Magi Craft Meister

Jin and Reinhardt were in the middle of the pitch black room into which they had broken into.

"[Light]."

Jin used light magic as illumination. With that their surroundings became visible.

"What could this place be…"

Reinhardt posed a question.

The room was a bit large, and only a few old-style desks and chairs had been left behind. The design of the desks and chairs resembled the design that Jin's predecessor used.

"Isn't this either an office or the control room?"

Jin also had only a guess to go on.

"But there might be a room beyond this one. Let's search."

And so, with the exception of the wall they had punched a hole through, they went to investigate the three walls, ceiling, and the floor. This time a passage was soon found. There was a door on the furthest wall of the room. Althought it had been camouflaged so that you couldn't tell at a glance.

"Should we try going?"

"Yeah."

After such a brief exchange, Jin and Reinhardt continued even deeper.

They followed the just unveiled passage for about five meters and there was another door.

"I'll open it. Jin, you be on your guard."

Reinhardt said, and as a precaution Jin prepared to fire a spell at any moment.

Then Reinhardt opened the door.

"Uh!?"

Simultaneously with the door opening the room lit up. It seemed that the room's magic lamps hadn't stopped working.

"This is…"

What appeared in front of their eyes were empty bookshelves.

"It's like a storeroom for documents."

Reinhardt looked over the bookshelves and said his conclusion.

"These were left behind."

Only two books, made out of parchment-like paper had been simply closed and left behind on the corners of the shelves.

"Is anything written on them?"

Jin decided to try reading. Jin noticed that these books were written in the characters from an ancient era, and he could read even 1000-year-old magical letters.

For the time being, Jin pretended to read them with difficulty, as explaining how he learned to read this would be difficult.

"Fifth…month…23rd day… The invasion…of the devil race…Decision…made to…abandon…the fort…"

It was a record like a journal. Surely something from the time of the Great Magic War. That's how Reinhardt thought.

"Documents…weapons…food…taken…out…as much as…we could carry"

Jin read aloud while Reinhardt nodded, and he analyzed it.

"I see, so there were too many places to guard from the devil race's invasion, and this fort was abandoned, is that it? And in so doing, they took out everything important."

"Just…in case…the hall…of…the Warp Gate…was…covered up"

"Oh, so the ones who hid this were from our side. Conversely now we had trouble finding it though."

Like Reinhardt said, although the Warp Gate was buried, the future descendants of the same side first digging it up was an ironic tale.

Jin closed the record and,

"Well, nothing important has been written down, really."

He said, but Reinhardt shook his head and,

"No, It's a document that approaches the truth of the Great Magic War, even if it's just a bit. Let's take it and go."

Reinhardt said. Taking documents like this from a foreign country's historic ruins was surely practically a criminal act, but they told themselves that it was preferable to having it fall into the hands of the Unifilers.

"There's also the option of sending it to King Egelia after translating it."

While thinking so, Reinhardt put the documents in his pocket.

"Now then, in that case the armory is most likely empty, don't you agree? Well, let's just try looking around there too."

Beyond the storeroom for documents there seemed to be the armory. If you ask why Jin knew that, it's because that was written on the door.

Because the door had become ancient, or maybe because it had been locked from the inside, in any case no matter how much Jin and Reinhardt pulled the door didn't open.

As a last resort, Jin called out to Reiko.

"Reiko!"

Reiko who heard Jin's voice immediately came.

"Yes, Father."

"Try opening this door, please."

"Yes."

Reiko promptly pushed on the door, and forced it open in one go. The hinges creaked but somehow didn't break in the end.

"This is…"

The door was opened, and ahead were a number of unmoving golems stretched about. Dust had piled up, and both Jin and Reinhardt covered their nose and mouth with a handkerchief.

"Battle-type golems? No, they're simple household golems.

Jin examined the unmoving golems, and judged them to be not golems for battle but for household chores.

"Five golems, huh. Doesn't look like anything in particular is broken though.

Reinhardt also leaned over to check up on the golems. The magic lamps here were dark, and he couldn't see well so he didn't catch the details.

"Feels like they ran out of Magic Energy."

But Jin refuted that.

"…No, that's wrong. Look at this. Come on."

Jin opened the golem's chest and showed it. In there, a certain something was missing.

"There's no…Control Core?"

Reinhardt grasped the situation at a glance, and went to examine the other golems.

"This golem doesn't have one either."

"Neither does this."

The result of Jin's and Reinhardt's investigations was that out of the five golems, not a single one had a Control Core.

"It's impossible that the Control Cores just disappeared. That means that someone disabled these golems, doesn't it look like that?"

"I wonder. That's the likeliest possibility though."

Even Jin didn't know what the truth was.

"These golems weren't that important. At least not something they'd take along while evacuating. If that's the case, it would be better to take only the most important part. …Is the feeling I get."

Jin agreed with Reinhardt's conjecture and,

"There might be something about it in the documents from earlier, let's take a close look after we've returned."

He said in addition. He then heard Reiko's voice.

"Father, there's one more in the back."

"What?"

Jin shifted his attention to the back of the room Reiko spoke of, and he saw something like a human silhouette in the darkness.

"[Light]."

Jin brightened the place up, saw the human shape better. It was an Automata wearing old maid clothes. She had been left alone sitting on the floor. A similar amount of dust as on the golems had accumulated on her.

"An Automata, huh…"

Jin crouched to examine the Automata. He cleaned up the dust using magic.

Her build was that of an adult woman type. The [Magical Skin] used as skin still barely retained its flexibility.

Her hair was dark blue. Maybe the color was different from a human's on purpose.

"This one has a Control Core!"

Jin who had been investigating yelled out in surprise.

"The reason she isn't moving…Lack of Magic Energy doesn't seem likely."

That's because this Automata had an Ether Converter installed.

"Oh, I see. She received some kind of an impact, and the Magic Energy links inside snapped."

At last Jin's sharp powers of observation discovered the defective part.

"Alright, let's repair her."

If he knew where the fault was, there was no damage Jin couldn't fix.

"[Joint], [Fusion]."

He joined the broken parts of the Magic Energy Circuit together, and mended the Magi Device that had begun disintegrating.

"Alright, [Start-up]."

Then after giving her enough Magic Energy for starting up, the Automata came to life.

While creaking a little, the Automata opened its eyes and stood up.

"Might you. Be the one. Who woke me. Up?"

Maybe the speech mechanism was broken as there were some pauses while the Automata spoke.