Crystal

The camp's construction would have to proceed slowly. Although Gawain had written a whole pile of regulations and plans, and had even drafted blueprints for the camp's next expansion and eventual development into a permanent settlement, none of it could be accomplished overnight. Considering the educational level of most people in this era, civilians and serfs had a Literacy Rate of zero, knights could only manage basic reading and writing, and even the warriors raised by noble families—not Serf Soldiers—could only write their own names and understand numbers below a hundred. So many things had to be advanced gradually.

What was more, there was no manpower here yet, and the current Cecil Territory could not support many hands.

After fully realizing this fact, Gawain returned to his tent and sat down before his desk.

This desk could be considered one of the few finished pieces of furniture the group had brought from Tanzan Town. It would probably take some time before the carpenters could make the first batch of furniture from the timber obtained from the western forest. Furniture-grade wood could not be as makeshift as the material used for simple plank houses, so having a desk was practically Gawain's greatest perk as the lord of this place.

A large pile of papers lay somewhat messily spread across the desk, filled with all sorts of things: construction plans, supply tallies, camp sketches, and a rough future development plan. Walls, docks, the Residential Area, production zones, farmland, and more were all laid out on it. Ink, a dip pen, pencils, and a wooden ruler sat on one side of the desk, while Amber was sprawled across the other.

Gawain walked over, casually grabbed Amber by the collar, and lifted her aside. The half-elf girl had not woken up when he picked her up, but halfway through, she suddenly cried out in alarm, then turned into a shadow and vanished from his hand before reforming some distance away.

"You scared the hell out of me!!" Amber finally woke up completely and glared at Gawain furiously. "I thought there was an earthquake!"

Gawain looked at her, both annoyed and amused. "I told you to watch the things in the tent. Is this how you stand guard?"

Amber looked perfectly righteous. "I threw my whole body over your scribbles, okay?!"

Gawain looked down at the desk, then glanced at Amber. "You even drooled all over them?!"

"How was I supposed to control that while sleeping?" Amber muttered. Then she watched curiously as Gawain sat down at the desk and scooted closer. "What are you doing? Drawing more of your scribbles?"

"These aren't scribbles. They're plans, regulations, and construction diagrams." Gawain found this uneducated half-elf deeply troublesome. "These things are the foundation of the camp—that's why I specifically told you to watch them."

Amber picked up a sheet covered in symbols and numbers, stared at it for a long time, and curled her lip. "What is this mess? I can't understand any of it."

Gawain looked at her helplessly. "You're holding it upside down."

Amber looked innocent. "I've never seen these diagrams and things before. They're harder than magic formulas. How am I supposed to know which way is up?"

"That's why you need to study. Knowledge is important." Gawain sighed. He was not surprised at all that Amber could not understand these things. She was just a little thief who had never received a proper education. Under the hands-on instruction of her foster father, who had also been her master, she had learned a set of skills for sneaking and stealing. Coupled with her inexplicable talent for Shadow Affinity, that had been enough for her to wander the world as an adventurer. Learning was neither possible nor necessary for her, so Amber's education had only reached the level of basic reading and writing. The diagrams he drew not only contained a pile of strange terms, but also all kinds of data and shorthand markings. Even if he threw them at Heti, she would probably be completely baffled...

Thinking of Heti, Gawain looked Amber in the eyes. "I told you to learn more from Rebecca or Heti whenever you had free time. Looks like you never took it to heart."

"That would be so boring, and I don't like dealing with nobles," Amber said, rolling her eyes. "Besides, your beautiful great-great... great-granddaughter is so busy. How could she have time for me? Rebecca is a little freer, but she always wants to throw giant fireballs at me."

Gawain looked at her with a faint smile. "You don't like dealing with nobles—but you seem pretty comfortable dealing with me."

Amber answered honestly, "I just don't think you seem like a noble..."

"You're also very different from the elves in my imagination." As he spoke, Gawain began sorting the papers before him and moving them aside. Then he took out several crystals and spread them across the desk one by one.

Amber muttered, "I'm only a half-elf, and I was raised by humans. How would I know what proper elves are like... Huh? You're not writing anything today? You're studying these rocks?"

After confirming that the crystals contained no magic and that Gawain had no intention of selling them for money, Amber had downgraded them from crystals to rocks in her mind.

Gawain looked at the half-elf with a headache coming on. "If you could be a little quieter over there, I'd be deeply grateful."

Amber said, "Tch. This is no fun at all. Study your rocks, then."

As she spoke, her body swayed, and she gradually vanished as though blending into the air. But through his faint perception of her presence, Gawain could tell that she was still standing where she had been, continuing to stare curiously in his direction.

Forget it. As long as she stopped babbling, he could let her do whatever she wanted.

Gawain focused his attention on the crystals before him.

For some time now, research into these crystals had made no progress whatsoever.

More than once during the journey, he had taken them out for careful observation. While in Tanzan Town, he had even asked Heti to probe their insides through Magic Resonance, but nothing had come of it. Magic Resonance in particular—Heti had frankly stated that these crystals had nothing to do with magical items. When magic power entered them, it could not stir even the slightest ripple, as though she were facing ordinary stones.

But could crystals that Gawain Cecil of seven hundred years ago had carefully stored in a mithril safe and even paid the Mithril Treasury for permanent preservation really be nothing more than insignificant rocks?

Gawain could only make a bold assumption: these crystals definitely possessed some special quality, but that quality was not magical in nature.

Or perhaps modern magical theory simply could not explain them.

He set aside the crystals that were clearly fragments and picked up the intact one.

The shattered crystals had already exposed part of their inner crystal structure, but it was difficult to examine accurately with the naked eye. Once Heti's Magic Laboratory had been built and they had a Crystal Resonator, they could try inspecting them from the perspective of physical structure. But this intact one... he did not dare tamper with it too carelessly.

Who knew whether the Crystal Resonator might damage some kind of "information" inside it?

He raised the crystal and examined it against the light.

Along its clear, beautiful crystalline edges, light drifted and flowed. As he changed the angle of incidence, every face and every edge displayed different colors and patterns of light.

This was a crystal of extraordinary geometric precision. Its craftsmanship must have been highly advanced. Moreover, when Gawain had tested the broken crystals, he had confirmed that they possessed astonishing strength—extremely hard, yet not easily shattered like ordinary brittle crystals. They could even scratch mithril ingots with ease, while their tips remained completely unworn.

This made him deeply wonder how those four crystal fragments had broken in the first place.

After observing it in the sunlight for a while, Gawain tried cutting his finger and smearing a little blood onto the crystal's surface before the wound healed.

Naturally, it did absolutely nothing.

He vaguely seemed to hear a certain half-elf holding back laughter...

Blocking Amber out, Gawain held the crystal and fell into thought. There were more and more things in this world that he could not understand—crystals of unknown origin, memories that had vanished without explanation, a "sun" that seemed to be a gas giant yet possessed properties utterly unlike those of a normal gas giant, and those "surveillance satellites" that should still be hanging in the sky, their purpose and origin unknown...

Just as his thoughts wandered to the surveillance satellites, he suddenly felt a faint warmth coming from his hand.

At first, he thought it was an illusion, but the crystal immediately began to tremble gently. The pale blue light in its core also flickered to life.

Warmth, vibration, and light—those three things together could not possibly be an illusion.

Gawain stared at the crystal in astonishment, but before he could pick up a pen to record its changes, a voice suddenly rang out in his mind—

It was called a voice, but it felt more like information directly flooding into his mental world. He "heard" and understood its contents:

"Resetting mental frequency. Reestablishing connection."

Immediately afterward, his consciousness became hazy.

It was as though something had abruptly entered his thoughts, connecting streams of "data" that did not belong to him. Yet those streams were not invaders, because after a brief moment of shock, he felt an inexplicable familiarity with them.

Those "familiar data streams" quickly formed clear corresponding things in his mind.

Images began appearing in his head.

They showed the earth viewed from high above.

In that first instant, what rose in Gawain's mind was neither surprise nor shock, but one thought: What the hell.

"What the hell, am I going back into the sky again?!"

Cold sweat immediately ran down his forehead.

But he soon realized that things were not as he had imagined. He was still sitting safely in his chair. His soul had not left his body and been dragged back into the sky to serve as a synchronous satellite again. All his senses remained normal, and he could still control his body freely. There was simply an additional image in his mind.

This immediately calmed him down considerably. Only then did excitement and exhilaration rise within him, and he focused his attention on the image in his mind.

Only then did he notice that the image was highly abnormal, completely unlike what he was familiar with.

The image had become blurry, and it showed strange color distributions, as though a filter had been applied over it. Like an image produced by thermal imaging, it was smeared into indistinct patches. He could only roughly identify structures such as mountains, forests, and rivers, and this blurry, strange image was limited to a very small area.

It was the northern side of the Dark Mountains, the area surrounding the development site of the New Cecil Territory. From above, he could vaguely make out the White Water River, the western forest, and even the faint outline of the camp.

The image could not be zoomed.