Chapter 257: From the Bygone Age (2)

The part it touched began to erode, the red receding from the point of contact while the neighboring areas remained intact. Ravian did not rush to expand the flame. He stopped after removing a shallow layer, inspected the spot, then resumed working from the same edge.

The process was slower than what he had done in the camp, but he was not trying to dispose of everything this time. His attention remained fixed on the boundaries emerging beneath the shell until a small, smooth area appeared, different from the surrounding surface.

He extinguished the flame and tilted his head to view it from another angle.

What had appeared was not another protrusion in the stone. It was a flat surface, its edge extending beneath the part that had not yet eroded, with a fragment of an engraved symbol on the exposed area.

‘I knew there was something inside you…’

He returned the flame to the adjacent spot, allowing it to advance along the edge rather than eat into the surface he had uncovered. With each section he removed, the smooth area expanded and more portions of the inscriptions emerged, until the shape of what lay inside was too clear to remain a mere possibility.

It was an engraved stone tablet, enclosed on all sides by the red shell. Ravian turned the stone inside the box and removed the covering piece by piece, stopping whenever he needed to establish where the shell ended and the tablet began, until the last red fragments disappeared and only what they had concealed remained.

He lifted his finger and extinguished the flame, then stared at the tablet in silence.

It looked like a piece of an ancient relic, but the inscriptions across its surface had not worn away like the edges surrounding them. A strange glimmer clung to it, appearing along the lines and in the spaces between them without disappearing when Ravian moved it or shielded it from the light with his hand.

There was no illustration to explain its purpose, nor a title in a common language to help whoever found it identify it. Engraved writing covered its surface, and the more Ravian studied its arrangement, the clearer the nature of the language before him became.

‘Prohibian.’

He recognized some of the symbols, but their arrangement was far more complex than any text he had read in the reference books. The only thing he could think to compare it to was the book that had appeared before him under the name Sovereign Pride.

‘Examine it now.’

[Examination of the exposed contents in progress…]

Ravian left the tablet inside the box and drew his hand back to his side. He finally had a chance to learn what he had bought, but his eyes continued moving over the inscriptions as he waited.

At first, he tried to identify the boundaries between the lines, only to find that some symbols belonged to more than one construction. What seemed to end one group also formed the beginning of the next, while a line separating two symbols connected to a third farther away, making it harder than he had expected to determine where to begin reading.

He used Absolute Focus to follow those relationships without losing track of one as he moved to another. He had no interpretation of the text yet, but his ability to understand the language allowed him to distinguish what concerned space from what concerned time. Then he saw symbols he knew were associated with flame, and others with gravity.

He raised an eyebrow slightly.

The presence of these meanings in a single text was enough to deepen his interest. The tablet might explain different phenomena, or it might be a record using the names of Laws without teaching the reader how to use them. The individual symbols were not enough to distinguish between those possibilities.

He returned to the first group and tried to read it within the context the others were beginning to reveal. He said nothing, remaining seated as his eyes followed the inscriptions, while the meaning he had failed to grasp by looking at each symbol alone grew closer to his understanding.

It was a complete construction, rather than scattered words gathered on an ancient stone. What had begun as an attempt to identify the subject of the text became an attempt to understand what it actually said, without him noticing the moment he crossed that boundary.

A new window appeared.

[Examination complete.]

Before he could shift his eyes to it, more windows opened over the tablet, obscuring part of the inscriptions.

[Warning: Stop reading the engraved text immediately.]

[Warning: Do not attempt to interpret the symbols or complete their meaning.]

[Warning: Look away from the relic.]

His hand jerked against the edge of the table, but he did not reach toward the tablet. He closed his eyes immediately as the warnings continued to appear.

[Warning: Resistance to the outer shell does not provide protection against the knowledge contained within.]

[Warning: Stop attempting to comprehend the text.]

‘I’ve stopped! What’s happening?’

He did not look at the inscriptions again. The group he had almost understood before the warning appeared remained in his mind, and he tried to turn his attention away from it rather than complete the relationship between its parts. But he realized that turning his attention away now would not erase what he had already read.

‘Show me the examination results.’

Some of the windows disappeared, replaced by a longer one. Ravian cautiously opened his eyes, fixing his gaze on the words the System displayed.

[Classification: Forbidden Cosmic Relic.]

[Rank: Second.]

[Type: Knowledge.]

[Origin: The Bygone Age.]

His back stiffened in the chair, and he read the rank again before moving to the next line.

[Affiliation: No individual Taboo.]

[Source of reinforcement: The powers of Prohibition themselves.]

[The relic contains knowledge concerning several well-known Laws. It grants no direct power; its value lies in the knowledge it holds.]

Ravian remained motionless for a moment. He could not imagine the power the Second Rank represented from what he had experienced so far, but the archive he had searched had offered clear accounts only as far as the Third Rank. He had not expected to hold something beyond that in his hands.

He drew a slow breath, then requested more information.

[Relics of this type carry priceless information. Nations fight over them for centuries without hesitation.]

His gaze moved to the sides of the window rather than the tablet beneath it. He had paid two thousand five hundred gold coins and thought he would have to discover its use before judging the price, only to find he had bought something whose value could not be measured by the sum he had spent at the auction.

Layla’s face returned to his mind, along with her repeated questions about the stone and his ability to touch it.

‘Did you know what was inside?’

He had no answer.

‘But why are you warning me not to read it?’ he asked the System. ‘If it’s a knowledge relic, what exactly does it contain?’

The next words appeared, and as soon as he read the beginning, he stopped thinking about Layla or the gold.

[The text engraved on the relic is a complete page of the Golden Scriptures.]

Ravian’s eyes did not move from the line.

The Golden Scriptures he had searched for in the archive, from which the System had told him to acquire a phrase by touching its carrier, without looking into its contents or trying to understand them.

He had never learned what they looked like or found a sample he could recognize if it appeared before him. Now an entire page lay beneath the window he was staring at, and he had begun reading it before learning what it was.

‘A complete page…?’

[The Golden Scriptures are the only First-Rank relic.]

[Legends describe them as the foundation of the world, the essence of spiritual powers, and the source of all Laws.]

Ravian recalled the symbols he had associated with space and time, then stopped before trying to remember them more clearly.

The tablet itself was a Second-Rank relic, while the page engraved on it came from a relic from which he had never expected to find even a single phrase so easily.

He reached for the lid and closed the box without looking at its contents.

The strange glimmer was the last thing he saw at the edge of the window, but closing the lid did not keep him from remembering where he had reached in the text.

‘Tell me the warning came in time.’

One window remained before him.

[The attempt to comprehend the contents of the Golden Scriptures has already begun.]

[Stopping the reading alone is no longer sufficient.]

Ravian read it with his hand pressed against the lid, finally understanding why the System had continued warning him after he looked away from the tablet.