Chapter 219 – Not over yet?

“What is that … is this some foreign language? Those are some strange symbols and drawings, is it magic?”

“Could you stop doing that?”

“But it’s so boring.”

A bored halfling gave out a sigh while looking over the shoulder of a certain armored man who was scribbling something into a notebook.

“Leave Wayland alone, Senna, we will be there in a few hours.”

After Senna was shooed away by her party member Orson Roland was able to go back to his notes. These were the ones he took during his stay at the village taken over by the abyssal cultists. It described in detail the way the tier 2 ranked remote device worked along with its runic program.

Luckily Roland was well versed in the ways of copying runes. During his stay in the village, he had used those skills to copy over the medallion’s runic structure onto a piece of similarly shaped metal. Thanks to this he would be able to slowly analyze the inner workings later even if he didn’t fully go through the code yet.

The larger problem was the higher tier main relic that was used to create the illusion. It could pierce through high amounts of willpower and even affect someone that had divine skills like the swordmaster.

‘Yet that woman had mostly combat-focused classes so she might have not built up any mental defenses against attacks like that.”

He could not leave that option out, perhaps some tier 3 classes would be immune to the effect of that magical device if they had some specialized skills. His armor and runic spells that he applied to it were clearly not enough and he would probably need to replace them with tier 3 variants to have a chance.

‘But that’s only if I can’t figure out how this relic works, what are my options here…’

There wasn’t much to do during the trip to the city of Reeka. There had been no ambush as some of the other adventurers speculated and the whole journey was mostly boring. After a while, they found the main road and now could see vast farmlands which indicated that they were close to civilization. The volcanic earth here was high in nutrients for the plants and also gave them a red tint due to fire element influence.

Thus while looking at the fields he continued to ponder the problem. The easiest way he could think of would be to insert some kind of kill switch into his armor. If placed at a timer it could send out a signal to any potential abyssal cult relics. Yet that would only work if these devices were copies of each other with no variation.

There were various ways a runic craftsman could go around implementing safety measures into his items. One of them would be to make them unique in some way, a slight variation to the code could alter the turn-off switch.

This of course depended on the craftsman and their willingness to alter their design. Would the person that created these double helix towers do that? Was he the conscious type or did he just copy everything to cut on time. Altering a tier 3 runic structure was not easy, changing something in the code could potentially cause the device to malfunction.

‘By the way these cultists acted, their belief in that illusion was absolute.”

He thought to the two lazy guards that he easily killed after waking up. They were clearly not paying attention to his slumbering body. Either they were just lunatics enamored with their magical items or no one had given them a reason to doubt them. Perhaps the one time he managed to break through back in Edelgard was a first for them as well.

Luckily for him, his tier 1 status probably shifted their suspicion towards the tier 3 class holder that was there instead. He wouldn’t be surprised if his old gnome boss took the brunt of their revenge afterward, if he was still alive until now was also debatable.

It was not a far-fetched idea if he considered the cult’s ways. The higher the level the craftsman was the more conceited and hard-headed they got. Roland could see the person making these relics think they were infallible so they might have not bothered to change the ‘perfect’ runic code they made.

If they created the copies while believing that no one would be able to get their hands on the control medallions, then it would be feasible for him to create a countermeasure. He would only need to have his armor send out a signal to turn these runic relics off. This he could either do by making it do it constantly on a loop or make it react to the frequency the double helix was sending out.

The second option was the more difficult solution as he would need to get to the bottom of the tier 3 runic operating system. For the current him this was not possible as he lacked the skills to access tier 3 runes. Even if he had gone through a lot of theories he had no practice, the only person that could help him now was his acquaintance from the magic academy.

‘I’m still not sure if Loreena will involve that cat…’

His involvement in the cult relic was already known by this church member so he made a shot in the dark by proposing a rune mage that he knew. He could only wait a bit to see if they ever contacted them for help or if they used their own people to investigate. Runic mages were few far and in between so the cat’s involvement was not out of the question.

‘To be on the safe side.’

Roland moved his hand into the satchel that had survived the ordeal. Inside of it, he had a few small things along with a certain magical scroll. Onto it, he started quickly scribbling a detailed recount of the incident with leaving out a few things he wished to keep secret. After he was finished he inserted his mana into a thumb-sized stamp on the side which caused the scroll to roll itself up while quickly turning into a green swallow afterward.

“Woah!”

Grisalde shouted out as she saw a small bird made from wind mana bolt into the sky. It carried a letter to Roland’s runic teacher with some information about the relic. Even if the cat professor wasn’t asked for help he might know the person that was. Due to the lack of runic mages in the kingdom, a lot of them knew each other and exchanged research, it was not outlandish to believe that it was the same situation here.

“What are you surprised about, haven’t you seen magic before or something? That’s why country bumpkins like you are…”

“Are what you little shit? I dare you to finish that sentence! ”

As always the two women adventurers got under each other’s skin. This was not the first time and actually something that the other adventurers started cheering on. But the joy was short-lived as soon Senna squinted with her eyes and called out.

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“Hey it looks like we are going to have visitors, there are a lot of them and they are heavily armored…”

Without trees in the way, his radar lost out to scout classes and their enhanced eyes. Yet even he could use similar ways to see further beyond. After peeking out from his cart, the visor he was using momentarily glowed in a blue light that caused the scenery to zoom into the distance.

“It looks like a group of mounted knights by the armor… is that the Valerian crest?”

“Nobles, this could be bad. What do we do?”

Senna called out to the people on the other wagons and to some that were walking on foot but in reality, her words were aimed toward one person. This person put away the notebook he was working on somewhat surprised that he was being asked the question.

“What can we do? Just keep your head down.”

Everyone nodded at Roland’s words as they knew that they could not go against soldiers from the Valerian household. Even if there were no nobles or proper knights with them a commoner could not go against the ruling noble faction or their soldiers. Soon enough the now smaller caravan was forced to stop as it met with a force of about thirty mounted knights and various other mercenaries behind them.

“Halt, identify yourselves, who is in charge here?”

A man on horseback that was wearing the shiniest armor stepped forward while everyone waited. While he shouted the knights slowly started surrounding the carriages. There had to be some kind of order singling caravans like this out as normally soldiers would not have bothered and just passed by them.

“Answer me! Explain your selves.”

The man shouted again as there didn’t seem to be anyone willing to speak up. To Roland’s surprise when he looked to the people he was with, they continued to stare at him and between the soldiers.