Chương 486: (479) 7.17. Not A Chance

Vin and Lumel stared at the brand-new grand artifact resting within Vin's hands. Now that he'd managed to free it from its magical box, Beyond the Veil was going wild, feeding him all sorts of strange information. For starters, his own magic sense was able to easily recognize the spatial magic radiating off of the artifact. But it was Beyond the Veil that allowed him to see precisely what it was intended for.

"It's a separate dimension," Vin muttered, turning the crystal ball this way and that as he peered at it. The surface of the sphere itself was clear, but the interior looked to be filled with dark, rolling energy of some sort. Beyond the Veil gave him the sense that the space contained within was much wider than it appeared in his hand, and Vin struggled to wrap his head around the paradoxical sensation. Arcane Discovery! 10, 000 exp gained. Level up! Adventurer of the Arcane lvl 55! +3 Attribute points to spend.

+1 Passive point to spend.

"It's a condensed dimension," Lumel whispered, her face practically pressed up against the crystal ball as she stared into it.

"That magic is beyond even me. My Dimensional Pocket works similarly to your Dimensional Sheath in that I'm not shrinking anything down, I'm just carrying it all along behind me in a separate dimension. This is advanced spatial magic. I'd guess tier-7 at a minimum."

"Why would this random town have such a powerful artifact sealed away within a magic box with no obvious method of opening it?" Vin asked, handing the artifact off to Lumel as he turned back to the box. Now that he'd managed to get what he wanted out of it and could actually gaze inside, he tried to examine the runes more carefully. To his surprise, he came to a startling realization.

"Lumel… I don't think this box had any method of opening it. I think it was supposed to remain sealed forever."

"What? Why would they have something like that?" she asked, her brow furrowing as she peered deeper into the ball.

"Why would they want to lock this condensed dimension away?" An idea popped into Vin's head, taken from countless stories back on Earth he'd either read or saw on TV, and he paled. Leaping back over to Lumel, he ripped the orb from her hands, giving her an apologetic look as she blinked and frowned at him.

"Sorry, but I don't think you should look too closely at this. A magically locked box that wasn't supposed to be opened… a condensed dimension in the form of a grand artifact… this whole situation just screams 'ancient evil that was sealed away' if you ask me."

"What?" Lumel asked, her frown deepening.

"Why would they do that? Why not just destroy the orb, or bury it somewhere nobody could ever find it? That's what my people do with dangerous artifacts."

"Usually it's either because they physically can't destroy it, or the people feel obligated to guard against the evil being's reawakening," Vin explained, feeling more and more secure in his theory as he spoke.

"I mean, look at it! It's filled with dark, rolling energy! It even looks evil!"

"I have to concede that much," Lumel admitted, her frown shifting over to the orb itself as she watched the shifting, dark energies within.

"But even so, that's a high-tier spatial artifact. I've never seen one before! I could learn so much from studying it!"

"I'm sorry, but that's basically the plot of every horror movie ever written," Vin said, trying to figure out how to explain this to her.

"Either you'll accidentally release it somehow, or it will take over your mind and make you go crazy, or a dozen other things."

"Vin, this isn't one of your weird, moving pictures you told me about," Lumel said, beginning to look more hurt than anything.

"You know how skilled of a mage I am. You don't think I can handle myself? Why spend all this time trying to break it out if we're not even going to glean anything from it?"

"I could tell it was an orb of some sort from the start, but I was hoping for a crystal ball that would let us scry stuff," Vin admitted, frowning at the orb in hand.

"The moment I felt the spatial energy and you mentioned it was a condensed dimension, I changed my mind. It's not like the last few days were a waste by any means. I built two new spells and even managed to hit level 55! Not to mention we managed to find this ticking timebomb before anyone else. That means we can destroy it, or hide it somewhere we know nobody will ever find it!"

"That's a grand artifact!" Lumel argued, looking aghast at the very idea.

"You can't destroy it! Vin, you're being ridiculous!"

"Wait, let me check something," he said, keeping the orb close as he went back over the runes in the box yet again.

"Hah! I thought so! All this time, I thought the runes were set up to destroy whatever was within the box the moment someone managed to crack it open. Now that I look closer, I think they're actually set up to destroy whatever is currently outside the box, no doubt in an attempt to kill whoever wanted to get their hands on this thing and free whatever was inside!" Stolen story; please report.

"Or because they are guarding their incredibly valuable grand artifact from would-be thieves," Lumel frowned.

"If it's so dangerous, why are you even still holding it? Aren't you just as liable to get possessed or whatever you think might happen as I am?"

"I at least have my divine boon," Vin said, cursing as he realized Lumel might have a point.

"Though I don't know if possession counts as maiming or killing me…" Without any better idea, Vin shifted it over to his golem arm, deciding that at the very least he probably shouldn't maintain skin contact with the almost-certainly evil orb. The two of them stood there for a moment, the dark, swirling orb held between them as they tried to come to an agreement. Putting himself in her shoes, Vin was easily able to understand where Lumel was coming from.

Even if her second prestige class didn't reflect it any longer, at her core, Lumel was a Dimensional Mage. That was a rare-enough class of mage that they'd never encountered another one in all their time on Edregon thus far. Up until now, she'd been forced to study the leftover workings of the Gods, which was no easy feat.

Even with her recent Capstone she'd received, Vin had no doubt studying a man-made artifact would still be far easier for progressing her magic than continuing to work on what the Gods had left behind in the creation of the Underside and the dungeons. Not to mention she hadn't grown up with reruns of late-night horror films that Vin had spent plenty of evenings watching as a child while trying to ignore the sounds of his parents fighting in the background.

It seemed Lumel was trying to do the same thing he was and view the current situation from his perspective, because she took a deep breath, offering him a small smile.

"Look… Clearly, you have some strong feelings about the orb. But are any of those based on your current magical senses and Beyond the Veil? Or are they all based purely off of your fictional stories you watched back on your world?" Vin frowned as he stared harder into the orb, straining as he tried to push Beyond the Veil to its limits. Yet try as he might, he couldn't seem to get past the dark, rolling energies clouding the surface of the orb.

It was almost as though his class ability was being blocked, and that did a lot more to worry him than calm him down.

"Why don't we get a second opinion?" Lumel continued.

"Maybe we could bring it to Erik. He's a few millennia old, maybe he's seen something like this."

"That is the last thing we need to do," Vin said, shaking his head.

"One of us getting possessed would be bad. An ancient, who-knows-how-powerful magical beast like Erik doing so? I don't even want to know what might happen."

"So what, we keep standing here arguing until one of us gives in?" Lumel demanded.

"I don't know about you, but I really dislike fighting with you."

"I do too," Vin sighed, wondering if just giving in and dealing with the consequences was the right thing to do after all. It was pure speculation on his part as to what would happen if Lumel tried to study the orb. The sealed box and dark energies within certainly didn't feel right, but they weren't exactly a smoking gun.

"…Maybe I can reach out to Benevolence. The Gods might have answers for us."

"I think that's a fair compromise," Lumel said, reaching out and taking his flesh-and-blood hand as she squeezed it.

"If they say it's dangerous, I won't argue about destroying it. But if they say it's safe, I want to study it, okay?"

"There's a good chance they won't say anything at all… but of course. I'm not about to argue with the Gods on something like this. This town didn't happen to have a place of worship, did it?" In fact, there was a temple off to the side of town that was little more than a small room with a few wooden statues carved to represent some of the different Gods. Vin recognized one or two of them from statues he'd seen within the Citadel, and he took a moment to examine them more thoroughly.

Strange how two totally different worlds have the same understanding of what some of the Gods look like… Though I guess they did have a habit of occasionally showing themselves to people in the old universe. It was kind of the whole reason why the old System started corroding, after all. Deciding to think more on that later, Vin walked up to the central statue, which had been purposefully left without a face.

Placing a hand on the wooden carving, he held the questionable orb clutched in his other hand, not willing to let it out of his sight before he got his answers. As he closed his eyes, he tried to reach out toward the Goddess of Benevolence, just as he had that very first time back within the Citadel. Hey, Benevolence? Me again. I have a bit of a sticky situation here I was hoping I could get your help with. First time trying to reach you through this particular statue, so I hope that doesn't mess with things.

Vin didn't feel anything unusual, and a quick peek revealed he was still within the small temple rather than that floating void the Gods spoke within. Grumbling to himself, he clenched his eyes shut harder, pushing his thoughts toward the heavens as he tried again. Got a bit of potentially super-evil artifact here I was hoping to get your thoughts on.

I know you don't make a habit of intervening unless you have to, but I feel like me getting possessed by some ancient entity is probably rather counterintuitive to whatever grand-plans you had in store for the survival of the Earthers. So… if you could maybe give me a call back, that would be great. This time, Vin distinctly felt something reach out to him, and he let out a sigh of relief as he opened his eyes. Only to find himself in a swirling black void that was not at all the one he was familiar with.

Rather than an empty void as far as the eye could see, this one was filled with rolling energies and swirls of mana that threatened to suffocate him. And instead of a smiling woman with golden, floating locks of hair drifting about her face, there was a man wearing a dark suit with silver buttons, giving him a sly smile as he looked him up and down.

"Oh yes, you will do quite nicely," the strange man said, nodding to himself as he held up a hand.

"It's been some time since I last walked among the living, but I think I can work with this." With a snap of his fingers, the darkness roiling about on all sides shot inward, forming into dozens of dark hands that grabbed at Vin from all directions as it screamed.