Subject Runes - V1 Chapter 15

I had taken a pretty brutal hit to the psyche, but what was done was done. There was no taking it back now.

To get my mind off it, I forced myself to focus on the ruins. As I stared at the wall patterns, it started to look like similar geometric designs were lined up in repeating intervals. I stepped back to look at the overall layout, then tilted my angle and looked from the side, but in the end I still couldn’t make sense of any of it.

Did every mural here necessarily have some kind of meaning, or were some of them just meaningless decoration? There was no reason to connect every single thing to Japan, but some of the researchers finally moved over to the altar, so I followed after them.

Marl stuck close behind me the whole way.

“…Why are you following me?”

“Because I’ve got nothing to do.”

“…..”

It was a little awkward, and honestly I wanted her to back off a bit, but for some reason she looked like she was having fun, so I left it alone.

Careful not to get in the researchers’ way, I stared at the altar from a little farther back. It was about three meters tall and built symmetrically, with a hollow space in the center where something was clearly meant to be enshrined.

There was nothing there now, but maybe there had originally been a statue of a god or something. Come to think of it, the altar we saw at the entrance yesterday had looked just like this one. If that was the case, then there might be another hidden staircase behind this altar too.

The researchers seemed to have finished their sketches, and now they gathered around the altar and began examining each part of it. I moved closer too, and careful not to touch anything around it, I gently stuck my head into the central hollow.

The bottom was flat, like it had been designed to hold an object. The left and right sides were carved with some kind of pattern. The wall at the very back was painted pitch black, and there was a bit of space up above too. Without a lantern shining into it, it was too dark to see much.

I pulled my head back out and looked at the lower section of the altar instead. There were two stands, one on each side, with a single round glass plate resting on each. A researcher was just collecting them, so I asked him about it.

“What are those glass plates?”

“These are ancient magical tools. Rooms with altars like this one always come equipped with them.”

“What kind of magical tools are they?”

“If you look at the wall patterns through these glass plates, different patterns appear.”

“What? C-can I see them?”

“Sure, but handle them carefully.”

I looked at the wall patterns through the glass plates, but at first nothing changed.

“Try rotating the glass a little at a time.”

When I rotated the two plates, there really were points where the patterns changed.

These were polarizing plates.

When I looked at the wall through the polarizing plates with each eye, a three-dimensional image of a woman appeared.

“A three-dimensional figure showed up.”

“Let me see.”

The researcher took the plates from me and checked the same thing by viewing it stereoscopically.

“Ah, this is one of the goddesses worshipped by this ancient civilization.”

I borrowed the plates again and started looking around more carefully. Besides the goddess image, there were several other stereoscopic images hidden across the walls.

I also pointed the plates toward the altar to see if anything had been drawn there too, but nothing showed up. Maybe there was something inside the hollow part.

“Marl, can you light up the inside of the altar with Lightning?”

Since the researchers were already using the lantern, we used the beginner-level light magic spell Lightning instead.

“Got it. I’ll keep it small so it doesn’t blind you.”

She lit up the ceiling inside the central hollow of the altar, and I checked it through the polarizing plates. There were no patterns on the ceiling, and even when I changed the angle, nothing appeared.

“So there’s nothing there.”

That was what I thought—right as I shifted my gaze away from the ceiling inside the altar, something flickered at the edge of my vision.

There was something on the black wall at the back.

“Marl. Hit it with Lightning again.”

The wall that had looked completely black seemed to have some kind of special processing on it, and when the Lightning illuminated it, reflected light brought a pattern into view.

“…What the hell is this?”

What I had thought was a wall looked just like a PC monitor.

A window appeared on the screen, and then some kind of batch file started up on its own.

“The installation started…”

Then a new icon appeared. When I double-clicked it with my finger, a window opened, showing a magic circle I had never seen before, along with a line of Japanese.

【Unique Non-Attribute Magic: Ultra-High-Speed Perception Release】

Found it!

Picking this dungeon had been absolutely the right call.

If I kept investigating similar altars in ruins from the same ancient civilization, I might be able to discover all kinds of magic. Hell, this probably still hadn’t been discovered at any other altar either. If it had, the researchers would have checked this place first thing.

Which meant the reason it had stayed undiscovered was probably because no one had solved the mystery of the black wall. More than that, before anyone could even think about operating a GUI, there was a good chance nothing had even been displayed on the wall at all.

If that was the case, then the key was probably the relationship between the polarizing plates and Lightning.

The first thing that came to mind was coherence, but did that mean Marl’s Lightning was basically laser light, unlike the lantern’s glow?

Once the entire new-student welcome dungeon event was over, every party returned to the Adventurers’ Guild.

We collected our quest rewards at reception, thanked the temporary adventurers who had joined us, and parted ways.

“See you around, Azoth. Feel free to talk to me anytime.”

“You too, Major.”

I gave the Major a sharp navy-style salute as I saw him off, and that was when Neon walked over.

“Azoth, what are you doing?”

I was still trying to decide how to answer when Marl let out an amused laugh.

“Azoth and that adventurer got really close. He’s been like that the whole time.”

“Huh…”

Neon looked at me suspiciously, but honestly, I could never quite tell what the hell this girl was thinking.

“I’m glad everyone made it through the quest safely and without injuries. From here, we’ll be holding a small debriefing. I’m sure you’ve all got your own stories to tell, so go ahead and enjoy yourselves.”

With that greeting from the club captain, everyone moved into the tavern inside the guild and started chatting it up with the people they got along with.

The five of us gathered together like always. Cain kicked things off.

“My group handled monster extermination in the dungeon at Mount Bispor Volcano. Being a volcano, it was packed with fire-attribute monsters, so we had to lean hard on the upperclassmen’s water magic. Anyway, I just kept cutting down beasts so they wouldn’t break through the front line. That upperclassman guy was completely useless, so it felt like I was doing the work of two people. It was rough as hell.”

“We were at the famous Dungale Labyrinth City. It’s a massive dungeon with unexplored areas, so we went treasure hunting there. Look at this.”

Dan pulled out a gold bracelet.

“It’s a magical tool that supposedly boosts spell effects.”

Neon seemed to have picked up some kind of magical tool too, and Marl looked at them with obvious envy.

“Lucky you. We didn’t get any treasure at all. More importantly, Azoth was awful.”

Then she launched into the story of the poisonous bug swamp.

“You caused an explosion with earth magic? What the hell does that even mean?”

“Marl, drop that story. You’re going to ruin everyone’s appetite.”

As expected, the story wasn’t exactly popular.

“More importantly, I heard something, Azoth. You’re Senior Selene’s fiancé? Man, I’m jealous. She’s gorgeous.”

“Seriously? Damn, that hurts.”

Dan looked annoyed and asked why I had kept quiet about it, and even Cain looked visibly disappointed.

When I told them what Senior Sasha had advised me, Cain snorted and glanced over at the group of five.

“Yeah, you probably should watch yourself around those upperclassmen. If anything happens, tell me. Honestly, Selene isn’t the kind of woman anyone but you could handle. She looks amazing, sure, but she’s kind of a disaster, and once she goes off the rails, nobody can stop her. Making her your wife is a life-threatening job. I’ve nearly died because of her more than once…”

Dan was trembling for some reason, but what the hell had happened to him?

“More importantly, listen to this. I made an important discovery in the ruins.”

I motioned for everyone to lean in closer, then lowered my voice.

“I think it’s an undiscovered ancient spell. None of the accompanying researchers noticed it.”

“Seriously?”

I briefly explained the situation when I found it and kept going.

“A magic circle and its activation method appeared. I think it’s probably some kind of body-enhancement spell, a non-attribute magic like Magic Barrier. I’m going to investigate it in more detail from here on, but keep it a secret between us for now.”

“Got it.”