33 Lost in Translation (1/2)

With Luna's help, he flipped through page after page and soon finished the book he was holding. He recognized some patterns in the runes but most of them were unknown. The problem was that while the designs were accompanied by an explanation, it was of course written in Easan, which he didn't understand.

In other words, to understand what the unknown runes were used for, he had two options, he could either spend some time to try and translate the text, or he could just simulate the rune and see what happen. It goes without saying he chose the latter, it sounded way more fun.

He ran back to Catherine and entered his soul world. A few moments later, he was in his lab and proceeded to craft the first rune in the book. It appeared behind the Plexiglass and without further ado, Joshua activated it, his eyes shining with anticipation.

The entire lab exploded. Before he could react, his body was pierced by shards of Plexiglass succeed by being heavily burned by the blast. The force of the explosion projected what remained of his body several dozens of meters away. He landed on a 17-inch monitor, his head going right through it. His right arm was gone and the rest of his body looked like it was about to fall apart. With great difficulty, he used his left arm to push out his head out of the screen. His face was cut all over and full of glass shards. He spat one out and merely said one word: 'Whoops.'

Luckily, he was a mere spirit and he quickly reformed his soul projected body. Looking at the ruins of his lab, he scratched his head.

'Well, that didn't go as planned…'

What exactly did go wrong? He had runes not working as intended before when he experienced with the basic models, but he never caused a major explosion. While he didn't know what the effect the rune would have, he was sure exploding on activation wasn't it. He considered to mass produce this rune to use it as a bomb, but that didn't seem like a good idea. There were too many unknown factors here. For example, maybe he had put too much energy in the rune, or had put the energy in it with the wrong way. Maybe the rune couldn't be used on its own and had to be combined with another. Or maybe the text he didn't understand just said: 'This is a perfect example of the kind of rune you must never produce, as the design is so stupid, it will blow up in your face.' In any case, he had to set randomly trying out unknown runes aside from now on.

'Well… At least until I manage to build a lab solid enough to resist an explosion,' he thought, grinning.

As the party members woke up and made their way to the kitchen, they couldn't help but stare at Joshua who was dressed as a famous chef. He welcomed them with a smile, the table was well furnished by now and tasting what he had prepared, everyone was pleasantly surprised. Catherine was glad to see he was back on his feet and acting 'normally'. Of course, he didn't mention anything about the visit he had during the night so he just told her he woke up early to prepare food.

When they were done eating, Catherine decided to hold a status meeting.

”Everyone, with the discovery of this building, I think we have reached a milestone in our journey,” she started, ” I propose we remain here until we have inspected every nook and cranny of the area.”

Everyone nodded, this place was an obvious boon for them, therefore, it was no surprise they all agreed to halt their journey for a moment.

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”His Majesty is looking for ancient weaponry. The rune factory we found alone could qualify as a success for the mission,” Eric added.

”Technically, he had no idea what he wanted when he sent us down here,” Joshua added in a sarcastic tone, ”He basically told us 'Go down there and find ancient stuff that can be useful for the war.' which is about as vague as it can get. We could just grab the weapons in the factory and go back up and he should be happy we actually found something.”

Joshua didn't personally care for the mission, Catherine and he had a much bigger problem to deal with, the Crow. It just happened that their goal aligned with that of the king or he would have looked for a loophole to abort this ridiculous escapade.

”In any case, we should explore the entire area,” Catherine said, ”Cynthia, Lydia, and Boris, I'll charge you with inspecting the floors above. It's mostly in ruins but maybe there will be something useful.”

The three nodded.

”Eric, Joshua and I will form the research team. We'll examine all the records and machines down here and learn as much as we can.”