Chapter 47: The Crystal

Building the camp had to be a gradual process. Although Gawain had drafted a whole stack of rules and plans—he even sketched out a rough blueprint for expanding the camp into a permanent settlement—none of it could be accomplished overnight. Considering the general knowledge level of people in this era, where literacy among commoners and serfs was nonexistent, knights could only manage basic reading and writing, and even the family-trained warriors (non-serf soldiers) could barely write their own names or handle numbers up to a hundred, progress had to be slow and steady.

Besides, there simply weren’t enough hands to help, and the current Lord Cecil’s domain couldn’t support many people yet.

Fully aware of this reality, Gawain returned to his tent and sat down at his desk.

This desk was one of the few finished pieces of furniture the group had brought from Tansang Town. It would be a while before the carpenters could craft the first batch of furniture using timber from the western forest—furniture-grade wood couldn’t be as rough as the makeshift boards used for the tents. So having even this one desk was probably the greatest luxury Gawain enjoyed as the lord of this place.

The desk was cluttered with piles of papers, covered in all sorts of notes: construction plans, material inventories, camp sketches, and a rough future development plan outlining walls, docks, residential areas, production zones, farmland, and so on. On one side of the desk sat ink, a dip pen, pencils, and a wooden ruler. On the other side lay Amber.

Gawain reached over and casually grabbed Amber by the collar, lifting her aside. The half-elf girl was still asleep when he picked her up, but halfway through, she suddenly gasped, then vanished into a shadow before reappearing a short distance away.

“You scared me!” Amber finally woke up, glaring at Gawain with a scowl. “I thought it was an earthquake!”

Gawain looked at her, both amused and annoyed. “I told you to watch over the stuff in the tent. Is this how you keep guard?”

Amber looked all righteous. “I was practically glued to your scribbles!”

Gawain glanced down at the desk, then back at her. “You even drooled on them?”

“Who can help it when they fall asleep?” Amber muttered, then curiously watched as Gawain sat down at the desk. She shuffled closer. “What are you doing? More of your scribbling?”

“This isn’t scribbling. These are plans, regulations, blueprints,” Gawain said, exasperated by the uneducated half-elf. “These are the basics for the camp—that’s why I had you watch over them.”

Amber picked up a sheet covered in symbols and numbers, staring at it for a long time before scoffing. “What a mess. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

Gawain sighed. “You’re holding it upside down.”

Amber looked innocent. “I’ve never seen your blueprints before. They’re harder to understand than magic formulas. How am I supposed to know which side is up?”

“That’s why you need to learn. Knowledge is important.” Gawain sighed again. It didn’t surprise him that Amber couldn’t understand these things. She was just a petty thief, raised without formal education, taught only by her foster father and mentor through hands-on experience in petty crimes. Coupled with her inexplicable affinity for shadows, she was more than capable of surviving and adventuring in this world. But learning culture? She neither had the conditions nor the need. Her literacy barely extended to basic reading and writing. The blueprints he drew were filled with strange terms, data, and shorthand marks—if he handed them to Hetty, she’d probably be just as baffled.

Thinking of Hetty, Gawain looked Amber in the eye. “I told you to spend your free time learning from Rebecca or Hetty. Seems like you didn’t take that seriously.”

“That’s boring, and I don’t like dealing with nobles,” Amber rolled her eyes. “Besides, your great-great-great-granddaughter is so busy, she wouldn’t have time for me. Rebecca’s a bit more relaxed, but she keeps trying to throw fireballs at me.”

Gawain smirked. “You don’t like dealing with nobles—but you seem pretty comfortable dealing with me.”

Amber was honest. “I always thought you didn’t seem like a noble.”

“You’re nothing like the elves I imagined either.” Gawain said this as he began tidying the papers, stacking them neatly to one side. Then he took out the crystals and laid them out on the desk.

Amber muttered, “I’m just a half-elf, picked up by humans. How would I know what proper elves are like? Hey, you’re not writing today? You’re going to study those stones?”

After confirming the crystals had no magical power and that Gawain had no plans to sell them, Amber downgraded them from “crystals” to just “stones” in her mind.

Gawain looked at the half-elf with a bit of a headache. “If you could just be a little quieter while I work, I’d appreciate it.”

“Pfft, no fun. You study your stones then.” With that, she flickered and seemed to dissolve into the air, but Gawain could still sense her standing nearby, watching him curiously.

Well, as long as she stopped babbling, he didn’t mind.

Gawain focused on the crystals before him.

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

He had taken them out multiple times on the road to examine them closely. Back in Tansang Town, he even had Hetty try to probe their interiors using magical resonance, but nothing came of it. Especially with the magic resonance—Hetty admitted these crystals had nothing to do with magical artifacts. When magic was applied to them, not a ripple stirred, as if they were just ordinary stones.

But these crystals had been treasured by Gawain Cecil seven hundred years ago, locked away in a mithril safe, with permanent preservation services purchased in the mithril vault. Could they really be just some unremarkable stones?

Gawain could only boldly assume these crystals had some special qualities—not magical, but something else.

Or perhaps current magical theory simply couldn’t explain them.

He set aside the clearly broken crystal fragments and picked up the intact one.

The shattered crystals had revealed some of their internal crystalline structure, but it was hard to observe accurately with the naked eye. Once Hetty’s magic lab was built and equipped with a crystal resonator, they could try examining the physical structure. But this intact piece… he was hesitant to tamper with it.

Who knew if the resonator might damage some kind of “information” inside the crystal?

He held the crystal up to the light.

Along its clear, beautiful facets, light danced and shimmered. As he shifted the angle, each face and edge displayed different colors and light patterns.

This was a crystal with extremely precise geometric form, crafted with advanced techniques. From tests with the broken pieces, Gawain had confirmed their astonishing strength—they were extremely hard and, unlike typical brittle crystals, didn’t shatter easily. They could even scratch mithril ingots effortlessly, with no wear on their tips.

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

After observing it in sunlight for a while, Gawain pricked his finger and smeared a bit of blood on the crystal’s surface before the wound healed.

Of course, it did nothing.

He thought he heard a half-elf stifling a laugh…

Blocking out Amber, Gawain gripped the crystal and fell into thought. The world was full of mysteries he couldn’t explain—these unknown crystals, memories that vanished without reason, a gas giant-like “sun” whose nature was unlike any normal gas giant, and those “monitoring satellites” still hanging in the sky, their purpose and origin unknown…

As his mind wandered to the “monitoring satellites,” he suddenly felt a faint warmth emanating from the crystal in his hand.

At first, he thought it was his imagination. Then the crystal began to tremble gently, its pale blue core glowing faintly.

Warmth, vibration, and light—these three signs together couldn’t be a coincidence.

Gawain stared at the crystal in shock. Before he could grab his pen to record the change, a voice suddenly echoed in his mind—

Not a voice exactly, but more like information flooding directly into his consciousness. He “understood” its message:

“Spiritual frequency reset. Reestablishing connection.”

Then his awareness wavered.

It was as if something abruptly intruded into his thoughts. Data streams not his own flowed in—but they weren’t hostile. After a brief moment of confusion, he felt an inexplicable familiarity with them.

These “familiar data streams” quickly formed clear images in his mind.

Scenes appeared—looking down at the land from high above.

At first, Gawain’s reaction wasn’t joy or shock, but a stunned “Holy crap.”

“Holy crap, am I about to go to the sky again?!”

Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

But soon he realized it wasn’t what he feared. He was still sitting in his chair, his soul hadn’t left his body to be yanked up as a sync satellite. His senses were normal, and he had full control of his body. The extra image was just an overlay in his mind.

That calmed him instantly, and excitement took over. He focused on the image in his mind.

Only then did he notice something strange—the image was blurry and distorted, as if filtered through a strange lens. The colors were weirdly distributed, like a thermal imaging map smeared into blobs. He could only roughly make out features like mountains, forests, and rivers. The image was confined to a small area.

It was the northern side of the Dark Mountains, near the newly developed lands of New Cecil’s domain. From above, he could vaguely see the Whitewater River, the western forest, and even a faint shadow of the camp.

The image couldn’t be zoomed or expanded.

(End of chapter)