It wasn't surprising to see this since I had already known it to be the case and after verifying this I moved on to the ruins. As the places that housed the aura masters of the order as well as their most dangerous artifacts and treasures naturally these ruins had traps all over the place. Most had been disarmed already by looters or the people of Rota but there were a few remaining. The ruins themselves were hardly worth mentioning as they were merely crumbling stone structures that continued into the ground a ways.-

It was all bland stone walls and empty torch holsters and rooms for the vast majority of the time. Unfortunately for the aura masters of that time they simply couldn't have predicted someone like me with all of humanities knowledge on aura available to them. This meant that what they had hidden behind aura mechanisms that no one should remember how to spot or activate were easy as pie for me to spot and open. The looks on my escorting knight's face when I opened the first of these hidden caches was priceless. The cache itself wasn't anything overly impressive really as it just held an aura relic and some outdated coinage.-

The aura relic was admittedly not a surprise to find as it was a silver globe inscribed with countless unknown runes. This globe was known as an Aura shield and effectively created a programable barrier of energy that could be used to cover an entire small building. If that sounds familiar it's because my Hub has that same technology worked into it. Aura shields were a type of thing that most of the world considered a lost technology so naturally finding a surviving example of it was a momentous occasion, well for anyone else that is.-

For me though I had expected something like this when I decided to come to these ruins. Don't get me wrong this was some seriously useful stuff even for me but I knew that there was no chance in hell that the Kingdom would let me just take the thing with me. No, more likely than not i'll be given some money as a "recovery fee" before being sent onto my way. That was fine though since I knew how to make the thing more or less though I still needed to get the unknown rune skill for it.-

I opened up a total of five more hidden caches while I was in these ruins but ended up sealing shut two of them because they contained "cursed" artifacts. Dark twisted items that were highly dangerous to even be exposed to for normal people. I of course explained why I closed those caches up and there was a serious argument where they insisted that I had no right to stop them from retrieving the items within the caches. I agreed but then bluntly told them that I also didn't need to help them retrieve the items either.-

Naturally we both knew that the only way they were getting those items was if they destroyed the ruins to get into those caches because those aura masters took the security of their things seriously. The other option was if someone opened the caches as they were meant to be opened and let them in. In this case I was literally the only person with the knowledge on how to do that so we were arguing about it. I stood firm though in that I was not going to open those caches back up and they couldn't force me to either.-

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I eventually sent out my messages to my people in Hoenn while this whole back and forth argument was going on between me and the Rota people. I simply left after that as I had no reason why I should stay, they didn't like that. "You know you'll accomplish nothing by standing in my way right?" I said calmly while staring down the small army blocking my path out of the kingdom. "All you have to do is open those caches up and we can all part on good terms, you are the one being difficult about it." the heavily armored knight leading this group of people said sternly.-

"And as I've said the last fifty times I will not have any part in those things getting released out into the world. If you want them go get them your damn selves. But lets talk about what the rest of the world is going to say about this since I've already sent out the information to all my friends in Hoenn?" I asked with a mocking look as he stiffened. "You didn't!?" he exclaimed in horror. "Oh I very much did since none of you seemed to understand what NO means."-

"Honestly I probably would have kept it all to myself if it wasn't obvious that you people would pull a stunt like this. So let me be clear here about your options. You can either let me pass peacefully or I'm going to force my way out killing a whole bunch of you in the process. Then again you might kill me too since I refuse to get captured. Any option beyond the first means your kingdom will have to deal with the wrath of the league and we both know you'll probably not survive that." I said with a calm expression.-

"Why? Why must you force us to make a choice like this!?" the knight roared angrily. "Believe it or not I'm actually doing you people a favor, those things are better left lost to time. You don't need them, you merely want them. You get those things and all it will accomplish is unleashing calamity on yourselves, leave them alone and forget they exist." I say seriously before walking past the man and all these troops that know they can't afford to stop me. Knowing that however didn't stop them from hating me for it.-

I didn't mind the hatred though as I truly was doing this with the best intentions. The two artifacts I found were the Plague spreader, a dagger that twisted aura to create a virulent plague that had no cure and spread rapidly. The second artifact was the Black talon, a single pitch black gauntlet that had the ability to rip out the life energy of those it grabs and feed it to the one wearing it to strengthen it. The catch was that the effect slowly twisted the wearer into a mindless beast that drained all the lifeforce in it's surroundings in addiction to the power it gained.-

Both of these artifacts were very bad news and I wanted no part in them seeing the light of day again. The really bad part though was that I knew for a fact that the previous wielders of both of those artifacts had been put down by the same godly legendary, Mew. She had much history with the aura guardian order so it was no surprise to find that she handed those things over to them for safe keeping.

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