Ascension of the elder

Chapter 31: Thank you and goodnight

"Pretty."

The golden array was a remote access to the mana crystal within the mansion and by using his soul sight Kyle could access the entire system. It allowed him to control the defences of the mansion from anywhere within its grounds. Unfortunately this access didn't extend beyond the mana range of the mansion but Kyle would look into ways of extending this range later.

Looking at the crystal mansion Kyle began to explore the layout using the arrays as a medium. Starting at the top and working his way down he began to draw a plan of the mansion floor by floor. While he was doing this Clara was watching him, his hand was still on the array and his eyes were glowing with a golden hue. It appeared as if he was doing something like automatic writing from our world as he never looked at the paper he was using but his pen never stopped.

Clara found this all to be really mystical and had no intentions of leaving or disturbing him and just rested her head on the arm rest of the couch she was on and continued to observe.

As Kyle delved deeper into the mansion he began to find chambers and passages that were not accessible normally. These areas were either hidden mechanically with secret entrances like something from a bad horror novel or behind coded illusion arrays of different types. The coding on these arrays was a combination lock and if you didn't enter the correct code the mansion would defend itself. Kyle could see these codes due to his connection to the mana crystal and it appeared that they had not been opened since before his family took ownership of this area.

When Kyle finally reached the basement level where the formation chamber he was surprised as his view of the mana crystal had changed from before and it appeared as a golden chrysalis surrounded by many different arrays. These arrays were all of the single glyph type but here there were hundreds if not thousands working in a formation together. This was beyond his current understanding because as far as he was aware this many arrays shouldn't be able to work in a single formation without collapsing. Sighing about this he thought about the loss of knowledge as the ability to create something of this nature must have been lost either due to time or war.

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Deciding to look at the functions of this formation Kyle used his mind to produce a triple glyph array composing of 'inspect', 'observe' and 'analyse' glyphs this should give him a good overview of the purpose of this formation and what was happening to the mana crystal. When his array came in contact with the mana crystal something unexpected happened.

His array touched the crystal and instead of relaying back a breakdown of the crystal itself the array was instead broken down. Rather than collapsing the individual parts were separated and began to swirl around with different parts coming closer to the crystal before being replaced with another section. One by one the different pieces were swirled around gradually getting faster and then the swirl became out of order as different pieces were inspected more thoroughly.

Finally the swirl slowed down and eventually stopped before the array was rebuilt and entered the crystal as if the strange occurrence had never happened in the first place. The information Kyle got back was more than he could process in the short term, as what he saw was a golden space filled with innumerable arrays but these arrays were not static, they were in fact changing from second to second with different glyphs and control rings. He didn't know what to make of this and just chalked it up as another mystery to resolve.

Kyle drew his attention back from the crystal and checked this basement to see if there was anything else down there. He wasn't disappointed as behind the staircase leading down he found another illusion array blocking steps leading further down. Letting his sight go down these stairs he found another chamber equal in size to the one above.

This lower chamber was a surprise as it didn't look like anything he had seen anywhere else yet. The walls sloped in towards a raised pedestal which had a floating sphere above it. There was mana pouring down from the crystal above and was being absorbed by this sphere but there were no arrays or any obvious ways for this sphere to alter the man it just seemed to get sucked in and disappear.

When using his sight through the arrays and mana crystal Kyle can see the flow of mana and its connected components, so for example he can see walls and arrays but he couldn't see furniture and he could only see people if they were drawing mana from one of the collection formations. This means the sphere is connected but the means of this connection was beyond him. There may be things in this room that could explain this so he would need to check but there wasn't any rush as this room had been sealed as the previous areas had been.

Thinking this must be the last room Kyle still did a cursory check around just in case and was amazed to find another illusion array once again beneath the stairs, indicating that there was another sub basement below this one. Thinking this will be the last one Kyle dove down to see.

This basement while not as eldritch as the one above still amazed as it was huge. It was larger than the whole mansion above and stretched to about 20km squared. There wasn't anything that he could detect in this area but there were many arrays such as 'lighting', 'water' and 'heat' so there were the basic necessities there were also various reinforcement formations supporting the ground above.

There was nothing to do in this area and he would need to look into what it was meant to be used for, but he decided to call it a night as he hadn't properly slept in 2 days and while he may be fine because of his cultivation he didn't see the point in taking the chance and plus he was mentally tired and a good sleep may help to put things into perspective.

Pulling out of his soul sight Kyle stretched and looked at the plans he had drawn for his mansion it was composed of three above floors and three below with rooming for over 200 people and assorted training facilities. This didn't include the new secret areas he had found so he was again reminded that this mansion looked like a fort built for war.

Standing from his desk he saw Clara lying on a couch by the door fast asleep. He approached her intending to wake her up so she could go to her room and get a proper night's sleep.

"Daddy."

As he neared her she spoke out in her sleep and smiled to herself in her dream. Seeing her relaxed and happy face he couldn't bring himself to wake her and ruin her dream, instead he carefully lifted her bringing her head close to his shoulder intending to take her to a room next door. As he approached the doorway he was expecting to struggle with it but once again appearing to understand his intention the mansion opened the door by its own volition.

Not bothering to worry about this Kyle headed to a room next to his study which had a bed. The door was already open and waiting so Kyle carried Clara into the room and put her to bed before leaving and closing the door behind him.

Walking to the entranceway Kyle wanted to claim a bedroom on the second floor he'd seen in his mental roaming. As he approached this room the door opened and the lighting came alive. Looking around this room Kyle was impressed. All the rooms on the first floor were smaller while on the second they were larger. Also the layout had the larger bedrooms facing the inner courtyard with other facilities at the outer wall, while the first floor had the rooms more equally arranged between the inner and outer facing walls. This made Kyle believe the second floor was meant for higher ranked members.

Kyle prepared for bed and realised he hadn't brought fresh clothes for tomorrow so he'd have to stop by his old room to pick up his gear. He climbed into bed and shutdown the lights before he felt that warm brush of mana again the same as he felt when he first got home. He felt this was the mansion saying goodnight to him so he responded in kind.

"Thank you and goodnight."