All Danger Beasts had been driven away because of Hyral Sols, so there was little point in Noah staying here.
He planned to make one final on-site investigation, then leave.
Putting on a temporary gas mask he had made, Noah left the research facility.
During an earlier survey, he discovered the ruins of a village, but because the fog appeared, he withdrew before completing his investigation.
This time, with protective measures prepared, he returned to the village ruins.
If he appraised the village as a whole, the Truth Seeker would tell him this place was called the Old Site of Lin'an Village.
Since it was called an old site, that meant Lin'an Village had not been wiped out, but merely relocated.
Perhaps it had changed its name and continued on somewhere else.
Most of the houses in the village were between twelve hundred and thirteen hundred years old.
By a rough estimate, Lin'an Village had not remained here for many generations—only about a century at most, no more than three or four generations.
Because the village relocated normally, there were no bones or corpses left behind.
Creak—
A thousand years had passed.
Even if the scale of the continent's crustal movement was insignificant to the land itself, for a tiny village like this, the effects were considerable.
Or rather, they were obvious at a glance.
Thick roots, having grown wild, pried entire houses apart.
Vegetation crawled over the buildings, splitting the walls with huge cracks through which the insides could be seen.
Not a single house here remained intact. Just as the name suggested, it was nothing but ruins.
He could not find anything resembling glass near the broken window frames, which meant the people of that era used windows differently from modern times.
If they used a fiber-based material, then perhaps it lacked corrosion resistance and disappeared long ago.
'Hm?'
'What's this...?'
Noah was constantly using the Appraisal ability of the Truth Seeker, so in his vision, everything around him was labeled with a name.
He stared in surprise at the spot beneath a thick root that bulged up to the surface.
A name was displayed there that should not have appeared in a place like this.
"Orichalcum."
Noah muttered and stepped forward.
Orichalcum was a processed material, not a naturally occurring ore deposit, so its appearance here was out of place.
As he drew closer and more of the exposed surface came into view, the information in Noah's eyes became increasingly detailed.
'A door?'
'So it really is... a forged object. And this is...'
Noah examined the area that was almost covered by plants.
Without hesitation, he manipulated the elements of fire and wind, mixing them together.
"Flame Storm."
After backing away a short distance, Noah raised his hand and unleashed a vortex of flame enhanced by wind, burning away the massive tree in front of him along with the vegetation on the ground.
When the flames subsided, the trees and weeds vanished, replaced by a giant metal slab, more than half of it buried in the earth.
Ignoring the heat radiating from it, Noah pressed a hand against it and activated Appraisal.
[Orichalcum Stone Door]
An entrance leading to the basement hidden away by the "alchemists."
'Alchemists, of all things?'
Nowadays, there were almost no groups left that still called themselves that.
Even if there were, they had only inherited bits and pieces of half-baked traditions.
The true principles had long been lost.
Whether secret arts, alchemy, or even forging techniques, all of it was dealt a devastating blow by the First Emperor of the Empire, resulting in a break in transmission.
The forty-eight Teigu were the culmination of all those crafts.
In other words, this place might contain technology lost to the world—and likely, technology related to the creation of Teigu.
The corners of Noah's mouth curled upward.
He never expected to stumble upon a gain like this.
Unable to wait, he tried to open the basement.
First, he pulled on it with his bare hands a few times. Though he used seventy percent of his strength, the thing did not budge.
Then Noah manifested Raven Feather and reinforced his body with magic, but aside from the illusion that it had shifted a little, there was no clear effect.
"Tch."
According to the Appraisal results, the door itself weighed 447 kilograms.
But the real key lay in the lock beneath it.
Since it was made of Orichalcum, unless one possessed enough strength to snap Orichalcum apart with bare hands, it was impossible to force it open.
Even more absurd was the fact that the door was designed so it could only be opened from the inside.
'Heh. If it weren't for me, this door might have kept protecting whatever's inside.'
Noah placed his hand on the Orichalcum Stone Door and focused his mind to a single point, expanding his perception to its limit.
This basement's seal was strong. Neither air nor wind could seep through it.
But unfortunately, it could not isolate magic power, nor could it block the effects of skills.
For Noah, who could manipulate all elements, he could have reforged the entire slab of Orichalcum and altered its shape.
But the more structurally stable a substance was, the harder that became.
It was not impossible.
It would simply take too much time.
Compared to that method, Noah chose to manipulate the elements inside the basement.
Even in a pitch-black, lightless basement, elements still existed—and all of them lay within Noah's range of control.
Clack—
Under Noah's manipulation, the multiple locking mechanisms beneath the door were undone one by one.
The moment the last lock released, the Orichalcum Stone Door beneath his feet tilted upward on its own, opening the entrance without Noah needing to pull.
The instant he saw that, Noah waved his hand and created a barrier to protect the materials inside the basement.
When the entrance opened, he leapt down without hesitation.
Using light-element magic to create a source of illumination, the basement was lit up.
At the same time, an old man who had been seated there silently for an unknown number of years appeared before Noah's eyes.
Noah's pupils contracted slightly. He suppressed the instinctive urge to attack and began observing the place.
First of all, it was smaller than he expected, because it was crammed with books, notebooks, and strange devices he could not understand.
And surrounded by all of that, seated in the middle—was a skeleton.
'Well, that makes sense. If the door was designed to only open from the inside, then of course at least one person would have been left behind to guard the place.'
Then again, more than a thousand years had passed. Naturally, all that remained inside was the dead.
If Noah had not prepared in advance, then the moment fresh air flowed in, this person's remains would have crumbled into ash.
After all, this was not a mummy.
Without special treatment, it was no easy thing for a corpse to remain intact for so long.
If there had to be a reason it endured until now, it was probably what people called obsession.
'The soul has dissipated.... that's natural. For a soul to continue existing after the body dies is difficult. To a soul, the body is like a cultivation vessel. Once the body is destroyed, the soul begins to wear away, and the process is fast. An ordinary person's soul would dissipate in just a few hours.'
'And the erosion of the soul is irreversible. Even if you were to strengthen the soul later by some other means, the worn-away parts would never return to how they were before.'
'The older a soul is, the more likely its personality will either become eccentric and bizarre, or stagnant like a pool of dead water—precisely because that process cannot be reversed.'
...Wait.
He seemed to have fallen into a misunderstanding.
How long had Hyral Sols been in a near-death state?
At the very least, it was not something that began only within the last few centuries.
And since it was near death, that meant its life had not yet ended.
At minimum, its soul had not dissipated.
Up until now, what Noah considered was that the other party's soul accumulated for over a thousand years, and that its quality must therefore have reached a terrifying level.
But...
What if the truth was the opposite?
What if Hyral Sols had long since reached its limit, and even its soul had become frail and weak—so worn down that it could be shattered in a single blow?
That possibility existed too.
No—more than that, it was likely!
The ratio between the two possibilities was... Fifty-fifty.
A fifty percent chance!
At that thought, Noah's excitement rose.
He appraised the skeleton before him and learned that the name it bore in life was Lamur, with no family name.
[Skeleton]
The remains of Lamur
The corpse of the alchemist Lamur
A skeleton burdened with obsession
Dead for 1,034 years and 11 days
Components:
Noah looked around.
Everywhere were carriers covered in indecipherable writing—animal hide, paper, furniture, even the walls themselves, filled with characters.
'Hm.'
'I can't read any of this.'
But that was fine.
"Appraise."
[A large passage of incomprehensible text]
Content: I¥#! @...%¥#... ...%! that Emperor %@...#%, I @... ...#%, making me craft those damned Teigu, even kidnapping my family to threaten me, and sending people to monitor me every day—damn it!
Noah: ...
These were probably curse words from this world a thousand years ago!
Really, what was wrong with this guy? He wrote so much stuff here, and half of it was profanity—cursing the Emperor, then cursing his coworkers.
It looked like everything on these walls was written while he was left here alone.
After all, the chances of someone writing insults about his companions on the wall right in front of them were not high.
Content: By order of the Emperor, in order to forge Teigu, I and the other alchemists came to Lin'an Village in search of the legendary super-class Danger Beast. This village had already been abandoned, so it became our base of operations.
Content: To avoid attacks from Danger Beasts, we used the transported Orichalcum as the entrance and exit and built this basement.
Content: Even back then, I thought that was a terrible idea.
Looking at the walls, which were so full of profanity that they overwhelmed his vision, Noah rubbed his temples with a headache.
He could not touch anything here, because it had all become far too fragile.
That said, it did not mean he had no way to obtain the knowledge inside.
"Appraise."
[Lamur's Notebook]
Content: Following the descriptions from the legends, we came here to investigate the Forest Dragon, Hyral Sols.
Frankly speaking, I don't think it exists. If it did, then how could we have spent a whole month here without the slightest result, without even seeing its shadow? Dragon-type Danger Beasts are all huge. That's common sense.
Content: Two months have passed. We go out to investigate every day. Ten people have died, and still there is no trace of the Forest Dragon. As expected, it was only a legend.
Content: We're finished. The Emperor wants to have us executed. He wants us to return to the Capital and report, but we still know nothing.
Content: Tomorrow we return to the Capital. If the Forest Dragon truly exists, then I hope it appears in front of us tomorrow and kills me itself.
'That's it?'
After reading the notebook, Noah was left momentarily blank when the contents abruptly ended, unable to react at once.
He searched for the other notebooks and appraised them one after another.
As it turned out, most of them were simply diaries the alchemists had written out of boredom at the time.
'...Seriously?'
'Wasn't there anything useful in here?'
'This wasn't what I wanted to read.'
Content: The Forest Dragon... it really exists!
'Hm?'
After looking for so long, he finally found a passage that seemed useful, and Noah's somewhat wandering focus sharpened.
'Eh?'
It was Lamur's handwriting again.
Content: Unbelievable! Just before we were preparing to return, that thing actually appeared. I can say with certainty—that was the Forest Dragon we had been searching for over the past few months. Although it was very small, truly small, the instant our eyes met, I understood. Without question, it was the being from the legends!
Content: The strange thing is, only I saw it, even though it was clearly right there.
Content: I refused the order to return to the Capital immediately. The Forest Dragon truly appeared before my eyes—
Content: I begged everyone to stay, but sadly, no one agreed.
Noah watched as Lamur's handwriting became more and more chaotic from this point onward.
If Noah's guess was correct, then what Lamur saw was either Hyral Sols's soul, or something similar—and ordinary people likely did not possess the ability to perceive it.
In such a harsh environment, Lamur had probably been close to his limit back then.
Because he was on the verge of death, he saw Hyral Sols's soul, disobeyed the Emperor's order, stayed behind... and ultimately died here.
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