Chapter 47: Crystals

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

The camp had to be built slowly. Even though Gawain drew up many regulations and plans, and even a draft for the next step in expanding and completing the camp into a permanent encampment, all of these ideas could not be realized overnight – considering the knowledge of most people at this period, there was zero literacy among the commoners and serfs, the knights had only basic reading and writing skills and home-trained warriors could only write out their own names and count to a hundred. Hence, things could only be put in place at a very slow rate.

Furthermore, there was a lack of manpower and the Cecil territory could not sustain many men at the moment.

After he understood the current situation in depth, Gawain returned to his tent and sat before his desk.

This very desk was one of the few pieces of furniture that the army brought from Tanzan town. It might take the carpenters quite a while to make the first batch of furniture using wood obtained from the west side of the forest – wood used to make furniture could not be overly compromised like simple wooden houses. Hence, having a desk was already the biggest privilege Gawain was enjoying as the feudal lord.

Several large pieces of paper were scattered across the desk and they were covered with all kinds of scribbles: construction plans, supply management, campsite sketches, and a rough plan for future constructions which included walls, wharfs, settlements, production buildings, crop fields and so on. There were ink, pens, pencils and a ruler placed on one side of the desk and on the other side laid Amber.

Gawain grabbed Amber by her collar and brought her to the side. The half-elf girl was still asleep when she was grabbed, but when she was carried halfway across she let out a cry, transforming into a shadow. She vanished in Gawain’s hand before reforming her body again somewhere not too far away.

“You scared me!!” Amber was finally awake and she glared at Gawain angrily, “I thought it was an earthquake!”

Gawain found her both frustrating and laughable, “Is this how you guard the things in the tent?”

Amber said with much righteousness, “I already laid my whole body over your ugly drawings!”

Gawain looked down at the desk and looked back up at Amber, “And you drooled on it!”

“How can I control that when I’m asleep,” mumbled Amber, as she looked curiously at Gawain taking a seat by the desk before scooting over, “What are you doing? Working on your ugly drawings again?”

“These are not ugly drawings, these are plans, regulations and construction schematics,” Gawain was at a loss dealing with the ignorant half-elf, “These are the foundation of the camp – that’s why I asked you to look after it.”

Amber held up a piece of paper filled with symbols and numbers and studied it for a long time, frowning, “What nonsense, I don’t even understand it.”

Gawain looked at her helplessly, “You’re holding it the wrong way.”

Amber had a look of innocence, “All these drawings of yours, I’ve never seen before. They are even more complicated than magic spells. How am I supposed to know which is the right way!”

“This is why you need to learn. Knowledge is very important,” Gawain sighed, not surprised that Amber could not understand these things: she was a mere thief who had never received formal education and was taught to do unscrupulous things under the guidance of her father-cum-teacher, together with a bunch of inexplicable Shadow-affiliated talents. She could only live life on the edge in this world. To her, schooling was neither a choice nor a necessity. Therefore, her literacy level was just enough for basic reading and writing. The things that Gawain drew on the paper contained a bunch of weird nouns, various figures and annotations. Even if Herti were the one reading it, she would be stumped as well…

Speaking of Herti, Gawain looked at Amber in the eye, “I told you to learn a thing or two from Rebecca and Herti when you have nothing to do, but it seems you have completely disregarded it.”

“That’s so boring. And I don’t like interacting with the nobles,” Amber rolled her eyes, “And also, that beautiful great-great….great granddaughter of yours is so busy, why would she have time to entertain me? Rebecca may be slightly more free, but she always wants to attack me with huge fireballs.”

Gawain looked at her with a faint smile, “Don’t like to interact with the nobles – but you seem to be very open when hanging out with me.”

Amber replied honestly, “I feel that you aren’t like a noble…”

“You seem very different from the elfs that I know of too,” said Gawain as he started tidying up the papers in front of him, sweeping them to one side. At the same time, he took out a few crystals and placed them on the desk.

Amber mumbled, “I’m a half-elf, and adopted by humans. How am I supposed to know what a true elf should be like… Hmm? Are you not writing anything today? You’re going to study these rocks?”

After confirming that the crystals were void of magical power and that Gawain had no intention to sell them, in Amber’s eyes those things were downgraded from crystals to just rocks.

Gawain looked at the half-elf, feeling a slight headache, “If you could quieten down a little at the side, I would be eternally grateful.”

Amber: “Psh, this is no fun at all, go and study your rocks.”

As she spoke, she spun around and gradually disappeared into thin air. But from the faint sensation from the atmosphere, Gawain was certain that she was still at her original spot as she continued to stare curiously at him.

Forget it. As long as she stops chattering, I will let her be.

Gawain focused on the crystals in front of him.

It had been quite a period of time and there was still no progress in the study of the crystals.

He had observed the crystals carefully more than once on his way to this place. While in Tanzan Town, he even let Herti used the method of magical power resonation to try to investigate the core of the crystals but to no avail, especially with magical power resonation – Herti explained frankly that the crystals did not bind with magical things at all and the magical power had zero effect on the core of the crystals, similar to that on rocks.

But these were crystals that Gawain Cecil had treasured and kept in a Mithril safe. He even purchased a permanent preservation service in the Mithril vault so how could the crystals be just ordinary rocks?

Gawain could only make a bold guess that the crystals were definitely extraordinary, just not on a magical level.

Or that modern magic theories were unable to explain them.

He put aside those that were obviously fragments of the crystal and picked up the complete piece.

A part of the core structure was visible in the crystal fragments but it was difficult to accurately observe it with the naked eye. Once Herti’s magic laboratory had been built and the crystal resonating machine become available, they could then try studying the crystal’s physical structure. As for the complete piece of crystal… it would be too risky to do anything to it.

God knew whether the crystal resonating machine would destroy some sort of “information” in the crystal.

He held the crystal against the light and observed it.

There was light glowing along the edges of the beautiful, sparkling crystal. With changing angles of incidence, every side and line displayed different colors and ray patterns.

This crystal was extremely precise in any form and must have been processed very skilfully. On top of that, after testing with the crystal fragments, Gawain had confirmed that they had an alarming strength – extraordinarily hard and unlike typical fragile crystals that would break easily. They could even make scratches on mithril easily without wearing out the tips at all.

It made him very curious as to how the four crystals had been crushed into such a state.

After observing the crystal against the sun, Gawain tried to slit his finger and before the wound healed by itself, he dropped some blood onto the surface of the crystal.

Expectedly, there was no effect.

He could hear a faint laughter from a certain half-elf…

Throwing Amber away to a side, Gawain held onto the crystal and slipped into deep thoughts, thinking about how there were more and more inexplicable things happening in the world – crystals from unknown origins, memories that disappear suddenly, a “sun” that felt like a gaseous giant planet but did not have properties of a normal gaseous giant planet, as well as those “surveillance satellites” that were till date still in the sky with unknown purposes and origins…

Just as his thoughts moved to “surveillance satellites,” he felt slight heat in his hands.

At first he thought it was his illusion, but the crystal started to tremble a little as the pale blue glow in its core became a little brighter.

Heat, trembling, and glow, these three altogether meant that there was no way it was him feeling things.

Gawain looked at the crystal, horrified. But before he could grab his pen to note down the changes of the crystal, he suddenly heard a sound in his head.

Rather than a sound, it was more like a message that directly entered the inner world and he understood its contents:

“Mental frequency reset, re-establishing connection.”

In the next instant, he felt himself losing consciousness.

It was as though something had entered his mind abruptly, like an influx of some “data flow” that did not belong to him. But the data flow was not an intruder because after being stunned for a short while, he began to feel a sense of familiarity towards it.

These “familiar data” soon produced corresponding definite things in his head.

Some pictures started to form in his head.

It was a view of the ground from high up in the sky.

At this moment, what appeared in Gawain’s mind was neither surprise nor horror, but a “what the heck”.

“What the heck, am I going to the heavens again?!”

His forehead broke out in cold sweat.

But soon he realized that things were not like what he imagined. He was still sitting properly on the chair, and his soul did not leave his body and return to the sky to become a geostationary satellite. Everything about him felt normal and he could control his body using his will. There was just an additional picture in his head.

This made him calm down a lot, after which he became thrilled and excited and put his focus on the picture in his head.

Only then he realized that there was a huge abnormality in that picture which was nothing like what he was used to.

The picture became blurry and it was as though there was a layer of filter that produced weird color distributions, smeared like a picture that was formed by a thermal imager. Only structures like mountain ranges, forests and rivers could be recognized. On top of that, this weird, blurry picture was constrained within a very small boundary.

That was the northern part of the Dark Range and the area surrounding the new Cecil territory. From the top, the White River, the western part of the forest, and even a silhouette of the camp were vaguely visible.

The picture could not be zoomed in or out.

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