Galahad continued working till it was a little past noon and he heard Regin start opening the door to the workshop's entrance. He was going to take a moment for lunch and left Galahad to either take a break himself or keep working, the choice was his.
The dwarf left the door open and walked up the stairs, leaving his assist unsupervised with a viable exit.
'Uh, you let a new hire just have a walk of the shop floor Regin. Either he's too easily trusting, or has no sense in keeping this place secure.' Galahad thought while tossing the bucket and brush to the side.
Galahad made his way over to the other side of the giant area and found the Dungeon Lock covered by the tarp once again. He clearly knew that massive piece of equipment would have been impossible to move on his own, regardless of his new class strength, but that wasn't his reason for a second inspection.
'The Black orb can absorb a Karmic plate and make a system out of it. It can read the crystal resonance towers information in the air. Maybe there's a chance it can learn from this.' Galahad put his hand in the device and felt nothing humming beneath the machine's black, rune-covered antenna.
He didn't feel any traces of mana along the willed himself to learn from the machine, wanting it to figure out if the system could absorb something so massive.
Ten seconds went by . . . only silence.
Nothing worked, Galahad was left with nothing showing up in his view. He took his hand off in defeat, knowing that it was really just wishful thinking at that point.
He didn't fully understand the parameters of the black orb's power, all the rules and limitations were unknown to him, he didn't even know why it existed. Yet he needed to find a way to learn about its purpose as he grew stronger. It was essential to learn what the reasoning was for a bunch of demons to spend twenty years making a crystal tomb of thousands of adventures to craft this one orb. Could it have been to make a powerful demon? Poison the surface of Endora? Enrage a dwarf with a bottle of water in his hand?
That last one had actually walked down the stairs.
"Can I ask as to why you're rummaging through my trashed projects?" He said with the same irritated tone as the day they first met. It seems he had only gone upstairs to grab snack food while still working, leaving Galahad to be caught red-handed.
"I'm just looking at it, seeing what kind secrets it will soon tell me." Galahad said in hopes this wouldn't suddenly end his employment.
"Oh, and what may those secrets be?" Regin humored the boy and sarcastically asked for the details.
"It's as you said last time; she's too hungry to do anything. That includes speaking about where I can find my friends." Galahad stepped away from the machine with a hint of disappointment in his voice.
The dwarf rolled his eyes and groaned. He didn't think the boy would still be going on about such an impossible idea, not unless Galahad cooperated with his own clever mind.
"Boy, at this point; your friends have been eaten, torn apart, or burned to cinders. I'm sorry to have told ya the honest to gods truth, but they've gone off to a better place."
"That's where you're wrong. I don't need you to believe me, I just need to get the orbs to make it work. Afterwards, we can discuss who is right or wrong."
"What in the goddamn hell of the dungeons makes you think they're still down there? Hasn't it been a month since the incident? Even if they survived some big attack, you really think they hold out long enough to survive alone down there. The first thing to go would be sanity then their bodies within a week."
'I think I already beat them in the race of gaining some insanity. For all I know, they've been put into a comatose state inside those crystals, untouched and no longer experiencing the sensation of time. Maybe, I'm wrong, Regin's right . . . they could be dead in that cavern, waiting as corpses to be eaten by a new black orb in twenty years from now.'
But none of those doubts meant anything to Galahad. He could be told by the strongest and smartest adventurers in the world to give up on his rescue attempt, but he'd never give up as long as he remembered that feeling of his mana tethers grasping to his friends' souls.
"Look, I just need to borrow your machine once I have what you need to run it. I'm sure there would some kind of benefit to running it and saving a group of adventurers thought to be lost. Imagine the publicity you'd get with making a machine fully operational to stage a rescue."
Regin seemed to raise his eyebrows at that thought of Galahad's strange amounts of tenacity, then he laughed at him for sticking up for his beliefs and trying to draw him in with thoughts of kingdom fame for his help. Seemed Galahad was putting the wrong kinda bait under the dwarf's nose.
"Ha, ya think I can be enticed with the idea of impressing the bootlicking servants running along the Guild? I don't need any government's pity budgeting, most of the equipment here is made by me or sold patents to earn me millions of credits a year. I am one of the only self-dependent workshops you'll see in all of Etherite, maybe even all of this damn continent.
As he bragged about his machines being developed and paid for by him alone, Regin didn't stop working. He pulled out the same giant purple lense from the first time Galahad entered the underground workshop. Regin looked at Galahad through the distorted, magenta glass and Galahad saw the smug grin change a tiny bit before he put it back down.
That little expression change started setting off Galahad's paranoia, telling him the lense might be something more than a odd piece of artwork.
"What's the problem?" He asked while trying to suppress the stress in his voice.
"Ahh . . . nothin." The dwarf withheld his thoughts and sat down for a moment on the nearest stool. He set the lense down beside him and carried the conversation on further with a more serious tone. "If ya want my help with this crusade a' yours, ya need to tell me everything. You need to tell me the plan; especially how your gonna get the orbs for my Dungeon Lock."
The sudden changes in Regin's decision to help did not ease the tension growing in Galahad's heart. 'What the hell does that lense do? And what the hell does he actually know?'
Regin seemed to interpret Galahad's silence as him locking up at the pressure he was dealing, so he kept going with his discussion. "You need to come up a better reason to get me on board with your statement, otherwise its just a waste of time performing suicide with extra steps."
Galahad had a whole list of reasons for believing in his statement; his new powers, his growth, and what he recalled from the night of the incident. Unfortunately he had only just met the dwarf three days ago, he couldn't explain the secret of the black crystals or the fact that thousands of people were trapped in the bottom of the cavern.
He didn't know anyone outside of his family who he could trust, and even then he only told Brett what happened at the beginning because of what his sibling already suspected the night of elf encounter and tavern drinking. His parents were left out of the loop since losing his sister a while back only made the problem harder for them to deal with.
Then there was Solteer, who was far too proud and living on the forest away from human society, it was very unlikely he told anyone about Galahad's powers after he helped close the rift. His pride would keep him quiet and additionally knowledge might prove useful. In Galahad's mind was unlikely to be a problem.
No other human should know of his weird new abilities and class, Galahad believed it to be the safest option he took. If the guild were to discover he knew of the cavern and had such strange changes done to him, he'd certainly be silenced one of two ways. He'd be turn into a dissected mess by the kingdom's smartest, or the guild officers involved with such a sinister plot would find and kill him themselves.
"So you'll just sit here quietly and keep the belief of their survival to yourself?"
Galahad's unchanging reaction proved he would do just that. As long as Regin didn't know the whole truth and let him work in the workshop, he would be just fine.
"Well it's too bad, goodluck solving how to get them out of the black crystals." Regin said as he hopped off the stool and walked over some other section of the workshop's giant floor. Leaving Galahad wide eyed at the mention of black crystal.
'How did . . . . ?' Galahad felt his whole body tighten at the little bit of information. He certainly didn't mention any of it to Regin, only Brett and Solteer knew of the crystals. So how the hell did Regin know?
It didn't take long for Galahad to realize he should have read over the letter and gone back to beat the shit out of Swittar and his little bird partner-in-crime.
"Solteer you fucking chicken-winged rat!" Echoed along the stone walls.
*****
Neita finally found herself a chance to sleep and fully recover from her endless nights of travel and work. The guild office in Bluewalk had a single building for renting and overnight stays for workers, but she was tired of all the little cotton cots and stale air. She ended up staying in a fairly cheap villa house nearby, it was run by a very nice elderly couple who seemed to be happy they were getting a lot more business recently.
She didn't have the heart to explain to the happy elderly couple that Bluewalk has had an increase of visitors due to a murder investigation drawing the eyes of many others.
When she awoke, the dusty room greeted her with light blinding her from the window. It was a rather sunny day with some thin sheets of snow all across the dormant hills. White snow only made the shining sunny glow even brighter in her face.
Neita washed away the drowsiness in the lukewarm shower and soon made her way back to the guild office. She hoped today would result in a quick clean up of her time in Bluewalk and after everything that happened, she'd discover the truth of what had been happening since the dungeon incident.
Neita's mind was filled with many possible answers to the questions she had been gathering during her screwed up travels. So many in fact, that it brought her to lose a sense of where she was going, and almost walked nose first into the dark-stone walling of Bluewalk's only crystal resonance tower.
'Oh, maybe I can get this weird class error fixed.' She thought as she made her detour into the crystal tower. The two pieces of paper detailing Galahad as a support mage and now suddenly an unknown battle class was frustrating her to no end.
The whole Magician class to Battle class seemed absolutely impossible. There have been countless classes and skills that seemed to defy the laws of nature or physics, but no one had ever changed from one category to another. So there must have been a reason for this she just didn't know yet.
The inside of the crystal resonance tower was filled with practically a skeleton crew of a maintenance team with very uneventful expressions. The first person she walked up to was about to just wave her off to the newest hire, but nearly choke on his words and sandwich when he saw the guild insignia across her bag.
The maintenance worker straightened his stance and put on a customer service face in hopes of not getting fired for the incompetence of his duty in the tower. Luckily Neita was used to less than ideal attitude from Malex and just asked about the recent syncing of Karmic plates.
When she left the tower, she looked over the copies of all the recent tower and plate connections and found once again the class name Spartan under Galahad's paper. Something she had never seen before, even when going over all listed classes that are deemed rare or Unique in the Guild's database in Teramore. A new class beneath the wrong name, only confirming that Neita knew nothing of what was actually happening.
Neita could only sigh at such odd information and arrived back in Bluewalk's small guild office, a few blocks down from the tiny spire for the dungeon of the town. Inside the little common office, there was a few desks lined up to give a walkway down the middle of the office space and into the main office of the guilder designated leader.
Every town processed to the guild was run by an official stated by the Etherite kingdom's royal court. Sometimes that official was given that job as the only task of power, but in some uncommon cases; the royal court is willing to let a Count like Swittar run the city in addition to power in the Guild office.
The name on the door to the private office was surprisingly Scern himself. The Carnomancer who was tired of dealing with Bluewalk actually held the official power here. Seems he wasn't just leading the guild investigation, but the Guild itself.
'Interesting, either they don't have enough guild workers in this region, or Scern truly wanted a break from the supposed idiots he mentioned.'
Neita looked around the office for a while and found no one else who could help finalize the report to let her leave. The only person with that power was Scern, who had yet to arrive in the office.
She slumped down in an empty office chair and decided just to wait for Scern to arrive. The experience of being away from the capital for so long was becoming more and more tiresome.
"Hey- you here for me?" A somewhat hushed tone asked to her left.
On one side of the guild office, there were holding cells along the stone walls. Through the grate of the metal door, Neita saw a handlebar mustache speaking at her.
"That depends," she leaned forward and curious if this was the idiot Scern spoke of. "Why are you behind that door?"
"Gah, you need to understand I was practically framed and thrown in here because of the darkness embedded deep in this town."
The statement was meant to be vague and enticing to the new guild worker. Luckily for ex-captain Hadrell, Neita was looking for an explanation to her current predicament and if he could provide any insight from his cell, she'd happily take it.
Three days after Vallori left Bluewalk, Hadrell and his entire squad was imprisoned by the guild authorities for violating a lot of bylaws set by the royal court. Neita had no idea that happened and was willing to listen for a short while, but the moment he started spouting obvious bullshit, she could make any reprimandings increase by threefold for lying to a capital officer.
Hadrell was not aware of that. When he watched Neita walk in, he simply believed she was a ticket out of there before the corrupted Countess returned to the town. Her temper towards anyone was very horrific and motivated him to escape by any means necessary. Yet in his mind, it seemed that all he needed was to provide a bit of deceit.
"This all started with a couple of travellers breaking procedure a week ago. Some kid and a relative to the old leader of the Bluewalk Guardsmen thought they could charge through here with potential contraband and I stopped them."
Hadrell immediately set off his lies with a partial truth. There were witnesses to his story about him stopping the two kids from entering, but the details of event were twisted to his favor. After all, how could Vallori correct his false story when she was now in Teramore.
"You stopped a relative? How does that fit in to them being suspicious of potential contraband?"
"It doesn't matter about my suspicions, it was some ridiculous cousin to Vallori, who has been running this place like she had an iron fist at our throats. They came in here thinking they can just charge through here without proper inspection. Because I tried stopping them, the two idiots drew up a crowd to cause a problem. Then she showed up and planned to have me arrested after she left. She retired and had secretly her more loyal-"
"The two of them?" Neita interrupted, her mind tracing back to her whole reason for actually coming all the way from the capital. She was starting to wonder if he was actually talking about Galahad and the Disark kid that gave out the job.
"Yeah, him and some snotty scarecrow with black hair." He didn't bother memorizing the name, but if the guild worker was asking questions to fill in her own assumptions, then maybe his lies would actually get him out.
"Did he have burns along his face and arm?" She practically jumped forward at the chance to find out.
"Huh, what? I don't know anything about burns on his face, but he did have something wrapped along his left arm I think. Is he wanted for something?"
Hadrell was hoping he could pin the incident on this boy she was talking about. Maybe his chance of escape was actually right in front of him.
Just then, Scern the white-haired guild leader came into the office, and the ex-captain seemed to have lost his confidence to speak. He just retreated back to his seat in the dark cell with a grimace pulling at the end of his lips.
Scern's dark brown eyes pinpointed Neita in an instant, immediately assuming what could only be an attempted scheme from Hadrell in his cell. His pace and shift in expressions were clear signs that Hadrell lost his chance.
"Oh don't bother with that idiot. His mother gave him his rank to run the town, not realizing we had to put higher ranking officier in front of him since the kingdom tries to avoid bloodlines of power. Up until last week, he was kept in a dormant state of stupid. Ever since our Leading Captain left, him and his buddies started "Inspections" for warcrime evidence." He put air quotes to really emphasize the ridiculous excuse the captain made.
Even with the anger in his eyes, Scern kept his voice at the intensity of explaining his actions to scald a child. It wasn't until he turned to Hadrell that his tone changed to match his eyes.
"Honestly, I would rather have teenage vandalizers than a bunch of idiots. Oh I can only hope to the gods that when the Countess comes to let you loose, she doesn't bring that psychopath you call a brother." He snarled at the prisoner sitting silently in the jail cot.
Hadrell had a cold shiver despite the warm air inside the guild office. He may have been a greedy bastard who held little regards towards others, but his younger brother was something far worse.
He hadn't even realized the possibility of his brother joining his mother on the way back to Bluewalk, the idea of it was causing cold sweat gather across his brows and under his arms.
Neita watched and remembered the conversation she had with Scern the other day. It seemed this was one of the many issues he had been dealing with since he lost the one who kept corruption out of the small town. She felt bad for Scern and promised herself to put in a listing application for Scern to get a new high level captain for the future.
She could only sigh at the "Well regardless of his actions, he informed me that he might have some insight to my current case. I would like to talk to him more about what is going on with Galahad Mystroff and his visit into Bluewalk."
"About that . . ." Scern could only glance back to Neita before started scratching the back of his head while averting his eyes. "You're to report back to the capital with a potential case involving a high class criminal roaming about Etherite land." Scern handed her the case file crystal with everything from the aftermath of the bandit camp massacre on it.
"I can't though, I am still assigned to this case." She gestured at the satchel with all the odd data on Galahad. She never came here to find a conspiracy involving the Royals of New, she just came to this part of the Etherite Kingdom to make sure she hadn't left a young adventurer in despair.
The situation Galahad was put through felt like an unfair punishment, he didn't deserve to have his whole life taken away by the dungeon and further ruined by the guild. She used the excuse of his inadequate story to come back and help him.
"I'm sorry, but the King actually sent a personal order to have you come back to the capital and explain your report to his council. You are the only one who was there during the peak of the fire and "
"So you mean . . ."
"Yeah, you're gonna have to pass off your current case and deal with the bandit camp massacre. Sorry, but your search for this Galahad kid has come to an end."
End of Book 1: The Incident