Irea's choice

The sound of someone's knocking on the doors forced Layn awake. Standing up from the bed, he quickly approached the doors before raising the knob that locked them.

"You came back pretty quick!" Staring with surprise at the girl in the doors, Layn quickly moved aside. From the tense look on the girl's face and how she constantly scanned the area around her, it was clear that she was quite anxious about being out in the open, even if it means being in the open corridor of the building.

"Don't you ever ask me for something like this again!" Barely holding herself back from shouting, Irea pulled off a ring from her finger only to throw it towards the archmage. "Here, this is what you wanted, isn't it?"

After taking a look into the storage ring and staring at a copious mountain of grade one stones Layn felt a tingle in his soul. Ever since he turned the one stone he managed to obtain into his rope, the avenues for the archmage's growth were pretty limited.

Without the source of energy to feed his aura or to help him cultivate, he was stuck at slowly amassing his power through the excess energy sucked from his rope. Yet, with more and more necessary spells stacking up, Layn was reaching the point when he started to consider learning the proper, ancient language just to save the magic necessary to power the translation spell!

"Yes, that's exactly what I wanted. But now, you need to make a choice." Turning the ring on his finger, Layn raised his eyes on the girl's face. Staring into her clearly annoyed eyes, Layn refused to look away no matter what.

"Come on, just spill it out already. What do you want now?" Irea didn't bother to hide her annoyance. While there was a good time and mood between the two of them before, after running errands for the archmage like some kind of servant, Irea reached the limits of her patience.

"Right now, you have a choice. You can do me a favor and leave me alone here for a while. In about two to three hours, the treasure should be finished." Shaking his head, Layn retreated back to the bed before sitting on it and resting his back against the wall. "But if you want to stay and watch what I will do, you need to be ready to follow me till the end of your days or until the day where I will no longer be able to accompany you."

As great as this girl was as a companion, Layn had the minimal morals in himself to put this last cause in the verbal contract. Given all his means, it wouldn't be a problem if the news about the possible way of using the stones was leaked. The only problem that the archmage had with such a situation, was that it could possibly have some great repercussions on the future he knew about.

That's why, if the girl was curious enough to decide to stay and watch, she would have to be ready to truly follow him, if not for the rest of his days, then for as long as Layn would remain in the current time!

"You do know that this is my house?" Asking this question more out of a reflex rather than in order to get a real answer, Irea shook her head before joining Layn on the bed. "You know how unfair you are with this question?"

Watching how the girl lowered her head and refused to answer anything else, Layn released a tired sigh.

"Listen. It's not like I don't trust you. But the thing is, creating that treasure… It can only be done with theories…" Layn hesitated for a moment. "Let's say that if they get out to the public if anyone were to learn about those theorems… The entire civilization as you know it would fall apart."

Those weren't some empty threats. While the reason for the last apocalypse that put a decisive end to the world of ancient was unknown, Layn was fully aware of what followed after that. Looking at the entire situation from a point of view from the far future, he could tell that the actual reason for the apocalypse could appear several years, ages if not millennia before its real effects actually appeared.

Just like with radioactive materials, if one were to just walk past a small amount of it, they would never know they were at risk. But once radioactive matter would find use in street lamps, it would be already too late to prevent many from succumbing to radiation poisoning.

And given how the apocalypse resulted in all the magic stones in the world dissolving into the primal matter and mixing with earth and air alike, there was a chance that using the technique of dissolving stones was actually hastening the entire process of the apocalypse.

"Aren't you a little too arrogant to talk about destroying…" Starting off with a common-sense-born rationale, Irea then looked at Layn's serious face. Then, her words stopped, as her soul understood that he was actually serious.

"If this technique spreads, the world as you know it will fall into ruin in less than a year." Layn once again reached for the insides of the storage ring, before pulling a single stone out of it. Grasping it in his hand, the archmage closed his eyes before sucking all of the energy from the stone inside his aura.

Leaving only the bare minimum required for the stone to keep its physical structure, Layn then poured all the other stones directly on the floor of the room. With several stems of a special, wet wood that he asked Irea to procure as well flashing between the lightly shining stones, he now had all the materials to achieve what he wanted in place.

"So, what will you do?" As hurried as Layn was to start his work, he still didn't receive the girl's answer. Turning his head to the side, he looked at Irea's face.

"Can we do it like that… If what I will see, will truly turn out to be so grave as you claim it to be, I will be yours for the rest of my days, just as you requested. But if not…"