Chapter 64 — Deep Within the Ruins
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 3
"In ancient ruins of such highly specialized construction, even the most skilled rogue wouldn't be much good," Hetty said, glancing at Gao Cen in confusion. "Cracking a place like this is generally a mage's field of expertise..."
"No, if Amber were here I could just toss her out to scout ahead, and I'd feel less guilty about it," Gao Lan blurted out. "Besides, her escape skills are first-rate—she could run back and then be tossed out again..."
Hetty was dumbstruck: the Xuanmai Sect had suddenly made such an unscrupulous remark—what was a junior supposed to do?!
Gawain glanced at her and laughed: "I'm joking. Mainly it's because Amber has a special Shadow Walk ability. In a place like this, full of shadows, she could find more hidden paths than the rest of us."
Only then did Hetty breathe a sigh of relief, and Sir Byron beside her nodded along: "I knew it. You are a model of knighthood—you would never do such a thing to a lady..."
The corner of Gawain's mouth twitched slightly: Amber? If not for the chest and face on display, who could possibly connect her with the word "lady"?
And frankly, even her chest and face weren't all that closely connected to "lady"...
A few exchanges of idle talk eased the tension somewhat, but no one's vigilance diminished in the slightest. Under the glow of Hetty's magical orb, Gawain kept his eyes fixed on every detail around them, letting no possible trap escape him, nor the ancient script that occasionally appeared on the walls.
That was the common script of the ancient Gondor Empire, from which the common scripts used by the four great kingdoms today had evolved. But with a thousand years spanning the gap, the script had inevitably shifted somewhat in the course of its evolution—and the Spark Era itself had been an age of great upheaval for the Gondor Empire. So the ancient writing in these ruins was, by and large, legible only to Gawain.
Heidi could only half understand any of them.
The scale of this ruin in the mountain really was enormous—so enormous that even Gao Yang was somewhat astonished.
Advancing all the way from the central corridor, the party encountered no small number of forks, winding turns, and flights of stairs; the passage as a whole kept spreading deeper into the mountain and descending, and along the way Heidi checked the flow of aura several times, confirming that somewhere beyond sight there ought to be a complete system of ventilation shafts—a clear testament to the advanced architectural skill of the ancient Gondor Empire.
And along the way they discovered chambers and other halls more than once.
These rooms and halls were built of a material that resembled stone, yet after Heidi appraised them she found they were not stone at all, but some man-made substance more durable than stone; every room and hall stood empty, and apart from a few rotten shelves and some metal tools on the verge of crumbling to dust, virtually nothing of value in the way of ancient relics could be seen—plainly, the Imperials in this facility back then had evacuated the place in good order and with considerable leisure.
This also matched Gao Yang's judgment regarding the "Era of Starlight."
But it also left Heidi rather disappointed: she had thought she might find some antique treasures inside—even unusable ones, for the mere words "from the Era of Starlight of the Gondor Empire" would be enough to turn a piece of scrap metal into a hotly sought-after treasure.
The group had no time to explore every fork and chamber along the way, so Gao Yang ordered markers left at the junctions of those branches that could not yet be explored, to be slowly investigated later when there was time and manpower; and the party, guided by Heidi's sensing, pressed straight on toward the direction from which the magical reaction came.