Exiting the elevator in a daze, Luke examined his surroundings.
Numerous metal shelves full of strangely shaped objects lined the hall, which was as big as the one they descended from. Next to each one of them stood a single guard.
Luke ignored the items on the shelves and instead started examining the guards closely, seemingly at random.
No matter how close his face got to them or what angle he looked at them from, they remained unmoving. He didn't go as far as to touch them, as Ellios strongly advised against it before they split up.
"Do not touch them, do not speak to them, and most importantly, do not touch any of the artifacts."
'This is the sixth one, yet it's completely the same as the previous five. Their heights, statures, hair, and even their facial expressions and features… It's all identical, as if they were mass-manufactured in a factory somewhere.'
Luke sighed and walked away.
'The creepiest of all are their hollow eyes. There's no life in them. It's almost like they're…'
"Luke!"
Ellios' shout dispelled his thoughts.
"What's that?" Luke asked with a curious expression as he looked at Ellios.
"New training materials," he answered as he pulled out a cube-shaped object from the pile of strangely-shaped objects he was carrying in his arms.
He tossed it at Luke, and he easily caught it with the assistance of his wind elemental, putting it into the inner pocket of his robe.
"Didn't you say that we shouldn't touch any of the artifacts here?"
"I said that you shouldn't touch them. And relax, I just paid for these," Ellios said as he used his chin to point towards a girl behind the counter, "There are clerks on each floor."
Noticing that the girl looked exactly the same as the one on the upper floor, Luke shrugged his shoulders and changed the topic, "Whatever… What about Anastasia?"
"She's still picking something out. Did you see anything you like? Master's feeling generous today," Ellios said with a puffed-out chest.
"I haven't. Isn't what you've got there enough?" Luke asked with a raised eyebrow.
"This is this, and that is that. Go and pick something out."
"Couldn't we have simply done this in Naiccos? I heard that they've also got artifacts for sale back there."
"Hmph, the difference in quality is immeasurable. The same goes for the price, so just accept the gift, disciple!" Ellios said with a very annoyed tone of voice.
Realizing that any further resistance would be futile, Luke succumbed to the offer, "Fine…"
Ellios nodded in satisfaction, and the artifacts sitting on top of his arms transformed into a translucent blue light before entering his chest.
"Are there any elementals here?" Luke asked.
"Only artificial ones, used for utility."
"Artificial elementals?" Luke asked with a surprised face.
"Ah, so you don't know. You can think of them as akin to a reusable artifact that is stored within your soul, in the same way as an elemental. The storage and flash elementals tend to be the most popular. It's also the reason why they're not out of place when surrounded by all the artifacts here."
Luke nodded, but had a more pressing question: "Who makes them?"
Stealthily glancing to the left and to the right, Ellios noticed that the doll-like guards' hollow eyes almost drilled holes through him and Luke.
He answered with a shake of his head, "I do not know."
They walked in silence as Luke examined the various artifacts in passing.
'The choice is pretty obvious.'
"I want a storage elemental."
"Khm, that won't be possible," Ellios cleared his throat as he looked away from Luke.
"Why is that?"
"…You already have it."
"…?"
And then Luke remembered.
"Wait! Was it the cube you tossed me earlier?"
Ellios nodded, "Precisely."
By the time they finished their conversation, they had already reached the shelves that were the furthest away from the center of the round hall.
Most of the artifacts here didn't even have a carved metal nameplate in front of them, unlike the ones in the rest of the hall.
"Hmm, I'll just take this one then," Luke said as he reached his hand out towards a random, unnamed artifact.
Not that one.
Luke heard a whisper, and his hand changed its intended direction and grabbed a different artifact than what he had originally wanted, as if guided by another's will.
'What was that just now? Am I hearing things?'
"Are you sure? At least it has a nameplate, but I can't tell what it is…" Ellios questioned with a raised eyebrow.
'He's right. The nameplate is completely scratched up, as if intentionally. But still, I got a strangely good feeling about this artifact.'
Upon closer inspection, it was caked in dust and had a hexagonal shape; if Luke hadn't explicitly known that it was an artifact, he would've mistaken it for a piece of junk.
Shaking his doubts away, he replied to Ellios, "I'll risk it. Let's just find Anastasia and leave. This place is giving me the chills."
"It's your choice. You must buy it once you touch it anyway, so no backing out later."
'Pfft, so that's why he said not to touch anything.'
Nodding at Ellios, they wandered around the hall, and after finding Anastasia, they barely managed to convince her to bring her shopping spree to a halt.
The persuasion expenses? An armful of new artifacts in her possession, to the dismay of Ellios' wallet.
Luke waited outside while Ellios was paying for the artifacts.
'They are taking quite a while in there…' thought Luke while fiddling with the artifact in the shape of a cube.
The sides of the cube all had identical lengths and heights, and the artifact could easily fit on top of Luke's hand.
'This is supposed to be the storage elemental, but how the hell do I activate it?'
Upon closer examination, Luke found a round indentation in the center of one of the sides, no bigger than the tip of his finger.
'Is something supposed to go in here…?'
Pressing his finger into the indentation, Luke felt something sharp stab into it almost immediately.
"Ouch!"
He let go of the cube, but it remained attached to his finger, even as he tried shaking it away.
"Try putting some mana into it."
"…?!"
Luke heard an unfamiliar voice and looked around with caution.
"Up here."
Following the voice's instructions, Luke looked upward, just as the figure started gracefully descending – no, gliding through the air.
'Is it even possible to fall so slowly?'
The man seemed to be as light as a feather to Luke.
Landing right in front of him, the black-haired man fixed his pair of glasses.
Even in a place as messy as this, neither his glasses nor his suit had even a speck of dirt on them.
'Why even pick a white suit for a trip to the swamp, of all places?'
"Are you just going to wear that artifact on your finger for the rest of your life?" the man asked with a dead-pan expression and a tilt of his head.
"Oh!"
Luke tried channeling his mana into the artifact and was met with an immediate reaction – the cube shattered into a million pieces.
A white light escaped from it and looked as if it were about to disperse, similar to a Gleem's wind elemental when Luke waited too long to absorb it.
As per usual, Luke willed the elemental to be absorbed into his soul, with the light obeying and entering through the same index finger the cube penetrated earlier, followed by a sharp piercing sensation coming from the left side of his chest.
"Argh…!"
'Damn, it's more painful than ever before!'
Luke collapsed to one knee, which sank into the mud along with his other leg, because he could no longer sustain the wind elemental due to the sudden pain.
After a few minutes, the pain subsided, and a new tattoo had probably appeared on Luke's chest.
It wasn't like he could check, though, as the black-haired man in the white suit stared at Luke during this whole process, his dead-pan expression not budging an inch.
"Fascinating," the man said, as his glasses shined brighter than usual.
Luke stood up, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and tried blowing the mud away from himself using the wind elemental, with little success.
"What is?" Luke asked while still attempting to clean himself.
"You broke the artifact, yet you still absorbed the elemental. That's impossible without using additional artifacts to recapture the dispersing elemental."
A small object materialized in the man's hand.
'A storage elemental?'
Without hesitation, the man crushed the object, and an azure blue light passed through Luke like a cloud.
The mud staining his clothes was swept away with the light, like it was only a mirage in the first place.
'It's not only the clothes… I feel as if I just took a relaxing, hot shower!'
This didn't help, though, as Luke only grew even warier of the mysterious man.
"I got a call. Someone tried to buy a certain artifact that shouldn't be available for purchase… Not that it matters, now that I've found someone like you. Ah, where are my manners? May I ask for your name?"
Intrigued, Luke gulped.
'Is it the hexagonal artifact? Could Ellios be in danger? I think it's better to play along for now.'
"My name is Luke. What's yours?"
The man bowed at Luke with utter respect.
'…That's the most formal bow I've seen in my life.'
"I am Christian," the man said while still bowing.
Christian ended his bow and fixed his glasses.
"Luke, I have an offer that you cannot refuse."
'Please, just don't offer me a discipleship…'