Rediscovered during construction work on the Deepway, Isa Lante was an intact relic from the ancient era.
Long ago, people had lived here. But when the city’s contact with the outside world had been severed during the Dark God War, it had become isolated from the rest of the world.
Eventually, its people had starved to death. Nothing remained of them now but monsters: risen corpses and wraiths consumed by hatred. It had become a literal city of the dead.
Following the city’s rediscovery, researchers had been sent to investigate. They’d proven that the city was collecting mana from a dragon vein flowing beneath its foundation, which it used as a power source.
The many pillars towering over the city served as conductors. Using mana from the vein below to fix the bedrock above in place with magic, they’d kept the city intact for all these years.
Just as impressive was the city’s infrastructure, which helped maintain a living environment. But that had been deemed too dangerous for contemporary mages to mess with, so it had been completely sealed off using dozens of layers of defensive barriers.
After all, it wasn’t wise to let any mage tinker recklessly with the city’s defense system and risk accidentally activating some ancient weapon.
In fact, the “Arrow of Judgment” that had been unleashed upon the Holy Land of Metis had been one such ancient weapon, and this was where it had accidentally been activated. But only a few people in Solistia knew that truth.
The point was that this ancient city was brimming with danger, so the mages needed to investigate carefully as they went about their research. If they found anything, they were required to report it without fail.
While research maniacs like Croesus taking items out of the city for further study without permission was certainly a problem, the bigger priority was ensuring the mercenaries—who were there as guards—didn’t pocket magic tools and other finds instead of reporting them as they were supposed to. It was a valid concern. Ancient relics were so valuable that people would resort to crime to get their hands on one.
Of course, the students sent here as assistant researchers were no exception to these rules. They had to report their finds as well.
Against this backdrop, Croesus and his fellow students from the Saint-Germain faction were combing through a storehouse that housed various magic tools found throughout the city.
“Hmm... This ring looks like it should be paired with something else,” Makarov observed. “I think that’s an activation formula etched into it, but I’ve got no clue what it’s meant to pair with.”
“If you’re not sure, then why don’t you just try to activate it?” Croesus suggested. “It could potentially be one of the other magic tools in here, don’t you think? Perhaps it’s in range.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding. What if it unleashes some terrifying spell on us?”
“Then we just bolt, don’t we? I’d run at the first sign anything was wrong, at least.”
“Wow. So responsible of you.”
Magic tools typically had either a magic stone, a magic crystal, or a spirit crystal embedded in them. By engraving formulas into these precious stones, crafters could imbue each tool with a different effect. In theory, one could use a magnifying glass to decipher the etched formula and determine which effect a tool had—but in practice, that required a lot of patience and effort.
If the magic stone or magic crystal was large enough, it was easy to read the formula. Some of these tools, though, were tiny, barely the size of your little fingertip. The researchers could tell that these had a formula etched into them, but actually reading the formula was totally out of the question.
They didn’t know how the ancient crafters had managed to make such intricate little formulas and sigils, but those impressive formulas were now causing the researchers no small amount of anguish.
Most of them, at least. Croesus, and Croesus alone, was delighted.
“These are magnificent,” he marveled. “How were they able to incorporate sigils into such minuscule objects? Truly, magic tools from the ancient era are works of art...”
“I’m amazed you’re still this excited, Croesus,” Yi Ling said, dejected. “We threw in the towel right away. Like... How are we meant to figure out what these things are?”
“This is Croesus we’re talking about, I suppose,” Serina said. “This place must be paradise for him.”
“Oh, it very much is,” Croesus replied. “This is no mere storehouse. It’s a veritable treasure trove of knowledge. I could spend my whole life doing research in here, and I’d have no regrets.”
“Jeez... Is it really worth getting that excited about?” Makarov asked, skeptical. “Everyone except you’s fed up with it.”
At first, all of them had been just as excited as Croesus.
After all, these magic tools were from an ancient civilization, and it wasn’t often that people got the chance to touch such exquisite objects. It might have even been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Moreover, there was a mountain of them. If anything, there had to be something wrong with any researcher who didn’t get giddy at the thought.
Once the work began, though, it became clear what a terrible hassle it would be to actually identify them all.
Technically, researchers with the Appraisal skill had a means of figuring a few things out, but even for them, these ancient magic tools were far too intricate to be fully understood.
The storehouse was just full of objects with purposes so unclear that even those rare individuals with Appraisal wanted to give up; identifying these things was an incredibly tall order. Working away at the task would level up an individual’s Appraisal skill, but they were just so far from being able to wrap their head around these things.
After all, it wasn’t just their Appraisal levels that were low; their levels as mages were low as well. They could barely hope to read a single letter of the formulas etched into magic tools made with such advanced techniques.
Usually, mages with Appraisal were given special treatment. Here, though, there had been a complete reversal; the task had well and truly shattered their confidence, and instead of talking them up, the other mages had started hurling abuse at them.
Combine that with the frustration of being stuck at a standstill, and tensions were so high that fistfights had broken out a number of times.
Croesus was pretty impressive for staying upbeat with all this going on around him. Even now, some researchers standing nearby were arguing about it.
“I can’t do this! My Appraisal skill’s hit the maximum level, but it’s not advancing to the next rank... Oh, I’m such a useless mage!”
“Urgh—here we go! The Appraiser’s whining again! I can’t focus with ’em carrying on like that. Someone go toss ’em outside!”
“You do it! I’m busy deciphering here! Gah—how do you even read this?! Someone pass me a dictionary!”
“A dictionary? Do you know how many races and languages are out there?! We’ve got thirty-six volumes here for beastfolk alone! Then there are the elves, and the dwarves, not to mention all the extinct races and their languages...”
“Aaargh! I don’t get this crap! The hell is ‘mahyaborala’ supposed to mean?! What language even is ‘chocho-memenne’?!”
“Calm down. You might just be reading them wrong.”
It was chaos.
The inescapable fact was that this work was a pain in the ass.
To decipher even a single letter, the researchers had to pore through mountains of dictionaries. Once they were done, they had to repeat the process again, and again, and again.
Apparently, back in the mythological era—the period before the ancient era—all the races had spoken a shared language.
Over time, however, that language had split into different dialects, which then drifted so far apart that each race eventually had its own unique language. That meant that the process of deciphering these old magic formulas was effectively an exercise in translating that original protolanguage. If researchers managed to decipher the meaning of these formulas, they would eventually get enough data points to reconstruct the entire language.
It was a huge, historical undertaking...but for now, the people working on it were just hitting roadblock after roadblock.