On the other side of the pyramid Seras found a set of two stairs that hugged the walls of the lower level. They didn’t lead straight down to the street level, so she couldn’t use them as way to go all the way down. But she did find another giant-sized door at the start of the next level.

With a mental shrug Seras strode through the door and into an open foyer, or maybe it was just some sort of waiting room. Seras had never been one for interior design, so she was a little hazy on the exact definitions. For all she knew she had just stepped in the parlor or salon.

At one end of the room was a stone counter with several doors behind it. Carefully she stalked through the room, glowing finger once again illuminating her path. Seras still felt cheated by the fact that she had to go through all that pain for a glorified nightlight. The floor had a pleasant if unremarkable tile pattern, and for a strange reason Seras got the impression that she had just walked into government waiting room.

Personally, she tried to interact with the city government of Mantal as little as possible. Hell, she didn’t even pay taxes since Merc work wasn’t technically a legal profession. But occasionally she had to wrangle the impenetrable bureaucracy that pretended to run the city, things like water and power required in person visits for some Gods forsaken reason. The bland tile pattern, the dirty beige plastered walls, and even the counter with attached offices all gave her the impression of a government building.

Which made sense now that she thought about it. This big ass pyramid was in the center of the city, it was either a palace, a temple, or a civic building. Or all three.

She checked behind the stone counters and within the offices but found nothing besides dust. Moving down the hall her impression of a government building was reinforced as she walked down the wide hall with several offices set off to the side.

Seras checked each room but found nothing. No ruined furniture, no wall hangings, not even the odd corpse or piece of graffiti. It was like this place had never been inhabited.

Moving on to another hall Seras found a stone stairwell and descended to the next level. There she found more hallways and offices, even some rather large rooms that might have been some sort of court rooms.

She found another set of stairs and once again descended to a lower level. This level was a little different. Whereas the other levels had long winding halls this one seemed to be a self-contained set of offices. Like a company that only leased out a single level of and office building. Her suspicion was confirmed when she exited the offices and found herself on a balcony within a massive atrium.

Looking down from the balcony Seras saw that the atrium went down several levels. Maybe even so far as the street level.

Curious about this change of the standard room and hall format she explored some more. On the upper levels of the atrium she found little side areas that could have merchant stalls, kinda like a mall. Though once again it seemed that these had never had any occupants because Seras couldn’t find even a scrap of trash. Just dust piling up in corners.

There were plenty of stairs on each level, and even what appeared to be elevator shafts. No elevator though, that would have been too convenient. Once on the lowest level Seras felt a slight breeze, and she found that at one end of the massive room was a set of more giant-sized doors. This time there were several next to each other, obviously intended for the passage of lots of foot traffic.

On the floor Seras found a massive seal etched into the ground. A sword, shield, and staff with the words ‘Vestal adventurer society’.

To add to the strangeness of her already strange day Seras realized that none of the words she had just read were anything she had seen before. Mantalese was a combination of pictographic characters from their roots as an independent kingdom, as well as the blocky foreign alphabet used by the rest of Ruin. These words were all loops and curls, each letter firmly linked to the next.

Must be that language adaptation. Handy.

On the bottom most level Seras encountered something she had not seen before. Glittering black jewels, casually left in one of the corners.

She crouched down to pick one up.

Iron rank Dark quintessence. Crafting material. A distillation of darkness.

She frowned. How do you distil darkness? It was insubstantial. Well, they had been in a dark corner that likely never saw light. They could have formed in the corner… somehow?

Another entry for list of strange shit.

She checked the other corners of the room. She had no idea how she was supposed to use dark quintessence, but the meta text had labeled it as a crafting material. And her inscribe rune/circuit had mentioned needing crafting materials. Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

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She found more quintessence for a total of nine jewels in the other corners. And within the final corner of the room, she found her first real sign that there were people on this world. Well besides the whole strange, abandoned city.

The sign came in the form of corpses.

Hidden in a side hall that she had missed from the balcony were three, maybe four bodies. She said maybe because they were little more than skeletons and their bones were scattered about haphazardly. Some of the bones gnawed on and cracked open.

The bones were a milky white color, meaning they had never gotten around to replacing their skeletons. Or worse yet, they hadn’t replaced any of their meat with cybernetics because those didn’t exist here. Seras shook her head at the idea. She did not like the idea of being stuck in a world with no cybernetics.

Seras’ examination of the bones relieved something strange. Two of the present skulls were definitely human, but the third wasn’t. The third was massive, twice or three times as large as a normal human skull, and looked like a cross between a human and a toothy predator with enough bite force to crush steel. She could only imagine what it had looked like in life.

The strange skull was another piece of evidence to the other world theory. As if the giant subterranean city and Cavern Lurkers weren’t enough proof already. And that was ignoring the glowing finger she had gotten from the strange shard.

Seras closed her eyes and once again pushed down her growing panic. She was going to have to deal with that eventually, but not now.

She searched their bodies, or what was left of them. Their clothes weren’t in any condition to salvage, all frayed strips and musty as hell. Even their footwear was ripped apart. Shining her finger around she did see a glint of metal and found a thick metallic chest plate made of some dark colored metal. It reminded her of the black metal of her old pistols, the ones that had earned her the nickname of Blackiron.

Not a person in Mantal hadn’t heard that name, and they said the name Blackiron with awe and respect.

The chest plate was about the size of a whiskey barrel and would have slipped over her shoulders if she tried it on. So, it was no good for her.

She scanned the object and read the name.

Armor of Umbral Steel. Provides the wearer with sound muffling and obscures the sight of others.

Stealth armor? Interesting. How did it do that? she saw some runic circles on the inside, were they magic inscriptions?

There was a huge gash in the front, looking like it had been shredded by massive claws. Likely killing the wearer.

She opened her pocket space and lifted the armor; bits of spine and rib bones fell out. Untouched by the beasts that killed them. Something else felt out as well, she threw the armor into the inexplicable space and bent over to pick up the palm sized object that fell out.

It was round like a marble with a cloudy grey mist swirling within. Occasionally Seras saw skulls within the mist.

Death essence: A magical distillation of death. Grants the wielder power over death.

Would you like to convert in appropriate form. Y/N

Before Seras could even consider whether she wanted to try absorbing the powers of death and red warning box appeared

Warning. Death essence is listed as restricted by adventurer society.

She frowned. That was new. She glanced back to the seal on the floor. Supposedly this must be like a branch office for the adventurer society. And they listed the death essence as restricted. Why?

She focused on the term restricted until a new box appeared.

A loading bar appeared with the words ‘Searching term’.

Then a new page opened up, and Seras recognized her Net browser as it pulled up a page listed as restricted essence list.

Essences listed on this list are restricted by the central council of the adventurer society. Any person who bonds one on these essences is barred from membership. Anyone who meets someone with a restricted essence is encouraged report them to their local branch of the adventurer society. A task force will then be assigned to eliminate this person.

And list right at the top was the death essence. Followed by other names like corruption, animate, succubus, and vampire.

Okay so first off, what the Hell? Seras thought she couldn’t connect to the net on a different world. So, what the hell was this.

She opened her ID page again and pulled up the racial traits section. Focusing on the Net connection ability.

Racial trait:

Net access: HUD GPS upgraded to world map. Street view map upgraded to tactical map. Access to public and divine knowledge repositories. WARNING Divine knowledge repositories require permission to access.

Seras had understood the part about her GPS, and with a flick of intent she opened the street view map to see that it had filled in with everything she had explored, as well as a grid layout of the city around her. That would come in handy later. It even listed what looked like the city’s name. Vestal outpost.

Now she focused on the third thing it had listed. Access to public and Divine knowledge repositories. The restricted essence list seemed like something people wanted to make public. What else was public knowledge. She opened up her net browser again and tabbed to different page. This time however instead going directly to her favorite porn site she instead typed it out and made sure it didn’t auto fill the exact web address.

Only one thing showed up.

Divine repository of Fertility

With a thought Seras tried to open it.

Access denied by the Goddess Fertility

Right, she needed permission for divine repositories. So what if she just looked up public repositories.

Restricted essence list (Adventure society)

Monster Manual (Adventure society)

Known essences (Magic society)

Known essence powers (Magic society)

Farmer's almanac

That was not a long list. Was there really not that much information that was open to the public. The idea seemed alien to her.

Still, something was better than nothing. Setting the death essence in her pocket space she tried looking up her own technology essence in the known essence list.

No match found

Odd. Why wasn’t it there?

She pulled up the list and read through the long, long list of essences. There were elemental ones like water, earth, iron, and fire. Then ones with weapon names like sword, bow, shield, and oddly enough a harpoon essence. She didn’t see a gun essence in there so maybe it was listed somewhere else. Then there were animal essences like duck, eagle, rat, wolf, and some animals she didn’t recognize like Heidal, Valack, or Goat. She only knew they were animals since they were listed under the animal category.

Then it listed more nebulous concepts like potent, might, swift, magic, and renewal. Which confused Seras. How would someone make an essence like that? Or were they like the quintessence, just forming in the right environment? That might explain why she found a death essence among some skeletons.

What was the right environment for potency?

More questions Seras added to her list.

There was also a section for essences listed as confluence essences. And judging by the fact that this section included a list of known combinations with each confluence essence Seras guessed that once you had three you either needed to find the right kind of confluence, or it just magically appeared.

Still, no Technology essence. Was hers rare? Or was it entirely unheard of?

Seras had stolen it from a space station that was dabbling in dangerous interdimensional energies. So maybe it could only be synthesized by specialized equipment?

More questions and no answers.

But between the room, the forward from the restricted essence list, and the confirmation of people Seras had confirmed there were people here. Seras had no idea what these people were like, what their ideals or culture was like, but at least she knew she wasn’t alone.

The strange, ruined city that felt like it had never been inhabited had been cause for some concern.