Ascension of the elder

Chapter 42: Nothing good

"Who's Scooby anyway?"

"Don't worry about it, come on I want to have a look at these sealed areas before it gets too late."

Kyle dismissed Zak's question and pushed onwards as he was now raring to have a look at these hidden zones within the mansion. When he found out about them he wondered how they had been missed for so long as they took up a rather large amount of the mansions floor area. It was probably close to a third of the overall space within the building.

Looking closer at the 'illusion' array Kyle had noticed that within the array there was a suggestion not to notice the anything strange about the layout. This wasn't a direct command as that would have made it much more noticeable for example if someone was walking down a hall but suddenly forgot about walking down the hall, someone would have noticed long ago in that case. Instead the suggestion made people not care about the strange blank areas which were hidden by the array. Kyle had to admit this was very smart as no one questioned it so no one looked into it. As it was only a suggestion it wouldn't work on someone who knew the true layout and was actively searching for those specific areas.

Once they reached the third floor Kyle led the way to a blank wall just next to the staircase. Zak looked at this blank wall but couldn't see any difference from the rest of the walls in the mansion so he looked at Kyle with a raised eyebrow leaving his question unasked. Kyle seeing Zak's look just smirked before speaking.

"Now for my next trick look nothing up my sleeves but hey presto."

With a flourish and a little bit of childish anticipation Kyle smacked his hand against the apparently solid wall. An array appeared immediately and began to spin. Kyle pushed his mana into the array and aligned the control ring like a combination lock on a safe before the wall dissolved into a mist which dissipated. This was the form mana took when it was compressed into a semi solid form like these illusion. It wouldn't make much of an illusion if someone could just accidentally trip and fall through the illusion.

Zak's mouth was hanging open on seeing what Kyle had just done. He had no idea something like this was possible, he had even heard it when Kyle smacked the wall. How much had been missed in this mansion and more importantly what would they find.

"Excuse me Lord Kyle but who created this secret area?"

Zak wanted to know who had created this as he didn't know of anyone capable of something like this, he didn't think even the lady of the house could do something like this and she was amongst the best array masters in the city.

"Well this is an ancient array system, the records show we have been using the current array system for at least 1000 years but it could be much older than that or someone could have found old records and used them but I think it is more likely to be the former."

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Hearing Kyle's response Zak couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of something being hidden for so long plus the mansion didn't look that old. He knew it was the oldest building in the estate but it wasn't like the other ruins around which showed erosion and other damage. Zak didn't know and Kyle wasn't ready to tell everyone about the mansion being able to heal itself to a degree which precluded such damage. So in theory the mansion may be even tens of thousands of years old with no one knowing.

Kyle walked through the newly opened doorway leaving behind a shell shocked Zak behind and looked around the newly opened area. The room wasn't to large but it was around 4m x 4m, it appeared to be some kind of small armoury as there were weapons and armour on stands and on racks fixed to the walls.

Zak finally came out of his stupor and looked in the room. Seeing what was inside he began to inspect the various articles, there were of course great swords but there were also glaives, axes and warhammers but unusually there were also things like bows and other lighter weapons, Kyle even thought he saw something which looked suspiciously like a machete.

It appeared the ancient people weren't as prejudiced with their weapon choices. The armour was a combination of full plate while there were also lighter scale armours present as well. Kyle and Zak looked at these different things and noted the materials used in their construction. They were made using the same materials that were currently in use without any different alloys like the one Kyle had created so it could be said the basis for their current understanding was based on the same knowledge as these people had.

Zak was noting down the amounts of weapons and armour present so they could move them somewhere more accessible but Kyle stopped him.

"Don't worry about it Zak we won't be keeping them like this. We'll melt them down and re-forge them into what we need."

Hearing Kyle, Zak stopped what he was doing and cast one last look over the things in the room. Everything here appeared to be functional, there were no decorations instead these appeared to have been mass produced in a hurry so the soldiers who would be stationed here would be ready to fight.

Kyle led the way and headed to his next destination. This was a much larger room located at the centre of the south side of the building. Kyle ignored a couple of smaller areas as from the sizes he guessed these were other storerooms but this big room must be something different.

On reaching the location he was aiming for Kyle touched the wall without any theatrics and unlocked the room. When the array was dispelled Kyle and Zak could see a double door with an arched top. Kyle thought this door was different than most he had seen and it reminded him of a church door. This room also contained one of the 'shield' arrays covering the mansion but he didn't know if this was coincidence or if it was located here to protect this room.

Entering through the door Kyle froze and Zak who was following gulped before saying what Kyle was thinking.

"Damn."

The room was enormous, it seemed even larger than it should be from Kyle's view through the plan and he suspected there may have been some time lord involvement in its construction. Arranged around the walls were bookshelves, hundreds of them and strangely there was a second floor balcony which shouldn't be possible as the only thing above them was the roof.

Looking around the first floor Kyle could see a few study tables located at the windows facing out towards the rest of the estate. In the centre of the first floor was a large golden or brass apparatus. In the centre of this machine was a blue sphere about 1.5m in diameter which was floating in the centre of the equipment without touching any of the surroundings.

"Zak don't touch anything."

"Okay sir but what is this thing? Also how is there a second floor?"

Hearing Zak's questions Kyle could only be honest and say.

"I have no idea, I really wasn't expecting something like this."

Walking around the apparatus Kyle saw some stairs leading up to the balcony so he headed to these as he wanted to get an overview of this chamber. Looking around the balcony Kyle found more work stations but unlike the area below the tables here were littered with various devices in different degrees of assembly or disassembly he couldn't tell which it was.

Zak who was following behind saw this and found this was similar to an array masters workshop as they usually had various projects going on at the same time when they were creating formations as they would usually concentrate on one type of array in a sitting as it helped them focus rather than chopping and changing which may cause them to make a mistake.

"Sir this looks like an array workshop."

When Kyle heard Zak's opinion he found this was probably correct as he could see various etching tools and when he approached one of the devices he could see some partially finished arrays on it.

"I think you're right Zak but look all the array's are in the old form."

Zak couldn't tell the difference as he never studied arrays so he just took Kyle's word for it. Kyle looked around to see if he could see anything else which would give an indication of who had used this area and spied a smaller notebook on the side of one of the desks. Picking it up Kyle opened it and saw it was a journal or diary of some kind. The language used was slightly different than how it was written now so he could only make out some of the context. Kyle wanted to know why it appeared as though the place had been abandoned in such a rushed manor so he looked to the last entry which was written in rushed strokes and read something like.

'They've breached the front, we'll be leaving soon good luck to whoever finds this.'

Zak saw Kyle's expression and asked with curiosity.

"Have you found anything interesting?"

"Nothing good."