Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 205: A Door?

The long period of time hanging in the sky as a surveillance satellite did not change the innate character of Gawain but brought him a distinct perspective on the universe —— when necessary, he could use the attitude of almost a complete bystander to analyze the transitions in this world and sum up some possible rules from the frequent changes that lasted thousands and tens of thousands of years. And these rules, to the species living on the ground (including those elves who had lifespans of a few thousand years), were difficult to summarize.

Precisely because he had witnessed the rise and fall of civilization multiple times, Gawain could speculate that the Dark Wave happened more than once —— even if he hadn’t caught any one of those times, the surveillance images before and after the occurrences were enough for him to guess what had happened in between.

And in another of Gawain’s guesses, he thought that the scale of the Dark Wave was uncertain.

A large-scale Dark Wave might cause the civilizations on the entire planet to be remolded, while a small-scale Dark Wave’s effects would be more localized; the annihilation of the Gondor Empire 700 years ago was probably just a “small Dark Wave”.

Although it destroyed the most powerful empire in human history, its range was only the central region of the continent. Forget others, even the elves’ Silver Empire and the western Dwarf Kingdom were barely affected.

Or… perhaps the event 700 years ago shouldn’t be considered an official Dark Wave but was merely the “prelude” of a real one?

All sorts of guesses and associations emerged involuntarily in Gawain’s mind. Many of those contents were actually from his imagination, coming out of thin air. Beside him, seeing that Gawain wasn’t responding for a long time, Amber finally couldn’t hold back and poked his arm. “Hey, hey, what are you thinking about?”

“Just thought of a matter,” Gawain jolted and casually replied. “Say, if one day, all the resources in the world that humans are familiar with changed — for example, the properties of all kinds of magic-conducting materials have been altered — what would happen?”

Amber faltered for a moment. “Why is the leap in your thoughts so big…?”

Gawain knocked Amber’s head. “Just say what would happen.”

“Everything would definitely be a chaotic mess,” Amber answered offhand. “Especially the Mages. They probably wouldn’t be able to find spellcasting mediums all at once, and many spell materials would have to be reviewed…”

When Gawain heard Amber’s answer, he kept silent for a good while before letting out a light sigh. “The civilization of mortals is really weak… isn’t it?”

Amber’s ears quivered. “You really speak oddly.”

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Gawain stood up, turning to look at Holme and the other members who were waiting at the side. These people didn’t dare to come forward to disrupt their feudal lord while he was in thought. Seeing Gawain stand up now, they then came a little closer.

“This type of ore needs a name.” Gawain nodded at Holme. “I will name it Holme raw ore.”

“Lo—Lord?” Holme, who had still been a serf not too long ago was greatly startled upon hearing Gawain. He repeated with eyes wide in disbelief, “Holme raw ore? This… I… this is not befitting of my status! How can I have this privilege…?”

“In the domain of exploring the unknown, discoverers are forever noble. No need to decline.” Gawain waved his hand. “Henceforth, we might find even more valuable objects on this land. Naming them after the discoverer would be a simple and convenient way —— and it could very well fire up the job enthusiasm of explorers.”

“Yes… Thank you!” Holme abruptly straightened up. For so many years, it would be the first time his back, which was hunched forward due to heavy work, was straightened. This even caused a cracking sound to come from his back; then pain spread throughout his whole back, but he still put in effort to keep his body straight. “I… I…”

This civilian with shallow insight, who would be considered barely able to read and write by noble standards, could not find the suitable words to describe his own feelings, and Gawain wasn’t bothered by this either. He only waved his hand. “Everyone in the exploration team deserves credit. I will have Heidi put this on record and convert them into rewards according to the contribution list.”

Then, he looked towards the direction of the mountainous path —— earlier, he had already seen a combatant run over. The soldier stopped on the path and had been waiting for him.

“What’s the situation?” Gawain approached the soldier and asked.

“Lord, I brought the report from the ruins.” The soldier stood straight, bowed, and reported, “Sir Byron found an unusual piece of magical equipment and a strange hall with runes that spread all over in the lower level. He hopes that you can go take a look personally.”

Another new area was found deep in the ruin?!

Gawain brows knitted together. He immediately gestured to Amber. “Make a trip with me.”

The two went down the mountainous path, led by the soldier. After a rather long journey, they finally arrived at the deepest part of the ancient facility.

“It’s really big in here…” Looking around at the tall and wide corridor and the dim magic crystal lamps on both sides of it, Amber could not help but sigh. “Even walking in here on a straight path took so long…”

“And this is still the outcome after Sir Byron had cleared the way.” Gawain nodded. He’d noticed that the magic crystal lamps on the two sides of the corridor were newly installed. Considering the problem with cost and the output rate of the portable Honeycomb Magic Web, those magic crystals were fixed with great intervals between them. As such, the overall illumination of the corridor seemed extremely dim. However, compared to the original pitch blackness, this corridor that had regained illumination once more was still much better than before.

In that circular hall, Gawain saw the middle-aged Knight who he had not seen for a long time.

The many days of exploring the ruins did not make this Knight seem haggard and exhausted: his condition was even unusually good, as if he had found the feeling of being a mercenary in his former days once more. Byron looked to be in high spirits. He came forward once he spotted Gawain. “Lord, you should look at this! I bet that the two sets of writings at the entrance are describing the uses of this room —— but we couldn’t figure out what they meant even after studying them for a long while.”

Gawain looked over, following the direction where Byron’s finger was pointing. He saw that there was indeed a metal plate that didn’t have the slightest sign of rusting on each inner side of the door to the circular hall. Neat ancient script was carved on those metal plates using a technique that resembled laser etching.

“The left says ‘caution, beware of accidents’, and the right says ‘personnel to lock the door when leaving’. ——What’s wrong?”

Byron: “…”

Then and there, Gawain saw the faces of the few soldiers behind Byron become flushed. If it weren’t for the military discipline holding them down, they would probably have the intention of rolling on the floor.

“Don’t go to the trouble of studying things that aren’t your specialty in the future.” Gawain sighed and patted the wily old Knight’s shoulder. “Even Heidi cannot read all of these ancient scripts, why are you joining in the fun?”

Byron’s forehead was covered with cold sweat. He turned around awkwardly and pointed to the center of the circular hall. “…You are right, Lord. You better come take a look at this…”

When Gawain looked towards the center of the hall —— in fact, from the moment he stepped in, he’d already noticed that intriguing object with a bursting sense of presence.

That was a circular ring vertically set into the ground; about a third of the structure was buried underground. The inner diameter of the ring was about four meters, and a whole bunch of magical patterns and symbols were densely packed on the upper section of the circular ring. Rare metals and magic-conducting crystals were mounted on the various magical nodes. This showed that it ought to be some kind of equipment that consumed tremendous amounts of energy.

Whereas, on the ground around the circular ring were similarly complicated and massive magical symbol systems, as well as multiple metal devices fixed to the ground and connected to the magical patterns on the ground surface. It looked like a control station.

“This is… some kind of door?” Gawain rubbed his chin. The figure of the ring-shaped object had him involuntarily reminded of things similar to a portal. However, he remained suspicious of the assessment of the “portal” —— even during the pinnacle of the Gondor Empire, the remote transportation spell was still a theoretical product. This world did not possess such a convenient and speedy spatial teleportation magic. If a mature portal did exist in the Gondor Meteoric Era a thousand years ago, it was impossible that none of the information was handed down.

It was more likely a “magic door” used for spatial transformation within a small scope, used to link up different spaces with the same coordinates. Such technology was rather developed in the Gondor era.

“Initially, we suspected that this thing was rock, but in reality, it was a metal. Only, it is of some unknown material,” Sir Byron continued to report. “In addition, we found several sealed off rooms on this level. There were some ingots made of the same material as the circular ring stored in them. It seems like the people here at that time planned to make even more circular rings or to expand it. —— Only, they evacuated subsequently, so these works were shelved.”

“Unknown metal material, is it…?” Gawain muttered to himself. “If it isn’t an ancient alloy, then it could only be that the Dark Wave caused a change in their properties. If the latter was the reason, the trouble with research would be big.”

Sir Byron did not hear him clearly. “Lord, what did you say?”

“No, nothing.” Gawain waved his hand. At the same, from the corner of his eye, he caught Amber who’d, at some point, wandered over to the circular ring and was using her precious little dagger to poke those dark purplish crystals on the surface of the ring. He immediately called out, “Ay! What are you doing! This thing cannot…”

“Don’t worry. I won’t steal!” Amber instantly glared at Gawain, loudly clearing away the suspicion of her occupational hazard breaking out. “I just felt that the remaining energy fluctuations in these crystals were slightly… familiar.”

“They’re familiar?” Gawain was startled. “You’ve seen such crystals before?”

Amber examined those crystals mounted on the ring like an expert scholar and used her free left hand to rub her smooth chin. “According to my years of criminal experience…”

Gawain: “…What?”

“Cough, cough. Work experience, work experience.” Amber had also caught on and quickly corrected herself. Unfortunately, everyone at the scene had heard her, so she went on with thick skin, “According to my experience, such crystals should be the very rare shadow affinity crystals —— the most expensive kind amongst all elemental crystals. And to be honest, its purity is also frighteningly high. Shadow crystals with levels of purity this high are seldom seen these days.”

“Shadow?” Gawain blinked. He knew about the existence of the elemental crystals. This type of unique magic crystals was formed by magical power crystals being corroded and reformed in environments with high concentrations of those elements. As the shadow environments in nature were scarce, locations that could sustain shadow environments with concentration levels hitting the criterion were even fewer. Therefore, elemental crystals with shadow aptitude were the rarest and most expensive ones. Although Gawain Cecil was known to be a scholar back then, his main specialties were in herbology, survival in the wild, construction of territories, as well as killing monsters. He did not study much on crystals. But as a thief who dared to pry open the tomb of even a pioneering Duke and was perversely talented with the shadows, it wasn’t odd that Amber had seen such crystals before.

“Could it be related to the shadow realm?” Gawain asked as a guess.

Amber patted her chest. “Then I’ll go in and check out the situation first!”

“Hold on.” Gawain grabbed her arm before she entered the shadow realm. “Go in with me.”

Amber faltered. Abruptly recalling the frightening experience of facing the divine flesh when she entered the shadow realm in the laboratory in the ruins, she instantly broke out in cold sweat and quickly grabbed Gawain’s arm. “Then you’ve got to walk in front later!”

Gawain found it both funny and annoying as he glanced at this half-elf who suddenly turned timid. He waved his hand. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

Amber inhaled deeply, calmed her emotions, then activated her innate gift of shadow affinity.

The familiar trance-like feeling closed in once again; Gawain felt the scenes before him begin to sway. Yet just as he was vaguely about to see the sights of the shadow realm, Amber suddenly called out an “ouch” beside him. Then the two of them “fell out” of the border of the shadow realm.

Amber rubbed her head giddily, only responding after some time. “It seemed like… we were rebounded out?”