377 The Lost Civilization (1/2)

Chapter 377: The Lost Civilization

Translator: Kris_LiuEditor: Vermillion

The cave was very dark. The only dim light Lucien could see was from the noctilucent moss. However, with his Moonlight blood power, which the Church called Blessing, Lucien could see very well in the darkness.

In Lucien's dark pupil, there was the vague figure of Angwoods, flickering and shivering like a candle which had come to its end. Finally, it went out.

”The Lord… shall be back?” Lucien repeated in low voice. This was what he found in Angwoods's deepest memory except for its boundless anger and hatred.

When Lucien found this piece of information in Angwoods's memory, he could feel Angwoods's great respect and excitement.

Lucien wondered if something horrible was really going on in the World of Souls, if the real immortal would wake up and come back.

Of course, the Lord that Angwoods referred to was by no means the God of Truth followed by the Church. Zie should be the God believed in by the senior-rank specters in the World of Souls. However, Lucien had no idea whether this was a true god or just some kind of abstract representative, or if it was like the ancestor of the vampires—Alterna.

Lucien's power at reading one's memory was nowhere close to that of Thanatos, and therefore, this ambiguous piece of information was all that he could get. The only thing that he got to know from it was that he had to take some immediate actions, or something very horrible would definitely happen to the main world.

Meanwhile, because of the information that Lucien got from Angwoods, he was more reassured with Rhine's words. Yet, Lucien was not going to force himself to complete all the tasks to save the world. After all, he was just a senior-rank mage, and this was something that should at least require the power of a group of legendaries. When it was necessary, Lucien definitely would report this to the Highest Council.

Lucien also got to know that it was Felipe who summoned this senior-rank specter, and right now Felipe had not noticed the existence of the World of Souls and where the summoned specters came from. In Angwoods's deepest memory, there was its contempt for Felipe's arrogance and its wish that another senior-rank named Adol would end up being tortured and killed by a legendary archmage.

According to the general information he got, Lucien guessed that the Hand of Paleness was indeed aware of the existence of the World of Souls, but they chose to keep the information to themselves in order to explore it on their own, however, it was used by the senior-rank archmages only.

A bright cluster of flame grew out of Lucien's palm and completely burnt out the remains of Angwoods. Then, very carefully, Lucien erased all the traces of fighting in this cave, in case some other senior-rank specters would discover what happened there.

Finishing the work, with the assistance of Spy Eye, Lucien proceeded further toward the underground.

In the darkness sprinkled with the dim light spots, Lucien walked in this underground maze for more than ten minutes. Gradually, Lucien felt that the air had become a bit warmer, and then he heard the sound of a river flowing.

Lucien knew that he was already very close to the underground ancient city of the dwarves. He became even more cautious.

Turning around a corner very carefully, what Lucien saw surprised him.

What was in front of him was a huge passage, seven or eight meters high, and twenty or thirty meters wide, and the ground and the walls on either side were built by large gray stone blocks, with black pillars in the middle, supporting the ceiling. From the pillars, the passage was divided into three paths. At a glance, the great sense of grandeur seized Lucien's mind. As the underground passage was already this magnificent, he wondered what would the dwarves' city look like?

According to the historical records, the dwarves of ancient times did not have magic, nor great blood powers!

The noctilucent patches of mosses growing wantonly on both sides of the walls cast a dim light on the passage. Under the dim light, everything looked very blurry and dream-like. In this kind of environment where silence and gloom resided, Lucien felt that, at any moment, a corpse would crawl out, or maybe a ghost would float out.

After checking around using the eyes, Lucien stepped on the passage. Although he tried to be very gentle, his footsteps still echoed and lingered in the empty space while he was walking on the stone passage.

Lucien activated his blood power and accelerated his movement speed. Now his footsteps could not be heard, and Lucien was moving very fast but, at the same time, he made sure that he was still in the detection range of the nine eyes.

Both sides of the passage were lined with a pair of black metal tracks, which appeared to be the track for some special vehicles to transport goods. Lucien sped along them, and soon he saw the exit of the passage.

Lucien slowed down his pace, and from the pictures sent back by the eyes, he could see that in front of him lay a vast, abandoned architectural complex.

The cave was naturally divided into more than a dozen blocks by the rock walls and pillars supporting the roof. The half-collapsed tall stone houses, overgrown with weeds, looked down on streets that had not been occupied for thousands of years.

What made Lucien a bit nervous was that the stone houses were joined by a series of metal pipes, which protruded from any parts of the houses and then connected to the huge metal pipes at the top of the cave. Growing into the cave roof, no one knew where they were going.

Walking through the cold dreadful streets, Lucien could see at times the familiar metal parts such as bearings, springs, pistons, and gears on the ground, as if he had returned to earth and entered a factory.

The corner of his eye saw something glittering in the grass. Lucien bent forward and picked it up. It was a huge steam rifle as thick as a bazooka. The gears were all rusty and corroded, but Lucien could still tell their sophistication. Also, the steam rifle was attached to a high-pressure steam backpack made of steel, with half the size of a human one.

Gently stroking the rusty rifle, Lucien released a sigh, since it represented the loss of an ancient civilization.

Before the development of human beings, the dwarves who were good at all kinds of crafts, had invented many steam engines and built a splendid Steam Civilization.

Although the dwarves were rather short, the huge airships which could cover the sky, the steamboat which could voyage in the Storm Strait and Boundless Ocean, the cannons that could hold several people inside, the powerful steam rifles, and the steel factories and engineering works that released black smoke day and night were just gigantic as if they were designed for dragons.

Dwarves did not have much theoretical guidance. Relying on their talent and experience, they magically developed the steam, and summarized the mechanical design knowledge in many fields. Even the legendary alchemist, Klaus, had to learn from the dwarves to improve the steam train based on the airships. Klaus' inventions were more like the improvements based on the original creations of the dwarves, but he managed to use magic or divine power to fuel the vehicles and lower the cost by shrinking their size.

Unfortunately, that civilization had been lost. Lucien got to know about it from the senior-rank Arcana and Magic Library. Even a profound sorcerer like Lazar who grew up in the Congress would have no idea that it was the dwarves who first invented the steam train and used them to transport goods. For him, Klaus was the one who invented the magic steam train.

In the later stage of the dwarves' Steam Civilization, the pace they had when making that progress started to slow down. The periodic invasion of the dark creatures from the Dark Mountain Range made the dwarves pay hard. The power of the horrible senior-rank creatures was completely out of the dwarves' expectation, and the steam rifles and cannons failed to work when facing the evil creatures. Within short twenty years, the splendid civilization had retreated to the underground.

However, down there under the ground, Steam Civilization had no space to grow. The civilization finally died out under the attack of many evil creatures and hunters after witnessing the development of the Dragon era, the Nature Elf era, the heyday of Werewolves. At that time, the ancient magic empire first started to gain its power. Only the small proportion of dwarves who chose to stay on the ground, in the end, managed to gain the blood power and spiritual power because of the experiments conducted by the crazy sorcerers. Slowly, those dwarves living on the ground built up their own countries again.