Chapter 10: A quest for answers.

When Salvatoris returned to the place where he'd had to flee the routny, a great deal of stress came over him. He felt an intense burning sensation along his abdomen, as if his gastric acid had taken up residence in his gashes rather than his stomach, no doubt provoked by his growing anxiety. If arcane wolves generally moved in packs, they were low-ranking monsters as long as no alpha controlled them, but this principle didn't apply to routny. They're small, agile, and their sharp mandibles are no match for wolves' jaws, especially as these ant-like creatures never travelled in small groups. The fear of seeing them again surfaced in Salvatoris' mind, leaving him to wonder whether he'd made the right choice in coming back here at nightfall.

However, his unquenchable thirst for answers drove him to take one more step into this infested, tumulus-covered plain. He hoped to find answers here as soon as possible, for although the vast world abounded in ruins of this type, they were certainly not easy to access. What's more, most of these ruins were protected by the remnants of the ancient civilization, the iron golems, or rather "androids", if Salvatoris' recent visions were to be believed. What's more, the unprotected ones had been excavated from top to bottom years ago, making it impossible for Salvatoris to find the answers he was looking for in these places.

However, a thought crossed his mind as he walked, prompting him to order his undead still wearing the routny to give him the insect, as he whispered.

"Even if she doesn't have much magic it's still better than nothing...especially since she'll probably go through it."

He then picked up the routny, before laying her motionless on the ground, the better to thrust his cracked, weathered dagger into her belly. However, as he began butchering the routny in search of an object, an atrocious smell assaulted his nostrils, prompting him to exclaim as he held back his nausea.

"Why the fuck didn't I take his soul stone earlier! Why didn't I do it right after I showed it to the village chief!"

Having said that, he extracted from the creature a small, oval-shaped soulstone measuring no more than three centimetres long, and two centimetres wide at its thickest point. However, despite its small size, it radiated a mysterious scarlet glow, mingled with a dark thread, an echo of the necromancy Salvatoris used on the corpse still possessing its soulstone.

The soul stone is the very place where all creatures' mana is crystallized. Their size varies according to the size of the monster, but above all, its use of mana. A simple bear, for example, being only an animal and not a monster, will only be given a one-and-a-half-centimeter soulstone due to the virtual absence of mana in its body, apart from that which it involuntarily breathes. Soul stones can also be absorbed by humans or other monsters to increase the mana limit in their bodies, albeit only slightly, making them extremely valuable. Such is their value that these stones were even designated as the official currency of all the kingdoms populating these lands, themselves populated by monsters, eons ago.

The sole basis of their value was the size of the stones themselves, echoing the quantity and quality of the mana they contained. Even humans are endowed with a soul stone or seat of their entire being, but this is often plundered upon death, as was the case with Salvatoris' undead, which is regrettable.

Salvatoris accordingly placed the soul stone in a small pouch attached to his belt, before continuing his walk in the direction of the burial mounds. He wasn't worried that his routny was weaker; he'd only reanimated it in the first place to show it to the village chief. He was, however, concerned about the possibility of running into these creatures at any moment. Even though they were diurnal, awakening a swarm of routny from their slumber by digging out part of their nest would mean the death of Salvatoris. So he methodically approached the tumuli decorating the plain, letting his undead slowly and discreetly dig up the periphery of the plain, tumulus after tumulus, in the hope of finding another ruin.

However, when most of the burial mounds on the outskirts of the plain had been excavated without mishap, Salvatoris approached the one containing the ruin he had already discovered. He knew there were no routny nests there at the moment. So he began to dig up a section of the surrounding tumulus, where as many of his black threads as possible were grouped together, until he hit something metallic. He'd just hit the ceiling of a ruin's entrance, leaving him to exclaim, raising his arms to the sky as his puppets crowded close to him.

"There's got to be at least one more! I didn't-"

However, he hurriedly put his hand in front of his mouth. He'd just screamed, even though he'd done his best not to be noticed until now. However, this didn't stop him as he ordered his dead to dig for him, leaving him to simply watch the entrance to the ruin take shape before him, as the earth covering it was tossed aside.

In just a few minutes, the entrance to the ruin was fully revealed to Salvatoris. It was in a similar state to the other ruin, just as rusty and cracked. The imposing door was also made of the same bluish concrete mixed with a blackish steel, riftine. The only difference was that the lock mechanism holding the door seemed totally destroyed, falling apart at the touch of air it hadn't been subjected to for so long.

Seizing this opportunity, Salvatoris entered the ruin. Despite a few differences, the layout of this ruin was very similar to the one he had already visited, despite the faded inscription at its entrance, which seemed different. Salvatoris quickly passed the stairs, the security post, and opened the doors arranged in the same way, i.e. doors on the sides, and opposite the entrance. They also contained the same things: a destroyed greenhouse, old storage rooms, a sports hall, everything seemed to be a carbon copy of the other ruin, apart from the last door opposite the entrance door, where slight mechanical clicking could be heard.

Instead of a small staircase leading to a corridor connected to all the rooms, there was a room there, an occupied room. When Salvatoris saw a humanoid figure moving about, he jumped, not hesitating for a second to assume a fighting stance with his puppets, as he observed the object of his reaction in greater detail. The figure wore clothes reduced to a simple set of wings, with only the badge bearing the name "Smith" visible. However, it was the face that caught Salvatoris' attention. It was made up of nothing but mechanical parts and black hair, his green eyeballs staring into space as he cleaned, and tried as best he could to maintain the place, giving him an impression even more inorganic than his total lack of reaction to the intruders.

Salvatoris then approached, but again no reaction could be observed from what was once an android. He seemed to have lost his mind, or someone had made him lose it. The room he was taking care of was consequently quite clean for a ruin, apart from the doors leading to the rooms, and their contents, destroyed and decomposed into pieces on the floor, no doubt to maintain the room over the centuries. The various repairs were clumsy, but surprisingly effective, giving the place a certain style. However, this wasn't what Salvatoris was looking for as he made his way towards the remains of a sofa, now completely ignoring the android, devoid of all reasoning, who was nonetheless being watched over by his puppets.

When he tried himself out on the sofa, he mechanically activated the huge holographic TV whose casing was fixed to the wall, and surprisingly, it came on. It was much larger than any he'd seen in the images, or memories, he'd been shown, and it didn't take him long to understand why. When the sizzling screen stabilized, a multitude of folders were superimposed before his eyes. Most of them looked corrupted, but one of the few with a name still visible caught Salvatoris' eye. Although he couldn't normally read the language, whatever Alice had forcibly implanted in his brain made him understand the writing in front of him, as he spoke from a tongue he'd never spoken himself.

"History of our world."

Once the command had been activated, the folder opened. Most of the files were corrupted, but the most important ones seemed to remain: "Antiquity", "Middle Ages", "Modern times", "Contemporary times part 1", "World war 1", "World war 2", "Contemporary times part 2", "Birth rate crisis", "World scarcity", "Unification war".

The few other files in the folder were unreadable, obviously corrupted.

Intrigued, Salvatoris ordered the file named "antiquity", looking for information. But as the video began to play, it seemed corrupted, difficult to read, while the words emitted by the television seemed hard to decipher, barely audible, not to mention the images, which frustrated him to no end as the video scrolled before his eyes. He then quickly scrolled through the following files, but it was the same with them, most had suffered the same fate, being made extremely hard to understand, even to the point of making Salvatoris give up. However, hard as it was to understand, he had seen civilizations come and go, evolving before his eyes as their technology advanced, despite a total absence of other races. What interested Salvatoris, however, was when the images would be the same as the vision he'd had, which was not yet the case. Now, although he had seen humans far more developed than what could currently be seen in his world, there was no android presence, and even less of a city composed solely of extravagant skyscrapers blending glass and steel.

Only the latest files, obviously more recent, seemed to be functioning properly. Salvatoris was notably intrigued by the next file he would test, wondering what it meant as he had seen abundant populations in his vision, only heightening his doubts and curiosity as he said.

"Birthrate crisis"

At his words, a sizzling video, seemingly in poor condition, but legible and understandable launched, and began a long story.