Chapter 6: Spring Palace (part six)

Hohoho~ Next set of chapters will be full of actions, strategy, and evil spirits! But that’s still later. Just realized, but the number of chapters in this series already catching up with the number of chapters in my other two series. After this, I’ll get back to Stepbrother’s Diary. Enjoy the chapter~

TL: clover

ED: clover

I ran down the dark stairs of the palace.

(Aah, it’s a great thing that I had changed my clothes–)

I felt light compared to when I ran in a dress.

I mean, it was painful to wear a dress as someone who had a modern human’s sensitivity.

Or it might be just my low femininity.

After a while, I arrived in the underground transfer gates.

The place was illuminated in the night in the warm light by the star crystal lamps.

“Maybe he’s not here anymore.”

I wished he was still sticking around in front of the transfer gates, but this was not the easy mode.

All around me, there were a lot of arched stones of the transfer gates lining up.

These were the transfer gates to go to the important places all over the country.

Each transfer gate was given a design representing its destination.

Every transfer gate had a faint glow with rotating magic circle floating around it.

They were magically sealed so that it couldn’t be activated without one-time keys.

Without hesitating, I ran towards the deepest transfer gate.

It was where the transfer gate to the ancient Ruins of Visitor was.

I arrived in front of the intended transfer gate and I felt disappointed.

“It needs keys…”

In addition to the one-time key magic circle, it also had a physical lock.

Even if you falsified the one-time key in some way, you still couldn’t use the transfer gate.

What an awful ending.

Even though I borrowed supplies from my older brother’s Wunderkammer, and I had assembled the perfect battle preparation.

However, rather than something happened, it was better that nothing happened.

–A sense of relief……was it alright to feel it?

But then, where did Klaus go?

I used the Wand of Glam Sight just to be safe.

Huh? This – this lock, it was a phantom!

The genuine lock was destroyed by someone.

But, somehow the one-time key magic circle was also an illusion.

The phantom that showed the lock as it was before destruction was created by Klaus Harvan.

He made it about thirty minutes ago.

The illusion of the one-time key was the thing that Duke of Aurelia, who was my father, made ten years ago.

The transfer gate to Ruins of Visitor was already outdated and old.

Therefore, it might not have been possible to set up a one-time key seal.

Instead, it was locked with a physical lock, and disguised it with an illusion as if there was a one-time key seal.

It was an effective camouflage for the western Aurelia who needed to spend a huge amount of money just to use Glam Sight.

But as the opponent was from the East, Klaus who was also an excellent mage, it wasn’t effective at all.

Klaus looked at this camouflage and immediately realized that the seal was fake.

After destroying the physical lock, he disguised it with a phantom lock that was identical with the one my father made in order to mislead.

As a result, the false images of the magic and physical locks were completed.

“As expected, I have to go to the ruins and bring them back.”

To be honest, I was scared.

Even in my past life I was not good with evil spirits and ghost stories.

It was very scary to go to the Ruins of Visitor where such things really exist.

But—

“Wait for me, Klaus, Ann.”

If the Harvan siblings were in such a place—

If they were lost in the ruins without knowing what was going on or what was in there, then I had to save them.

I took a step forward into the transfer gate to the Ruins of Visitor.

If I was not mistaken, the words praising the land of the destination should be the command words to activate the magic.

I read the command words that were engraved on the transfer gate.

“Come, my friend, let’s give a new name to the promised land over this sea.”

☆

—I felt a slight dizziness.

When I opened my eyes, I was on the first layer of the Ruins of Visitor.

The transfer gate was an ancient system in which spells were engraved on the floor openly.

In contrast to the Spring Palace which was made of white solid stones, the ruins were created by cutting out ordinary stones and piling them up.

The ruins were located near the west coast of the Aurelia territory.

I thought that I could smell the waves slightly.

Even though evening had come all the way, it was not completely dark.

The lamps which contained star crystals were installed on the wall, the weak gentle light which had a faintly yellowish color was illuminating the room.

Long time ago, the family that founded Aurelia of the West, was the last people who visited this continent.

Ethnic groups who had lived in this area first called them the Visitor’s Clan.

They were excellent navigators, alchemists, and people of a destroyed country who had lost their homeland.

Or maybe, they might have destroyed their homeland through excessive alchemy……but the details were uncertain.

Where they came from and what kind of past they had, were all covered in the darkness of history and disappeared.

Due to the inclusion of a piece of truth in those lore, the people of Aurelia had destroyed some of their forbidden technologies.

For example was their homunculus creation technology, which was imparted only through the lore.

It was said that the secret of the ancient alchemy that had not yet been elucidated was preserved in this Ruins of Visitor.

I looked at my surroundings carefully with the Wand of Glam Sight.

At the moment, there was no other traces of magic than the magic of the transfer gate.

First of all, that was a relief.

(As expected, this thing is useless when I applied it on the ruins.)

Additionally, I used the Wand of Urd Sight five times.

Five white lights generated from the wand spread throughout the room and converged on my eyes as the ripples reflected and returned.

Through the Urd Sight which reads and interprets the incidents that had passed, I could see the back of Klaus leaving from the exit on the left side of the room.

“Klaus……you came alone.”

When I continued to look around the room, I saw Ann reached this room through the transfer gate.

She seemed to have noticed something, and seemed that to have searched for one point in the room.

After that, she also headed for the exit on the left—

The past view ended there.

Apparently, after Klaus headed alone for this ruins, Ann who had noticed it seemed to have been following him. It would be preferable if the only one who entered the ruins was Klaus who had some skills.

I also looked at the place where Ann seemed to find something.

There was a spell card.

But it seemed that the magic had not been executed yet.

Since it was in a state not holding magical power, my Glam Sight didn’t notice it…!

The spell card which was made with a parchment, had spells written in ancient characters of the eastern Harvan.

I was not particularly fluent in foreign languages.

If I could read the letters I might have gotten more hints, but even this alone was enough for me to keep track of them.

Let’s chase Hansel and Gretel’s unused spell cards of bread crumbs¹.

As I passed through the exit on the left side of the room, there seemed to be several rooms with similar composition.

Ah, I could see a narrow passage in the distance.

Once I arrived in the passage, there were lamps. It was not completely dark.

But, this was scary, though?

This ancient building, the Ruins of Visitor was in the underground and it had the atmosphere of an underground dungeon.

“I’m not scared of ghosts, I’m not scared, not scared……!”

For the sake of giving myself a fighting spirit, I raised my voice repeatedly.

Mustering a little bit of courage, I used the Wand of Glam Sight and Wand of Urd Sight alternatingly, and chase the back of the past Klaus and Ann.

Had I move 200 meters from the entrance? I had walked down the stairs four times, so my sense of direction became ambiguous.

I thought that monsters and ghosts were scary, but as I ran down the dark passage, I suddenly remembered my past life.

It was a memory when I was hit from behind at night during high school.

It was not fear that froze my spine, it was just a dark, gloomy feeling.

(No, I’m scared of human beings……Ah, I feel like I can score easy victory with such things like ghosts.)

Yes, humans were very scary.

The resentment of living humans, the envy, the hatred.

Such things were really, truly frightening.

As I remembered that memory, I met a human.

“You, are you Erica……!?”

There was the exhausted face of the eastern mage, Klaus Harvan.

¹ She compared the Harvan siblings with Hansel and Gretel, so if in the H&G story they used bread crumbs to remember the way, the Harvan siblings used unused spell cards.

About the transfer gates, I imagined it combined three of these pictures. Imagined it as the arched stone in the second picture (without the stairs), with the circle in the number 2 in the first picture, but changed the circle as the glowy magic circle in the third picture.