Master Of None

The group of undead could have been a threat. Could be the operative word. If these undead had ambushed one of the guard groups or the younger adventurer groups, then sure, they would have needed to put up a major fight. However, the party was barely worried since Alice had already made a move after the false wall had been pointed out.

A single change in tune shaped the light balls Walker left around them in to spears of light. They shot through the air purifying the undead mana and destroying the skeletons who had been using earth magic to hide as an ambush. It also caused a small burst of light showing off even more of the passageways ahead.

It was a crossroad leading toward three rooms. One the group could see led to a deeper floor and two that appeared to be closed off storage rooms. The stone doors weren’t carved or locked in any impressive ways. Walker even pointed out the places that someone could grip them to easily channel in earth mana.

The doors being made of stone and needing earth mana to move made perfect sense. If the ”tower” was created by earth mages and was primarily underground, then why would they need normal wooden doors? They could move stone in place that would better protect them from any invading monsters.

Without hesitation, Walker moved the door to show off a cleaner room. It was fairly large compared to what they expected from the tighter passages they had walked down. And seeing that there wasn’t a single spider web, it proved that it was a storage room as they believed.

Unfortunately, there was not much here that time didn’t take from the room.

Bits of what could be called leather were remnants of monster parts or stored food. The brittle wooden bits on the ground had been broken down and were less than worth looking at.

The only things left intact were some piles of dust with rocks in them. ”We can store these orders away or have the other collect them. They are basic piles of iron, tin, copper, and some other odd ores here and there.” With the appraisal he did, Walker could easily point out the ores and what they really were.

Luckily for them, this room had been closed and no water leaked in from anywhere. It meant that the ores and even some pieces of metal had been left mostly intact. While a few ores had broken down, that was just the reaction of time on them, so there was nothing to cry over there.

”I thought this was a pile of bricks, but these are ingots too. This should be helpful for working on basic camp supplies.” With Gil dusting off the piles near the wall, the party realized just how much metal had been stacked up in here.

”They must have stored a lot of their ore and metal in rooms like this because they found so much while underground. This could be very valuable for trade.” Having Su looking carefully at all the metal, she also knew that Walker would be sneaking some away from the wandering blacksmith. It was why the wandering blacksmith had come on this expedition in the first place. Too many potential new materials to work with, and ancient ingots or ore would intrigue him enough.

”If this room is all ore and metal, what do you think is in the other room? Dried herbs? Seeds? Maybe there are even some alchemy tools from ancient times!” Remey was already ditching them to head for the other stone door. She didn’t even hesitate to use her strength to move it instead of earth mana. For her and the others, they could muscle open the door with a little effort.

Moving behind her, the others managed to see a similar room, cleaner than the hallways without spiderwebs but still holding a decent amount of dust. However, in this room there was something more unique.

’Preserved raptor skeleton

This skeleton was preserved for study. It is from the wind blade raptor which used to hunt the breezy fields near this ruin. It was considered one of the more dangerous monsters in the area since it would utilize wind mana to slice through tougher armor forcing those who wished to travel within its hunting territory to utilize powerful earth armors.

This skeleton was preserved using various forms of earth magic and alchemy. This was done so that the researchers of the age could identify better weak points while also educating others on the dangers these monsters possessed.’

Walker saw a few of their preserved skeletons. All of them had different earthen materials melded with the bones keeping the shape while also ensuring that there would be a clear example of what they truly looked like. It was a lot of work to achieve this which might be why they were all in a storage room with good protection.

”So they saved the bones of monsters to research them then?” The wind had been taken from Remey’s sails since she had hoped for something alchemy related. Instead, she was looking at skeletons that weren’t even undead to fight. To her, this was lame, if not even entirely boring.

”This is a great discovery. Walker, can you have them carefully bring all of these back to Genesis for research? I want to see if we see any of the same monsters. If we do then we can look in to finding what else we can learn to fight these monsters too.” Su was having a field day though. She felt that they had happened upon something perfect for everyone to search for in terms of education for the future adventurers or just guards alone.

”We will absolutely have every single one of these brought with us. Researchers will want to see what ancient monsters were like and we can use this as a way to have a better picture of ancient times. If we understand the threats they faced even better we can understand the reasons why and how their skills developed. Why their magic was so much stronger or why certain magics might have been created.”

Walker even stored a few of the skeletons away and freed up space so that everyone else could see that there were also fossils being found. Fossils that were older than ancient times had even been saved proving that the ancient mages who lived here were wise. They made sure that they would keep as much as possible for their education and research. They did not hold back any potential information that would strengthen them.

The clacking of bones on stone stopped everyone before they heard a lot more noise. It wasn’t the clacking of bones chasing them but instead, it was bones breaking. Then the rhythmic tapping before everything became quiet again.

Everyone knew this had come from the floor below them and they knew that they were about to encounter more of what they had seen before.

Taking their formations again, Walker guided everyone from the two storage rooms toward the staircase heading down again. This time though, there were many passageways leading in to many sealed and opened storage rooms. Plenty to search through and plenty that could hold monsters to fight.

The scent of decay was stronger down here, it held itself in the air like it would always be the case instead of being able to be cleansed. Alice even strengthened the song she sang to purify the air around them, but the smell persisted. With an enhancement from Walker, her light spread showing the broken bones of many skeletons.

The undead had been hunted by something and it was not caring about their state. It was clearly breaking parts of their skeletal bodies and taking them. Some shards of bones were even caught up in webbing around the walls to further prove that the undead were being hunted by more than just the party.

”And here is the webbing again. This spider is making… there are bone shards in all the webs here.” Picking up a strand, Gil showed Walker that small pieces of bone were in every single thread. Just enough to be recognizable but not enough to actually be called a bone thread or anything like that.

”It’s like it doesn’t have enough thread and is using bone to extend its thread. That’s gross.” Remey tried to burn it up and found that the bones resisted the flames a bit. Something that none of them enjoyed realizing or seeing.

”We might have to face something a bit more resistant to our usual methods. But we can also somewhat track the threads leading toward the end of this larger passage.” Walker pointed ahead. They could block the storage or whatever rooms they were as they walked with stone. Then they could focus on the problem ahead.

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