Night Ranger

Chapter 346: Taboo Metal

Translator: Translation Nation Editor: Translation Nation

Marvin's words bewildered the Vampire.

Clearly, that guy didn't know about the [K series] metals.

Marvin didn't mind. Gwyn was currently under the pressure of the Pale Hand's assassination. The only thing the Vampire wanted was to get out of here as fast as possible and return to the Bright Side's headquarters to inform Grand Duke William.

This was perfect for Marvin; the less Gwyn cared about the resources, the better. After all, Saruha was only so big, so there might not be enough K metal.

Marvin thought about it and said, "You wait here, I need at most fifteen minutes. After fifteen minutes, I'll take you to the find the hidden way out."

Gwyn nodded in acquiescence.

Marvin used Stealth and entered the small warehouse.

Although the storehouse seemed to be in ruins, the constructs patrolling in the surroundings were still quite numerous.

But Marvin was different from before. With over 200 points in Stealth, even Legend Wizards' detection spells wouldn't find him, let alone these small constructs' probes.

He passed by the constructs undetected.

He kept looking around the small building, finding that both the main entrance and the side door were sealed. There was apparently no way to enter.

Marvin could only jump to the roof to find a roof window.

'Thankfully it's not locked. If I broke the window, it might have attracted a bunch of constructs and alarmed that crazy one that only knows how to kill!'

Marvin landed gracefully in the warehouse.

He could faintly hear some sounds.

Vivid cries of distress that seemed to be coming from ancient times entered Marvin's mind!

'The legends are true, K series metals had an astonishing ability to absorb sound.'

'These sounds are probably the howls of the Ancient Gnomes from when disaster struck.'

'What happened at the time?'

Marvin had a solemn face and couldn't help but let his imagination roam.

Even someone with as much knowledge of Feinan as him didn't know about everything that happened in history.

After all, the information spread officially was only this much, so he had to explore many things himself after the Great Calamity to learn more.

The Great Calamity caused widespread destruction, leaving little information pertaining to the ancient eras. Occasionally there would be a few Gnome vestiges unearthed by people which would reveal a minute amount of information. If he wanted to be clear about everything, then the best way might be to go to the City of Knowledge.

But before he transmigrated, he had never heard of any player able to enter the City of Knowledge to get the information he wanted. Even the players with the qualifications of an apprentice who swore to spend their lives as scholars couldn't get the information they wanted. Their rank was too low and they didn't have the right to hear about it.

....

The destruction of the Ancient Gnomes was naturally very shocking.

However, Marvin's willpower was strong, even stronger now that he had the Spirit Armband. After a few seconds, those sounds disappeared.

He glanced around the warehouse.

Although this warehouse wasn't big, there were piles of boxes of raw materials!

Marvin knew this place was where the Gnomes piled their unique [K metal], because of the complete lack of any markings or signs outside this warehouse. And besides K metal, every warehouse had a sign explaining what kind of material was stored inside.

K metal wasn't just one type of metal, but was in fact a series.

It was said that during the Wild Era, the Night Monarch led Feinan's people to fight their way out and beat those wild monsters formed from primal chaos. The remaining people began to divide the territories and the puny Ancient Gnomes asked the Night Monarch for the Pambo Seashore, this desolate land.

The other races were shocked by the Ancient Gnomes' choice. At the time, the Gnome Race had a very important personage, a Great Prophet powerhouse. This was his idea, and the Gnome Race obediently complied.

They found countless resources in there, and the Great Prophet relied on his wisdom to fully display his race's talents. Soon, a unique country was established in the Pambo Seashore.

That was Feinan's 1st Era. The Post-Primal Chaos Era!

It could be seen how powerful the Gnome empire was from the ruins they left behind.

After many excavations of the Ancient Gnomes' vestiges, people gradually understood that the fall of the Gnomes started with a kind of metal.

The story was quite terrible, and after it was shared on the players' forums, it was considered one of the unresolved disasters of Feinan.

The story happened around the end of the Gnome empire. The Great Prophet was about to pass away, and at the time, they found a strange mineral resource in the seafloor of the Pambo Sea. At the time, the Gnome empire was already rich to a certain degree and even had some things similar to submarines.

They had established a mining platform in the seafloor of the coastal waters in order to dig deep below.

But this excavation didn't go smoothly. It was said that a lot of Gnomes died while building the mining platform, and although the Gnome empire kept throwing brilliant engineers at it, keeping the platform stable was very difficult.

Even though they managed to stabilize the platform later on, a lot of unfathomable accidents happened.

The Great Prophet was about to die and he didn't want to have to take care of this matter.

But with the deaths of so many brilliant engineers, he had no choice but to personally move his ill body and take a look at it himself.

When he saw the wondrous metal being extracted, his face changed.

He passed his order: stop this project, and don't allow any Gnome to extract this series of mysterious metals.

Even though this series of metals did have very magical abilities.

Even if the high ranked people of the Gnome empire were shocked, they still followed the Great Prophet's order and hastily closed down this engineering project.

But the greedy Gnomes would easily forget their ancestors' lessons. About fifty years after the Great Prophet's death, they re-opened the project and unbridledly started gathering the metal.

But they hadn't thought that this metal would cause a disaster for them.

That's right, this was the metal Marvin was after, the K metal.

This metal was rumored to be cursed. This curse did not only target an individual, but instead targeted the entire greedy Gnome empire.

In the Post-Primal Chaos Era, the communication between all the major races was still underdeveloped.

It wasn't until the High Elves firmly established their civilization and began to travel in all directions that they found out that the once-arrogant Gnome empire had already suffered destruction.

And only few people knew about the rumored K metal.

Marvin, as a transmigrator, was one of them.

...

Marvin knew little about the details of the K series metals. But from doing a few secret quests linked to the Gnome empire's destruction, the players found out that the fall of the empire was really linked to the K metals. But it wasn't purely these metals being cursed. Rather, these metals would make a few lifeforms envious.

Naturally, these so-called curses wouldn't be able to suddenly collapse the Gnome empire. Marvin wasn't superstitious, so how could he be afraid of K metals after going through twelve curses?

He also knew that in the game, K series metals were split into three kinds. They were casually named K1, K2, and K3 by the players and were different from ordinary metals. They had extraordinary natural properties: [Magic Penetration], [Divine Restraint], and [Unbreakable].

When smelting weapons, only a bit of the K metals was needed to add these properties!

It was normally very hard to give these properties to weapons.

In all of Feinan, weapons with Magic Penetration were very rare, those with Divine Restraint were even rarer, and as for Unbreakable... those were almost nonexistent.

Only a genuine Master Enchanter could maybe manage to make a weapon with Magic Penetration or Divine Restraint during his lifetime.

Otherwise, Marvin wouldn't have been so excited when obtaining the pair of [Azure Leaf]s.

It was an incredible pair of daggers, to be able to have both Magic Penetration and Divine Restraint while still being light as a feather, all without the use of any K metal. Only an outstanding Master Enchanter could create this kind of weapon.

Most people would spend their lifetimes without ever seeing such exceptional weapons.

But this common sense was broken in the face of K metal, which even the Pearl Tower's Scholars called [Taboo Metal].

Marvin knew that if these K metals saw the light of day, they would bring about a storm.

This was a trump card!

After the Great Calamity, Chaos Magic Power would run rampant across Feinan. Many Wizards would fail the willpower test and turn into magical walking corpses.

And the Gods would also send their subordinates to Feinan.

Magic Spells and Divine Spells would become mainstream in the future world.

And K metal was the perfect nemesis.

This would be one of the most powerful cards to handle the chaos monsters and the Gods!

...

Marvin was recalling all he knew about the strength of the K metals while plundering unabashedly.

In the entire warehouse, most of the boxes were in fact empty. Most of the K metals had apparently already been used.

Fortunately, Marvin found some in a corner.

In total, he obtained eight small boxes of K metals, among which there were three boxes of K1 and three boxes of K2, which could give Magic Penetration and Divine Restraint.

And there were only two boxes of K3 which had the [Unbreakable] property.

Each box only had a fist-sized piece of K metal, but Marvin was already satisfied.

These K metals had been refined, and their purity was very high. If they were used to smelt hidden weapons and used at critical time, it would definitely catch his future enemies off guard!

...

After fifteen minutes, Marvin sneaked out of the warehouse.

Gwyn sighed in relief.

He wasn't curious about what was in the warehouse, and only urged Marvin to take him out of Saruha.

Marvin didn't hesitate and led the way, circumventing the Arsenal and avoiding a few constructs, before finally opening a sewer's manhole.

"This is the secret path you talked about?"

Gwyn frowned, displeasure apparent on his face.

Marvin couldn't help but roll his eyes. "Is it important to stay clean when running for your life?"

After saying this, he ignored Gwyn and went in first.