Chapter 15 - Tryphon

Chapter 15

It was ten days after the Ashtown Devastation—that was what they called it now.

After they expelled Ravriel, they grabbed what they could find and ran far away from Ashtown, heading towards the coastal town that Calen previously mentioned.

Luckily, it wasn't hard to find with the guidance of the paved road. They arrived at Ghostbay after two days and have settled there since, tending to their injuries and keeping their head low.

Reve was currently on one of his routine walks. It was a cooly afternoon, and he didn't like being cooped up with Calen and Ren in a tiny room for so long.

As he walked past a wall with a wanted poster on it, Reve bent his head low and sighed in his mind. 'They still won't get over it, huh.'

The destruction of Ashtown had wiped out most of its surveillance cameras, but a few of them survived and they had damning pictures of Reve and Ravriel fighting in their titan form.

'Luckily, they don't have any photos of us or we will have been sold out the instant we arrived at Ghostbay.'

Reve didn't trust the people here. After all, he would do the same if he was in their shoes.

He increased his pace slowly, hoping to get back to the hotel before Ren murdered Calen.

It was a certain possibility.

It was hard to comprehend how incompatible those two were. They were like water and oil; they could never mix!

However, Ren has such a strong distrust of Calen that she willingly offerred to watch over him. Not that he was complaining. He didn't trust Calen either.

As Reve strolled past the coast, he noticed there was a huge ship on the dock. A huge signboard was erected against the ship.

Reve read it and his eyes widened, instantly running back to the hotel.

He opened his room door and shouted at the two, "Tryphon is back. I just saw it."

Ren and Calen instantly turned to him and frowned.

Ren mentioned, "That's not possible. Shouldn't it return in a month's time?"

Reve replied, "I just saw it, and it's leaving again in a week's time. This might be our chance."

When they had first arrived there, they didn't plan on staying for too long. However, they quickly found out that Ghostbay was akin to a maze.

The waters of Ghostbay belonged to the Obsidian Depth and no water vessel could cross it. There were many aquatic monsters in the Obsidian Depth, giving it a fatal rate of almost ninety percent.

Death was guaranteed when crossing the Obsidian Depth.

However, Tryphon was the only exception. It was the only ship that could survive the ocean, and that wasn't a fluke.

Tryphon had an otherworldly track record. Everyone that sailed it survive, and the ship always came back.

It was a great mystery as to how it does that, but the people never asked. They were content with its existence.

In the same way, it would work for Reve, Ren and Calen.

They desperately needed to get off this island. There was another island in the Green Archipelago that had a famous town. It was said that this place had a warp gate, and with it, they could teleport to a safer region than this place.

The trio gathered together and discussed.

The next morning, Ren went out to book three sailing tickets with the money she stole from Ashtown. It was the only reason they weren't struggling for money at this moment.

When Calen left the room, leaving Reve all to himself, the latter locked the door and sighed.

'I can do it now!'

He reached for his bag and brought out a black box.

Ren had picked it from Ravriel's corpse and handed it to him. It was no secret in the group that the box contained a scroll from the Apollyonian Codex.

They had tried opening it, but it seemed to have been sealed by some sort of mystical mechanism, so they quickly discarded it. However, they had no clue that Reve knew how to open it.

Looking at the box, Reve fiddled with its geometrical patterns.

He nodded, "I was right. It is indeed arcanites."

Arcanites was a language system developed by ancient arcanists, mages that studied magical circles in their way of magic. It was used as a cipher for secret communication in case they had something they wanted to hide.

Reve analyzed the box and jotted down each geometrical pattern in a book.

"More connection to Arcadia. There is something going on here that I haven't noticed yet. Whoever constructed this box was a mage from Arcadia. Ahh, enough rambling, let's see if I still have a brilliant mind."

As he finished jotting down the patterns, Reve studied each one of them intricately.

Arcanite characters had varying sub-systems. Each symbol carried a different meaning. It was up to him to decipher them and figure out the hidden message here.

Reve spent the next two hours breaking down the characters and merging them together to form a single character. He had half the mind to separate each one after breaking them down, but his instinct told him that was not the case.

This wasn't a quest that was protected by a hidden message. The arcanites covered a box, most likely the clue he was looking for was the mechanism of the box.

He was meant to solve something.

So, Reve followed his instincts and merged all the symbols together.

When he was done, he noticed the singular symbol formed an incomplete magic circle.

It was a familiar one.

"The Founder Spell… but it's missing something. It's missing the symbol of Gae. Wait… I think I understand now!"

Reve flipped the box around and inspected its bottom. He smiled as he found a tiny symbol of Gae and softly placed his hand on it.

Instantly, the box rattled with clicking sounds. It seemed to be unravelling as the top slowly opened.

Reve cackled, "I'm a genius!"

The Founder Spell was a magic circle used as a foundation for a chain magic circle. It was the base that held advanced magic circles together to form one spell.

The keyword here was "base" or "foundation", all meaning the same thing if one followed a certain context.

Thinking about it, Reve got the idea to check the bottom of the box and, lo and behold, he actually found the missing symbol there.

The box finally opened, revealing a murky cluster of air that was too thick to even breathe in… along with a brown paper scroll.

"Jackpot!" Reve ignored the murky air and carefully brought out the scroll.

The scroll contained the depiction of a faceless woman covered by the shadows of the moon.

When he stared hard enough, he spotted a body of text covering the depiction. Just like he had expected, the text wasn't written in English, but in Ancient Arcadish–the language of Arcadia.

He read them word for word.

"Behold the Glimmering One, the Dark Lady who dwells in the Overground.

The Bringer of Life, yet Unholy Matron of Yore.

The Crimson Queen of Chaos.

Loveless and Unsung, she is.

-Omicron Scroll."