Chapter 118: Discovery of New Mana Vein....

Chapter 118: Chapter 118: Discovery of New Mana Vein....

"The source?" Leo asked, his voice low.

"The source of this mana. Possibly...," Elly replied.

Leo fell into deep thought. No one moved because none of them could even make out what stood directly in front of them.

Elly’s hologram hovered steadily in the air beside them. The chamber had fallen into a silence so complete it felt almost physical, broken only by the faint static flicker of her projection.

When Leo didn’t answer right away, Elly repeated herself. "I believe what we’ve found is the source of this new type of mana signature."

The dark shape at the center of the chamber remained exactly where it was, indifferent to their presence, swallowed by shadow. Their flames, no matter how brightly they burned, did nothing at all to illuminate it.

Leo turned back toward Elly. "So the source is here. But what exactly did you detect?"

"I detected a highly concentrated version of the same mana signature," Elly stated.

"Can you identify what it actually is?"

"Not yet," Elly replied.

"Then why did you tell us this was the source?"

"Because the mana concentration increases the closer we get to it, and my scans show it’s all gathered in a single location. The ambient mana in the air is circulating around this one point." Elly gestured toward the darkness as she continued. "Every formation throughout the surrounding chambers is directing energy toward that same spot."

At the mention of the formations, Shen’s attention sharpened immediately. He tried to move closer, stumbling slightly in the dark before finally finding the chamber wall with his hand.

Elly was still processing, still working through her data even as she spoke.

"I initially assumed the formations here were separate, independent preservation arrays," she said. "But after comparing their patterns against the readings from this chamber, I now believe they’re all interconnected."

Her expression shifted subtly as she laid out her theory, something between certainty and unease.

Shen ran his hand over the wall’s surface, and his formation detector flickered faintly to life, its glow barely visible in the dark.

He traced the patterns carved into the blackstone slowly, following each line with his palm and fingertips, one after another.

His eyes sharpened with focus as he studied them. "These formations..."

Leo, watching him closely, prompted, "What about them?"

Shen didn’t answer right away. Instead, he moved further along the wall, checking the arrangement of the patterns from several different angles before finally speaking again.

He looked out into the darkness of the chamber. "These formations don’t just function as preservation arrays. They’ve been arranged so that whatever’s being preserved gets pulled inward — converged toward a single point."

"Converged?" Leo repeated, momentarily lost. Then it clicked. "You mean... toward the source?"

"Yes." Shen nodded, glancing around at whatever he could make out in the gloom. "The entire formation network is centered on that thing Elly mentioned. Whatever’s sitting beneath that location."

Leo looked around, taking in as much of the space as he could. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning this entire chamber was built around it," Shen said.

Leo nodded slowly. "Like the lightning vault, then?"

"Similar," Shen said. "Same underlying principle, at least. But the formations here are completely different in execution."

"The lightning vault’s mana well was surrounded by formations designed to conduct mana and channel elemental energy outward. Here, it’s reversed — everything converges toward the source instead of radiating out from it. And..."

Shen paused for a long moment before continuing.

"And it’s colder here. Quieter, too. That’s probably tied to whatever type of mana this is."

Elly, having finally completed her scan analysis, spoke up again. "Master, I can give you a clear representation now."

Her holographic projection flared and expanded outward as she spoke. Lines of light stretched into a grid, and slowly, the surrounding chamber began rendering itself in real time.

The walls, the corridors, the chamber itself, every formation, every dimension of the space they stood in — all of it took shape piece by piece.

The hologram continued building, though the very center of the chamber was still resolving. Slowly, something emerged there — a massive circular structure, buried deep beneath layers of darkness.

"So that’s what’s down there," Leo murmured.

"Yes. Based on my current scans," Elly confirmed.

The whole party gathered around the projection, every one of them stunned into silence. Even Rook wore an expression of genuine bewilderment.

Hugh leaned in closer. "How deep does it go? Any idea?"

Elly’s holographic head shook. "Unknown."

"Size, then?"

"Also unknown. The surrounding mana is interfering with deep-range scanning."

Leo studied the massive structure closely, trying to piece it together with everything he’d glimpsed so far. It resembled some kind of stone basin — that much he could make out. The lower portion vanished entirely beneath several thick layers of blackstone.

Unlike the lightning mana well, there was no silver surface here, no shimmer of liquid, nothing that could reasonably be called fluid at all.

The structure simply stood there in the darkness, ancient and unmoving, as though it had been waiting for something.

Leo looked around at the barely visible faces of his teammates. "Now that we can actually see the shape of it, even a little — what do you all think?"

No one answered immediately. No one seemed to know quite what to say.

Shen studied the projection for several long seconds, clearly lost in thought.

Finally he muttered, "The formations really are centered on that thing in the middle." He turned toward the hologram. "Elly, can you zoom in on the central section?"

Elly nodded and enlarged the center of the projection.

Shen pointed to several sections around the chamber and the structure itself.

"This is just a guess," he said slowly, "but I don’t think these are random preservation arrays. I think they’re all part of one massive interconnected system. Possibly..."

His voice trailed off, uncertainty creeping into his tone.

Leo pressed him. "Possibly what?"

"Possibly containing it. Or protecting it. I honestly can’t say which." Shen shook his head. "We just don’t have enough information yet."

Leo nodded slowly, accepting that for now.

"Well," he said, "we’ll have to find out, then."

With that, he activated his forge sight and started walking toward the center structure alone.

The moment Leo got close, a system chime rang out.

[Ding~]

[Mana Well detected.]

Leo froze in place.

Elly pulled the notification forward and displayed it on the larger projection for everyone else to see.

The whole party stared at it in a daze, silence settling over the chamber once more.

"It really is another mana well," Leo muttered.

Then a second line appeared beneath the first.

[Ding~]

[Mana Type: Death]

They’d only just begun to recover from the first shock when this new notification appeared.

Everyone froze all over again, a fresh wave of cold sweeping down their spines. The word death, sitting there so plainly, felt unbearably heavy.

Leo stared at the notification for a long moment, then looked back at the structure, then over at his teammates, all of whom wore the same stunned expression.

He found himself recalling everything they’d passed through to get here — the preserved remains, the watchful skeletons, the strange formations, the cold, the unnatural silence.

All of it clicked into place at once, forming a picture that finally made sense.

"So that’s what all of this was," Rook muttered, apparently arriving at the same conclusion.

"The unidentified mana signature I detected earlier," Elly added, "was coming directly from this structure."

Leo turned his forge sight back toward the structure at the center of the chamber and studied it more closely. He could make out extensive wear from the passage of time, layers of dust coating every surface — and, strangely, patches of something that looked almost like grass growing across it. Though calling it grass felt wrong somehow; he genuinely wasn’t sure the word even applied. What kind of plant, he wondered, could take root and grow in a zone saturated with concentrated death mana?

Without quite meaning to, he muttered aloud, "I wonder how long this thing has been sitting here like this."

Elly began analyzing immediately.

"The exact age of the mana well cannot be determined with certainty," she said, pausing briefly before continuing. "However, based on the surrounding formations and the preserved condition of the chamber, this structure appears to have existed for an extremely long time. It doesn’t belong to this era, much like the lightning well."

Leo nodded slowly. "So, thousands of years, then."

"Possibly more than that," Elly said, giving her holographic head a small shake. "I can’t confirm an exact duration."

"The mana signature," she continued, her voice steady and clinical, "is consistent with everything we’ve observed. The cold, the sound dampening, the formations lining the corridors — Death Mana affects its entire surrounding environment. And it’s been doing so for a very long time."

Leo took a few more steps toward the structure, drawing closer.

Another notification panel appeared, unbidden.

[Ding~]

[Death Mana Vein detected.]

No one was particularly surprised by this one — they’d already known a mana well existed here, so a vein feeding it only made sense.

A second vein. A second well. Running quietly beneath the very same fortress as the first.

Then a third notification materialized, almost like an afterthought. Leo felt a distinct sense of déjà vu — the same sequence had played out back in the lightning vault, too.

[Ding~]

[Guild Facility Registration: Mana Well detected.]

[Tier: ??? — insufficient data.]

[Register to Crown’s Domain? Yes / No.]

A near-identical prompt to the one they’d seen with the lightning mana well, almost word for word.

Leo made sure to display every notification for the rest of the party to see as well.

"Well," Leo said after a moment, "I suppose this isn’t necessarily a bad thing." He selected yes. "Register it to the Crown’s Domain as a guild facility."

[Ding~]

[Congratulations. The guild’s foundation has been strengthened by the presence of a mana vein.]

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