Chương 590: Chapter Five Hundred and Seventy-Four - Still Waters Run Deep

"This is it," the knight said. I could tell right away that he wasn't entirely ready for us to just waltz on into the core room. He stood by the entrance, stance a little wide, hand on the hilt of his still-sheathed sword and the few bits of cloth sticking out from beneath his armour shifting in the waves of raw mana pumping out of the core.

"Thank you," I said.

"Before we go in, we'll just... feel out the magic and all, is that okay?" He nodded. I wanted to give him a bit of time to get used to the idea. Pushing a new friend's boundaries was only acceptable to a point, and not a very far point at that. So, I took a step back, then watched a little warily as the other two knights accompanying us backed off a ways too. They were still close, hovering by the entrance, but they weren't as threateningly close.

"So," I started as I turned towards my friends. My attention naturally drifted towards Amaryllis.

"There's something up, definitely," she said.

"The magic feels like it's pulsing. There's a frequency to it."

"Is that so unusual? Forgive me my ignorance," Desiree said, "but I don't know dungeons so well that I could say with any certainty what is or isn't typical."

"It's unusual," Bastion said. He closed his eyes, though only for a moment before reopening them to peek at the knights.

"I've seen my share of dungeons. They usually have a strong outflowing of mana that is relatively constant near the core. The only times I've seen one that was unusual was with you, when we encountered those Evil Roots. The magic coming from those tends to be different, stuttery, though it's hard to notice."

"The roots suffocated the core," I said. I reached a hand up, almost like I was asking a question, and tried to feel at the mana rushing by between my fingers. Way of The Mystic Bun was actually helpful there, letting me get a good impression of the slight ebb and flow of the mana. It really was stuttering.

"This doesn't feel the same." I wasn't sure if I could completely trust my memories of the impression. It had been weeks since we'd last seen an Evil Root, but still, I was pretty sure that they didn't give off this kind of... almost mechanical feel to the magic?

"Hmm," Amaryllis hmm'd.

"There's a spell at work here. Or something like it. Most natural effects on magic aren't this precise."

"There does seem to be something wrapped around the core itself," Caprica said.

"Look, there, around the centre of it." I leaned to the side to see past the knight, and she was right. The core was a large stone, cut so that it had geometric facets. Around the middle of it, however, was a kind of belt? It looked like leather, or some sort of tough material at least. There was a buckle to one side, cinched tight. Squinting, I could only-just make out that there was something more attached to the back of the core, though most of it was hidden from view by the core itself.

We were on the wrong side to see what was actually there.

"That's weird," I said.

"We'll have to investigate it up close," Amaryllis said.

"But core rooms are quite dangerous. Ideally, we only send in one person at a time."

"Two," I said.

"In case something happens." Amaryllis considered it, then nodded.

"Two. And those two should burn off as much of their mana as possible before going in. It'll give us the most time in the core room before suffering from any sort of mana surcharge."

"I want to go in," I said.

"Yes, I saw that coming," Amaryllis replied dryly.

"Fine, you and I? While the others wait here?" No one had any objection to that, so Amaryllis and I started to burn off mana. I politely warned the knights, then took aim at the wall opposite the core room and loosed a flood of Cleaning magic. It was like switching on a wide-angle spotlight - a strangely peaceful, shimmering hum filled the room as dust and grime evaporated, leaving utterly pristine stonework behind. As for Amaryllis... she summoned a sort of magical web made of hundreds of thin manawires.

I think they were part of her puppeteering skills. Then she touched one of those wires and surged electricity through them all. The fact that her web kept growing and expanding outwards across the far end of the room, lines joining together to form a more and more complex web probably meant that she was pouring a lot of mana into that spell. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Was it even a spell? It looked a bit too freeform for that.

In any case, my mana was soon in the single digits, and I found myself panting a little. Amaryllis cleared her throat a few moments later, then shook her wings a little.

"Done," she said. With that, both of us approached the entrance to the core room, and the knight standing guard.

"We're heading in," I told him.

"We need to see what that thing around the core is up close. It... wasn't there before, right?"

"No," he replied.

"That is new. Something they added. Were we permitted to reach the core, we may have excised it, though even through the loss of Solace, some rules remain."

"Well, we'll see what it is then, and if it's nasty, we'll take it right off."

"If doing so doesn't lead to some other, more terrible consequences," Amaryllis added.

"Right, that." I wasn't sure if the knight was very confident in us, but he only hesitated for a few seconds before stepping aside and letting us slip into the core room. Instantly, I felt a smidge dizzy. Core rooms always had so much ambient mana in them that they felt a bit suffocating. Having practiced a lot with magic only made it worse since that gave me a heightened sense for just how much mana was pressing in around me. It was like being at the very bottom of one of those Olympic pools.

Deep enough that I could feel the weight of the water bearing down on me. Then the core pulsed, and the pressure spiked for a moment, like a wave had washed over me.

"What do you think it is?" I asked Amaryllis as we stood on the edge of the room. The core itself was on a plinth in the centre, but all around it was a pool of water that was so clear that I could tell it was far, far deeper than any fountain or pond - the walls of the pool were a shaft that descended straight down into inky darkness, hundreds of feet beneath me. A small, narrow bridge ran just a bit under the surface of the water from the edge of the room all the way to the base of the plinth.

There was room there to walk around the core, though not much.

"The device is artificial. My first guess is that this is some mage's strange experiment. There are ways of moving items from one place to another, obviously, so why not raw mana? It's been tried... and usually failed. This could be a similar attempt."

"Huh," I said. I wouldn't have ever thought of that. I gingerly stepped onto the bridge, then winced a bit as water soaked into my shoes and immediately turned my socks soggy. Gross! Amaryllis and I walked over to the core, and as we approached, I could feel my mana refilling itself. We'd only have a couple of minutes at most before it was topped up. When we got within a metre or so, I stopped.

"Wait," I said. There was another pulse, and I blinked. It wasn't merely a pulse; it had a spell-like quality. One released as a sort of point-blank wave away from the core. It was even kinda strong, for all that it was mostly directionless. I recognized it.

"That's Cleaning magic," I said. I walked up to the pillar around the core, then moved around to the far side. On the back of the belt was a sort of leather satchel, hanging there, with several wires leading from it to the core where they were stuck to the side of it by what looked almost like wads of chewing gum. The satchel was ticking. I opened the side of it and peeked within and discovered a complex set of little machines, with embedded crystals and lots of little clockwork devices.

There was also a folded piece of paper, kind of sticking out in a very 'grab me' sort of way.

"Take it and head back," Amaryllis said.

"I want to inspect this a little longer. Maybe I can work out what it does?"

"Okay," I said.

"Don't take in too much mana. If you faint here, that could be bad."

"I won't," she said with a sniff. I glanced down into the watery deep.

"If you fall in the water you might drown." She sniffed.

"I can't drown Broc, harpies are too light. We don't sink in water."

"Well... don't fall face-first into it, then." She rolled her eyes, but shuffled farther away from the edge. Nodding, I grabbed the folded paper, then sloshed my way out of the core room. I shook my feet once I was out, dribbling water all over.

"We found something," I said.

"A letter."

"Well, what does it say?" Desiree asked.

"Guess we'll find out," I replied, unfolding the paper.