This place seems to have the same type of lights as the underground forest. Though, these lights are more white than the ones in the forest which were probably meant to mimic the sun.

The ones in this hall are also noticeably dimmer.

I wonder how old this place is?

It seems pretty well preserved. Which makes sense, I guess, it being isolated in a cave and all.

There are so many doorways, I wonder where we should go first?

[Let's just hug the left wall and go into each room in order.]

{Good idea! Let's do it!}

Let's see what's in room one!

It's…!

Not much of anything, really.

Well, they can't all be winners.

Maybe the next room?

Nope, nothing here either.

Man, this is really weird.

Room three?

Noooope.

Man, this is really weird.

Not only do all of these rooms have nothing in them, the floors also look… burnt, almost?

There were also some ash piles in the last room.

What happened here?

The room we started in is the only one with anything inside.

This is reeeeally weird.

Well, time for the last room.

This one is on the end of the hallway, so there has to be something in it, right?

Drum roll please!

Aaaaand…

Oh?

This room is also pretty empty, but it does have something.

On the floor, there are some weird symbols drawn.

I wonder if these are what I think they are…

{Gloria, walk on those symbols!}

[Why?]

{If they are what I think they are, they're magic tools that will let us teleport somewhere!}

[Where?]

{I dunno.}

[Hm, fine.]

We walk over to one of the symbols, step on it slowly, and…

Nothing.

Nothing happens.

What about the other one?

Nothing.

Daaaaamn iiiiiiiit.

That's so disappointing!

I really expected more from an ancient building buried deep underground.

Maybe some kind of old secrets, unknown to the modern world.

Or maybe some kind of ancient security system that we’d have to escape from.

Nope, just some ashes and burn marks.

Well, I guess these weird symbols are something.

We might be able to study them to increase our magic understanding skill.

Other than that, all there is is those information stones.

I don't think we should use those yet, though, because we’re still pretty injured.

We’ll just have to wait around here until we recover.

If we get hungry we could just… ugh, eat the wolves? I don't want to, but I think that'll be our only option for a while.

Hopefully they don't rot too quickly.

[So, what's the plan?]

{For now, I think it's best we stay here. I'll study the symbols we found until we recover enough to use one of the information stones, and we'll eat the wolves if we get hungry.}

[Gotcha.]

So, let's begin right away.

The symbols are very detailed. The basic shape is just a circle, but there are patterns drawn all around and inside of it.

I don't think I'll learn anything by just looking at it though. So, mana perception, go!

Hmm…

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

It's faint, but there's still some mana lingering in it.

It's stagnant though, so as it is this provides no information to me.

I'll need to try to get the mana flowing.

But… I still don't know how to manipulate mana.

Maybe it's like… this?

No… this?

Not that either…

Maybe if I apply what I know from soul manipulation…

Oh, that's working!

Nice! With that, I can officially start working on studying these circles.

Let's see… if I prompt the mana to start flowing, it seems to flow away from this point right here, so I assume this spot is the mana supply.

Aaaaand… yep, it is. I just tried pulling a little mana from it out into the rest of the circle, and it just came flooding out!

So, that's the supply, next up is… the rest of the circle.

Hm. This may be more effort than I expected.

Well, I don't really have anything else to do.

It's been hours now, and all I have to show for my work is a level in mana manipulation.

I just can't understand anything no matter how long I stare at the circle!

Bringing back my caveman comparison from earlier, it's like a caveman trying to read, understand, and reverse engineer a complicated math paper.

It's simply impossible!

I think I'd need a higher level of magic understanding to even start to understand the inner workings of this circle, but I can't increase my magic understanding without studying magic!

I think I should just give up on studying the circles, and hope my magic understanding level goes up when I max out mana perception and manipulation.

Well, on a positive note, we’ve recovered enough to use one of the information stones.

Gloria’s choosing which one to use right now.

She’s really interested in them, and it's not like we can actually tell which one would be best to use, so might as well let her have some fun, right?

Sometimes it feels like I'm babysitting Gloria, honestly… I might be, I don't really know how old she was before.

It's hard to tell. Sometimes she acts incredibly immature, making me think she was a kid, but other times she acts even older than me…

Whatever, that doesn't really matter anymore anyway.

We've kinda reached an unspoken agreement to not question each other on our past’s anyway, so I'll probably never know.

It may seem like knowing each other better would be good, but what if Gloria was some kind of mass murderer? It's not like I can just say ‘yeah, sorry, but I don't work with evil people!’ and leave. We’re stuck together, so it's better to just be blissfully unaware about each other.

Anyway, seems like Gloria’s done choosing, so let's get to touching that stone right away!

Three, two on-

We touch the stone, and immediately fly backwards into the wall.

Oof!

Ow, ow, ouch.

Yeah, glad we waited to recover health before doing that.

Ouch!

Any useful information?

Hmm… uhhhh…

Nope, doesn't seem like it. If we wanted to understand anything in this stone, we’d probably have to use most of the other stones in this room too.

So that's definitely not happening any time soon.

Oh?

Well, that made it all worth it!

I don't quite understand why that gave us a level in magic understanding, but I'll definitely take it!

Maybe the information in these stones is somewhat magic related?

Whatever, I got a level in a skill that's tough to level, so I'm happy!

Ah, wait, I should probably check how much damage we took from that impact, shouldn't I?

Insight!

Not horrible.

Still, definitely not gonna do it again until we’re back to full, just to be safe.

So, now what?

We have two options.

Either A:

Stay here, studying the magic circles until our health is full and then using an information stone, with wolf meat as our food source.

Or B:

Leave for now, focusing on leveling up and evolving, with whatever we can scavenge as our food source (probably moss).

[I'm voting for B!]

{Any reason for that?}

[Option A sounds suuuuuper boring!]

Well, I don't disagree.

{Fine by me. As long as we make sure to actually remember our path this time, we’ll be able to come back whenever we want to use the information stones and study the magic circles.}

[B it is then!]

{Yep. I guess we’ll head out right away then.}

[Let's eat on our way out, it'd be bad if we left on an empty stomach and find ourselves without food later on.]

Urk.

I was leaning towards option B for multiple reasons.

But one of the biggest is the food.

I don't want to eat wolf meat anymore.

I don't know why, but it just… doesn't sit right with me.

It's definitely not a physical thing, because Gloria seems to love it.

I, on the other hand, despise it, and prefer moss.

Neither are good though, obviously. I’d eat even my least favorite food from my last life over anything I've eaten so far in this life.

But now, Gloria is suggesting we eat that wolf meat I despise so much before we leave, so we don’t leave on an empty stomach.

Honestly, it's not a bad idea.

It's actually a really really good idea.

But… It's wolf meat!

Moss isn't that rare. We definitely wouldn't starve to death before finding some. Probably.

Maybe.

Argh, I just can't bring myself to protest!

No matter how gross I find it, I know Gloria is right!

But… but… wahhh!

Chomp!

While I was wallowing in my aversion to wolf meat and the inevitability of eating it, Gloria had walked up to one of the nearby wolf carcasses and taken a huge bite.

It's… not horrible?

Oh, no! Am I becoming like her? No, no! I don't want to get used to this!

I want to be disgusted by objectively gross food like this!

Ah, it's finally happening, this world has begun to take it's toll on my mind.

First, I became a monster in body.

And now, despite my resistance, I'm becoming one in mind as well.

Ah, what a tragedy…

[Fir?]

{H-huh, what!?}

[I've been trying to ask you if you're ready to go for like two minutes now.]

{O-oh! Uh, yeah, I am!}

[Alright, good. Time to head out then.]

Goodbye, ancient, empty ruins. It was fun for the short time it lasted.

Maybe next time we meet I'll have a better excuse to stick around longer…