(Giden) “You…How did you learn that?”
The old man working on his own blade looked at me with a vaguely astonished expression.
(Kai) “Mh? You mean my blade-smithing? I’m mostly self-taught.”
(Giden) “No, no. Not that, but the mana channeling for the blade. How did you do that?”
I looked at him, confused.
(Kai) “What? Is it rare or something to be able to this?”
I gestured to the hand-and-a-half sword I had made. Sure, I was fairly certain that things like the hand-and-a-half or bastard swords hadn’t been seen yet, but the sword itself shouldn’t be anything special.
(Giden) “Girl, the art of making a blade able to channel its wielder’s mana without any inscription runes has been lost for millennia.”
Ah shit. Nobody had said anything about it before, so I thought it wasn’t anything too special. Now, it looks like I’ve broken common sense again.
(Giden) “How did you do it?”
Great, now the old man and his two assistants are looking at me with expectation, like their lives had led up to this point. Ah, what to do, what to do?
Oh, I know!
(Kai) “Well, do inscriptions have to be on the surface of the blade?”
Their expressions turned to shock, like a thunderbolt from the heavens had leapt from the sky and struck them with inspiration.
Truth be told, I integrate mana circuits into my blades during the forging process, which have nothing to do with inscriptions. I was once interested in computers, and used that knowledge to invent the mana circuits. I’m mostly sure that I wasn’t the first to have this idea—as evidenced by that one blade I had found in the labyrinth, Ancient’s Respite. It had unbelievably complex mana circuits integrated into it, far beyond anything I’ve seen before. The only thing that even comes close is my own sword, Twilight.
Maybe there was a way to internalize the inscriptions, but I had never tried it, since mana circuits were able to handle more mana, and had more diversity.
I’ll let them chew on this problem a while though. Capable craftsmen like them tended to have their own type of pride. They would attempt to solve the issue of internalizing inscriptions without involving me at first. If they couldn’t manage to figure out how to do it, then I was hoping that they wouldn’t come to me, due to that pride.
But still, I hadn’t expected for mana circuits to not exist in this place. It’s lucky that no one noticed it before now.
The three smiths immediately started work on another blade, this time trying to integrate the inscriptions in the blade. They assumed that my inscriptions were located in between the folds of the metal, so they attempted to utilize the folding techniques they had seen me use. I shouldn’t have to say that it was a failure on the first try. I also expected it to be a failure on the second, third, fourth, or even tenth try.
Well, until they decide to give up their attempts, they shouldn’t come to me for help. They seem stubborn, so I should be fine for a while, at least.
Unfortunately, I panicked a little after realizing that mana circuits were something too advanced for this world, and forgot to create a scabbard for my new bastard sword.
I ended up just propping it up against the wall of my new room. I got some strange looks from the building manager, carrying in a new-looking sword, but I had nowhere else to put it.
Really, I had just made the thing to waste some time, and to experiment a little. I had been curious as to how many different types of mana circuits I could include in a steel sword. I had been putting two or three into my other blades, while five went into Twilight. However, two of those circuits had somehow occurred naturally, the structures within the blade itself aligning into complex patterns.
Also, the density of the mana circuit affected things greatly. A mana circuit with greater usability would occupy more of the space within the blade, and could conflict with other mana circuits. And then, there are some mana circuits I’ve found that are straight up incompatible. Like trying to implement both fire and ice based mana circuits.
Twilight was by far my most powerful blade due to the sheer density of the mana circuits, and their compatibility with each other.
It didn’t hold a candle to Ancient’s Respite though, due to the fact that it has just as many mana circuits in it, and they have an even greater compatibility with each other. Also, the entire blade is filled with them. It’s the difference between a desktop and a super-computer.
That being said, Twilight holds the same gap between it and any other contemporary blade.
Well, the sword I forged today had seven mana circuits in it. Here’s what I saw when I used〖Analyze〗on it.
Unnamed BladePropertys:Wind Elemental BoostFire Elemental BoostMana StorageKeen EdgeSpeed BoostLightning BoostFrailness
All in all, it wasn’t bad. Wind and fire worked well together, and I was also able to stick lightning in there. That in turn enabled me to add the speed boost, but also turned the blade somewhat more fragile. The mana storage was an idea that I’d had a few weeks ago, and had been waiting to try out. However, it wasn’t really a property of the blade. I had put those mana circuits into the pommel, where I could store a good deal of my mana pool.
I think in the future, I’ll forge something only meant to store mana, so that I didn’t have to worry about running out in the middle of a fight. You can never be too prepared, after all.
I think I’ll hold onto this sword for now. I don’t know what to do with it after having forged it, though I now know that selling it wouldn’t be an option. Especially after seeing how my other blades had been misused by the nobility.
It could make a good gift for Niten, though. When I next see him, I’ll ask about it.
Making that blade had wasted about five hours of time. Not really having anything else to do, I decided to check out the academy’s dungeon.
It was a tier five, from all the other dungeon cores that had been fed to it. I had already been granted access by Flavius, so I could enter whenever I wanted.
The dungeon was in the center of the campus, amidst several monolithic marble buildings. At first glance, it seemed to just be a stone gazebo, meant for relaxing in. However, the gazebo had a spiral staircase right in its center. The staircase had a turnstile, or this world’s equivalent, guarding the dungeon’s entrance, preventing those unauthorized from entering.
I pulled out a glass card, and waved it over the turnstile. Immediately, I heard a click, and pushed through its bars.
Very quickly, the staircase descended into the dungeon, finally winding it’s way down into a cavernous room with fluted marble pillars set around its walls. It felt grand, and regal—A far cry from many of the other dungeons I’d seen so far.
It also felt neglected, and abandoned.
The whole room was lit by a glowing moss that had carpeted the floor, and crept up the pillars with vine-like tendrils. Those same pillars had accumulated little cracks up their length, giving the vines a place to hold onto.
What little I could see of the floor indicated that it was composed of black and white tiles, thoroughly shattered. Little motes of glowing dust floated, suspended in midair. There was a stillness, like I had disturbed the atmosphere of the room, and it was waiting to see what I’d do.
Oddly enough, I felt a sense of unease, and unslung Twilight form my shoulder, readying it for a draw if need be.
It was unlikely that I would encounter anything capable of threatening me until at least the thirtieth level, but I was still on edge.
True to my word, every time I encountered a monster, they were easily cut apart. The first time badly scared me, though.
Wary and cautious, when the hound had jumped out from some underbrush, I immediately drew Twilight and let loose a slash that killed everything in the room. I chided myself for such foolishness, and moved on. I managed to restrain myself the second time, if only just barely.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
As I ventured deeper into the dungeon, that wariness only seemed to grow, as did the architecture and grandeur of the buildings around me. It had gone from rooms like that at the entrance, with classical styles of carved stone and arches, to what looked like entire city blocks.
On the fifteenth level, I was astonished to find that the entire floor was a single, massive room. It looked like there were streets laid out, and badly damaged stone buildings covered the place. Many of the buildings were only partially intact, their innards exposed after a few walls had collapsed. The omnipresent moss and vines found their way here as well, the glowing green lights providing an eerie tableau to the disgraced architecture.
In the center of the floor, and single building rose above the others, it’s domed roof actually scraping against the floor’s ceiling. There were windows all around the dome’s base, and the dome itself rested on a rectangular building with two wings extending out in front of it. Marble pillars lined the building’s sides, and what had once been large glass windows had long ago broken, the vines creeping out of there as well.
That building was definably the largest on the floor, and I decided to go check it out, interested to see what was inside.
Well, besides an easily beaten floor boss shaped like a giant crow, there were large, partially damaged murals all over the inner wall, depicting several races waging war, making peace, and defending against greater foes. There were a few races that I recognized, but I didn’t think existed on the continents.
I was half tempted to just dismiss it as the dungeon adding it’s own flair, or that broken buildings were just a part if it’s personality.
Unfortunately, I knew from past experience that this dungeon was much too young to be capable of demonstrating these things. It would take quite a bit of time before it could gain true consciousness, and until then, it would do what all young dungeons did—Draw from it’s surroundings. Sort of like how a dungeon in the mountains might look like a mine, or how a dungeon in an old cemetery would be chock full of undead-type enemies and creepy things, or a dungeon in the middle of a forest would be full of greenery and various animal-type monsters.
But then why would this one have these buildings, and the murals holding races that no one here should know about?
They might be remnants of an ancient civilization, buried under the assault of time and other things. Judging by the murals, they had been gravely threatened at more than one point, and forced to cooperate to survive.
The dungeon might have found these buildings, and incorporated them into its floors. It’s the likeliest scenario, and one that would explain a few things.
I mean, I had always wondered why a mana rich world like this one would only have three sentient humanoid races—The elves, humans and demons. Normally, you would find upwards of two dozen, and a great diversity of other races. Even more, nobody knew what a dragon was here. Well, they did, but dismissed them as myths. No indication as too whether or not they were ever real.
To put this in perspective, let me say this.
Every world I’ve ever been to had dragons occupying it, in one form or another. Whether or not the world had mana didn’t matter. Dragons were called the beasts of creation for a reason.
The fact that they don’t exist here, in a world where they should be able to thrive, indicates a few things to me.
One, they could have died off during a great cataclysm or been hunted to extinction.
Two, there might be things in this world capable of killing all the dragons.
Three, this world is much, much older than I first thought.
And, I know that they had existed at one point. After all, they were one of the races depicted in the murals, defending against a shadowy mass of…something.
Intrigued by the implications of these murals and the buildings, I ventured deeper into the dungeon, banishing that wary and disturbed feeling to the back of my mind.
Eventually, I past the fiftieth floor of the dungeon, blasting past all the monsters that had appeared.
The floors were getting larger, and the buildings bigger. None of them so far were as big as that one on the fifteenth level, but there were some at least half the size.
Not satisfied, I continued deeper, now having forgotten that urgent feeling of wrongness, like something dangerous was happening.
Then, past the seventieth floor, things began to change dramatically.
The floor size had shrunk again, with the seventy-first floor only holding what seemed to be an ancient and badly damaged market place. Interestingly, the stalls had either been built out of stone designed to look like wood, or the wood had somehow turned into stone itself. Most of them were broken, with the stone looking like it had splintered from some violent impacts. There were buildings jutting out from the floor’s walls, half in and half out of them. Unexpectedly, there were no monsters on that floor, so I walked down the market street, and descended a level, where the first bodies appeared.
It reminded me of something I learned while studying another world’s history, when a volcano erupted and buried an entire city under ash.
Centuries after that had happened, archeologists found the city, and it’s residents preserved under the packed ash. While the bodies had silently decayed, it had left cavities under the ash perfectly outlining their forms.
It kind of felt like that—there were no actual bodies, just kneeling stone figures, like someone had poured plaster into the cavities, and taken away the ash. I might have thought they were just statues, except they all had expressions of sheer terror on their faces as they looked to some distant, now non-existent point.
Something big must have happened to this place, to make it like this.
Even more, some of the figures weren’t of elves, humans or demons—Proving that the murals I had seen earlier were no fakes.
I continued down the dungeon, and promptly lost count of the floor level, due to my astonishment and wonder, looking at the vestiges of a civilization destroyed untold ages ago. I might have found it odd that there were no more monsters attacking me, but like the fear and wariness, it got shoved to the back of my mind.
----------------------------------------
(POV Flavius)
Something’s gone very wrong. I don’t know how it had happened, but Kai has disappeared. The staff-card I had given her shows her entering the academy’s dungeon five days ago, but never leaving. I can’t see her falling to monsters inside the dungeon, given her strength—and true enough, she’s still alive.
I knew this because of the staff-card, which monitors its holder and reports their position and wellbeing to me. So I know she’s doing fine, but it won’t display her coordinates. Thankfully, it also records such information, so I could see that she had made it to the bottom floor of the academy’s dungeon two days ago.
I would have been astounded by this, since she had set a new record for reaching the bottom, were it not of the information displayed next.
Somehow, after reaching to bottom of the dungeon, she disappeared, her coordinates unknown.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this has happened. A few teachers have reached the bottom of the dungeon, and also disappeared. After a few weeks, their desiccated corpse appears in the dungeon’s core room, and nobody knows what’s happened to them. I really hope she’s fine, since she’s Master Niten’s disciple, and because I was once good friends with her mother.
Actually, I felt quite a bit guilty as well, since nobody had realized she was gone until I found students suited to learning from her. I tried to find her, but couldn't. I ran around, trying to find her, before checking the system that monitors the staff-cards.
After we found out about her being missing yesterday, I shut myself in my office, trying to figure out ways of reaching her. I could think of none in the end, and had to resign myself to a hellish fate—Letting Niten know that I’ve lost his newest disciple.
I hope he finds her. I was really looking forward to knowing her better, and seeing her teach those seven new students from the human empire.
----------------------------------------