Not a Place of Honor

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In a flash I was by Elze's side. "Elze! How do you feel? Do you taste blood in your mouth?" I didn't say anything as dumb like 'Are you all right?' because patients are dumb like that about trying to get out of their own injuries and that's what [Diagnosis] was for.

"S-shut up, you!" she gasped, case in point. "I'm… t-tougher than that..!" she said, even as she failed to straighten out her spine. "Don't… don't worry about it."

"No, *you* shut up! Armor weave can stop stabs and slashes, but blunt trauma gets past all that and get all these squishy organs bruised and bleeding. Of course I'm going to worry!" I put my hands over her stomach and felt at her soft tissues. She flinched at the touch. Yep, some serious bruising in there. Livers and kidneys and pancreas were considered solid organs and could burst. The abdominal cavity could fill up from internal bleeding.

While I cast [Cure Heal], Elze coughed and pointed behind me. "Shouldn't we do… something about that… instead?"

The Night Baron was getting back to its feet, with my Zanzibar sword-spear stuck firmly in its chest. It would have been faintly impressive to penetrate solid armor with the point, but such an attack was also particularly useless. Pity. It was quite nice custom spellwork to fling my sword like some sort of magic railgun and not have it shatter on impact.

[Lightning] was just conveniently within [Wind] magic affinity after all. Wind magic is best magic. Fite me bro.

"Nah, don't worry about it."

"Strike true, Light! Sparkling Holy Lance: [Shining Javelin]!"

Linze's energy javelin that shone with the warmth of sunlight smashed into the Night Baron from behind, punching straight through the armor and out the other side. The undead wobbled in place and dark purple smoke began to wisp out of the ragged wound. It roared in pain and rage.

"Oh come on!" I roar out. "Undead are supposed to be weak to Light magic!"

/"Well this did do a lot more damage than anything we've done so far. It's just not enough."/

This was probably the reason why it was a Green rank mission. It was easy enough to escape from the Night Baron, it wouldn't chase you. But it was also annoyingly persistent and would give brash young adventurers a good dose of humility.

The Night Baron growled and raised its greatsword. Yae interposed herself between us still there on the ground and the enemy, ready to block that massive blade with her much thinner katana.

While still bent over Elze, I licked my lips and murmured, "Yae. Close your eyes, please."

Yae blinked. That would be the stupidest possible thing, when facing an enemy that didn't have a head or a brain and yet still the pinnacle of the warrior arts and capable of low cunning. This was a poor time to be practicing one's blind fighting skill!

So she closed her eyes. She threw her awareness out just in case, but she refused to move. Hers was a sword meant to protect. A swordswoman must be strong and also strong enough to trust others.

And then she felt only heat.

"Storm. Wrath. [LIGHTNING.]"

Thoom. And then there was only light. The rolling thunder comes from how the bolt of lightning breaks apart the air too quickly, but this was no mere flash. Lightning struck the ground like a hammer and stayed there, sparking and writhing like a chained dragon. The air screamed with unrelenting fury.

Crackle. Crackle.

Thunderbolt and lightning! Very very frightening!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee.

A hissing sound rose out from the ground. Superheated steam. Vaporising metal. A wall of cold air chuffed against a final shockwave and a piercing echo as the hammer-blow of the gods finally stopped.

As the light and spots faded from everyone's eyes, there was only that electric tang in the air and on the ground a small crater punched into the ground with bits of a boot and gloves one the outside. In the pit still glowed red-hot fused glass.

"I see…" Yae whispered numbly. "Magic resistant is different from magic immune, after all."

Elze stared dully up at me. "Showoff. I could have beat that thing on my own too. I don't need you to rescue me you know?"

I sniffed haughtily. "Then do it faster next time. I'mma kill-steal if I want!" I bared my teeth at her in a shameless grin.

"Ahahaha…" She began to lightly slap my cheeks and her finger trailed down my jaw. "Help me up."

Yae lowered her sword and then stared back at us with a faintly frantic expression. She blinked again, and her face resumed its warrior's tranquility. She coughed into her fist. "So… we have won, yes? Is there anything else we have to do? Elze-dono, Playa-dono?"

And from above we all heard Linze wail "Mister Zaaaah! I can't get down!"

Ahahaha.

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"I am underwhelmed!" Elze groused some time later after we made sure no monster beasts would be returning. "In fact I am so under the whelming I should be sinking right now."

/"What's wrong? I thought you didn't mind if Player took the kill – you said that as long as it counts for the team, anything is permissible?"/

"I mean we subjugated the old capital, and what do we get for it? Some coins when we get back? Like we need any more of that! Where's the treasurrre?! Where's the loot?! This place looks like it's already been picked clean!"

I glanced around the ruins. Well I enjoyed the place. This was most of the reason I was prepared to make a backpack tour through Europe. To soak in all these fallen grandeur and tarnished antiquity. I wanted to /taste/ history. The girls were much less impressed. There were old ruins everywhere.

"Say, isn't cut stone valuable?" I mused.

/"Linze, dopeslap him for me please."/

Thwap. Linze, without hesitation, reached out and slapped the back of my head. Heh.

Monika added /"This is the reason why despite how an [Inventory] system would be so convenient, it's not really much of a priority for me. Don't even indulge Player's hoarding tendencies."/

"So there's really no chance of finding any more secret treasure or hidden rooms?" Linze whispered despondently.

I crossed my arms and huffed, "Well it's not like we have any sort… of… treasure detect… or….?"

Monika and I stared at each other through the smartphone screen. Linze noticed how my words trailed off and asked excitedly "Do you?!"

/"[Ground Penetrating Radar],"/ Monika said with wide-eyed realization.

"I also know how [Metal Detectors] work…" I added, while raising my hand. Small slivers of lightning sparked between my fingers. I was the absolute master of Wind magic. Fire and Water and Earth better step up their game, because [Wind], my precious element of freedom, also made me a master of [Magnetism].

Linze let out a shriek of glee. Elze groaned and palmed her face. "You have infected my sister with your money-grubbing ways!" Then she looked up, touched a finger to her lips and made a show of thinking about it. "Actually… on second thought, she's always wanted to do that. Buried treasure is a girl's romance!"

Um, I'm pretty sure *romance* is a girl's romance, but as adventurers eh sure that sounds legit.

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After a few scanning passes, Monika identified a section of rubble that seemed promising. A whole section of the palace wall had fallen over, and boulders fell on that of that, and then carved pillars on top of that. If these many tons didn't look so accidental, it would have been suspicious how someone definitely didn't want something to be uncovered.

Linze excitedly stepped up to the heap and shouted "Let me!"

She raised her wand high and shouted "Burst forth, Fire! Crimson Eruption: [Explosion]!"

KABOOM.

My face hung slack as the heat and shockwave rippled past. Small stone shards pinged off my helmet as everyone else other than Linze covered their faces. All the rubble was blown apart, what had been a pile of multiton stones tall as a three story building was now left nothing more than flattened scorched land.

… okay. Fire. Fire element just reminded me it doesn't need anything fancy. All it ever asks from you, in all sincere glee, is "Won't you walk the path of [Explosions] with me?"

Linze turned and gave me a hopeful little smile. I slowly raised a thumb up in approval. Um. Good job, Linze? You're overdoing it a bit, Linze? Where did all this sudden zeal come from, Linze?

/"Player, she didn't even cast it from a [Supercharge]. That was all just from her internal magic reserves."/

I was amazeballs. Then I felt the tug of the [Search] spell.

The blast exposed a pair of massive steel doors set into the ground. Looking at the edges, it seemed that it wasn't enough to cover it with debris, they had actually bricked over the doors to hide it even further.

We all combined our strengths to pry it open (though mostly just Elze, admittedly), and suspiciously it opened smoothly with not even a hint of rust or a creak of gummed up-joints. What waited for us was a stone staircase, eerily beckoning us to descend into its lightless depths.

"Am I the only one to get a baaad feeling about this…?" I mumbled.

"You scaaared?" Elze said with a catlike grin. "It's okay, we can turn back." Her grin froze as she stared down the staircase and felt the oddly hot moist air that wafted up. "Y-yeah. I think we've done enough for now. There's.. no need... to push ourselves."

"Let's go!" Linze said firmly, taking that first step down the hole.

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As soon as my head sunk down below the lip of the heavy metal doorframe, I stopped. "Huh. That's weird." Hurriedly I ran back up to taste the air outside.

"W-what are you doing?!" Elze shouted, trying to hide her nervousness as she followed to stand by my back. "You can't just run away like that!" Then in a smaller whisper, "takemewithyou."

"Monika, you feel that?"

/"Now that you mention it… while [Ground Penetrating Radar] exposes the cavity underground, it is like there's this immense pressure that separates everything else. It's like a preservation seal of some sort? No… the opposite of that."/

"What? What are you saying?!" Elze began to ask, her tone starting to grow panicked. "What's wrong with this place? What are we going to face down there?! Ghosts? Vengeful ghosts?!"

I walked back downstairs. "This place is magically dead." I looked ahead to see Linze waiting ahead, a small red fireball floating above her hand. "Magic still works though, but for some reason it is completely isolated from magic in the outside world."

/"It's not Anti-Magic. More like some sort of Faraday Cage?"/

"I'm just going to assume it's for historical preservation purposes."

"Of course it's not going to be for historical preservation purposes! Even I know that much!" Elze wailed suddenly. "A city that is guarded by undead above… who knows what's under it! And why is this wall so warm and wet?!" She slapped her hand onto the nearby stone brick wall, and recoiled. "That's not good for preservation!"

"It is like deliberately going down the throat of some monster, isn't it?" I replied gently. Maybe it was just centralized heating. It gets real cold underground, right?

"Don't say it like that!" Elze clenched her fists. "LINZE! Come back!"

"What are you all doing over there?" Linze shouted from below. "Come on! It looks safe!"

"That's not making me feel any better!" Elze moaned.

Linze nooo.

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It was a deep spiraling staircase, which was setting off so many SCP-087 vibes(1). Throwing a rock down to hear an echo wouldn't work since it would eventually just ping off the stairs and stop.

Fortunately after some time the stairs ended into a long straight but narrow tunnel, barely large enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Linze walked confidently at the head of the group. Right beside her, I kept blasting ahead with [Air Sense] to check for traps.

Linze now had three fire balls drifting around her raised fingertip. Seeing my curious gaze, she said "These are [Dancing Flames]. Duchess Ellen taught me the spell. It eats up good air and consumes more magic power, which is why many like to use the Light spell Tiny Illumination: [Light Sphere] instead."

"Why use this one then?"

Linze flicked her wrist, and one of the little fireballs shot forth down the corridors, illuminating a straight featureless passageway. It exploded off a side wall, blasting a pit into solid stone bricks. "Because the difference between [Dancing Flames] and [Piercing Flames] isn't much at all."

/"Oooh, Little Linze is Lara Crofting all over the place. I LIKE this side of Linze. Don't you, Player?"/

"Very much," I agreed. Linze blushed and made a 'hawawah' sound.

"S-stop flirting! Stop enjoying yourselves! This place is freaking me out!" Elze moaned. "I'd prefer traps! What's with this… moist air! And that smell…!"

"What smell? There is no smell," I said back.

"That's what makes it so weird! You'd expect some smell of mold or rot, wouldn't you?! Is it a monster? Is it a ghost?! What's going to come out of these waaaalls?!"

"W-what are you saying, Linze-dono! G-ghosts won't come out, no, they would not! I hope not!" Yae shouted out more to calm herself than anyone else.

"Gughk." The two girls were frightfully pulling at my cape so hard I was starting to choke. It was very difficult to walk like that. The eerie pulsating red light caused by Linze's [Dancing Flames] weren't helping.

But eventually the passageway opened out into a large vaulted chamber.

/"This… place seems familiar somehow,"/ Monika said. /"Dang it, now why is that? Where did I see this sort of thing before?"/ She turned the glow of the flashlight mode of the headset to maximum.

There were four pillars surrounding a central space. At the far end of the room was a wall filled with pictographic writings. /"It feels like an Egyptian temple or a tomb, but there's no altar or sarcophagus."/

I snapped my fingers in sudden realization. "I'm feeling the same way. Now I remember! It's like that place they found the Abydos Cartouche!"

/"Abydos cartouche(2)? What do you… aah!"/

/"STARGATE!"/ we yelled together. And then /"Everybody stay away from the center of the room!"/

Elze yelped and quickly flung herself towards a corner. Yae drew her sword and likewise put her back to an oddly warm wall.

"Mister Zah! What's wrong?" Linze asked.

While carefully moving around the room clinging to the stone pillars checking if they were primed to fall, I answered "Search the walls for clues! This is clearly not a dead end."

I looked at the center of the room. It didn't have a distinctive ring symbol etched into it to guide people to stand in the middle and get transported off somewhere. Could maybe still be a pit trap though?

Nah. I had no idea why, but this magically-dead place gave me a feeling of… peace? It was a different sort of earnest serenity to that of a temple, nor the chill silence of a grave, though similar. No, not peace. Perhaps… stasis? Yeah, that was more like it. Like a feeling of something held strongly in place, like a boulder frozen in the middle of a glacier.

We didn't really have to fear the usual arrows and darts flying off the walls or sawblades dropping from the ceiling. Even poison gas traps were nothing to people with Wind magic. But this place probably wasn't trapped – which meant these writings on the wall were *meant* to be read.

/"Hmm. Well that's weird,"/ said Monika. She changed the output of the flashlight into a projector that showed herself reaching running her hand over the pictographs. /"My autotranslation is having a much harder time trying to get any meaning from these pictographs. They're apparently considered graphics, not text, and as such iconography gathers meaning from its intended audience."/

I nodded. That was fair. "We'll just have to photograph everything and see if we can squeeze any more money from Charlotte later."

/"Player, they're already paying us a lot for renting the digicam and your weekly translation services. Any more of this and you would literally bankrupt the kingdom's magic research grants and Charlotte would have to start thinking about selling her body."/ She scrunched her nose cutely at me. /"Is that your motivation?"/

Nooo. Of course not.

But I was saved by Elze's cry of "I found something!"

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Elze pointed to something stuck in the wall in the right side of the room. It was a large muddy brown crystal, though cut like a jewel.

I rubbed at my chin as I inspected it. "This is a magic stone, isn't it? Earth element, I think?"

"It's a spellstone," Linze explained. "From the looks of it, if you get some magic flowing through it, something will happen."

I nodded. "Right." I took a step back and touched my headset. "Monika, is this a false wall?"

/"[GPR Scannning…] [Done.] Yes, yes it is. This could still be a trap, but running magic through is probably related to removing this wall."/

"But if they intended to HIDE something, they wouldn't put such an obvious way to clear the obstacle, isn't it?" I said. So this might be safe. I just hoped those pictographs didn't say something like THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR. (3)

Linze beamed so happily that it almost hurt me to look at her. "Thank you, Mister Zah! None of us here have the Earth element to explore any further."

"Well, couldn't Elze just punch through instead?" I answered.

"Well I don't want to!" Elze huffed and crossed her arms.

/"If I were building this place, that's actually what would trigger my trap. Disrespectful visitors get no mercy!"/

Everyone else took shelter behind the pillars just in case while I touched the spellstone and channeled some magic through it. The ground began to rumble and shake. Elze screamed "I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!"

And then with a buzz, the wall just crumbled away into sand.

Anticlimactically, it exposed another room.

In contrast to the intricately carved room from before this one was bare and featureless on all sides except for the support pillars, and at the center was a large thing covered in dust and sand. Even a store-room would have been more interesting.

Linze looked so disappointed, it actually did hurt.

"There's no treasure?" she whispered sadly. "Well, there were no traps either… I guess it would be too much to hope to get something good for something too easy."

I frowned. Indeed, even a storeroom could probably have given us some pottery or something for Linze to take home as a souvenir. I strode towards the center of the room to inspect the large beetle-like sculpture(?)/ idol(?) in the middle of the room.

I wiped the dust away to expose that it was made of some sort of glass or crystal. It looked damaged, with its legs already broken off. Monika pulled up some insect samples, and because the back legs of the thing were much longer than a bettle's six roughly similar-length legs, it was more proper to call it a cricket instead. "Maybe this is all made of magic stone? How valuable could that be?"

"Haha, a magic stone big as someone's fist could buy you a kingdom!" Elze snorted. "There's never been stones that big. This thing isn't made of magic stone, I'd know."

I stood up and sighed. The light was fading, Linze's three [Dancing Light] fireballs were dimming; I assumed it silently expressed her dissatisfaction. I reached out to pat her shoulder.

"Cheer up, Elze. Much of archaeology is actually just like this… it's boring, but knowledge is gained through careful delicate work. Not everything can be exciting. Even if this didn't feel productive – well at least we're safe! And now we have something secret only we know!"

I nodded happily, trying to transfer my good spirits over. "We can [Boom Tube] here any time. I can think of a lot of things fun things we could do with a secret underground installation that only we know. We even have a guard in the form of the [Night Baron] on the surface!"

/"Your supervillain lair, Player? Sure, why not."/

Linze looked up. "Mister Zah? What are you saying?" She noticed her dimming lights and tried to push more magic power into them. The fireballs blazed a little brighter and then dimmed again. "I'm… I'm not doing this."

My danger sense immediately went into overdrive.

"Playa-dono!" Yae screamed out suddenly.

I turned around to see that a red orb was now glowing in the crystal cricket-things's head. It began to stir and shake, waking up.

OH SHITE.

/"It's absorbing the magic!"/ Monika shouted in alarm. /"Player!"/

THIS WAS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR!

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AN:

(1) (ʰᵗᵗᵖ:/ʷʷʷ.ˢᶜᵖ⁻ʷᶦᵏᶦ.ⁿᵉᵗ/ˢᶜʰᵗᵗᵖ:/ʷʷʷ.ˢᶜᵖ⁻ʷᶦᵏᶦ.ⁿᵉᵗ/ˢᶜᵖ⁻⁰⁸⁷ᵖ⁻⁰⁸⁷)

(2) (ʰᵗᵗᵖ:/ʷʷʷ.ˢᵗᵃʳᵍᵃᵗᵉ⁻ˢᵍ¹⁻ˢᵒˡᵘᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ.ᶜᵒᵐ/ʷᶦᵏᶦ/ᴬᵇʸᵈᵒˢ_ᶜᵃʳᵗᵒᵘᶜʰᵉ)

(3)(ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ:/ʷʷʷ.ᵈᵃᵐⁿᶦⁿᵗᵉʳᵉˢᵗᶦⁿᵍ.ᶜᵒᵐ/ᵗʰᶦˢ⁻ᵖˡᵃᶜᵉ⁻ᶦˢ⁻ⁿᵒᵗ⁻ᵃ⁻ᵖˡᵃᶜᵉ⁻ᵒᶠ⁻ʰᵒⁿᵒʳ/)