The Hundred Reigns

Chapter 44: The Stone Muse (4)

The trip to Magvolia was pleasant enough.

Duchar was a bit annoyed to be leaving his laboratory unattended for a long period, even for the prospect of studying a wellspring of the Dark, but Simon mollified him by turning the archive into a Dungeon, then confirmed he could teleport across its halls.

“I knew it,” Simon said. “My Lord of the Demon Castle Perks apply to the Dungeon I create as if it were Castle Frightwall, including the teleportation.”

“Fascinating,” Duchar replied as he observed the Dungeon crystal. “So we could travel back and forth between Magvolia and Telluria at will?”

“No, it would unfortunately be a one-way trip. I have no way of teleporting back to Magvolia.” Which frustrated Simon, since it drastically limited his options. He hoped one of the Overlord’s future Perks would eventually solve that issue. “But we can return to Telluria in a pinch if the archive is ever breached.”

“Fair enough,” Duchar replied with a sigh. “The magical protections should protect the archives from discovery, and my creations will give a warm welcome to anyone talented enough to breach them. Studying the process by which Your Majesty can harvest souls should prove more fruitful for my research than my current experiments anyway.”

Simon wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Having an experienced scholar of the Dark joining him on the trip would be a boon, but spending too long in the old necromancer’s presence creeped him out. At least his daughter behaved more demurely.

Leonard also had his hangups about the sudden trip, though not for the same reason. “Is it wise to leave without informing Lady Anna of our departure?”

“Anna struggles to keep secrets, and I don’t want the likes of Elaine Malphas to learn of our destination,” Simon replied. That was the reasonable enough explanation his mind had conjured, but the truth was that he simply didn’t feel ready to deal with Anna again. He needed time to process the fact that the person he had loved was truly gone.

Did Father let such things get to him? No, the thought was laughable considering how he had treated women in past loops—up to including raping Anna. The Overlord’s reigns were a pure blessing for monsters who cared only for themselves and no one else.

Anyway, Louis quickly arranged for them to board an airship to Magvolia and then take a heavily armored train to the Goetia Research Facility at the northern point of the province. The accommodations within were more rudimentary since those models were used to transport troops and supplies rather than private individuals, but they were still granted a separate compartment with tables and beds. Simon was still wary of practicing his crafting there for fear of being spied on, so he stuck to reading his father’s research notes and reports on the Darkwoods.

At least Simon had been reunited with his life-stealing morningstar. He had felt diminished when forced to rely on purchased or gifted claymores in past reigns. The phantom scepter he could produce when manifesting the Class outfit was passable, but required miasma to appear since it was an extension of the Overlord armor itself.

After a day’s ride, the group finally reached the Goetia Research Facility. The site was one of the most remote and well-protected in the entire empire. Dug at the base of an ash manatree, whose surrounding forest had long been cut down and its titanic roots equipped with mana-extracting devices, the building was a massive factory of towering chimneys belching out blue fumes, pipes steaming with mana, and cranes carrying supplies in and out from the armored trains regularly running deliveries to its only entrance. Carts carried crystals dug from the depths of dark mines.

Their train passed by multiple checkpoints overseen by Class-wielding soldiers, iron golems, and magical artillery ready to blow them up at the first sign of trouble, before arriving at a metal platform near twelve-foot high gates of grey metal. Lauriane was waiting for them here, dressed in her military uniform and with a squad of Knight and Sorcerer Class soldiers.

“We meet again sooner than I had expected, Simon,” Lauriane greeted them once they walked off the train. She glared at Lorimor—who wisely stayed quiet—saluted Meredith, Leonard, and Belzemine … and then gasped upon spotting a certain pair of necromancers. “Duchar Honorius? Is that you?”

“I did not expect to see you again, Lady Lauriane,” Duchar replied with polite calculation. Simon could notice the mage had become warier all of a sudden.

“You know each other?” Simon asked. He had never questioned Duchar too much in depth about his past beyond the fact that he served his father.

“He tutored me in magic once before Hector–” Lauriane caught herself midsentence upon noticing Cassandra, whom she seemed to recognize. “My apologies, I didn’t mean to trouble you.”

“You did us no harm, Milady,” Cassandra replied politely, her expression undecipherable. “Our brother shall return in due time once our work lifts death’s veil.”

“Brother?” Simon asked, quickly putting two and two together. “Oh, is he–”

“Hector Honorius was my retainer, a brave man who valiantly perished in the line of duty, and that is all I shall say,” Lauriane explained, glaring at Duchar. Simon could tell something had soured whatever relationship they might have had. “Why are you here, Duchar? I thought Father had sent you away to Telluria?”

Simon’s heart skipped a beat in his chest, doubly so when Duchar glanced at him. He had intended to introduce the necromancer and his daughter as mere mages he had recruited in Telluria, but Duchar had failed to mention that he and Lauriane knew each other, mostly because he never even mentioned her.

Quick, think of something that won’t lead to questions… prophetic dreams? Too vague, will lead to more interrogations, more lies and Lauriane will just grow suspicious… An idea crossed Simon’s mind as he recalled how he had stymied similar inquiries before. Let’s hope these two play along…

“Well, I met Cassandra in Telluria and we’ve been getting along well,” Simon said, his uneasiness in no way feigned. “I thought I could invite her on this trip and reassure her father about my character.”

“Why her father would need–” Lauriane froze, her eyes widening in disbelief as her gaze turned from her brother to Cassandra. “Simon, are you courting this girl?”

Her question was so blunt and to the point that Simon couldn’t help but blush in embarrassment, doubly so when everyone stared at him all of a sudden, Cassandra included.

“Oh,” the latter said, sounding a little curious, “is that why Your Highness blessed me with so many gifts?”

Lauriane’s palm hit her forehead in annoyance. “Simon, please don’t tell me you came all this way because you wanted to impress a girl with a shiny new Class?”

“I…” Simon’s words died in his throat. Cassandra stared at him with curiosity. Duchar was raising an eyebrow at him as if trying to figure out whether he was lying or not, Meredith had blushed like a tomato, and even the straight-laced Leonard was clearly struggling to hold back his laughter. Somebody kill me now. “I didn’t come just for that.”

Lauriane’s gaze became unbearable. She closed her eyes and then took a deep breath. “Only you have clearance to enter the factory, so the others will have to wait out here. No exception, not even for Firewand.”

“I understand,” Simon replied after regaining his composure. He wasn’t dealing with his loving sister in the comfort of their home, but the leader of a military production facility.

The soldiers checked him for any weapons or magical devices—he had thankfully left his morningstar in the train—then guided them past the gates into great metallic halls illuminated by crystal panels.

“Of all the girls in Telluria, you had to pick a necromancer’s daughter,” Lauriane complained.

“Is Duchar really that bad?” Simon asked, though he already knew the answer.

“He is a man of vision and considerable talents, but he lacks the scruples to temper his obsessions,” Lauriane replied with undisguised contempt. “I haven’t been acquainted with his daughter, but I can tell the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. You would do well to break it off as soon as possible.”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Lauriane.”

“No, I do not blame you,” Lauriane replied with a tone of pure exasperation. “It is our fault. We’ve sheltered you too much and failed to find you a proper fiancée. I suggested marrying you off to Patriate’s daughter, and Euphemia wanted to ship you off to Fablan or Bujan, but Father denied us both.”

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For once, Simon was half grateful to his father for not setting him up with Elaine Malphas. “I swear I didn’t come just because of her,” he insisted. “I’ve… I’ve had dreams.”

Lauriane’s expression immediately sharpened. “What kind?”

“I’m not sure what to make of them,” Simon replied before giving a half-truth. “I saw dragons and monsters fighting in a crimson sky. One of them came for me when I least expected it, and I woke up when they cut me down.”

“I see… so this Vouivre and Casval might not be the only heirs Gargauth sired to oppose us.” Lauriane scowled. “You came looking for a monster-slaying Class?”

“Yes, I think I’ll need one in the future.” Mostly he was looking for a Crestone whose abilities would synergize well with Overlord and that would give him an excuse to level-up in the Darkwood. “Perhaps not like the Paladin, but as close as possible.”

“We actually inherited the Paladin Crestone’s blueprints from the Church of Light,” Lauriane replied. “We used them to create Templar and Hellblade Vassal Crestones.”

“What, really?” Simon had always assumed those two descended from the Cleric or the Warrior. “Quite ironic that Paladin Vassals would end up serving the Overlord.”

They walked along a guardrail-protected passerelle overseeing a vast chamber the size of a castle’s feast hall. A faint mana mist leaked from a series of large glass cylinders below, each of them containing large chunks of mana crystals contained within colorful liquid. Apothecaries, crafters, and researchers measured them, drew notes, and surgically extracted small chunks.

“Are these raw Crestones chunks?” Simon inquired, fascinated by their glow and color. Their translucent purity clashed heavily with the darkness of his miasma crystals.

“Those are the mana crystals we carve Crestones from, more precisely.” Lauriane walked up to the guardrail and studied the crystals. “What are Classes in their purest form, Simon?”

“They are archetypes born of the collective consciousness of all souls,” Simon replied. Everyone interested in the subject understood that.

“I see you listened to your tutors,” Lauriane said with pride, having been one of them. “Souls return to mana once they die and shed their memories, their thoughts, and their beliefs during reincarnation. This stream of information endures through the network that binds the manatrees together and that some would call the Worldsoul, the System, or for some, the Light. The Overlord is the only exception, since it draws its power and existence from a separate force called the Dark.” Lauriane waved her hand at the cylinders and their contents. “Crestones are mana crystals attuned to these archetypes and that serve as channels between these ideals and mortals through highly complex magical scripts carved into their very structure.”

“And most mana crystals are fossilized leaves or roots from a manatree,” Simon recalled. “Is the local dryad happy that you’re extracting those from her domain? Or that we built a facility inside her tree?”

“We didn’t give her a choice,” Lauriane replied, a dark shadow passing over her gaze for an instant. “The elves shaped the Noble Crestones from mana crystals carved from the Worldtree, the origin of all life on our world, and then tapped into twenty-two archetypes at the core of mortal consciousness. Unfortunately for us, they succeeded too well. Noble Crestones tap into such a pure form of their archetype that they are now symbiotically linked to them. The Noble Crestones have become their Class, and thus cannot be fully replicated.”

“Not unless the original is destroyed first?”

Lauriane shook her head, to Simon’s surprise. “The Noble Crestones can be destroyed, but they don’t stay that way for long. Past Overlords have actually shattered the Paladin’s Crestone more than once, and it always reformed somewhere else. Only when the very idea of a hero defending the innocent has been scrubbed from all records and living memory will the Class cease to be and its Crestone fade away.”

Simon didn’t know that. If Noble Crestones couldn’t permanently be destroyed, then it would explain why their number had remained unchanged in spite of the Overlords’ Devour Crestone Perk. Some of Simon’s predecessors had indeed consumed them, only for the Crestones to reappear later. A tradition that Simon would probably follow…

“So that’s why Gargauth swallowed the Paladin Class,” Simon guessed. “Destroying it would have caused it to reappear in the hands of enemies, so containment was the only sensible option.”

“Exactly,” Lauriane confirmed. “However, our research indicates that Noble Crestones have a strange ability to always find their way to wielders matching their archetype. That is why Father distributed them among members of our family or the High Council. Either we provide them with worthy wielders, or they’ll escape to find them themselves.”

“But that’s not the case for Vassal Crestones?”

“No. These imitations have no will of their own, since they are mere diminished echoes of the original. This is also why we can mass-produce them.” Lauriane gave a military salute to the researchers below, apparently happy with their work. “Once we have isolated mana crystal chunks of sufficient purity, we then ship them off to the processing center where the true work begins.”

She led him deeper inside the facility, to rooms lined with workbenches and assembly lines on which crafters painstakingly carved complex symbols on pristine Crestones with scalpel-like instruments.

“While we cannot fully reproduce a functional Noble Crestone, we can isolate parts of their magical scripts to tap into lesser archetypes,” Lauriane explained. “The Warrior is the master of all weapons, so we could isolate the mastery of the blade to create the Fencer, the skill with the spear to create the Spearsman, and so on.”

“I don’t see what the Hellblade has to do with the Paladin,” Simon pointed out. “Even the name stands out.”

Lauriane smiled faintly. “The Hellblade represents a fallen and oath-breaking hero, the same way a swindler is still a merchant, but I will concede it is one of the most difficult to produce.” She approached a table and studied one of the workers’ newly crafted Crestones. “We have collected twelve of the twenty-two Noble Crestones, and though we had to leave the Monk and the Bard in the hands of tributary viceroys as part of annexation agreements, we could still obtain their blueprints. We’ll soon add the Mage and the Ranger to that number, should Norbelle manage to bring Cocagne into the fold, for a total of fourteen.”

“And the more blueprints we accumulate, the more Vassal Classes we can create,” Simon guessed. “Which in turn strengthens our army as a whole.”

“Indeed. Collecting all of the twenty-two Noble Crestones has been an imperial policy since Mardok’s rule for that very reason.”

“Did no one try to create an Overlord Vassal Class, though?” Simon wondered. “I would have thought some dark wizard would have at least tried to replicate it.”

“With what blueprints, Simon?” Lauriane scoffed. “The Overlord Class has no Crestone we can study, and the Crimson Throne is a complete black box. Mardok took the secrets of its creation to the grave, and there’s not a single soul alive who could enlighten us.”

There is one person, albeit not truly ‘alive,’ Simon thought as he recalled Elios Magnos.His ancestor had helped create the Crimson Throne, and Balzam Magnos perished at least four times against him. Was Father trying to steal his secrets and create Overlord Vassals?

“When I took over the empire’s Crestone research, I began to push for a new approach: combining multiple Crestones’ magical scripts to create customized Classes drawing some aspects from both parents,” Lauriane explained after congratulating the workers for their good work. “A swordsman that can cast spells, or a bard who honors the gods with his music, and so on. My secondary Spellblade Class is the result of these experiments after our spies stole part of the Mage blueprints from Cocagne.”

“What was the customized Class you had in mind for me?” Simon asked her teasingly. “A mix of the Warrior and the Mage so that I can do a bit of everything?”

“Actually, I intended to give you a hybrid of the Librarian and my own Alchemist Noble Class,” Lauriane replied with amusement. “Since you wanted to become an adventurer with the means of supporting yourself independently from the family, I thought it would both play on your scholarly strength and help you achieve your dreams.”

“The Librarian? Oh right, we have its blueprints." Simon’s head perked up with immense interest. “Come to think of it, do we have complete schematics of that lost Class? I know multiple civilizations managed to create to create Vassal Classes of it, but nothing much.“

“Our blueprints still have holes, so we only have partial records,” Lauriane admitted. “Father actually sank considerable resources into researching any scrap of knowledge we could gather on the Librarian Class, though he never told me the reason why.”

Simon could guess the answer: for learning how to defeat the near-invincible lich beneath his homeland. “I wouldn’t mind learning what that Noble Class can do.”

Lauriane quickly dashed his hopes. “Sorry, Simon, but that research is highly classified. I cannot make an exception on that front, even for you.”

Of course it wouldn’t be so easy. Simon hoped he could eventually change her mind, either with persuasion or by playing up his prophetic dreams, but he decided to let it slide for now. Pushing too much too fast would ruin his credibility, and receiving a custom Crestone was already a pretty big favor in itself.

“Alas, that Class won’t be ready for a while,” Lauriane said. “If you need a Class optimized to fight demons or monsters, I can gift you a Templar Crestone.”

Simon stifled a laugh at the irony. “A War Party leader, giving me a Class emblematic of the Church Party?”

“I have no love for Mastemo’s enforcers, but pragmatically speaking the Templar is the best tool for slaying monsters.” Lauriane put a hand on her waist, her expression thoughtful. “I know of a place nearby where you could quickly level it up. I wouldn’t have recommended it under normal circumstances, but your retainers can protect you from anything truly dangerous, especially Firewand.”

“The Darkwood?” Simon guessed. “Lorimor mentioned it during the trip.”

“I still believe sparing that fool was a bad idea, but it might be a blessing in disguise.” Lauriane’s expression hardened considerably. “Yes, I speak of the Darkwood. I actually intended to send someone there to investigate the demon Lorimor trafficked with.”

Simon quickly connected the dots. “Because his Scholar is a Vassal Class of the Librarian?”

“That, and I do not like the idea of a demon challenging our monopoly on Crestone creation. I would like to learn how the fiend learned that information, and then eliminate it.” Lauriane seemed torn about what to say next. “I do not want to put you in danger or involve you in our affairs, so I will perfectly understand if you refuse.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Simon reassured her. In fact, it perfectly played into his plans. “It is the least I can do after all the help you gave me. I can investigate and eliminate that demon with Firewand.”

“I see.” Lauriane took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Simon.”

Simon frowned. “For what?”

“I had hoped I could keep you away from trouble, but… perhaps Louis is right. I can’t shelter you forever, and our enemies might come for you sooner or later.” She shook her head and brushed it off. “I will provide you with papers identifying you as my representative to ensure the locals’ cooperation in your investigation.”

And Simon knew exactly where to start.