Professor Gemstone is on the case! part 6 (33)

"You seem to have had a lot on your mind, recently."

Ezera looked at Dereck and smiled. It was nice of the other man to worry about him.

"I didn't think I was this obvious," he apologized.

"It's fine. I've seen you less in the morning, though. I was wondering what was up with that."

Oh, of course. Dereck was curious. Ezera smirked.

"I've been meeting with a friend. Why do you ask?"

"I just... I noticed that you were pretty protective of the kids. I didn't think you would leave them alone for so long..." Dereck slipped his hand in his hair, seemingly embarassed.

Ezera's smirk widened.

"Why, that's because I trust you, of course!" he teased the other man. "Would you let my dear students come to any harm?"

Dereck spluttered.

"What, no! I swear I wouldn't. They're nice kids."

Ezera's features softened.

"See?" he said, very seriously. "You're attached now. And I think you're trustworthy. Therefore, I can reasonably leave them in your hands while I go read and experiment and explore, without having to drawn on my sleeping schedule."

Dereck seemed pleasantly surprised at Ezera's words. But then, his surprise was tamed into content warmth.

"It is an honor to have your trust, Professor."

Ezera nodded, glad to have driven his point across. But Dereck was still curious.

"However so, while you trust me, I cannot say the same for the other visitors that sometimes come in to watch," he added concerned. "Did you find a way to ease your mind?"

Bingo!

"About that!" Ezera smiled from ear to ear. "I did! It's all thanks to this world's technology. With a bit of imagination and some patience, I could recreate anything from our original Earth here!"

Dereck frowned, somewhat confused.

"Technology... Recreate...?" He repeated the words as though it were the first time he heard them, but Ezera knew it not to be the case.

"Yes. It turns out magical technicities are easy to play with."

"That's... You mean that you created a magical device?" Dereck looked into the air as though he'd seen a unicorn pop up from there.

Ezera raised his eyebrows.

"What is it?"

"Would you show it to me?"

"Sorry, I would rather not," he winced apologetically.

He and Ilya had already agreed to keep the developpment of the scrying lens a secret from others, as it could be spread and its purpose might be perverted. And while it would be useful if the people he wished to warn of knew they were still observed under his careful eye, it might be more practical to let them believe they were free to act as they pleased, so that he could decipher their intentions quicker.

"Mh. Yeah, you're right, it might be a bad idea," Dereck agreed, but Ezera couldn't understand how he came to this reasoning. "But you really... You understand the principles of caster creation?"

It was Ezera's turn to frown.

"What is a caster?"

"Ah, it's what we call the technological devices that function thanks to firelight."

"Mh... Then yes, I guess? But I've only really tweaked one up, I'm not sure I could create one on my own."

"Forgive me for asking, but is your Grace technician?"

The question was blurted suddenly, without warning, and Ezera found himself stunned, not knowing where it came from.

"Uh... No," Ezera had no Grace. "Is it something only technicians are allowed to do?"

Dereck was quick to reassure him, batting the air with his hands.

"Oh, nothing like that. It's more like only technicians find themselves... Interested by the topic, enough to study it. In a way you're quite impressive, Professor."

Ezera deadpanned.

"It's not that boring, you know."

Dereck chuckled.

"Of course not. I didn't say that. And you can also practice whichever activity you want, it's not forbidden as you might have thought."

"Ah, that's a comfort," Ezera sighed, almost exageratedly. "I wouldn't want to be arrested even for the sake of research," he joked. "Yet, why do I sense a but?"

He snuck a glance at the knight, only to find him in deep contemplation. Dereck's gaze was fixed on him, there was a concerned glint in there that Ezera couldn't place.

Dereck smiled.

"Nothing much. It's just, that you might want to be discreet, when practicing on premises. Technicians are not really considered common, in this place."

Ezera raised an eyebrow. What did that mean? Were they hostile to technicians? Thanks these suns that Ezera wasn't one of those, then.

Ezera found himself thinking about it even hours later, while exploring the underground network. It had been a few days since their first venture into the tunnels together with Ilya, and they had found themselves exploring designed parts of the tunnels, each his turn. The map was constantly swapping hands as they progressed. This time, Ezera was wandering in the deeper parts, under the inner palace.

He was thoughtful. How strange could the kingdom be? At first glance, their history with magic was quite common. Their late king had been a great warrior, greedy for either lands or victories, and he hunted down dragons for their firelight charged scales. It seemed as though it was almost an obsession to be the strongest. Ezera could not say it was unusual.

But a few details brought him to the theory that this assumption might be wrong. First, the late king suddenly stopped his quest to conquer the lands. He also stopped pursuing draconic powers, as Ezera managed to get a read on in one of the chapel's books. Not only so, but very few people were enclined in working in magical technology domain.

Ezera had read that the last one to have been royally appointed was the technician who had created the registering system that had been used the day Ezera and his class first arrived in this world. The man died mysteriously ten years later, even though he was only forty-seven. In this world, thanks to healing magic and very knowledgeable herborists, the medium age of death was quite high, therefore it was surprising.

Had the man been gotten rid of? Or did he die naturally? Or perhaps it was the this Grace's function simply wasn't popular, and people weren't forced to become what they were skilled in. Yet that didn't make sense. Why such a reaction to magic power in a country that had seemed to strive to possess ever more of it?

Not mentioning that no book in the official library could give efficient explanations on the subject. It was as though the governing head was trying to stop people from learning about magic.

It might have something with the researches on dark matter Ezera and Ilya had found in the chapel, and the dark instrument in there. Ezera had still no idea of the crisis that had been agitating the kingdom before the new Church appeared, even though Ilya had done his best to answer to his interrogations. Was the crisis linked to dark matter manipulation? If it was so, regardless of Hortensius' apparant untrustworthiness, had the Church come in to find a solution to this problem? Or, as opposed to that idea, were they the source of the problem?

One thing was sure, and it was that they were in part responsible for the information manipulation running around Luversten about the use of magic, or firelight energy as they called it.

Just as he thought of this fact, Ezera felt a powerful tug drawn him in, in the air. He raised his head, perking up as he tried to perceive what had moved. He could not hear anything unusual. Nothing was visually out of place. However, he thought he could taste something coppery on his tongue, and there was an undeniable double current in the air.

Warily, he followed the current, keeping his footsteps light and silent. According to his estimations, he shoud be walking right under the very back of the inner palace. If he was right, the tunnel labyrinth shouldn't go much further than it, except if it engulfed under the plateaux behind the castle.

He was right, he realized, as he walked around the corner, feeling a heavy kind of malevolence in the air. A sort of killing intent that had no owner, no direction either. As he turned and stopped, he saw that he had reached the very end of the underground labyrinth.

It should be an accomplishment, Ezera would be cheerint in any other situation. After days of mapping out every single passage in the damned place, and finding a few outs here and there to the surface, they had finally what could only be the Finish Case of the labyrinth. And they had been quick and efficient about it.

Ezera took a step back, swallowing at what he saw.

He wasn't cheering, because this wasn't a nice discovery. And Ezera had read enough fantasy novels and played enough MMORPG to have a fairly educated guess on what, exactly, stood before him.

Said discovery, oozing with dark matter, had been hidden deep in the depths of the castle, buried so low that no one could have hoped to find it had they not investigated very thoroughly. Its presence here in front of Ezera could easily affect his entire reasoning regarding the issues he had been breaking his mind over earlier. So easily.

Terrifyingly.

This, he thought, is either a dimensional gate...

...Or a dungeon.