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MAZE - Chapter 1057 - What lies behind the door
🕑 Added 2025-05-17 17:08:47 +0000 UTCHera stood a few moments in front of the door, trying to identify what it was. She knew that she had another option, but she went to first see if she could figure out things by herself. There was really not a point in always going for the quick answer. After all, that wouldn't allow her to learn and identify things on her own. But, if needed, she could use her relic.
She took a few steps away from the door and let her Mana flow through the air. There was no spell being cast; it was just the raw energy of her magic. Something that when she first became an Explorer, Hera would never be able to do. But now, after years of practice and constant use of magic, it was just as easy as breathing out some air.
The Mana touched the door and was met by a solid wall, which made sense considering this was a door. But at the same time, it was a bit strange. As far as the empress could understand, no object in the MAZE was completely impervious to Mana. Everything had small gaps that would allow magic to pass through, even walls. As a matter of fact, her pulse spell and the advanced version sonar were proof of that. They could penetrate through materials. And while it would make the magic stop sooner, it was still possible to let it push through the object.
Going for a different approach, the empress used the pulse spell. It was the most basic version of it and, generally speaking, the least threatening spell related to scouting that she had available. But, just as the first attempt, the moment the magic hit the door, it was completely stopped, proving that there was still some magic on the door itself.
The Empress used [Blade Accord] to summon a set of chains wrapped around her waist and gave the other end of it to Livy and Vulcan. That was just a safety measure in case something happened. After taking a deep breath, she took a step towards the door, reaching out to it. She was about to touch the entrance with her hand before stopping and realizing that she didn't need to risk herself that much.
Taking a few steps back, the Ophidianite raised her tail to touch the door instead. This was the type of action that still felt a bit unnatural to her. But she needed to get used to that kind of thing. After all, she was no longer a human. She was now an Ophidianite, and the right thing to do was to live as such.
But the moment her tail touched the door, nothing happened. It seemed like this wasn't the type of spell that would stop anyone from touching it with aggression. Or maybe that part of the spell was long gone. After all, despite the door being in a better state than the one they passed through, it was still pretty deteriorated. The empress wouldn't put past it that the door used to have a more excessive reaction to people touching it without permission.
Now that she felt safer on messing with the thing, Hera started looking for any hidden pressure plates or buttons. Anything that could show how people used to open this. She was only hoping that the spell related to actually opening it was not gone. If that was the case, she would have a big problem in her hands.
While everyone was trying to figure out the type of spell that was present on the door, Viper noticed something weird, not coming from the door but from behind them. He glanced back and saw how there was a very faint but similar Mana signature coming from the golden medallion. The one on the hands of the skeleton that was on the ground. They were not exactly the same, but were close enough that made them seem to be part of the same device. Like two cogs in the clock.
"The large golden coin in the hand of the corpse, could this be the key?" Viper asked.
Hera frowned. "But why would they be holding the key here?"
Crimson looked at the corpse and then at the door. "Maybe they were trying to get inside, but they were hurt and died before reaching the door?"
Everybody was a bit unsure on what the corpse was doing. It was pointing towards the door but that didn't mean much. The person could have died in a number of ways and just fell like that. For instance, they could have been stabbed and tried to get away or they could have been attacked in a way that caused them to fall backwards. There were options, realistic options for the body to be in that position.
But Crimson's suggestion was also a very realistic possibility. If the person was injured trying to get here, even to the point of dragging itself along the floor, but failed to reach the door, then it very much would be in that exact position. It was hard to tell if that was the case. There were no claw marks on the ground, but then again, part of the skeleton was half buried on the floor. Likely a result of eons of accumulating dust.
Hera approached the medallion to try to analyze it a bit better. Since it really was a key of sort to be used in this place, there would be signs. The Mana signatures between the two should be very similar and the type of magic present on the two structures, meaning the doors and the medallion itself, would be almost as if they were related.
Together with Vulcan, Viper, and Filigree, they started sending small pulses of Mana towards both the medallion and the door to check if every reaction could be the same. The whole process lasted about 20 minutes in which Livy quickly started to feel bored but she refused to say anything. After all, even if this was not the type of thing she enjoyed, she was the outlier in this situation.
But then, they were able to confirm that, by all metrics, the golden disk seemed to be related to the door. Maybe it wasn't a key specifically, but it was something that was supposed to be there.
Being a bit worried about the situation, Hera, instead of grabbing the medallion and making it touch the door, created a small glove made out of wind wrapped around the chains of the Blade Accord. It was a strange combination of the two powers of a legacy that she acquired at the last battle of the war, and the movement was very awkward. But it was good enough for what she wanted. The chains curled around the medallion and pulled it away from the skeleton's corpse. The weight behind the spell caused the bones to break.
Hera quietly said, "I'm sorry." Before continuing.
The cloud chain glove slowly moved the medallion to the door, touching it just on the edge. The moment she did so, there was a loud thump behind the doors and they slowly started to go back, revealing that the floor was actually a thick layer of dust that was almost 5 cm tall. The room behind this entrance further away from the ceiling.
At first, it only appeared to be a dark cave, but that quickly started to change as there was a flicker on the sides and glowing rocks started to ignite. This wasn't something uncommon for the Empress as she had seen rocks behaving like torches in the past, but it was the first time she saw this happening where they had an on and off switch. As far as she understood, those types of rocks would constantly be glowing or couldn't emanate light anymore. There was no in between.
More and more started to turn on, revealing a very wide area, which was wider than the cave they were currently in and which was deeper than the distance between the entrance of the cave and here. Not just that, but part of this place seemed to be going downwards in a spiral, but only after the last pieces of illumination were turned on, that they had an idea of what this place was.
On the very back of this room, directly facing the entrance, was a massive map of the plateau. Just this plateau. There were countless markers and drawings of different monsters, plants, passages, and pretty much everything that anyone would want to explore the area. In the lake, which was represented as deep turquoise instead of the lime green that existed now, there was also a cloth attached to it. Specifically, a cloth with the drawing of the altar that the Empress had seen underwater. The cloth was in a pitiful state, but the fact that it survived this long was already incredible by itself.
Everybody slowly walked inside, making sure not to touch anything, They noticed various workbenches with long rotted wooden tables and broken vials that were unable to survive after this long. But what was this place was very clear to everyone. It was a laboratory. One used by the ancient Naga civilization. And apparently, one that had something to do with the final state of the lake.
"Everyone, spread out and see if you can find any books or any writing that we could use. Be careful with the things you move and check everything before touching it. If anything is covered by Mana leave it alone," Hera said.
The court nodded in agreement and they all headed out, spreading around the laboratory and trying to find anything that could explain anything about this place.
From the little that they could gather just from a surface look, there wasn't really anything that explained why this particular cave was being used as a laboratory. Hera couldn't see any specific or unique type of Mana. There was nothing in the cave formation that was catching her eye aside from the Naga remnants. All in all, it didn't seem to be any real reason for the presence of the Naga in this cave. Unless, of course, they were here to hide from something.
This could be a secret research facility made so that only a handful of people would be aware of its presence. After all, unless they knew exactly where they were looking for, it would be very hard for anyone to notice the cave. Maybe this was just her hopes speaking, but Hera couldn't help but imagine that this place was in fact related to her quest. There was the giant map of this specific plateau, with several indications of things that should exist here, even if most of the information was severely outdated.
Maybe every single one of these plateaus would have a laboratory like this one. And maybe each plateau had something that was destroying it. Considering that the Naga had vanished, and current information indicated some sort of internal collapse, this could be the reason. Maybe all the laboratories started working on things that were dangerous and when one failed, it caused the domino effect. But this was just a theory for now. In order to become anything else, Hera would need to learn more about the surrounding area.
They continued looking all over the lab, searching for books or any form of writing that could give them an idea of what this was. But unfortunately, there wasn't anything that survived the test of time.
Eventually, Lurize was able to find a large locked cabinet. In there was a set of journals together with about two dozen different books. The cabinet was locked with some form of stasis spell that kept things inside somewhat protected. It made it so the paper could survive for a long time. But not long enough.
Most of the books had turned into dust the moment Hera undid the lock using the golden medallion. The only things that were left were a couple of the journals. Even then, most of the pages also crumbled away once the journals were picked up, leaving in total, less than a third of a full journal for her to work with. But it was still much better than anything she could think of right now. And with something like that to work with, Hera could make herself busy for the next couple days until she was allowed to continue exploring the room. Or until she had to do something else at the request of the Alliance.
