Arc examined the broken beam, removing a splinter with his flint tool. The rot was only surface deep, implying that decay was not the culprit behind this building's collapse.

Subsequent investigations showed some char, but not much. It was possible that a small fire weakened a critical load-bearing column, and was snuffed out when the roof came tumbling down on top of it... Though that wouldn't account for the total extent of this ruination.

It looked almost like a sloppy job with a wrecking ball... Maybe the structure was condemned after the fire? But why bother, if they're not going to build something new on the site? Not to mention, he'd seen no evidence that the surface dwellers had that sort of technology.

The waning moon had risen a fair ways above the horizon; the sun would not be far behind. Soon, the minions would have to retreat back underground. Arc had been hoping that this expedition would have be more fruitful than this... He had a grim premonition that this may be the last opportunity to visit the surface in relative safety.

With much effort, he'd managed to coax the minions into installing a climbing rope in to the pipe Kat had fallen from. They'd actually made a living scaffold when installing the pinions! It was surprisingly sturdy, too... Possibly due to the influence of the dungeon, which had started to grow much more rapidly after that incident the other day.

The top of the shaft had been clogged with debris, mostly wooden, but the minions cleared it with ease. Arc wanted to save some of that valuable material, but in the end he'd judged it a waste of effort and let the minions carry it off to wherever.

The shaft appeared to have once been a well, in the courtyard of a ruined building. The main materials seem to have been wood and plaster, although the outer walls were stone. The footprint was fairly large, even by the surface-dwellers' standard.

The minion excavation team had found nothing of note in these ruins other than some broken statues (one of which may have matched Kat's icon) after over half a night of searching, though. The site had probably been picked clean of valuables by earlier scavengers.

Arc was about to start extracting his team when Scrooge suddenly rushed over. "Boss, thing finden!" "Show me."

A small tem of eager minions had uncovered some sort of furniture - maybe a dresser or cabinet, it was hard to say with it still half-buried face-down. Unfortunately, it would take too long to return it to its upright position, so Arc begrudgingly gave the order.

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"Open it."

A pair of minions started hacking the exposed backside with adze-like toolheads. It was a seamless wooden panel: promising, since that would have helped keep water away from its contents.

As soon as the hole was big enough, one of the minions reached inside and pulled something out... "Scribblies!" it cried, raising its prize aloft in triumph.

A book! Undeniably a priceless treasure, even if Arc couldn't read it himself. However, he had already made plan for this eventuality: he'd ask Kat to scan the contents and translate as best she could.

A few more books came out of the broken shelf, and then another valuable commodity: chalk. That would be so much more convenient for marking the walls with than paint. There was also a slate to go with it, and an abacus as well.

Arc didn't trust the minions not to break anything, so he had everything be piled up in one place where he could watch it. He idly opened one of the books, regretting the fact that Kat probably wouldn't be able to teach him the language properly. After all, she could only read the meaning behind a symbol, and most books aren't meant to convey knowledge of the language itself.

...Wait.

The page he was looking at was dominated by a single rune as big as his hand. The page opposite had a simple yet colorful painting of some domestic animals grazing in an open field. There were only a couple lines of characters along the bottom of the pages, with generous usage of whitespace.

Arc flipped through the pages, and they were almost all like this. What he held in his hands was most likely a text intended to teach children about the alphabet!

Arc was dumbstruck, not only because he couldn't believe his luck, but because he hadn't expected local human culture to be one that believed in common literacy. And maybe it still wasn't... These ruins didn't look like they were that of a common household.