Chương 199: Heirs of Zelyr

The four of us stepped into the darkness, as I did my best to keep an eye on the strange dimensional warping taking place in our surroundings. It was clearer and easier to detect the spatial warping happening in our surroundings now that we had entered the corridor: it felt almost like we had stepped into an entirely new dimension.

The feeling of essence moving in a constant rhythm was also stronger inside of this tunnel, and I had an even stronger feeling that the laws of reality were somehow different in this area. It wasn't easy to notice exactly what was being changed, but the altered laws of reality weren't incompatible with our bodies, at least. We hadn't simply started dying or falling apart here, unlike when we had come in contact with the dimensional laws of the living universe's dimension.

I stopped thinking about the dimensional laws of this area, and instead focused on the physical world again.

"It's quite dark," I said, not needing to resort to mental communication since we weren't near other adults.

"I can see just fine if I rely on my soulsight and spatial sight, but how are your eyes doing, everyone?"

"Not great," said Felix, frowning.

"It's quite hard to see. I can't quite figure out how to make metal turn into a light source for me, either, so my attunement is useless here. Sallia?"

"I don't know any light spells from the manifestation system," said Sallia, sounding a bit embarrassed.

"I might have focused a bit too much on physical boosts. I didn't really think that much about smaller utility spells."

"I have no issues seeing here," said Anise.

"The eyes you guys got for me back in the Market are really helpful right now. I can also see a little bit of plant life scattered throughout the area as well, but that still doesn't help you guys see. Miria? Do you have any ideas for how to help Sallia and Felix?" Anise frowned.

"Now that I think about it, my sword lets me do a bit of fire manipulation, but I've also heard that gasses can build up in underground mines and explode when they come in contact with fire. I don't know if anything similar would happen here…"

"Let's not mess with fire for now. If we have no other choice, we can think about it, but there might be a better option," I said. After a few moments of thinking, I turned to Anise.

"Can you fire a magic missile at the air in front of us? I'm going to try to shape it into a lantern." Anise nodded, and fired a bolt of glowing, silvery force into the air in front of her. I immediately latched onto it the spell with my alteration essence, and then tried to alter the magic missile just a bit. Specifically, I removed the momentum from the magic missile. Or at least, I tried to.

Messing with other people's magic was much harder than messing with my own magic, especially if I was trying to do something very specific to Anise's spell. I messed up the first time, and the bolt of force slammed into the wall. I had altered its trajectory, but hadn't stopped the missile in midair. Even though magic missiles were incredibly basic spells, hijacking Anise's magic missile and turning it into a completely different spell wasn't easy.

"Sorry, try again," I said. Anise fired another magic missile, and this time, I managed to stop the magic missile in midair. I thought I had succeeded, right up until the magic missile dissipated into a puff of glowing silver-colored air, almost like a firework petering out in midair. I sighed.

"Again." The third time, I managed to create what I was hoping for - a magic, silver colored blob of light that helped illuminate our surroundings. I had to keep a small trickle of alteration essence going into the silvery bolt of force at all times, but frankly, it was such a tiny amount that I barely noticed the strain. I regenerated essence faster than I was spending essence keeping the lantern going, so it wasn't really a problem.

"Thanks, Anise," I said. Anise grinned at me and nodded.

"Can you two see now?" I asked.

"It's good enough for me," said Sallia.

"I can also see again," said Felix.

"It's a bit of a strain on my eyes, since my perception is a bit lower and I don't have any abilities to compensate for it. But it's good enough."

"Then let's keep going," I said. The stone tunnel kept going for what felt like forever - although it couldn't have been longer than twenty minutes, during that entire time I was carefully scanning our surroundings with my spatial and soul sight, trying to make sure that I didn't miss a single potential threat. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

"I found something," said Anise, after a few moments. I blinked in surprise. Anise had noticed something I hadn't?

"There's a room under our feet," said Anise.

"It's about thirty meters down. I can see something sleeping inside of it, too. Do you remember the giant white… worm… centipede thing from our last life? The one we saw while we were traveling overland?"

"Vaguely?" I said, trying to remember what Anise was talking about. I remembered we had seen some sort of giant creature during our time above ground. It had been using some sort of acid magic and had demolished a giant group of Orukthyri. However, we hadn't fought the creature, so my memories of it were pretty vague.

"It looks kind of similar. It's like a giant, fuzzy worm, with white fur. It also has about twenty different pairs of eyes spread across its body. I don't know if it's dangerous," said Anise. I scanned the area using my soul-sight and spatial sight, before I frowned. Even when I looked directly at the spot Anise was pointing towards, I still didn't see a thing. Even when I used my soul sight and spatial sight, I couldn't find the monster Anise was talking about.

The danger of this facility ratcheted up several notches in my mind. Perhaps I really had been too overconfident in saying that we would be able to safely explore this facility.

"How strong do you think it is?" I asked Anise. Anise frowned.

"Honestly, I have no idea. I have no way to measure essence or mana, and I can't quite guess based on looks alone." I nodded. We spent a few minutes trying to make sure the creature didn't have any way to get to us, and also made sure that we didn't have any way to get to the monster. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any hidden passages or methods of attacking the creature. If it was hostile, a kill and a new skill would have been quite nice, after all.

After a few minutes of searching, we decided to give up and move on. We wanted to be back at camp before our parents woke up, and so we couldn't afford to waste too much time. Instead, we continued walking down the corridor. After another few minutes of walking, we came to a small room. The room was packed to the brim with furniture, almost like someone had tried to cram an entire house into a single room.

In the furthest corner of the room, there was a cot where a single person could comfortably lay down and sleep. Next to the cot were several bookshelves, all packed full of books. All of the books were in a language I half-recognized and half didn't. In another corner of the room was a desk filled with writing tools and paper. There were a variety of papers scattered across the ground, all covered in dust.

It gave the room a feeling of both clutter and age - it was obvious nobody had set foot in the room for decades, or perhaps even centuries. Finally, in the center of the room, I saw an empty table. Given how cluttered the rest of the room was, the empty table stood out like a sore thumb. In the middle of the table, there was an indent. The books were what caught my attention the most. The old books and papers scattered throughout the room might give us some idea what this facility was used for, or why it existed.

The language written on the books also caught my attention, so it was so strangely familiar and also unfamiliar to me at the same time. I frowned, and squinted more carefully at the letters and words on the spines of the books. The books were all written in an alphabet exactly like the one used by Verne, and some of the words were even the same. However, there were also several words I didn't recognize, and the grammar felt… odd.

"They're probably written in whatever language the Zelyr empire used," said Felix, as he examined the books.

"Old Mo mentioned that nations that were conquered by the Zelyr had a partially shared language, which implies the Zelyr enforced some kind of language on their conquered territories. This is probably the parent language of Vernese, which is why it looks so similar." I nodded at this, and did my best to peruse the titles books. I couldn't quite make out what they were saying - but I could understand just enough words to guess what the books were about, even if some of the books were harder than others.

The collection of books seemed completely random to me. Even though I could only understand about half of the words on each book, some of them were about forging, some of them were about growing crops, and there were a variety of other random fields of knowledge represented in the bookshelves. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them at all. While I scanned the bookshelves, Anise's orb continued to glow, and the beam of light it emitted pointed towards the indent in the table.

"The indent in the table is shaped perfectly for me to be able to slide my orb in," said Anise. She looked at us with some hesitation.

"Can I put it in?" I also hesitated for a moment.

"We followed the orb this far. We might as well see it through," said Sallia.

"I don't think it'll be dangerous enough to hurt us… probably?" She didn't sound entirely sure about that statement. Felix eyed our surroundings warily, but he also sighed and nodded.

"Let's see what happens. The indent in the table is perfectly sized to allow you to insert the orb into it. Just be ready to fight if something goes wrong."

"Do it," I said. Anise inserted the orb into the indent in the table. A blob of light appeared above the orb, taking the shape of an older man. He appeared to have a goatee, as well as reasonably long, graying hair and a dignified expression.

"Welcome, prospective heirs of Zelyr! It has been 172 years since the last test was given out. I welcome you to -" the old man broke off his speech, giving us all downright rude stares. I blinked in surprise. When the old man had started talking, I had assumed he was essentially a video recording of some sort, but the hologram seemed… surprised? Before I could sink further into my thoughts, the old man's tone changed completely, and the dignified expression melted off of his face.

He stared at the floating silver lantern I had made out of Anise's magic missile, before he sighed dramatically.

"Well shit. That essence definitely doesn't belong here, and the way your spells work doesn't conform to the local laws of reality at all. And it doesn't look like you traveled here from another dimension with your physical bodies, because the way your body composition looks is just too similar to the locals. You four are from the Market, aren't you?"