128 Three Pines Ruins

Honestly speaking, the Black Ruins weren't entirely black.

A lot of them were. Many buildings were made of some strange smooth black material. Even after time and weather had taken their tolls on them, roughly half the town remained intact. Walking into the nearest little hut-like structure at the gate, Remian found the insides dry and almost dusty.

In other words, the roof didn't even leak.

There was a good bit of broken furniture, though. Twisted metal and old wood chips hinted at a desk by the large window. Was this some sort of guard house or inspection booth?

Meanwhile, the floor, rather than black, held broken white tiles. The roads outside were gray stone. The trees and bushes around were a mix of greens and reds. There were flowers and creepers growing wildly everywhere. Some small critters even made their homes in the ruins, and they too added color to the scene.

Mindy touched the black wall, sniffed, and said, "You know, now that I think about it, this feels like pencil lead. It's more solid and much stronger, but it smells and feels like that."

"Is it a kind of metal, or a kind of stone?" Remian asked.

"Is it obsidian?" Mindy suggested.

Remian picked up a broken piece of black wall, and felt it. "Too smooth. Obsidian is usually very sharp when it shatters. Some people like to make weapons and cutting tools with it. But this… it's something else."

They went through the street, peeking into the buildings to either side. Some of them still had shelves and worktops made of black stuff. Mindy observed, "These look like shoplots. This was probably their market street."

"That makes sense." Remian glanced about. "Those poles there… they look like lamp posts, similar to what Ecclesia uses. For a town this size to have lamp posts on the streets… they must have been incredibly advanced compared to the rest of us now."

"Or maybe this particular town was especially rich?" Mindy suggested.

"Why would it be? It's not some beachside vacation spot." Remian glanced about. "I don't see anything nearby that would make a town in this location rich. There's no elemental mine, no mana lode, no large factories or anything that looks like tourist attractions… this just looks like some quiet hillside town."

Mindy glanced about, thinking. "You know how there's a few black ruins scattered across the hillside? Spread out far and wide?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I think maybe the people here had plantations on the hillside. Depending on what they planted, it could have been very valuable." Mindy still hadn't given up on the 'rich town' theory.

"Let's go take a look, then." Remian suggested. "See what's growing there now. Some of those plants might have grown wild and spread around."

"Later." Mindy retreated. "First, I want to see their magic."

"Their magic?"

"The black cities' legendary forbidden magics. I want to know what was so great about it and why it was all forbidden."

They went in farther, discovering oddities left and right. Most of the time, all they found were pieces or wreckage, but on occasion, they'd glimpse something intact, but neither of them would have any idea what it was.

"Don't touch touch any of them, or investigate them in depth for the moment. There's a reason why the adventurers are setting up camp." Remian advised her.

"How much time do we have here?" Mindy asked.

"Not much. I was only planning a quick run-through. We still need to find Darian." Remian considered. "Ten minutes, perhaps?"

"Well, let's see if we can find some traces of their magic in ten minutes."

Remian didn't think they could, but in fact, they did. It was actually a pair of sharp devices facing each other in a shaded corner of a hall covered with white dust…

Mindy sniffed. "That smells like calcium. Bone dust?"

"Two weapons facing each other covered in bone dust." Remian said softly. "Ages ago, we might have come up upon two dead bodies, their weapons having killed each other."

"So… what happened to the black cities… it might have been a civil war." Mindy guessed.

"Maybe. All we can guess from this for now is that two people killed each other in combat."

"That, and the bodies were never moved, their weapons never retrieved. Everyone else, therefore, must have been too preoccupied." Mindy pointed out. "Doesn't that mean something big was going on?"

"Something big, yes."

The weapons in question were like short halberds, or perhaps swords with excessively long handles. The bladed parts were two feet in length, slightly curved and double-edged. The handles were almost as long, formed of a lighter version of the black material used in the walls, twisting down on itself like a sort of stiff rope, ending in a pommel.

There were runes etched into the weapons. Different runes on the different blades, handles, and even the butts of both pommels. "Do you recognize any of them?"

"No, but I don't sense any magic left in them, so…" Mindy picked one up. "Think we should send these to a specialist to study?"

"What for? So that they'd try to steal it for themselves, or announce to the world that there's a fresh ruin here waiting for everybody and their uncles to come plunder? No, we better keep this site and these weapons a secret." Remian shrugged. "I'd rather study them myself."

"Me too." Mindy said.

"Just be careful. We don't know what those runes do. Whatever you do, don't point that thing at me if you want to test it out."

Mindy snorted. "I don't think they're too complicated. These are personnel weapons, after all, not doomsday devices. What kind of runes would you put on a personal blade like this? Attack, defense, weapon-enhancement… something like that?"

"Pretty much." Remian agreed. "But… don't test it while there are other people around. I'd suggest at least a hundred meters of open space and either sheer rock directly in front of you after that, or miles of empty sky."

"Either of those are easy enough on this mountain." Mindy mused.

He took one, she took the other, and then they left the rest for the adventurers to investigate while they took the Red Fang south to search for Darian.

***

Meanwhile, George returned to the farm tired after a long trip from Fal'Herim.

"Bang!" a little girl said, pointing at him a toy rifle that looked suspiciously well-made and well-balanced.

"Oof! I'm dead!" George smacked his chest theatrically and slumped over, leaning his head to one side and sticking out his tongue. "Blehh."

"Eriane, come eat your dinner!" her mother called her.

The little girl laughed and ran off.

"Mrs. Vin." George approached Eriane's mother.

"George." Lisa Vin nodded to him amiably.

"I need to talk to you and your husband about what the children are learning." George mentioned.

"You're one of those children too, George. You should be in school like the rest of them."

George shook his head. "Maybe in some other life. Right now, I need to keep us all safe. The frontier is a dangerous place. On that note, you have been teaching them weapons and combat, right?"

"Right. You're welcome to join us if you like."

"I… would like to take a look, first." George paused. "We need to be prepared for anything."

"That sounds ominous."

"I don't mean to scare anyone, but… I don't want our people to have to live in fear of the Wilds." George said. "If there was a way to make everyone strong enough that nobody needs to be afraid of the random Wilds any more…"

"You want everyone to be able to fight off a random Wild?"

"At least a Tier 3." George nodded. "I'm thinking maybe it would be fine for everyone to wear armor and carry weapons all the time."

"That's just encouraging violence." Lisa frowned. "Are you trying to raise bandits?"

"Uncontrolled violence is bad. But martial arts training should begin with control. This includes discipline, and righteous conduct, doesn't it?"

"I don't know. A lot of these martial artists seem to behave like bullies in the end."

"A well-trained one shouldn't. That shouldn't be what martial arts is about. If it's all just about strength in the end, our world would turn into a world of tyranny. But there is such a thing as a code of honor."

"You mean, like knights? Some knights behave badly too."

"Then it's an issue of teaching, isn't it? So teach them. That's what teachers do."

Lisa fell silent for a long minute. Then, "I want the support of the Adventurers Guild. If I invoke a punishment, the Guild has to back me up on it. That means, if I ground somebody, the Guild grounds them too, no missions, no bounties, nada."

"That's fine." George nodded.

"And we need funding. If you want everyone armed and armored, then we can make it a standardized uniform… that might even instill in them a form of patriotism…"

"Uniforms are rejected. The frontier is free." George shook his head. "But we'll make weapons and armor readily available from the Guild at reasonable prices, and offer better opportunities to earn more points at lower Tiers. Also, we can offer points as rewards for school achievements. Heck, give them a few points for finishing their homework if you have to, but one way or the other, they need to earn their own weapons and armor."

"Points for finishing homework sounds good." Lisa nodded. "But surely you can make the armor at least look similar enough to have some sort of uniformity?"

"I'll talk with what's left of the forge. It should be reasonable for items coming from the same manufacturer to sport the same overall design." George allowed. "Especially if we start seriously mass-producing Tier 4 leather armor."

"Can the forge really manage that? I mean, I heard almost everybody left."

"We'll have to offer armor-making jobs through the Guild too. In fact, we should offer a lot more jobs of a lot more kinds through the Guild. Everyone can be an Adventurer. The more people join up and help out, the better off we'll all be."

"And what should we do when adults ask if they themselves can join in the classes, whether to learn combat skills or earn points?"

"I say let them. Everybody needs to grow stronger."

"They might feel rather embarrassed about it, though."

"Isn't that motivation for them to train harder, then? Not that anybody's forcing them. We'll just make it possible and very attractive and just mention publicly that there is no age limit. At all."