"Don't do anything. I'm going to try something. Don't use your inventory and especially do not cast any spells or use any enchantments." Felix called out to Martin.

"Uh… Felix?" Martin said, "… Ok."

Sitting down in the middle of the basement, Felix pulled on the ambient mana around him, sucking it all into a single mana battery in his hands. He pulled on it harder than he ever had before. With the basement almost entirely sealed, the ambient mana levels dropped rapidly until it was essentially a mana desert. Some mana was slowly making it's way through because the walls didn't hold it back perfectly, they were only three dimensional after all. The leakage was slow enough though that he figured he should be able to get ahead of it.

Once Felix was satisfied with the mana levels, he stowed the battery in his pocket and released his own, affinized mana, into the air. Once the mana levels were close enough to normal, Felix stood back up and looked around him. His affinized mana slowly filled the pattern in the walls, tracing it's visible and hidden lines. Now that he could feel it in it's entirety, he realized what it was. The visible lines were for collection and they all fed into lines sunken into the walls that led to dozens of locations around the room. Only one of them was directly on top of the wall where the string of anima was located though.

Felix walked over to it and examined the wall. It seemed like it was either concrete or possibly carved directly out of stone and finished to be smooth and once shiny, though he couldn't tell which. He didn't want to immediately resort to trying to break the wall, though he was tempted to try, he was worried he might damage whatever was behind it. Unfortunately, he had no indication of how to open it. First, he cut the mana to that section of the wall. He simply held all the mana around it in the lines still and didn't let any of it pass through into that section. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to have any effect but he kept it starved just in case.

There were two possibilities running through Felix's mind. Either this was supposed to be opened and there was a trigger to open it, like a button, lever or key or it wasn't meant to be opened at all. If it wasn't meant to be opened, it was either protecting something from the outside or protecting the outside from something. Considering the charring, Felix was leaning towards it being protected from the outside and whoever or whatever incinerated the basement. It was possible it was being protected and was meant to be opened but he wasn't sure.

"What did you do?" Felix turned around startled to see Martin standing behind him.

Martin continued, "All my enchantments started failing all at once and then I felt suffocated and my mana regen went to 0. Now everything is back to normal?"

"I sucked all the mana out of the room so I could follow the enchantment embedded in the walls."

"You can do that?"

"Uh yeah… Got a cool skill."

I hate straight up lying like that, especially to Martin who is so nice and trusting, but I have a feeling I shouldn't be advertising my innate.

"Sounds like a damn cool skill. What class are you now by the way? Is it something awesome like Mana Savant or something like that? What rarity is it?"

Well shit. Is Wizard too… Yeah it sounded too special.

"Arcanist. It's just Rare. My profession is cooler though, Mana Engineer."

"Rare for a class is pretty awesome. Mana Engineer does sound sweet though. Any chance we could drop the barrier at the top of the stairs? Everyone else has kind of been waiting…"

"Oh right. Sorry about that. Yeah."

Felix and Martin walked up the stairs together. Arriving at the barrier, Felix pressed his hand against it and the barrier disintegrated, all the mana reabsorbed into his core.

"Was that solid mana?"

Felix turned his head to look over his shoulder, "Uh… yeah."

They walked down the stairs and a few moments later the rest of the party joined them.

"You guys find anything interesting down here? What was up with that barrier?" Jack asked the two of them.

"Doesn't seem to be anything down here. Felix was just running an experiment." Martin responded.

"There's something behind or in the wall there," Felix pointed, "but I have no idea how to get it to it. You guys find a key or anything that might open it?"

"Nah. There wasn't much of anything in the house. Seems like a totally normal earth house. Well, other than the dust." Jack shrugged, "Any chance you can drill through it Martin?"

"Mind if I give it a shot?" Martin turned to Felix.

I guess if there isn't a key, it wasn't meant to be opened… It's always possible they missed something I guess but honestly, I was probably going to resort to drilling into it anyways.

"Go for it." Felix nodded.

Walking over to the point on the wall that Felix had been staring at, Martin pulled a handful of contraptions out of his inventory and began going to work on the wall. It took him a half hour or so to finally get through the rock wall, which was extraordinarily tough but was only a centimeter or so thick. Unfortunately, the rock was just decoration, behind it was some kind of teal colored metal that Martin couldn't even scratch.

"You sure there's something in there?" Jack asked.

"Pretty sure." Felix nodded.

"How long do you think it would take you to get through that one?" Jack called out.

"Honestly? I don't know if I can get through it at all. If I did it would take me hours of experimentation." Martin scratched his head.

"Alright. I think we let this one go. Whatever is back there, probably isn't worth the time. There are vaults on this level that have loot and are much easier to find. I think we give up on this one. What do you think Martin?" Jack suggested.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Yeah, I agree. Sorry Felix." Martin slumped a little.

"That's alright. Mind if I stay here and keep at it?" Felix asked.

"By all means." Jack nodded.

"Any chance you finished scanning all those books?" Martin asked.

Yeah, finished a few minutes ago. Grim cut in.

"Yeah. I'll walk upstairs with you so we don't get ash or dust on all of them."

"Sounds good."

They made the transfer on the front lawn then parted ways. After they had left, Felix did a quick run through of the entire house but he couldn't find anything. Just as Jack had said, the house was completely normal. He found cookware in the kitchen, furniture exactly where he expected it and the remnants of clothing in the closet.

The furniture and cookware were all evidently low quality, possibly even E grade considering how easily it all crumbled compared to the rest of the furniture he had seen. To be certain the house was empty though, Felix picked up all the furniture and left it in a pile of garbage on the front lawn. Then, he opened all the windows, a few of them breaking from the stress of being opened for the first time in, at minimum, thousands of years. Finally, using a few simple wind spells, he cleared out most of the dust from the ground and second floor of the house.

Felix searched through again, paying attention to the ambient anima and mana but found absolutely nothing. He found faint hints of mana and enchantments on a stove and refrigerator, but that was expected. There were also hints of it on some of the lights but again, he expected that. He was very quickly getting to the point where he was ready to just start tearing through the walls hoping to find anything.

Got any ideas?

Honestly? I think you should burn the place to the ground. Make sure you properly incinerate everything.

Ha ha. Seriously tho-

No. I am being serious. If there is a key, it's probably magical so it should survive the fire. Worst case, you end up back where you started and have to find a way to break into the wall.

Uh… I guess… I mean… Am I really going to just burn it down? That seems so… inelegant?

Who cares. Whoever lived here has been dead for billions of years probably. Unfortunately, we are stuck in this integration universe that has a severe lack of knowledge. So we make do with the information we have.

Any idea what's in the wall? If it's actually worth retrieving?

Nope. No idea. Best guess is a magical item that was bonded to someone in a weird way.

Yeah. For the bond to stay in tact like that though… and just flutter in the ambient?

Definitely weird.

Also why would something like that be in such a normal looking house and why is something in such a normal looking house so well protected?

I definitely think it's worth figuring out what it is. Worst case, it's something innocuous and you wasted some time.

Is it weird that I find this far more engaging than the prospect of the vaults and more loot?

Makes sense. This is more of a mystery, a challenge.

Yeah… Anything interesting in those books Martin had by the way?

Yes. There were a few first hand accounts, here are the only interesting sections.

Journal 1

Oh god why. Why did we move here. We should have known. I don't know how much longer we can hide. He's coming. He protected us, we trusted him. We moved here so our kids could grow up and be safe, so they could become something. I just wanted them to be surrounded by the best. To have mentors and teachers, resources. I suggested we move here. It's my fault. We should have seen it sooner. We were simply cattle, being raised for the slaughter. Now we are all going to die at the hand of the butcher.

Holy shit Grim. That was…

Yeah. Next one is… ominous.

Journal 2

Today Erolan took an apprentice. It's just some girl. He put her up in a house on the second level. Why couldn't it have been me? I'm so much prettier than she is.

Eri started this new program where the best of the best, the highest potential, get hand picked by him to ascend. Apparently you get personal training and when it's done, you get the chance to move wherever you want. I want to go see a big city, maybe this is my chance, I hope I get chosen for the ascension.

It's been a few years now since Eri chose my brother to ascend. At first I was so happy for him, a little jealous, but I was happy. Now I just miss him. I wish he would come home. I hope he at least says goodbye before he moves to a big city. Maybe he can bring me with him?

Is that the last one, Grim?

The last relevant entry.

Eri is Erolan?

I think so.

Is there any doubt that ascension is what I think it is?

No, not really.

Alright. I guess it's time to burn down the house.

Felix picked back up all the broken furniture and placed it into the middle of the house then formed a simply Flame Thrower spell. It didn't take long for the furniture to ignite, aided by the dust still lingering in the air. Felix quickly jumped out a window and started igniting more of the house from the outside to be sure it all burned. He flew around and made sure the fire reached every corner and used force spells to make sure it collapsed inwards. Once the entire house was alight, he switched over to trying to increase the heat. His ultimate goal was for the entire house to be a pile of ash he could easily sort through, he didn't want any solid chunks left behind.

It took just over an hour for the fire to start dying down with most of the remnants contained to the basement. Felix didn't want the fire to die down just yet though so he didn't let it. He continued pumping his own flames into the charred remains to make sure everything had enough time and heat to fully disintegrate.

They weren't really providing much fuel anymore though so the fire gradually became Felix incinerating the remains much more so than it was the remains themselves burning. Before it had all cooled down, Felix wrapped his robes around his mouth and nose then used wind spells to blow away as much of the ash as he could. He figured if a key had survived the fire, it wouldn't be light enough to be blown away by a very light breeze. Keeping that in mind, he made sure his wind spell was as gentle as possible while still blowing the ash away.

He thought about creating some kind of vacuum spell but ultimately he didn't have a bag to contain the ash or anything he could use to filter out the remains. Once his gently breeze lifted the ash into the air, a much stronger one a few meters above the ground blew it all away. His hope was that whatever was left behind, if anything, was some kind of magic key. Unfortunately, all he found was a smattering of nails and other small metal things that had been warped by the fire. Once he cleared most of the ash out, he was left with the same basement he had started in, just empty now. Looking to the corner where the soft rubbery mat had been, there was a large metal plate under it that stood out from the uniform, scorched concrete flooring everywhere else around it.

Felix walked over to the metal plate and pulled it open using his staff as a crowbar. He found what he was both expecting and not expecting at the same time. He knew the undercity was just below them and figured there couldn't really be anything else down there, but he didn't expect there to be any way to access it. He half assumed this would be a vault of some kind, a portal just below the metal plate. Instead, he looked down into the darkness and saw the light that shone through highlighting the edges of the cliffside castle below.

The underside of the hatch had a veneer of the white stone so that when closed, the hatch itself would be almost entirely invisible from below. He carefully and silently closed the hatch so he didn't attract any unwanted attention from the high level Devoured below. Looking around at the basement, he realized it wasn't spatially expanded at all, the brick flooring beneath this entire level was just much thicker than he realized and the basement had been dug into it.

No key. Fuck. I need to get my hands on more spells, skills and items. This whole thing was so… crude.

Any bright ideas?

If you go get Nova, it can probably just eat the material but it would probably take a day or so.

Could I move it yet? You know like the powers I'll get through the bond?

Hell no. You can maybe wiggle a pencil. Maybe. We can test it out later.

Damn. Alright, I guess drilling through the wall it is. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .