Chapter - 629

"Our defenses? You were there?" Lith asked.

"Of course, I was. That's my turf and the Kingdom spends big money to protect something like a crystal mine. They are more valuable than even platinum. Their production can't stop even during winter because even magical research would be affected.

"Thanks to their weapons and arrays, the guards managed to hold on until my arrival, but there wasn't much even I could do. You know goblins, right? Well, they were a frigging army, each one capable of using normal magic and those black rays as well.

"Once I realized we had no chance against such an assault, I detonated the arrays to buy us some time and lead the survivors inside the crystal mines. We went to its deepest tunnels and then I used earth magic to bring us even deeper.

"Usually doing such a thing is idiotic, raw crystals are unstable and earth magic could make them detonate. That's why you need specialized personnel and Crystalsmiths to work in the mines. Yet between a likely death and certain death, the choice was obvious.

"We walked for days, with only my rations to feed dozens of people, constantly on the run. Somehow, the goblins would always find us, and to make matters worse, they seemed to become better at magic over time.

"Long story short, we found the ruins by sheer luck. While escaping, we crossed an underground network of tunnels we weren't even aware of. At that point, our luck turned. The goblins stopped following us and I finally had the time to wait for reinforcements. You can easily guess the rest." Morok said.

'Fuck me sideways! This means that the Abomination inside the goblins had enough time to completely reform and is waiting in the area, or that even such a powerful creature is scared of those ruins. Either way, this is bad.' Lith thought.

Solus opened all of her senses at once. Lith's dirty mind wasn't the only thing that had rubbed off on her over time. Her paranoia was now fully developed too.

"Is that the moment when you consumed monster flesh?" Lith asked.

"Yeah, but not the goblins'. There was something off with them. Their smell, how they moved, heck, they could even talk."

When they landed, Lith casually sniffed his partner. He trusted Solus, but after the experience with the Awakened assassin, he had started to consider that her senses could be fooled.

Morok kept talking like a magical beast. A normal human wouldn't have the time to perceive the goblins' smell in the middle of a crisis. Yet all of his enhanced senses told him the odd Ranger was human.

The entrance to the mines resembled a military fort. A tall, round wall made of stone one meter (3.3 feet) thick surrounded an area the size of a village. Four guard towers stood 10 meters (33 feet) tall, allowing the guards to notice incoming enemies from afar.

Life Vision showed Lith a series of arrays surrounding the fort. All the buildings within the walls were made of stone and in mint condition. At the fort's very center, there was an arch made by stone and huge wooden beams that lead to an underground passage.

"Are you sure this is the place? It's in perfect condition. I don't see any traces of the attack." Lith said,

"Told you. The Kingdome spares no expenses for a crystal mine. Winter or not, they rebuilt it in less than a month."

"Then why not put a Warp Gate? It would allow moving reinforcements and crystals way faster than any other common means of transportation." Lith asked.

"Crystals are unstable. Even the number of arrays in place here is fine-tuned to not trigger a chain reaction. A Warp Gate would be a liability since bending space for such long distances creates ripples that might make the crystals explode.

"That even if there was no array, and defense takes precedence." Morok took several rectangular wooden rods out of one of his dimensional amulets. The rods were about 2 meters (6.5 feet) long and 3 centimeters (1.8 inches) thick.

Each of their four sides was covered with bright red runes, pulsing with power. Lith immediately recognized those rods. They were the same the late Captain Velagros used to build a temporary waypoint near Kandria.

Back then Lith knew nothing about runes and advanced Forgemastery, so neither Solus nor him paid the enchanted item any attention. Now that they had discovered about the importance of the runes, it took them quite an effort to not stare dumbly at them.

'By my maker, each of these things holds only part of the pseudo core. The runes are even more amazing than we thought! They can even allow a magical item to be disassembled and assembled at will.' Solus thought.

'Also, why red runes? Are they different from the blue ones or what?' Lith wondered.

"First time seeing one of these?" Morok asked after noticing Lith's surprise.

"Second time, actually. Do you have any idea why these things have runes on them? Aside from communication amulets, I've never seen them on an enchanted item and I'm a Forgemaster."

"Lucky you! I spend a fortune every time I need to upgrade my equipment. Honestly, I have no clue. Maybe just like the runes on an amulet mark their owner, these runes are related to the coordinates they are locked on." Morok shrugged and started to move away from the mines.

"I wish these things weren't so delicate. It's hard to assemble them when you are under siege, but the worst part is that they can be used only once and are linked to a specific location.

"Even if I had one back then, I couldn't have used it to escape because without a proper structure, the dimensional ripples a Gate generates would have blown up the mines and killed us all." He sighed.

Lith helped Morok to assemble the beams, forming with them a circle on the ground. Solus could see that each time a beam was correctly positioned, the pseudo core fragments would assemble.

The slightest mistake would make them clash, and the beams would disconnect releasing sparks. When they were done, the Rangers had to inject mana into it. It took them time and effort, but after several minutes a Warp Gate materialized above the circle.

"What did I tell you? Spoiled rich kids are the worst. We had to fly here and do all the hard work so that they don't break a sweat. Lazy bastards." Morok said.

Lith was more interested in sharing Solus's mana sense and studying how the runes interacted with the Gate rather than listening to Morok's ramblings. Normal enchanted items couldn't hold spells like flight, healing, or Warp Steps because they required their caster's will to work properly.

A mage could only infuse such spells inside his own magical rings, which was one of the reasons that made even tier three rings expensive and tier four ones prohibitive for most mages.

The pathway, instead, was able to overcome such limitations thanks to the runes. They enveloped the pseudo core, bearing the will of its creator and channeling all the accumulated energy in the beams to connect to a Warp Gate.

The dimensional corridor was big enough to allow several people to cross it together. Those walking through the Gate were all members of research teams from all the six great academies, each one wearing their distinctive uniform.

The clearing was quickly filled with a rainbow-colored mass of people.

"What the heck? Are we really supposed to take care of so many people with just the two of us?" Lith couldn't believe his own eyes. There were already ten people and more kept stepping out of the dimensional Gate.

"Of course not." Morok replied.

"Each one of these bastards would gladly cut their best friend's throat if it meant getting more funds and recognition. I'm here to guide them to destination and you are here as a contingency measure. For everything else, there's the army." Morok's words garnered him a lot of attention.

Mostly of the bad kind. What he had said was true yet incredibly rude. He was speaking of esteemed Mage Professors and Researchers as they were just common thugs.

Lith recognized the uniforms from the Black, White, Lightning, and Fire Griffon, whereas it was his first time seeing people from the Crystal and Earth Griffon.

"Ranger Verhen!" A young woman greeted Lith by giving him a big hug.

"Dad really has done it. He made you come here with the excuse of the evaluation!"

"What the heck do you mean with that, Quylla?" Lith's paranoia had made him see countless shadows and conspiracies on his path, yet the truth had turned out to be beyond his wildest expectation.

"I told you that there's no one I trust enough to watch my back while on the field. Since you never got the time to accompany me, I had no qualms exploiting my family's influence to get you assigned here."

"Don't worry, miss. Us Rangers are always glad to help hot women." Morok said with his arms open, expecting to receive the same treatment.

"I'm sorry, I don't hug unknown creeps." Quylla replied with a straight face, before letting Lith go. The scene was drawing too many gazes.

Lith went to greet the White Griffon Professor who had brought Quylla along as her Assistant when the real bodyguards stepped through the Gate. It was a five men unit, donning deep green uniforms that identified them as members of an elite troop.

Their clothes granted them protection on par with that of a Ranger, but they also wore enchanted arm, legs, and shoulder guards that increased their defense to the level of a Professor's uniform.

Each one of them had at least a cyan core and excellent physical condition. Their weapons were nothing much, though. They all held the same pseudo cores, giving them several versatile abilities rather than few but powerful ones.

The only exception was their Captain. All of her equipment was custom made and on par with Lith's Gatekeeper, if not even better.

"Lith, what are you doing in the Hessar region?" Phloria asked. She now had very short hair that resembled a pixie cut. It made her look even more tomboyish than usual.

"It's nice to meet you too, Phloria. How are you doing?" Lith was happy not being the rude one for once.

"Pretty well, thanks. I volunteered for this mission to make sure that nothing bad happens to her. I was expecting to meet another Ranger, so you'll excuse my surprise." She said while pointing at Quylla.

"I'm your man, man." Morok offered his hand to her.

"Ranger Eari, at your service. Now that we are all here, let's not waste any more time. We need to fly to the mines and then it takes a long walk to reach our destination.

"Since we're babysitting academics, it might take us days to get to the ruins."

Phloria's soldiers repressed a chuckle, while the Professors and their Assistants threw at the Ranger more gazes filled with contempt. Morok collected the wooden bars forming the temporary gate before leading the group to the mines.

"Is it really necessary to have a guide? We could've found the ruins on our own." A middle aged Professor from the Crystal Griffon asked to Phloria after they landed. He had blue eyes, white hair, and a beard.

"Good luck with that." Morok chimed in.

"I closed the passages as fast as I created them to make it harder for the goblins to follow us. The only traces left are those of the tunnels opened by the goblins, but most of them have collapsed during the chase or shortly after.

"The little bastards only cared about catching us and they made quite a few crystals explode in the process. I'm the only one who can find the way, so shut up and follow me."

After checking their identities, the guards residing inside the fort let the expedition team in. Despite the incident with the monsters, the mines were already fully operational. Carts full of crystals were being unloaded near the entrance before being sent back.

Lith's group was comprised of twelve experts, one Professor and one Assistant from each academy, Phloria's five men unit, and Morok.

The mines had ample corridors, but not big enough to accommodate 19 people while workers and Crystalsmiths did their job. Even though they moved slowly, by the time the group reached the lowest levels, the people from the academy were exhausted.

The Professors were all experts in their fields with decades of experience, which meant they were quite old and more used to sit behind a desk rather than walk on rough terrain.

Their assistants were younger than them, but equally out of shape. None of them was warrior material.

"Girl, you may be pretty, but if you start getting a fat ass at your age, it will be hard keeping your boyfriend. You need to exercise a little." Morok said to Quylla. He had yet to break a sweat and had only compassion for a young woman who wheezed like one of the old fossils.

"Lith is not my boyfriend." She angrily replied.

"I know. I'm talking about the Captain guy. He clearly fancies you if he's risking his ass for your safety, you could at least…"

"Phloria is my sister." Her voice became stone-cold, her eyes brimming with rage and fatigue.

"Oh. Sorry, I just heard a noise coming from that way." Morok said pointing his finger in a random direction.

"We'll resume this conversation never." Morok moved quickly and silently like the wind, reaching the position of the make-believe threat under the baffled gazes of the soldiers he met along the way.

"Did you hear that too?" Lith emerged from a shadow, pointing at the only tunnel that despite the many mana crystals coming out of its walls and the artificial lights was poorly lit.

"I sure did. I mean, that thing is a woman?" Morok's voice was still shaken by the revelation.

"Not that. That." A small clunk made the hair on both Rangers' necks stand up. They waited in silence, ignoring the noises coming from the distant miners and the nearby academics.

A clunk, followed by another. Lith used Life Vision but the mana crystals inside and outside the walls messed up his perception. He could have sworn there were life signatures among the crystals.

Solus's mana sense didn't fare much better, so she stopped focusing on the details and looked at the corridor's bigger picture.

'There's a distortion in the mana along the right wall.' She said.

The moment Lith's gaze followed her directions, he could notice that the distortion had a humanoid form.

"It seems that hiding any further is pointless." A raspy, feminine voice said. A snap of her fingers made the tunnel they had come from be sealed by a stone wall while the entire zone was silenced.

Not even the guards near the collapsing tunnel noticed that something was wrong until a volley of Chaos arrows came flying their way.