Monarch Chapter 200 (Patreon)

Chapter 200

The shock of Weskins and Dorin coming with them didn't disappear immediately, but everyone in the room had become accustomed to unexpected things happening since they entered the Godless Ruins, so no one reacted too strongly.

Andrew and Lyra were probably already aware of the arrangement anyway, which meant that the explanation was mainly for Rayne's party.

In simple terms, both of them were coming because they were important to the next part of the expedition.

Weskins' role was fairly straightforward.

He would be responsible for preparing the potions they needed to survive the pressure of the inner city, along with acting as a healer of sorts through his knowledge of herbs and medicine.

The strange mana pressure was already dangerous enough that ordinary healing potions wouldn't be enough to keep everyone in good condition, so having someone who could act like a doctor of sorts would be helpful.

But that wasn't the only reason Weskins was going.

The inner city was filled with things that had survived for centuries, and many of those things could still be useful.

Herbs, magical plants, rare materials, and perhaps even ingredients that couldn't be found anywhere else in the kingdom were all possibilities.

Weskins would be responsible for gathering as many of them as possible while they moved through the city.

Although he didn't seem like he wanted to go there, apparently he had already made a contract with Prince Caelan long back.

Dorin's reason for coming, however, was considerably more important.

He was the key to reaching the Lost Sanctum.

Rayne had always been curious about one thing.

How had Prince Caelan even found the way to the sanctum in the first place?

The Lost Sanctum had remained hidden for centuries. Countless people had explored the Godless Ruins, and yet nobody had managed to locate it.

So how had Caelan, who wasn't even supposed to have been involved with the ruins, managed to find information that everyone else had missed?

As it turned out, the answer was surprisingly simple.

Caelan had bought the information.

Several months ago, a group of adventurers had been hired by a merchant who had received a tip about an old government building somewhere in the outer city.

The building itself had long since collapsed, but during their exploration, the adventurers discovered that it had a basement beneath the ruins.

Most of the basement had collapsed as well.

Somehow, however, a collection of old documents had survived.

They had been protected by a mana barrier around them, and although the building above had been destroyed, the papers inside the basement remained in surprisingly good condition.

The merchant had acquired the documents from the adventurers.

At first, he hadn't thought much of them.

They were old papers from a dead city, after all, and there was no reason to believe they were anything important.

But after examining them more carefully, he realized that they might be worth something.

So he took them to the capital.

That was where Prince Caelan had found them.

The merchant had apparently intended to sell the entire collection for a considerable amount of money, but there was a problem with the documents that prevented him from understanding their full value.

They were written in an older form of Dwarven.

Sage City, as the Godless Ruins had once been known, had been home to countless races before its destruction.

Humans, elves, dwarves, beastfolk, and many other races had lived within the city, and because of that, important documents had often been translated into multiple languages.

The papers found beneath the ruined government building were one such example.

The problem was that the Dwarven language used in them was old. Very old.

The language had changed considerably over the centuries, enough that even modern dwarves couldn't necessarily read it properly.

The merchant had been able to recognize that the documents were related to the inner city, but he couldn't understand most of what they actually said.

That had been enough for Caelan to become interested.

He had purchased the documents and eventually translated parts of them.

Older Dwarven translators were extremely rare, but fortunately, Caelan had another option.

Dorin.

Rayne had initially wondered why Dorin was here with the warband in the first place since they could have found a local smith to help out.

Now it made sense.

Dorin couldn't completely translate the documents either, but he could understand some of the older words because several metalsmithing books passed down through his family had been written using the same old form of Dwarven.

It wasn't enough for him to translate everything. It was enough, however, to understand the important parts.

Through those documents, Dorin had been able to determine the approximate location of the Lost Sanctum.

More importantly, he had learned that the sanctum was somewhere within a particular region of the inner city.

That was the information that had allowed Caelan to plan the entire expedition.

But there was still a problem.

There was no simple path to the sanctum. A large central area of the inner city was covered by a strange magical fog.

According to what Rayne knew, the fog made navigation extremely difficult and could prevent anyone without the proper magic from reaching the area beyond it.

That was a reason why the Lost Sanctum had remained hidden for so long.

Even if someone managed to reach the inner city, walking there would be hard enough. Then they would have to cross the magical fog before they could even hope to reach the sanctum.

Fortunately, Dorin had something that could help them.

A family heirloom.

Rayne didn't know exactly what the object was capable of, and Caelan hadn't explained every detail, but apparently, it could help them navigate through the magical fog far more easily.

There was only one problem. Dorin was the only person capable of operating it.

That was the real reason he had to accompany them.

Without him, they could reach the inner city and still have no reliable way of getting through the fog to the area where the Lost Sanctum was supposed to be located.

Once Rayne understood all of that, he couldn't really object to either of them coming.

Weskins had the knowledge needed to keep them alive and gather valuable materials, while Dorin possessed an artifact that could potentially lead them directly toward the objective they had spent so long searching for.

Rayne still didn't know how capable Dorin was in combat, though.

That part worried him slightly.

The inner city wasn't a place where someone could simply rely on others to protect them, and if Dorin couldn't fight, then the rest of them would have to make up for it.

At least Weskins had his exploding potions.

And Rayne had [War Pulse].

If nothing else, that skill should be enough to warn them about most dangers before they get too close. At least, he hoped it would.

Once the reason for both of them going had been explained and everyone had learned more about the Lost Sanctum, Prince Caelan moved on to discuss how they would actually travel through the inner city.

They did have a map. Calling it reliable would have been a stretch, however.

The map had been created from old records and the scattered information gathered by previous expeditions, so there were bound to be inaccuracies.

Buildings that had once been standing could have collapsed, streets could have been blocked, and entire sections of the city might have changed.

Still, it was better than having nothing.

They would use the map to move through the inner city, but ultimately, their exact route wouldn't matter too much until they reached the region covered by the magical fog.

That was where their real challenge would begin.

The pressure of the inner city was already dangerous, but once they reached the fog, the monsters inhabiting the area would become their greatest concern.

There were actually a considerable number of creatures recorded in the old documents, though Caelan couldn't say for certain whether they were still present.

The last proper expedition into the inner city had taken place more than a century ago, and very few of the people who entered had managed to return alive.

That meant some of the information could be outdated.

Even so, there were several monsters that Caelan expected they might encounter.

One of them was the void cutter.

It was a dark, spatial creature that lived within small pockets of distorted space scattered throughout the inner city.

Unlike ordinary monsters, it didn't always need to approach its prey physically. It could move through those pockets of space and attack from almost anywhere, making it extremely difficult to predict where the next attack would come from.

Its forelimbs were shaped like enormous axes, capable of cutting through armor and flesh with terrifying ease.

Moreover, according to the records, the void cutter didn't simply consume flesh.

It consumed magic.

Its attacks could apparently eat away at the mana contained within a person's body itself, damaging the magical pathways and weakening the victim with every successful strike.

Rayne didn't particularly like the sound of that.

Then there were the mire colossi.

They were massive frog-like creatures that inhabited the many pools of water scattered throughout the inner city.

Some of the old records described them as being large enough to hide beneath the surface of an entire pond, waiting for something to approach before attacking.

Their tongues were their most dangerous weapon.

They could extend them across distances comparable to an entire street, snatching people before they even realized they were being targeted.

Rayne could already imagine how difficult such a monster would be to fight in a ruined city filled with water and narrow paths.

But even those creatures weren't what Caelan considered the greatest threat.

That title belonged to the fog dwellers.

They were the monsters about which the records contained the least information.

There were no proper descriptions of their bodies. No clear explanation of their abilities. No reliable information about how they hunted.

All that remained in the records were accounts of people entering the magical fog and then disappearing.

When others eventually reached the places where those people had been last seen, there would be blood.

Nothing else. Only blood.

According to Caelan, the fog dwellers might have been above level 100.

Rayne immediately understood what that meant.

If he encountered something like that alone, there was no chance of him surviving.

He didn't even need to imagine fighting a level 100 monster to understand the difference in strength. The creatures they had fought so far were already capable of killing experienced soldiers, and the level gap between them and something above 100 was simply too large.

The magical fog was therefore far more dangerous than Rayne had initially expected.

The meeting continued for quite some time after that as they moved over more such things.

With the dangers of the inner city explained, everyone began speaking more openly about their abilities.

There was no point in hiding too many things anymore.

The inner city wasn't a place where they could afford to keep secrets from one another, especially when their lives would depend on their ability to work together.

Lyra spoke about several of her abilities, including some of the spells she usually kept hidden during ordinary battles. Andrew did the same, explaining more about his fighting style and the abilities he normally reserved for situations where he couldn't afford to hold back.

Rayne already knew quite a bit about both of them, but even he learned a few things he hadn't seen before.

Dorin also revealed more about himself.

Rayne had assumed the dwarf was primarily useful because of his smithing abilities and knowledge of old Dwarven language.

Apparently, he could fight as well. More specifically, Dorin was skilled with a hammer.

Rayne had never expected that.

The dwarf didn't look particularly intimidating due to his size, but Dorin spoke about his hammer as though it was something that had taken hundreds of life.

Weskins had considerably less to reveal.

Most of his abilities were related to alchemy, herbs, and potion-making, and everyone already understood what he would be doing during the expedition.

Eventually, Rayne's own party began talking more openly as well.

Bran explained more about [Guided Arrow] and some of the other abilities he had acquired, while Nate, Jason, Kesh, and Heins discussed the skills they could use in combat.

Rayne listened quietly. He understood why everyone was revealing their abilities.

If they were going to fight together inside the inner city, knowing what each person could do would make coordination easier.

But there were some things Rayne simply couldn't reveal.

His abilities weren't normal.

Even among people who knew him well, explaining [Skill Stealer], the strange origins of some of his abilities, or the full extent of them would raise questions he wasn't prepared to answer.

He felt slightly guilty for keeping secrets while everyone else was being open, but he couldn't change his mind.

Some secrets were simply too dangerous to hand out.

There was, however, one thing he decided to talk about after everyone was done.

The person he had sensed while they were leaving the ruins.

Rayne explained that while moving toward the exit, [War Pulse] had briefly detected someone at the edge of its range. The presence had disappeared almost immediately, and he hadn't felt anything similar before or after that.

At the time, he had assumed it was probably a random adventurer.

They had already been heading toward the exit, and Rayne hadn't sensed any hostility from the person. There had been no reason to stop the entire group over something that could easily have been nothing.

Still, now that they were preparing for the inner city, he thought it was better to mention it.

If someone had been following them, they needed to know.

Caelan didn't appear overly concerned, but he took the information seriously.

"I'll look into whether others have sensed any eyes on them."

That was all he said.

Rayne nodded. There wasn't much more they could do about it.

They were already going to be on high alert once they entered the inner city, and becoming even more paranoid about every shadow they encountered wouldn't necessarily help them.

Eventually, the meeting came to an end. But as they left the room, Bran looked toward him and his party.

"Get some sleep tonight. We will gather early in the morning."

Rayne glanced at him. "Before the normal time?"

Bran nodded. "Yes, before that our party is going to have a talk first. A long talk as tradition dictates.”