here.”
“What do you mean?” Van asked.
“I mean, if I found the gem and found this place, but figured out I can’t bring anything back, the first thing I’d do is make sure that nobody else can find this place. Then I’ll come back here once I find the thing that helps unlock everything here.”
Aidan nodded in agreement to that. The reason why they had the quartz is because they took it from its resting place, keeping the door completely hidden and unseen by anything else. They would then research a way to figure out how to unlock the mechanism that kept these complex devices in place.
“Guess we’re the ones that managed to find this place against their wishes,” Aidan answered. He was starting to connect the dots of what’s going on.
In other words, the Red Riot got screwed over when one of their members got greedy and grabbed the quartz. Then, he unfortunately died and the quartz was taken by the very same person that took the guy out. That person just so happened to be himself, all the while Red Riot had no clue on where the quartz was.
“Looks like we found what we were looking for,” Van said, turning to Aidan. “So, is this it? Are we done?”
“Looks like it,” Aidan crossed his arms, looking back at the room they were in before with the central pillar sticking out. “Hate to say that we haven’t found anything worthwhile, just more information. Hopefully that Soul-Mending water might appease her.”
“Me too,” Haley shivered. “I hate to think what she might do if she wasn’t pleased with all the work we did.”
“D-Do I have to give back the armor too?” Van asked, his hand hovering over the chest armor they received earlier.
“I think the water should be enough,” Aidan said, spinning the Arcane Ring around his finger in return. “Not like I’m planning on telling her what I found either. Plus, knowing her, she’ll probably figure out a way to find somebody who knows how to unlock this Merunian stuff.”
“Then it’s time to go home,” Haley let out a breath of relief. “Oh boy, I feel like I shaved off bits of my lifespan while we were here.”
“Goes double for me since you’re here,” Van uttered. Haley replied with a quick jab to his arm.
“Alright, let’s go.”
The group left the Merunian treasure room, though it was a stretch to really call it that, and Aidan pulled the quartz out of the pillar. In response, the doors that lead to the treasure room began to glow and dissipate into the air, making the doors disappear right in front of him.
If there was one thing he knew, the Merunians certainly knew how to make stuff. He wondered if perhaps they had some connection with Harmony like him, capable of crafting stuff like the door and those modules inside. Would he be able to recreate them if he spent more time developing his Craft spell? That would certainly be decent to have.
His feet stopped moving. A sudden bang in his mind resounded, forcing him to freeze. The others quickly noticed his plight, turning back to him. The mood turned tense as Aidan just stood there, unable to comprehend what he was sensing.
“You… gotta be kidding me.”
“W-What?” Haley asked. “What’s wrong? Stop leaving us in suspense like this, Aidan!”
“Aidan, what’s wrong…?” Van asked, though his face soon clouded into dread.
“We’re so far away,” Aidan said, moving his head left and right as if to dissuade the argument in his head. “How is it coming after us like… wait, is it because of the quartz? Is it following us because of the quartz?”
“Aidan?!” Haley shouted this time, her eyes widening and turning into pinpoints. “What’s going on?!”
“Ghhh… everyone, take your positions! It’s coming after us again!”
As if in response, a deep roar echoed out all around them, reaching deep into their very souls as the ground beneath them trembled in short intervals. It was as if great weights were slamming on the ground, reverberating back to them–and it was becoming louder and fiercer as time passed.
The doors that led out of the central room smashed open, and a humongous beast landed with both large hands keeping it steady. It let out another roar as the Dweller Prime made its appearance to them all.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter