The ancient vault lay hidden among the mountains. Vines crawled over ruins that no one knew existed. Walls built from massive stone and metal were covered in scars, each mark a character left by time, and from those characters, the only word humanity could read was "eternity."
This ancient ruin's history traced back to the distant Gondor Imperium era. Its heavy, imposing style was utterly foreign to modern Andraste. In Gwayne's memories, the northern pioneering army had already found it in ruins when they arrived, and even back then, it hadn't looked much "younger" than it did today.
Gwayne, Rebecca, Amber, and Ser Byron entered through the largest archway. The flickering torchlight made the corridors shift between light and shadow, resembling the legendary Soul Corridor leading to the realm of the dead.
Amber grumbled.
"Should've brought your Aunt Hestia along. What good are you, can't even cast a Light spell and you call yourself a mage?"
Rebecca's face reddened.
"F-Fireball... Fireball can be used for illumination too...!"
Unfortunately, her tone carried zero conviction.
Ser Byron walked not far behind Gwayne, studying the ancient stone walls and the indecipherable grooves carved into them. He couldn't help recalling his days as a mercenary.
"How old is this ruin?"
"No idea," Gwayne shook his head. "It was already ruins when we first found it. The more knowledgeable people in the expedition said it was a relic of the Starfire Era, a period of great magic-technological development in the Gondor Imperium's middle-to-late period. That was when the great mana well, the Deep Blue Well, was successfully activated. The empire went through an expansion craze, building fortresses and research facilities all along the borders, hoping to find other super-large mana foci like 'Deep Blue' elsewhere on the continent. But eventually all those facilities were abandoned."
Rebecca was incredulous. "They didn't find a single mana focus?"
"No, they couldn't find one like Deep Blue," Gwayne recalled the history in his mind. "The Deep Blue Well's power is beyond your imagination. It was a super-massive mana source at the center of the Lorath continent. Its daily energy output could power every mage tower in present-day Andraste for a month. That's why later scholars theorized that the Deep Blue Well's explosion in Gondor year 1739 was actually the catalyst for the Tide. The explosion didn't immediately destroy the entire imperium, but it tore a massive rift in the elemental plane. The elemental imbalance accumulated until the following year, triggering the Tide. But this theory can't be proven, the entire Deep Blue Well and the mana focus 'Deep Blue' were completely obliterated. No one can investigate anymore."
"That's incredible..." As a mage, Rebecca naturally grasped how staggering such an ancient mana well was. She was even more shocked that humanity had once commanded power of that magnitude. "The Gondor Imperium was amazing..."
"In short, to the Gondorians back then, the mana foci scattered across the continent were barely worth a glance. So after discovering a few medium-sized ones, Gondor halted exploration of more remote regions. A whole batch of fortresses and research facilities were decommissioned. This was probably one of them, and likely a multipurpose installation."
Amber suddenly tensed. "Then... there won't be any out-of-control ancient magic monsters or magic traps in here, will there?!"
Gwayne looked at the nervous half-elf. "You're a woman who digs up other people's ancestral tombs, and you're scared of an ancient facility that's been abandoned for over a thousand years?"
"That's completely different! When you rob a tomb, even if the body rises from the coffin, it's still just a person, but if something pops out in a place like this, who knows WHAT it could be! I've heard some ancient facilities have sealed-away synthetic beasts and mana colossi created by mad mages..."
Veins bulged on Gwayne's forehead. "So me rising from the dead being 'just a person' was really a letdown for you, huh, and between the Black Mountains rumors earlier and the ancient-facility horror stories now, where do you get all this wrong information?"
Amber thought for a moment, then put on a deeply mysterious expression. "Let me tell you a secret, I really am the Chosen of the Goddess of Night. Sometimes when I pray really hard, the goddess gives me revelations. She taught me everything..."
Rebecca casually shaped a fireball the size of a thumb and flicked it at Amber. Caught off guard, the half-elf took a faceful of soot and immediately started shrieking.
"Are you INSANE?! Throwing a fireball without warning is really dangerous!"
Rebecca shrugged.
"...Guess she's not a Chosen after all."
Gwayne couldn't be bothered with these two anymore.
Because the ancient door had appeared before them.
The corridor ended at a massive gate forged from dark purple-black metal, built in the unmistakable Starfire Era style of Gondor, heavy, solid, its surface decorated with abstract bas-reliefs depicting soldiers and city walls.
Amber scrubbed the soot from her face and stared at the door with shining eyes.
"Is this... is this a single solid piece of purple steel?!"
"That's right, one solid piece. But for every flake you scrape off it, I'll have Rebecca convert it into an equivalent fireball aimed at your face," Gwayne tapped Amber's head with the Pioneer's Sword's pommel. "So put away those bold ideas. Waiting patiently for your paycheck is the sustainable path."
Amber turned her head and muttered. "...Cheapskate..."
Gwayne heard her but ignored it. He stepped back half a pace and produced the crucial "key" from inside his shirt.
The inheritance from seven hundred years ago. The platinum disc.
Rebecca looked worried. "It's been so many years. Will this thing still work?"
Gwayne looked at her with a slight smile. "This is Gondor Imperium technology. As long as the facility's main structure hasn't collapsed, its primary doors will never malfunction."
As if to prove his words, the complex patterns on the platinum disc began lighting up one line at a time, and the bas-reliefs on the massive metal door began flowing with threads of luminance in response.
Once the light filled the entire door, a chorus of creaking mechanical sounds emerged from deep within the door and the rock walls on either side. Everyone felt the ground tremble faintly beneath their feet, and with that tremor, the great door slowly opened.
Gwayne and the others were already prepared. As the door opened, they covered their mouths and noses and retreated to the sides. Gwayne also activated one of the knight's basic skills, [Breath Ward], a barely perceptible barrier that shielded everyone present. This ability was similar to the mage's basic spell [Breeze Shield]. it offered extremely limited defensive power but effectively maintained a clean air environment. When delving into ancient ruins and similar places, this skill protected the caster from toxic gases.
This particular ruin held no poison-gas traps, but a space sealed for seven hundred years might have accumulated unknown gases. An extra layer of protection couldn't hurt.
Several minutes later, Gwayne dropped the ward, nodded to the others, and led the way through the door. Ser Byron followed closely.
Amber hesitated, then reluctantly abandoned the idea of secretly chipping a piece of metal off the door while no one was looking, because purple steel was too hard for a dagger to scratch.
Beyond the door was a vast rectangular hall. Sealed doors were visible in all four directions, and the ancient stores were piled directly in this main chamber.
The hall's sealed environment and the runes placed throughout had ensured these supplies oxidized and corroded at the slowest possible rate. To this day, many items were still in decent condition.
Heaps of metal ingots. Crystals of various colors. Swords. Armor. And stacked in the very center, several large crates standing half as tall as a person.
Gwayne stepped forward, wedged the Pioneer's Sword into the seam of a crate, and pried it open.
One crate was filled with gold and silver coins that still gleamed. The others contained neatly stacked pale purple crystalline bodies, military-grade crystals that had been carved and charged.
The gold and silver coins weren't the most valuable items. The crystals were.
The ancient Gondor Imperium had dominated the continent through its advanced magic technology. The mana from the Deep Blue Well gave imperial mages access to seemingly inexhaustible energy. Even the most mediocre mage could brute-force technological achievements under those conditions. And so Gondor had accomplished something the modern four nation-states would consider nearly inconceivable.
Mass-producing Arcane Armaments.
Ordinary swords and armor were unenchanted. No matter how sturdy or sharp, they were mundane equipment. Only enchanted gear imbued with supernatural power qualified as Arcane Armaments. In modern Andraste, enchanted weapons and armor were issued only to officers of various ranks, and even then, not always. But in Gondor's era, every soldier was standard-issued an enchanted sharpness-spelled longsword and a regulation crystal.
These thumb-sized crystals came pre-loaded with basic shield and explosion spell models. They ran automatically with friend-or-foe identification, usable even by grunts with zero casting ability. When the wearer was attacked, the shield activated. When the shield was depleted, the crystal would heat up, flash, and sound a warning. The wearer could then throw it with force, and once it reached a safe distance from the bearer and nearby friendly units, it would detonate. To Gwayne, this was an almost unbelievably advanced weapon system.
If circumstances hadn't been so desperate back then, if they could have possibly carried everything, the pioneers would never have left these behind. The expedition had taken every portable item of greater value; these crystals were the portion they'd been forced to abandon.
Gwayne picked up a crystal and rolled it gently between his fingers.
This might have been a way to let ordinary people access magic, but it was a dead end.
Only with the Deep Blue Well running could these crystals be produced without regard for cost. With the Deep Blue Well destroyed, these ancient crystals were irreplaceable.
But at least for now, these crystals would become the foundation stone of the territory's security.