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1279 Words
After giving Malcolm some time to exit the ruin, Matt started dumping mana into one of the runes responsible for projecting the shield across the wall.
It only took ten minutes and around 24,000 mana for the rune to give out, and the shield flickered and dimmed.
Camilla, whose jaw was essentially on the floor at this point, asked, “How much mana can you make? That’s not normal. I don’t enchant but melting a rune shouldn’t take a few minutes.”
Matt grinned. He could tell it came off as cocky, but her reaction was satisfying. His Talent gave him an advantage that few, if any, could even dream of. He might not hit as hard as others, but he would always be able to take those hits and keep going.
He was endless.
“Let’s just say that I can put out a lot of mana over time.”
She didn’t press, and Matt repeated his actions on the far wall, where the other rune was embedded.
Ten minutes later, their whole section of the hall was brightly lit, and the barrier was down.
Matt turned and said to his party, “Now’s the time to decide. Do we leave? Or do we stay for the larger prize?”
Liz got up, and with a grin, asked, “What are the chances that a certain scepter is the item that would fit that hole?”
Matt returned her grin. He just had the same thought.
Everything they came to this ruin for was so close. They just needed to put the puzzle pieces together.
As everyone prepared to move on, he reactivated [Cracked Phantom Armor], and they retraced their steps back to the two golems working on the specter. Matt carefully watched the golems and the surroundings as he stepped up to the platform.
Ready to dodge at any moment, he slipped the scepter out of the golems’ hands, after checking for traps.
When nothing happened, he jogged back to his friends.
Liz had her blood and spear at the ready, prepared for anything to spring to life. Despite no enemies presenting themselves, she didn’t lower her guard. She said, “Well, that was easy. Almost feels too easy.”
It did, and they all nodded in agreement. But with nothing else to be done, they made their way back to the hall containing the vault.
After checking the vault, they found that the hole in the door was a perfect fit for the gem embedded in the head of the scepter.
Not wanting to fall into a trap, Matt used his spiritual sense to scan the scepter. It was a complex piece of rune work, but it didn’t seem to be a cursed item or trap. He could tell what most of the runes did.
“Here goes nothing.”
He put a bit of mana into the scepter, and the tip started to glow.
With a press, the scepter clicked into the vault door and, after a moment, the runes embedded deep inside the door activated. The edges of the door glowed with a dim light, but it didn’t budge. There just wasn’t enough mana in the system for the scepter to complete the separation. Not by a long shot.
Liz, Aster, and Camilla had been watching the door with him, and felt the same thing.
Liz turned with a huff and asked, “We’re gonna have to fill this place up, aren’t we?”
Matt shrugged. “If this was a rift, I’m sure the place would start with full mana reserves. We can keep checking the door every so often. I’m up for a risk. Even a riskier risk than the ones we usually take. But we should at least try and mitigate the odds of us dying as much as we can.”
In an effort to be as cautious as possible, they hopped on Matt’s flying sword. They flew close to the ceiling and mapped out the floor from above one hall at a time.
The vault was near the elevator, which seemed to be a central shaft that branched out to the rest of the ruin. They found refineries and other smelting equipment, along with stacks of metal that blocked off some halls.
Their exploration flight took them down various twists and turns, until they finally found what they were looking for.
An exit.
It was at the outer wall of the ruin and seemed to be a larger version of the hangar that they had seen a few floors up. Unlike last time, the roll-up door was buried from some sort of cave in. Whether it was already there, or was caused by them in some way, the group wasn’t sure.
After digging for a few minutes, they found themselves outside, and in a copse of trees. Before they returned to the ruin, they moved a few bushes to hide the hole they dug out.
It wasn’t perfect camouflage, as they had made the hole large enough for them to fly through, in case they needed a quick escape. But hopefully it would stop any casual observers.
Returning to the vault, they quickly discovered that things didn’t go as they hoped.
Every fifteen minutes and 36,000 mana, they tried the door. Unfortunately, the result was always the same, even as more and more of the nearby halls started to brighten.
Matt couldn’t just dump his mana in one single place, and they didn’t want to risk overloading the runes near the vault. To prevent that, he rotated to a different part of the wall every five minutes.
As the time and mana, he put into the ruin increased, so did the sense of worry among them.
Down the other halls, they could hear heavy sounds of activated golems, but nothing came to their corner of the ruin.
They were close to the one million mana mark, and a little over seven hours, when the scepter made an audible click, and the solid door swung open toward them. The seams of the door glowed with the power of the runes that had split the metal.
As the doors of the vault opened, Matt’s eyes widened, as did everyone else’s.
The vault was full of valuables, and they scrambled to stuff as much as they could in their bags, leaving the scepter in the door. The first section had various small bits of metals that felt strong in essence. They were at least peak Tier 6, or possibly low Tier 7. The second shelf had crumbled dust patterns that looked like old herbs or other organic materials.
Liz paused long enough to pout. “How long does it take for herbs to turn to dust?”
As the one who practiced alchemy, seeing all of the materials wasted by the passage of time had to irritate her.
They moved past the decayed cloth and dried bottles of potions and found a small rack of finished items and weapons.
After they shoved them into their spatial bags, they passed the last rack and saw a glowing core. It was exactly like the one from the utility golem, only hundreds of times more massive. It was in a container that looked like clear crystal of some kind, but from the essence it radiated, the material was something far stronger and higher Tiered than them. There were also arm thick cables running from it to various walls, floors, and ceilings.
This core was only glowing slightly and was spinning ever so slowly.
Matt paused and looked at everyone else.
None of them wanted to charge that thing up.
“Do we break it?”
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