Remember This
Thud.
Behind them, the door slamming shut echoed with an ominous finality.
Tap. Tap.
The three descended the stairway, swallowed in pitch-black darkness, taking care never to let their guard slip.
"Deeper than it looks, isn't it?"
"Then again, the air's surprisingly fresh. Must be some kind of ventilation system down here."
Arendt let the banter between Arthur and Richt wash over him as he surveyed their surroundings.
Torches mounted along the walls cast just enough light to illuminate the ground at their feet.
*An ordinary person would struggle to take a single step down here.*
All three of them had bodies tempered by a knight's training, which was the only reason the passage was passable — for anyone else, it would have been a genuine ordeal.
Arendt found his senses sharpening of their own accord.
And right at that moment.
Clank.
A sound utterly out of place brushed past his ear.
Arendt's head snapped up reflexively, and Arthur and Richt fell silent mid-conversation, staring ahead.
Beyond the darkened stairs, a faint silhouette had come into view.
"Huh?"
At a glance, it looked vaguely human.
But it didn't take long for them to realize something was wrong.
The part that should have been 'its' head was bent at an unnatural angle.
That wasn't all.
Its arms were so grotesquely long they dragged along the floor, and its legs were far too thin for its heavy upper body.
Clank.
The thing took a single step forward, and the torchlight revealed its true form.
It was no human at all.
A doll carved from stone — that was the far more accurate description.
In the sockets where its eyes should have been, some nameless gemstones glinted with a malevolent glitter.
Arthur let out a sharp exclamation.
"What the hell is that?"
"A golem?"
Arendt muttered without meaning to.
Grind, grind. Joints that didn't quite fit together ground against one another, producing a hideous shriek of noise.
And there wasn't just one golem.
All three widened their eyes and focused their mana on what lay ahead — and promptly lost the ability to speak.
The path that had been veiled in darkness was packed solid with golems.
Even a rough count put them at well over fifty.
The eyes glinting in the darkness looked anything but friendly toward the knights.
THUD!
When the creatures all stepped forward at once, the ceiling shuddered and dirt came sifting down in a fine drizzle.
Arthur burst into a hollow laugh.
"We're dead, aren't we?"
"Apparently this was a trap all along."
Richt spat the words out calmly and readied his sword.
Arendt stared quietly at the golems crammed into the passage, then spoke up.
"Hey — do you see that thing glittering on their chests?"
"Huh?"
"That's their power source. Smash that, and they stop easily. Hitting anywhere else is useless — they just regenerate on the spot."
Arthur and Richt gave the golems a second, closer look.
Sure enough, they could see gems embedded in each chest, glowing with a faint light.
"Hey, how the hell do you know that?"
"Is that really important right now?"
The moment Arendt snapped in irritation, the golems came surging toward the three of them in a mass.
With no time left to argue, the two knights gripped their swords.
When a golem lumbered within arm's reach, Arthur drove his blade deep into its core with a heavy crunch.
The golem went rigid for an instant, like a man struck through the heart, then simply crumpled to the floor.
"It actually works?"
"Would I lie to you in a situation like this?"
"Stop talking and focus!"
Richt barked at the two bickering knights, even as he cut down his own golem in a single stroke.
But half of the golems they felled simply squirmed, reattached their severed limbs, and rose back to their feet.
Arthur, his face twisted with disgust, smashed another golem's core.
"Golems? Weren't the methods for making them supposed to be lost ages ago?"
"There are ancient grimoires, aren't there? Looks like they built these before they got around to the ghoul research!"
WHUMP!
Ducking under a golem's arm as it swung past his face, Arendt thrust his sword forward.
With a crash, the golem collapsed into a heap of rubble in an instant.
But before he could even catch his breath, more of them came oozing out of the darkness in a relentless tide.
The sudden appearance of these things could only mean one thing: somewhere ahead, there was an alchemist commanding them.
*It's him, isn't it.*
Arendt clicked his tongue in annoyance.
* * *
*I do hope they're following along properly.*
Count Stadler swallowed dryly.
No matter how sharply he strained his senses, he couldn't detect the slightest sign of the knights behind him.
Granted, there was no way someone like him could sense a knight's presence in the first place — but that did nothing to ease his anxiety.
The Marquis kept his mouth firmly shut and simply pressed onward.
Bang. Bang!
Somewhere in the distance, the dull ring of pickaxes echoed faintly.
They descended the stairs and walked for a long while through the gloomy passage... until at last Marquis Grig spoke.
"Count, I believe I mentioned the Golden Garden."
"Yes? Yes, my lord, you did."
"The truth is, it's beyond any comparison to gold. It's worth far, far more than that."
Before they knew it, the two men stood before a dilapidated door. When Grig shoved it with his full weight, it groaned open with an unpleasant screech of splitting wood.
Hff — the Count instinctively shielded his face from the cloud of dust that billowed out, and then the sight before him stole the words from his mouth entirely.
*A cavern?*
It was easily as spacious as a great hall. No matter how he considered it, this could not have formed naturally.
Lamps mounted along the walls blazed brightly over a chamber dug out of the earth by human hands. And carved into the walls were dozens of passageways, each wide enough for a person to enter.
Count Stadler stood gaping at the scene until the Marquis's voice snapped him back to his senses.
"Isn't it magnificent?"
"M-Marquis. This place is..."
Grig bared his teeth in a wide, gleaming smile at the Count, whose lips could barely move.
"Yes, that's right. It's a mine."
A mine.
The Count's mouth hung open.
The place where they now stood was the heart of the mine — those small burrows were mine shafts.
Faint but unmistakable, a strange, indescribable mana permeated the entire space, and piece by piece, the puzzle in his mind began clicking into place.
The reason anyone would pour a colossal sum into building a garden in the middle of a wasteland was to conceal the noise of excavation. And the reason they would shoulder such an economic burden and inconvenience just to monopolize a mine was because of the minerals it yielded...
"Welcome, Count Stadler. You've come a long way."
Startled by the sudden voice of a stranger, the Count stumbled backward in shock.
There was no telling how long the man had been standing there — a young man, barely a few paces away.
He looked to be around Arendt's age. His body, clad in an immaculately tailored suit, was lean and well-balanced, clearly the product of disciplined training, and a longsword hung at his hip.
But what seized the Count's attention above all else was the black mask that covered half his face.
Only his jaw and lips were visible. Whether it had been made purely for concealment, the mask bore not a single one of the decorations so common to such things — not even a hint of ornament.
Count Stadler couldn't even muster the courage to return the greeting.
It was Marquis Grig who hurriedly stepped forward instead.
"Lord Vincent! It has been far too long. How have you been?"
"I've been well as always, Marquis. I received your report. I hardly expected Count Stadler to visit us so willingly — that is greatly to your credit."
The man called Vincent smiled graciously and patted the Marquis on the shoulder. Grig beamed and bowed his head deeply.
It was quite the spectacle — the mighty Marquis Grig groveling before a young man barely twenty years old.
To the Count, who could only stare at him in a daze, Vincent spoke again, his tone gently probing.
"Count?"
"Ah — forgive me. You startled me somewhat... I am Rex von Stadler."
"Just call me Vincent."
Vincent flashed another amiable smile.
"I quite understand your shock. As you can see, this place is a mine. And what it produces is no ordinary mineral, either."
"Surely you don't mean... magic crystals?"
The Count asked haltingly.
Vincent burst into bright laughter.
"Ah, Count Stadler — your reputation as a scholar of mana is well deserved. Truly unmatched. You've already guessed it."
The world seemed to tilt before his eyes.
The claim that this was beyond comparison to gold had been no exaggeration at all.
As far as anyone knew, the magic crystal veins within the Empire had run dry ages ago. And yet here was a mining operation on a massive scale — not even far from the Imperial Capital, of all places.
"Follow me, Count. The magic crystals produced here are of exceptional quality. If you wish, you may take as many as you like."
Vincent dug into his coat and produced several small gems glowing with a vivid violet hue, holding them out to the Count.
Once again, Count Stadler lost the power of speech.
As if to prove the words *finest grade*, the crystals shimmered faintly, cradling a serene and orderly mana within.
*These are magic crystals of an entirely different order.*
Three fragments of crystals this pure, even the smallest size, would buy a house in the Imperial Capital without difficulty. And their value to his research went without saying.
Vincent smiled and pressed the crystals into his hand. Unable even to think of refusing, the Count accepted them in a daze.
"Consider that a gift — keep them. Though I imagine you're more interested in the grimoires than in these, aren't you? I'll show you the way at once."
"Ah... yes. Yes, of course..."
Vincent drew the slack-jawed, nodding man toward the interior. The Marquis, who had been hovering awkwardly to the side, slunk along quietly behind them.
"What you've been hoping for, Count, lies deeper within. Discovering this was pure coincidence. We were extremely fortunate."
"Coincidence, you say...?"
"It turned up while we were surveying the magic crystal mine. The entrance was sealed away most thoroughly."
Vincent strode ahead without hesitation, speaking cheerfully, a smile playing about his face.
They walked a long way down a corridor leading in a direction entirely apart from the mine shafts. The moment Vincent, who had gone on ahead, opened yet another old wooden door, the Count's mouth fell open of its own accord.
"This is..."
"We conducted a preliminary survey, but it has been preserved almost exactly as it was found. All of it is yours to study, Count."
The air outside had been fairly pleasant, as mines went, but in here it was so crisp and cool that it was hard to believe they were underground. There was no trace of dampness or chill.
The floor was laid with a carpet in a style he had never seen, and display cases lined the walls, crowded with every manner of jewel and magic crystal — and statuettes of gods he did not recognize.
And above all: bookshelves, filling one entire wall from floor to ceiling.
Count Stadler walked toward them as if in a trance.
Most of the volumes were grimoires, but a considerable number of alchemical and engineering texts were mixed among them.
"I would have preferred to transport them out, but a spell has been placed on this room preventing anything from being removed. So I've had no choice but to leave them here, regrettably."
With trembling hands, the Count reached out and drew down a single volume.
Ancient script covered the yellowed pages dense and close, interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations here and there.
Count Stadler murmured, his voice distant and faint.
"Impossible..."
This was a discovery the likes of which had never once appeared in all the recorded history of the Callion Empire.