Chapter 186: Revisiting the Acacesium Temple

With the wave of her hand, Dalai had caused the two horse-like earth golems to start marching forward.

"I would recommend holding on," Dalai said while tightening her grip on the earthen beast.

Merlin took her advice to heart and did the same, and a few moments later the horses started picking up speed.

The benefit to travelling on golems rather than living creatures was that golems could travel great distances with consistency, they didn't run out of stamina or faint from overexertion, they were essentially just machines that utilised mana as fuel.

It seemed as though Dalai had utilised quite a bit of mana to manipulate both these golems, as they were now running at speeds much faster than what most horses could ever do.

While the scenery was flying past his vision, Merlin glanced at his chat, seeing what was going on there.

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[User]...

[User] Queen106: Can players learn this spell?

[System] Make sure to follow the channel so you're always notified when I start streaming!

[User]...

[User] Brian_Simmons_3867: It seems pretty overpowered, who knows?

[User]...

[System] Type !rules in chat for a list of the channel's rules, and !disc for a link to our community server!

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Merlin continued to read chat while partially paying attention to his surroundings, and roughly twenty minutes in, he received a red alert box indicating that his playtime was going to come to an end relatively soon.

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[Message from the devs!]

Group one, there is only one hour left for today's session, you will receive another notification when it's time to log out.

If you do not leave by that time you will be forcibly disconnected, please make sure you're in a safe location when you log out.

└───────────────────

Merlin swiped the window away and turned his attention back towards Dalai, who seemed to be showing early signs of mana exhaustion.

Merlin was somewhat impressed that she had held on for such a long time. It was clear that her mana pool was tremendous when compared to his own.

The two arrived at the abandoned town of Acacesium a few minutes later. Both Merlin and Dalai unmounted the horses, which were then promptly unsummoned.

Merlin watched as the two horse golems dissolved into piles of dirt beside him, and Dalai wiped the sweat from her brow with her oversized sleeve before drinking what appeared to be a mana potion.

"My god. This place really is abandoned, huh?" Dalai said while looking around the town, "It's one thing reading about it in a mission report, but it's something completely different when you see it first hand..."

Dalai spent a few minutes silently wandering around the abandoned town. She began exploring the houses, taking a look at the state they were left in and ended up accidentally scaring a family of foxes when she wandered into a room that was occupied by the creatures.

Although it seemed as though Dalai was even more frightened than the fox mother, as she had stumbled backwards and knocked several pieces of cutlery off the kitchen table, causing the foxes to run out of the house.

"Oh, no. I'm sorry little foxes..." Dalai muttered as she watched the foxes leap out of a window and disappear. "...I didn't mean to scare you."

Dalai's slowly waddled out of the building with her head held low, it seemed that exploring the village was putting a damper on her mood.

"Well, instead of getting depressed. How about we pay a visit to our actual destination?" Merlin said while pointing to the large temple in the distance. "That runic text isn't going to decode itself."

Dalai nodded and followed Merlin as he made his way up the hill towards the temple.

Merlin cautiously took a look inside the building first, but there didn't seem to be anything within it that immediately caught his attention or set off any red flags.

The two walked into the temple, where they were greeted with rows of shattered statues.

"Oh wow, this place has seen better days," Dalai quipped while skipping towards what seemed to be the base of a statue, there was a partial nameplate on the base, the other half of which seemed to have been shattered into tiny stone fragments that laid at Dalai's feet.

"A couple of these letters match up, I wonder whose name it was." She muttered before hovering her hand above the pile of shattered statue fragments.

After muttering a brief incantation, the stone shards began floating into the air, coming to a stop while hovering over the palm of Dalai's hand.

The stone shards seemed to be clashing together, slowly reforming into the state they held before being destroyed.

It took a few moments, but the other half of the nameplate had actually been fixed, and with another incantation, was slowly attaching itself to the base, forming what they both believed to be the name of a god in ancient Arcadian. 

"Right... I still can't read it," Dalai muttered while sketching down the runes. "We'll have to build the statues so I can figure out which god is connected to which name."

Dalai pointed out that a set of feet were attached to the base, and that they just had to build the statue up with puzzle pieces that fit,

Both Merlin and Dalai had started picking up chunks of the statue, with Dalai focusing on repairing anything she could.

"That won't fit, that's clearly a woman's thigh and that's the torso of a man," Dalai started pointing out mistakes as the two tried figuring out which body part fit the specific statue they were trying to repair.

It was at the moment that Merlin had picked up what seemed to be a handful of stone grapes that he realised which god they were in the process of building.

"Dionysus. This text means Dionysus," he said while handing Dalai the stone grapes.

"Well, I figure out those letters, but there isn't much else I can get from this." She said while attaching the grapes to the statue.

Before they continued, Merlin pointed out the statue that he remembered Callisto getting angry at last time, the one that had a shattered stone bow in front of it.

"There's Artemis," Merlin said while pointing towards the statue base.

Dalai started repairing what little damage the nameplate had taken, but she eventually fixed it and started filling out more runes in her book.

"Very well, I'll take your word for it for now," Dalai said before moving on to the next one.

The two spent the next ten or so minutes piecing together various statues until the identity of the god or goddess could be confirmed. After being confirmed, their names were added to the list and then they would move on to the next statue.

This continued several times until they came across a statue in much better condition than some of the others. This one seemed rather odd, as the base of the statue clearly showcased six feet, all facing away from each other.

Merlin saw various heads, torsos and legs scattered about the temple floor, it was clear to see which god this was, just based on the statue's base.

"This is clearly..." Merlin muttered to himself before Dalai had walked over to him with the shattered upper torso of a goddess that was carrying a torch. "Yeah, that's clearly Hecate."

Once again Dalai had repaired the nametag and started filling in runes when her eyes suddenly lit up with excitement.

"Merlin, Merlin, Merlin," Dalai shouted for Merlin to come and look at what she had found, it was as if her previous moment of sadness was but a mere illusion.

When Merlin peered over her shoulder at what she had found, he noticed it immediately.

"One of the words in the door frame, the entire word is just Hecate's name?" He muttered out loud, causing several things to click in his mind in that instant.

"Wait, then that means..." He muttered to himself once more, "Doesn't she?..."

"We worship her today as mostly the goddess of magic, but back in the day it seems she was much more popular for her other domains," Dalai said while jotting down notes, "The goddess of crossroads, who was also affiliated with the moon. But most of all, she was renowned as a goddess of the underworld and of the dead."

"A guardian who guides the dead to the afterlife with a torch in hand," Dalai muttered, "Although since necromancy is a taboo topic, that part of her is rarely ever mentioned."

"Then is it a portal to the spirit realm?" Merlin muttered, realising what had happened. "A door without a key..."

Dalai's ears seemed to perk up at that last line, but before she could say anything Merlin continued talking to himself.

"But the key, in this case, would be your soul..." Merlin continued, "But then why didn't it allow the dagger or the goblin soul? Why is the portal blocked?"

「The quest "A door without a key." has been updated.」