"Well, isn't this fancy?"
Seth and Silva had passed through many rooms and seen many they couldn't search due to them collapsing or other reasons, around 100 or so they passed but never found much of interested other than dust or destruction, that is until they came across what they were both staring at now.
In front of them were two massive metal doors that were a clean silver, they shimmered with a multicoloured light as the weak light shafts creeped through the cracks in the decrepit castle.
"These things are frickin' massive"
("True, I've seen some impressive architecture before, but this is certainly impressive")
Seth walked up to it and placed his gauntlet covered hand flat on the surface and swiped across as if to get a better feel of it, he pushed on the doors but no matter what strength he used even with reinforcement they wouldn't budge even a millimetre.
He used mana vision and sure enough the entire thing was laced with mana moving in a specific pattern.
"This pattern… it's an array? To think one lasted this long and its even in such good condition"
Arrays were a huge part of human ingenuity, humans constructed magic circles subconsciously when casting a spell however arrays were different, though countless centuries, even millennia of trial and error they learnt from the patterns and movements of the magic circles from an almost uncountable number of spells to reverse engineer them, figure out what had what effect and inscribe them on to objects performing spell like effects with a set pattern.
("Try using your spirit sense")
"Right"
His eyes glowed with a silvery lining and his vision scanned the door, what he saw surprised him; The spirit ley-lines seemed entangled within the doors construction almost following the array pattern that was inscribed.
"It's controlling it?"
("Not quite, I told you before that magic uses spirit to construct the sequences, or the 'magic circles', right?")
"I remember that, yes"
("While this array is much more advanced that ones I've witnessed before there is also another difference, Humans use parts of magical beasts and cores to power their arrays but this one makes use of the spirit ley-lines to construct part of it, so the array is not controlling the spirit ley-lines rather they make up a large portion of the array.")
"So… what's the point?"
("How much do you know about arrays?")
"I know what they look like, that's about it"
("Well, arrays aren't some omnipotent techniques, they have vulnerable points those being the power source and the array pattern itself; If the power source is destroyed, well, it should be obvious it'd turn off immediately, the latter however means that if someone experienced with arrays managed to observe, learn and alter the patterns in an array it can be rendered useless without touching the power source at all.")
Silva glanced at Seth and saw he was paying attention at least before continuing.
("The reason combining spirit ley-lines with arrays is ingenious is that it covers both of these weak points, firstly the ley-lines are used to direct the surrounding mana in an sufficient amount so that the array can stay active as long as the area contains mana meaning there isn't a power source to destroy, and secondly someone that doesn't have spirit sense can't interfere with them thus they cannot disable or destroy the array that way, and the amount of people that can do that is incredibly low at any time in history.")
"That sounds amazing, but how do we get past"
("Sigh, you don't really hold much interest in this stuff, do you?")
"It's not that I don't have any, it's just right now getting past this door is way more important"
("Take another look at the array inside the doors, follow the ley-lines they should coalesce towards a singular point")
Scanning the doors for a minute or two Seth looked through the complex pattern and it wasn't long before he saw what looked like a bundle of lines crumpled together like a ball of yarn.
"I see it, what is it?"
("It's the array core, like spells that have a core to their construction it's where the array starts and is also the weakest point")
Silva then floated towards the area Seth identified and placed his paw on it.
("Watch closely")
Seth stared attentively, with his spirit vision active he watched small tendrils of silver spirit energy extend from Silva's aura and start wrapping around the ley-lines in the door array, slowly but surely the lines were becoming untangled and before long after one last tug the entire thing became loosened, quickly the ley-lines seemed to recede, ejecting themselves from the array entirely, the lights on the other array runes quickly dimmed before going dark.
("It isn't that complex, it's basically undoing a knot since the ley-lines are entirely unchanged, you just need to remove what is anchoring them to the array and they'll remove themselves")
"Amazing! So, we can open it now, right?"
("…Yes, we can open it.")
The small spirit inwardly sighed and secretly hoped Seth would at least remember what he just said.
With eagerness Seth once more pushed the doors and with a large creak and plenty of stone grinding noises the two doors were pushed open enough for them to pass through.
As they entered the dark room that laid beyond them all of a sudden many light seemed to come alive and the entire hall became lit up, a sight unlike the rest of the decrepit castle laid before them.
Lights that had cores as their centre glowed with a bright white as they highlighted the pure white walls that shimmered with a similar multi-coloured light of the doors, there were many things placed orderly on the left and right sides of the room, treasures stacked high, many coins, weapons, armour pieces that were in perfect condition, there seemed to also be many shelves stocked with both books and scrolls of various colours some looked like they contained priceless information or history based on the gold trimmings lining their design.
"Is this the real treasury then? To think all of this still remained…"
("With a spirit array to protect it I'm not surprised")
"So, whatever attacked didn't have spirit sense?"
("It seems not, it doesn't change the fact that whatever it or they were, they forced a kingdom with such technology to such dire straits")
They kept walking forward towards the deeper parts of the treasury, Seth's eyes almost sparkled gold with everything that caught his vision the armour and weapon he had now seemed like hand-outs compared to what he saw here, he was about to reach out to a sword handle but-
("Are you sure you want to do that? Everything here is array protected")
"Seriously? Damnit! Can't you do anything?"
("If I have time sure, but first I think we should continue on")
Reluctantly, Seth sighed before agreeing; It's not like all this treasure will run away anyway.
After walking for another minute or two with star struck eyes, they came to what appeared to the end of the room, however it wasn't a flat wall, what was there was a crystalline staircase leading up to a similarly styled throne that was completely empty.
'I wonder how much that would sell for?'
Seth walked up the steps and stood before the throne, other than this there was nothing else, but Seth found that suspicious.
What he didn't realise was that Silva had stopped following him and waited at the bottom of the stairs while attentively staring at the throne.
"This can't be the end; I've searched basically the rest of the castle, but I never found a way to the centre tower!"
He relentlessly searched around the throne patting it and pushing anything that was potentially a button, the floor tiles, the separate steps, the circular patterns in the crystal, he even tried using the throne itself as a lever in the small possibility that was the answer.
"Nothing… But I'm at least 99% sure this is the way up!"
'Maybe the trigger is elsewhere in this room?'
He scanned the pile of treasures once more in an attempt to find something, but his head ended up hurting from the near unlimited possibilities.
'It'd take years for me to search this entire place!'
"Maybe if I sit on the throne?... huh?"
He noticed something was off, Silva was at the bottom of the stairs not paying attention to his antics and instead his sight was glued to the crystalline throne.
'That's weird, I don't think I've seen anything catch his attention like this yet… wait a minute'
He then remembered the warning that Silva gave him twice.
'It couldn't be?'
But before he could turn his head a grizzled voice entered his ear holes.
"You're being rather rude for an intruder, don't you think?"
Almost scared out of his bones, Seth quickly tumbled to the bottom of the stares before glaring daggers at the throne where the voice came from.
Before, there wasn't a single person there, not in this room or the entire castle, but now there was a man sitting in the throne with one arm rested against the armrest and pressed to his cheek in a relaxed manner.
His blonde hair was fairly tattered but long as it grew past his shoulders and had many white streaks running through it, his face was rugged and contained a few scars as well as having two piercing blue eyes that seemed to contain the boundless sky.
"No way-"
Seth couldn't believe his eye-sockets
"P-p-prince Llyod?!"
Although he was aged, Seth recognised the visage of the prince of Reverie.