The next morning, while the others either prepared for the day or woke up the rest of the way, Kevin found himself making breakfast with Tomo. The generally quiet woman was unusually talkative and began telling Kevin a bit about her homeland as he cooked bacon and she prepared oatmeal.

She talked about her life slowly, but with a quiet self confidence and strength. Kevin realized this might be her way of showing thanks or trust after he’d saved her team the day before.

But as she kept speaking, Kevin grew more interested in her story.

The truth was he had noticed how different her name and clothing was from most other humans he’d seen in this world so far. He was familiar with her country, too–Soto. It was one of the human countries to the south. However, even though Tomo didn’t look Asian to him, he was starting to suspect the country had somehow received some Japanese influence.

There were just too many coincidences. Nothing on its own was a smoking gun, but as Tomo kept talking about her country, Kevin began to develop a theory that at some point, some Japanese people had made their way to this world, or maybe been reincarnated like him. Otherwise, the odds seemed stacked against so many specific cultural similarities between two countries on different worlds.

But did that even make sense? How many worlds were there? Was it even possible?

He had a lot of questions after chatting with Tomo, all of which he unfortunately had to keep to himself.

Eventually, the adventurers were all ready to explore the area they’d actually come to see. Kevin went to the large, stone door in the ruins and picked up his translation where he’d stopped the day before. George held the key in his hand–what looked like a quartz rod–but the Mountain fingers had unanimously decided to let Kevin translate the writing on the portal before opening it.

It took him less than an hour to finish. Truthfully, he spent most of the time just jogging his memory. It’d been a decade since he’d read any script like this. Finally, he stood back and said, “I have the gist of it now.”

“What does it say?” aske Fili. His eyes shined with curiosity and a hint of greed.

Kevin scratched his cheek and let his eyes continue to roam over the inscriptions as he spoke. “It was a laboratory of some kind. There aren’t any warnings, or curses, or anything bad. In fact, it’s kind of weird…”

“What is it?” asked George.

“It’s almost like…someone’s name, and instructions on what to do with deliveries.” Kevin frowned. “I think whatever is beyond that door belonged to an individual, or maybe a powerful family. It was definitely a testing facility too, though. So I’m not sure what the significance of that is, if anything. I don’t know anything about this city. Not much is known about the civilization this language comes from, either.” Kevin pursed his lips as he thought regretfully about how easy it’d be to just ask his parents about it. They’d likely seen this place during its heyday.

George nodded thoughtfully before walking forward to the door and slowly inserting the quartz key into a slot in the middle. After it was fully inserted, he tapped the end of the key.

Immediately, the door silently swung outward, slow enough that getting out of the way would be no problem.

Kevin was impressed all the way to his toes. For a structure this old, and a mechanism this ancient, the soundless opening of the door had been astonishing. He inspected the outside of the doorway to determine whether it’d been somehow opened relatively recently, but that possibility was unlikely. The grime was ancient, and even chipped off in places from where it’d been disturbed by the opening.

A hallway leading down from the doorway greeted the adventuring team, and lines of small lights on the ceiling and lining the stairs began to glow. The darkness within was warmed by the little lights, eventually providing a dim, but pleasant illumination.

“Everything still works,” whispered Jagna, awed. Everyone else nodded. Then George resolutely stepped forward to lead them down into what might have been a laboratory in the distant past.

***

“How is it going?” asked Jagna. The ork woman was standing guard for Kevin as he worked on translating a wall mural.

“Slow.”

The spearwoman grunted and Kevin understood her boredom. The others were exploring the rest of the ruins. They’d initially all stuck together, exploring the entire area first, though. This had been to ensure they wouldn’t be separated if there were any traps or nasty surprises.

Interestingly enough, there was evidence of plenty of traps and other secrets built into the place, but either time had ruined them, or perhaps they hadn’t been activated before whatever had happened to this ancient city, happened.

Kevin hadn’t spotted any magical traps or barriers, either. But like mechanical security, there had been plenty of evidence that they’d existed at one point.

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He was glad that he hadn’t had to deal with them. Based on the lines of runes he’d seen so far, the magical technology of this place made his neck prickle. What he’d witnessed so far would definitely be fuel for the mages who believed that magically technology had regressed in the world. Kevin actually knew this to be true–his parents had verified it.

Whoever had worked on the security for this place had not been messing around.

Now Kevin was trying to learn more about the ruins, anything he could. Even though the others hadn’t said anything about it, he wanted to earn his keep on the team. His job was to spot magic traps or other dangers. Of course, without him, they might all be dead, but he had a strange motivation to prove himself as a scholar, not just as a warrior.

Finally, he finished translating the art on the walls and found George. Jagna had followed him, so all five of them were standing in a large room–the second to last room in the underground complex. Fili had a sack full of loot and George did as well.

“Profitable?” asked Jagna.

“Oh, gods yes,” chuckled Fili. “We found reagents, stones, jewels, artifacts, and plenty of other things we can sell. Pretty confident now we found almost everything of value. But since there are a couple more things to talk about as a group, and we owe Kevin so much, George wanted to wait until we were all together again before we finished.”

“Did you find out anything more about this place, Kevin?” asked George.

“Just a bit.” Kevin made a frustrated expression. “There has been some damage over the years, and the language is so old that the dialect doesn’t exist anymore. Some of the vocabulary and even the characters are weird, but best I can tell, this was the home and office of a high ranked researcher.”

“That does align with what we have seen,” said George. “But what about the power source?”

Kevin knew exactly what he was talking about. When the group had initially been exploring the entire area–about seven thousand square feet–he’d seen a pillar in the center of the last room all by itself. On top of the pillar was a black ball of light hovering in the air with bands of riotous colors erupting from its center. Each colorful swirl would rotate a few times and disappear again into the center.

“I don’t know,” said Kevin. “The handful of books I’ve seen on shelves don’t seem to cover the subject by the title, but who knows? It would take years to translate the pieces, and most are damaged or too brittle to turn pages. There isn’t any mention of that power source I can see on the walls, either, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to mess with it.”

George flared his nostrils and tightened his jaw, which was the lizard-man equivalent of frowning. The adventurer leader said, "While we were exploring, we all came to that same conclusion, unless you were to contradict it."

"It's not so bad," said Fili. "We massively profited from this run. What we found already took us up to a whole new level. This is a huge haul, like ten normal years worth. No use in being greedy."

"That's rich coming from you," said Jagna.

"Yeah, whatever, shut up, ork." But Fili smiled and winked at the group.

Jagna grumbled somewhat awkwardly before she prompted, "George, don't you have something more to say to Kevin?"

The lizard-man nodded, human-style. "The fact is, all of us unanimously agree that this trip might not have been so pleasant, and at least one of us would have probably lost our lives without your help, Kevin. We did not hire you as another adventurer. We hired you as a scholar, and a lower-ranking one at that. But you've probably saved our lives and you've been functioning as another adventurer as much as a higher-ranked scholar to boot."

"I'm just translating the things," said Kevin.

George attempted a human-style smile, which looked terrible, especially with all his rows of sharp teeth. He said, "I may not be a scholar, but I have been an adventurer for some time, and I know I can recognize most ancient texts now that most scholars can actually read. What you have been reading is extremely rare. I've never seen it before. I highly doubt that there are many scholars, especially in Clearmine, who could have helped us with this."

Kevin shook his head again. "There weren't any active traps, though, and you didn't actually need me to read anything. You could figure out how the key worked. On top of that, all the magic traps either ran out of power or hadn't been activated."

"It doesn't matter," said George. "They could have been. And if they were, again, I doubt that many other scholars would have been able to truly help us. This entire quest ended up being much more difficult than we had planned. So all of us would like to show our appreciation to you. The original contract was to split profit five ways, but all of us are going to contribute another two percent to you. So instead of receiving twenty percent, we will all be receiving eighteen, and you will get twenty-eight."

Fili added, "On top of that, me, Tomo, and George just collected up most of the loot in here, but we found something that might be of interest to you. Wanna come see?"

"Sure," said Kevin. Then he followed the others through the mysterious complex to what had to have been a library in the distant past. Of course, most of the books had long become unreadable or been eaten by insects or had just fallen apart. Kevin had already given most of them a quick once-over. There were a few that had survived the test of time, but had also been easy to note had no value. The Mountain Fingers might not be able to read ancient texts, but like George said, they were experts in their field and they likely didn't usually have a scholar with them to tell them what was valuable. Books were heavy.

George led Kevin to the very end of the room where a book was lying on the table and seemed to be mostly untouched by time. Fili stepped up and held his hand over the book. “I found this in a hidden drawer. It’s one of the few books that we found in here with a slight bit of magic inside, protected it from time, but we don't think it's a spell grimoire. And to be honest, I can't properly tell what it is. We were wondering if you could tell us anything about it."

Kevin made a contemplative face when he saw the mostly plain cover on the relatively small book. It didn't look like much, but there was something about it that piqued his curiosity. He waved a hand over it, trying to see if he could sense any traps or other issues. This sort of thing would be easier if he could use magic himself, but he was still sensitive enough to how traps made him feel that it wasn't impossible. Of course, it would be ideal if he could just call Branch here to help him, but through necessity, he'd had very little contact with the fairy the entire time he'd been traveling with the Mountain Fingers, and even for some time before that.

Luckily, Branch was a fairy. He could very easily amuse himself during times of separation like this. The time apart had definitely riven home to Kevin how lucky he'd been to befriend the little guy, though.

Finally, figuring that it was probably safe, Kevin flipped open the book and started translating in his head. This one was not as difficult to decipher as the writing on the wall and the door, but it was still an ancient language that was all but dead. The only reason Kevin knew it this was was because of his parents’ library. They both predated the rise and fall of the entire civilization that had spawned this language.

Kevin looked up after a few minutes of intense concentration and said, "I think it's a diary, and I think there might be notes about potions in this."

"Ah, that does sound interesting," said George. "It might even have some value, but maybe not. Either way, with your interests, it was one of the only well-preserved books in this entire location that could probably actually be read from front to back. So we decided that we would ask you if you wanted it." George turned. "Is that acceptable, Jagna?"

The ork woman grunted as she nodded. "Of course."

Kevin gently lifted up the book. He quelled any polite refusals. "Well, since you're all being so generous, don't mind if I do."

In the back of his mind, he’d been thinking about how close he was cutting it to get back to Clearmine in time now for the second mission he'd taken on through the Magi Guild, something with an alchemist. If Kevin could sell the book to pad his own finances, a little more wouldn't hurt. He didn't like to think about it too much, but taking care of the goblins he’d rescued had been draining his finances rather quickly.

He wasn’t naive enough to think that his journey would continue to be relatively inexpensive, either. Taking care of a half dozen goblins for a month in Clearmine would probably cost less than a single week, maybe a single day of lodging in a high end hotel within one of the larger cities on the continent.

With thoughts of Rock and the others on his mind, he once again wondered if he should broach the subject of the cultist orks with Jagna, but decided not to. She already seemed burdened with problems related to orks, and she was basically an outcast of her country right now. There wasn’t much she’d be able to do about the matter, Kevin reasons. And if he changed his mind, there was still plenty of time to talk to her on the return trip back to Clearmine.