While Remian and Petrov were debating the fate of the world for Mindy to learn, Alexei was investigating the Black Ruins at Three Pines Peak. He had already explored the area yesterday; today he was going to look inside several buildings he had hunches about. The whole process went on for a few hours…"Fascinating. Some day, I"d like to come back here and look into this in greater detail." He mentioned as they were taking a break for lunch.
Behind him, two of his students exchanged meaningful glances.
"Can you make any sense of it?" Ruth asked. She and Sandra were supposedly showing their guests around but really, the magi seemed to know more about these weird buildings than they did.
"Well, that"s a transmission tower for sure." Alexei pointed. "Those three are certainly mangathering foci. That place there appears to be a manufacturing plant for some light machinery. This open cage here appears to have been a garden."
"Wow. Really?!" Sandra bounced. "So those pipes with holes aren"t some sort of music instrument?"
"I believe they"re for irrigation."
"And I thought this was an instrument maintenance facility." Sandra stared. "I thought this whole town was an arts center."
"Hardly. Looking at the way the roads lead to that building, I"d say the manufacturing plant was actually the main focus of the town." Alexei squinted. "Whatever they did here, it used a lot of magic. Those towers… their mana channels are six times larger than the ones regularly used at Ecclesia. What kind of devices would require that much power just to a.s.semble…?"
"What kind of garden would need a cage like this and pipes with holes? I mean, there"s plenty of land all around." Sandra added.
"You"re welcome to stay with us." Ruth put out the invitation directly. "All of you. You can teach us how to properly investigate these ruins."
"Can you even afford to properly investigate these ruins? How much funding do you have?" Alexei asked.
"Uh… we don"t actually have funding. We just get Guild Points…"
"Guild Points aren"t going to pay for the experts and the equipment you"d need for ruins like these." Alexei snorted.
"Just how much funding would we need, do you think?"
"This?" Alexei shook his head. "It could take several years. Each year, you"d need to hire experts, rent specialized equipment, bring on an entire support staff… it"s good you already have a settlement here, that would cut costs greatly… but shipping heavy equipment here from Ecclesia or Ceres would be costly, so perhaps… ten million lir a year?"
"What if we could handle the shipping ourselves?" Ruth asked. "Use Mindy"s airships?"
"I did see a Sky Galleon back at KarGoth." Alexei mused. "I suppose you could save a million or two from shipping costs if the airships are all manually powered. But the basic problem is that shipping, equipment and experts… everything and everyone will need crystal power, and crystals are heart-crushingly expensive these days. Some equipment couldn"t run on anything less than a purple crystal. That"s as much power as a thousand yellow crystals can provide, densely concentrated, very rare, and very, very expensive."
"Simply putting in a thousand yellow crystals or a hundred people"s mana wouldn"t work?"
Alexei shook his head. "The concentration density wouldn"t be enough."
"Where would we even find purple mana crystals?!" Sandra groaned.
"You might not have to worry about that. The same experts who own the equipment usually keep stock for expeditions. You just have to pay them." Alexei explained. "By the millions."
"What about red crystals?" asked a voice behind them.
Alexei, his students, Ruth and Sandra turned to see Darian arrive.
"Red crystals…? You mean, the legendary Dragon Emperor"s crown jewel?" Alexei mused. "If you manage to steal it, the power contained in that thing should be able to cast twenty Tier 4 spells all by itself, without a.s.sistance. That"s roughly two hundred fireb.a.l.l.s" worth of mana, unaided. That level of density… it"s probably going to destroy the equipment if you tried to use it."
"But supposing someone managed to steal that red mana crystal, how much could it sell for?" Darian asked.
Alexei frowned. "Such a crystal would be priceless. Last week, a fresh, standard Tier 4 purple crystal was sold in Ecclesia for 1,600,000 lir. A Tier 3 blue crystal sold at 80,000 lir. Using the ratio of twenty fold increase from Tier to Tier, math tells me that a Tier 5 red mana crystal should theoretically sell for 32,000,000 lir. But that was last week, before the war broke out. Why?"
"Oh… nothing…" Darian said, with an innocent look on his face, one hand in his pocket. "Just curious."
***
"You want to what…?" Remian blinked.
Ten minutes after lunch and ten minutes before takeoff, Darian had approached him out of the blue. "I said, I"ll bribe you to drop the search for the Source of Magic."
"Darian, do you even know what "bribe" means?" Remian had to ask.
"Sure. I"ll give you something, so that you"ll do something for me. In this case, I happen to know that you need high level mana crystals or millions of lir to fund your investigation of the Black Ruins." Darian said frankly. "I can offer you that."
"How?" Remian frowned.
Wordlessly, Darian took his hand out of his pocket, and opened it.
Red light gleamed for a bare moment before Remian yelped and hurriedly covered it up with his own hands. "Don"t show that sort of thing out in the open! How did you even get that?!"
"It"s really valuable, isn"t it? Doom said if we gave it to you, it should be enough to make you quit your search. You can sell it and hire experts to investigate these ruins and everything. Won"t that be more worthwhile than chasing rumors and legends?"
"Probably. But this trip isn"t about money. It"s about ending the war and saving lots and lots of people." Remian tried to explain. "We can"t just take bribes to give up and let all those people die."
"Well, you can"t do it. You don"t even know where to go or what to look for." Darian said pointedly.
"Maybe not, but we know we need to head south." Remian answered. "All we really have to do is follow the mana density. As long as we head towards wherever it"s thicker, we know we"re getting closer. It"s not called the Source of Magic for nothing."
Darian grimaced and lowered his head. "Drats."
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Then he stepped back, and clenched his fist in his pocket. "Looks like I"ll have to stop you by force."
Remian stared, half-frozen. "No way…"
The power of two hundred fireb.a.l.l.s in the hands of a nine year-old bent on stopping the expedition… not good. NOT good.
Darian pointed his finger.
"Light!" Remian threw up a barrier.
"Thunder!" Darian shouted, and then…
What happened…?
Remian wasn"t entirely sure. He seemed to be looking up at the blue sky, and the nice fluffy white clouds overhead, and of course, he"d soon be joining them, because he had an airship…
But he didn"t need an airship, did he? He was already flying, floating freely like the clouds…
There was a high-pitched sound in his ears, and some muted buzzing. Dimly, he was aware of fireb.a.l.l.s flying and criss-crossing both ways above him. Only then did he realize that he was in fact on his back, looking up at the sky, but beyond that it was hard to tell what was going on with all the ringing in his ears.
"Ugh." One groan. That was as much as he could manage.
***
But considering Remian"s situation, it wouldn"t be proper to describe things from his perspective.
So instead, here"s the general overview of the battle.
Darian"s Thunder spell hit Remian from all sides. It was an areof-effect burst; while some of it splattered across the barrier in front of Remian, the sonic energy hitting him from left, right, above, below and behind was more than enough to lay him as flat out on the floor as the exhaustion from two days before.
Alexei responded quickly with a fireball.
Darian countered the fireball with one of his own, missed, and almost hit Father Petrov instead.
Alexei"s fireball blasted Darian off his feet.
Sir Ivan darted in to block Darian"s fireball from Father Petrov. Darian"s fireball blasted him over sideways.
Darian formed a thin Silhouette layer, instantly wiping out the fire on his clothing. It must be mentioned that momentarily being set on fire would usually cause grevious harm to nine year-old boys and should never, ever be attempted experimentally. Darian, however, was a boy who had been through a great deal of body tempering, eaten a whole bunch of special fruits that increased everything from his defense to his martial energy, and had been wearing furs made from the leftovers of dragons" meals, that is, the hides of Tier 4 and 5 Wilds. Basically, while a little singed, Darian wasn"t hurt much.
Three students scroll-casted spells at Darian, an ice spike, a fire bolt, and a web.
Darian dodged. He simply ran in a quick semi-circle around the spells, and charged directly at the students.
Alexei gasped. "So fast!"
Sir Ivan"s squire leapt forward to meet him. They met in a loud crash, making the dock shake. Darian stumbled back a few steps. Sir Ivan"s squire went flying clear off the dock.
Sir Ivan himself had regained his footing and went charging in to fill the breach.
Darian ducked, tapped the dock with his hand and said, "Shake!"
"Whoa!" Father Petrov, Professor Alexei and two of the five students stumbled. One more student leapt up to avoid the shakening, and the last two dropped and hugged the deck.
"Darian! Stop!" Mindy yelped, dashing out of the airship. "Please!"
Sir Ivan drew his sword.
"Mindy, stay back!" Darian tore a floorboard right off the dock and wielded that in his hands in reply.
Alexei gasped. "So strong!"
But Mindy ran right at Darian, not hesitating for a moment. "Stop, or I"ll… I"ll… I"ll KISS you!"
"K-k-k ….!??" Darian gasped.
Mindy puckered up her face.
"Nooooo!!" The nine year-old boy turned and ran for his life.
Various teenage adventurer girls watching from afar exclaimed, "So cute...!"
Father Petrov, Sir Ivan, Professor Alexei and everyone else was left staring in bewilderment as the protégé of Doom fled the scene.
Meanwhile, a still-dazed Remian finally managed to sit up.
"What did I miss?"