Ludger erased every last corpse of the remaining forces of the Theocracy of Bretus with magic.
Ater Nocturnus greedily devoured the bodies.
Ater Nocturnus primarily fed on its user’s mana, but it did not eat mana alone.
Fresh bodies like those—still imbued with divine power—were delicacies to it. After all, they still contained unextinguished vitality and energy.
When the fighting ended, Lexuror appeared before Ludger in the form of a hologram.
[This is a real mess.]
It was what he said after seeing the site Arius had destroyed.
“Wasn’t it over quickly?” Ludger replied.
[Everything’s wrecked.]
“I didn’t break it.”
[You could have finished it before it got wrecked. Or, failing that, you could have restrained that power so it wouldn’t damage the surroundings.]
“I didn’t feel the need to. I still hadn’t properly been told what kind of facility this ancient ruin actually is.”
In other words—why didn’t you explain it beforehand?
Lexuror was left speechless and let out a hollow sigh.
He’d tried to needle Ludger, only to fail to gain anything from it.
[Fine. You win. I lose.]
Just then, Casey and Veronica arrived at the site as well.
Once everyone had gathered, Lexuror spoke again.
[There are still some leftovers, but they’re rummaging around useless sections, so let’s not worry about them for now. Let’s pick up where we left off.]
Lexuror snapped his fingers.
Blue lights raced along the corridor, flowing in one direction like guiding lamps.
Lexuror took the lead and began walking.
The group exchanged glances, then silently followed behind him.
[This ruin is a gigantic laboratory. And what it experiments on... is the creation of life.]
“Creation...?” Casey murmured in shock.
Wasn’t that something only gods could do?
At her words, Lexuror chuckled softly.
[Humans trying to encroach upon the seat of gods isn’t exactly new. There are even those who borrow divine authority and act as if they themselves are gods. Naturally, some would aim for that seat outright.]
Ludger recalled the forest surrounding the ruins.
“So the forest outside, the beasts living there, and even the spirit beasts that evolved at the end of it all... they’re the results of that.”
[Exactly. Of course, the spirit beasts themselves wouldn’t know it. If you really wanted to put it one way, it’s like animals released from a zoo as juveniles who then came to live naturally in the forest. They don’t know where they originated or were born.]
As they continued along the path of light, a hidden passage appeared.
Lexuror placed his hand against it.
A faint glow seeped in, and the passage opened smoothly.
Unlike the stone doors of the other laboratories, this place had been meticulously maintained.
Or else it had been crafted so exceptionally that it still functioned perfectly despite the passage of time.
Either way, it was clearly a special place.
The opened passage led to a staircase descending downward.
They already knew there was a massive facility underground, so going even deeper wasn’t surprising.
The staircase was like a narrow ravine. Hardly any light reached it, and without Lexuror’s guiding lights, someone might have misstepped.
Of course, none of the people here should have made such a mistake.
“Ah!”
At that moment, Casey lost her footing.
Since Ludger was right nearby, he naturally caught her and steadied her.
“Th-thank you.”
“Be careful.”
Casey shyly expressed her thanks.
“I feel like I might slip again... could you hold my hand?”
“.......”
Ludger didn’t answer. As Casey’s shoulders drooped, warmth suddenly spread over her hand.
She looked at Ludger with wide eyes, then broke into a bright smile.
Watching the scene, Lexuror’s eyes lit up—an unmistakable emotion. Jealousy.
[Hey now. Tch. Does anyone spare a thought for the lonely ones? Doing this right in front of me—how cruel.]
Since he’d clearly meant for them to hear it, Casey cleared her throat awkwardly, while Ludger offered no reaction at all.
From the rear, Veronica tilted her head.
‘Mage Casey shouldn’t be clumsy enough to lose her footing in a place like this.’
As a knight, she had an intimate understanding of the human body.
She knew exactly which muscles produced what results when stimulated in certain ways.
From body shape, gait, and even small movements, she could grasp a person’s basic physical abilities.
At least to Veronica’s eyes, Casey wasn’t that uncoordinated.
A vague thought crossed Veronica’s mind, but she chose not to voice it.
No matter how oblivious she could be, even she wasn’t that clueless.
The staircase that seemed endless eventually came to an end.
[From here on, try not to be too shocked. Among modern humans, you’ll be the first after me to witness this.]
“Strictly speaking, the first among the living,” Ludger added.
As if.
Lexuror shot Ludger a sharp glare, then placed his hand on the door.
Blue energy seeped into it, drawing beautiful patterns.
Like trees rapidly growing up through soil, the blue designs surged upward from floor to ceiling like a fountain.
Once the pattern was complete—
Rrrrnnn.
The door split open to the left and right.
Brilliant white light poured out through the opening. Perhaps because they’d stayed in the dark so long, it was almost painful to the eyes.
As their eyes adjusted, the scenery beyond the light slowly came into focus.
“My goodness.”
Veronica, whose recovery was fastest thanks to being a knight, let out an exclamation.
Ludger and Casey could see it as well.
“It’s a forest.”
Inside the underground facility... was a forest.
It was different from the primeval forest outside. It felt like an exquisitely cultivated garden shaped by human hands.
Trees heavy with fruit, flowers in vivid colors, grass swaying gently.
Clear streams flowed throughout, and the light touching their skin was warm.
Everything here had been created ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) artificially—yet it didn’t feel artificial at all. It was that natural.
As if a piece of real space had been cleanly cut out and transplanted here.
“More than anything, this light...”
It was underground, yet sunlight hung above them. Where was the source of this warm light?
At the center of the forest.
There floated a single, bright yellow sphere.
Everyone present felt it at the same time.
That is a Relic.
“Remarkable,” Ludger murmured in awe.
A cavern underground, an artificial forest within it, and the source of its light being a Relic.
It was close to an artificial sun.
“So that’s why the temperature was high down here.”
Casey finally understood how the tropical rainforest outside had come to exist.
That realization only made it more shocking.
“That thing... how many hundreds of years has it been burning?”
The chance it had gone out even once was low.
If it had, not only this place but the tropical rainforest outside would have been wiped out by the frigid environment of the Hyperborea continent.
The fact that a forest of that scale still existed outside meant that this artificial sun Relic had never gone out—not even once.
And that for at least several hundred years.
“That’s practically perpetual motion.”
Perpetual motion.
If such a thing truly existed, it would overturn the current system and surpass the laws of physics themselves.
“Calling it an artificial sun doesn’t guarantee it’s perpetual motion,” Ludger said.
It might still have a lifespan. Having burned for hundreds of years already, it could just as easily be nearing its end.
“But it looks perfectly fine to me.”
“At the very least, it can probably burn for as long as it already has—if not longer.”
Whether it was truly permanent was debatable, but its greatness was undeniable.
“What’s even more astonishing is its heat output being unaffected by the environment.”
“Right. It’s hot enough to maintain a tropical rainforest and warm the groundwater, yet standing this close, it doesn’t feel hot at all.”
Normally, the closer you got to a heat source, the stronger the heat would feel.
But this artificial sun wasn’t like that.
Considering the temperature and humidity of the outer rainforest, this interior should have been hotter than a furnace.
Instead, the temperature here was lower than outside. If the outside was midsummer, this place felt like a warm spring.
That was why spring-associated flora dominated the area.
“It can boil groundwater, completely invert a glacial environment, and even control the range and influence of its heat.”
It was truly worthy of the name Relic.
Ludger stared fixedly at the artificial sun.
Staring into blinding light would normally cost one their eyesight—but that didn’t apply to Ludger.
The artificial sun was, quite literally, a gigantic lightbulb.
A metal sphere with perfect curvature, its surface etched with grooves that looked like seams.
It must have been assembled from large segments into a single sphere.
“It’s a kind of vessel.”
The fundamental energy source was inside that sphere.
Judging by the amount of energy leaking out, even using only its thermal output would be enough to cover the energy consumption of a decent-sized nation.
Just boiling water and spinning turbines with it would be more than profitable.
Anyone would covet something like this.
[I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I saw it. I tried desperately to seize control of the true ruin systems just to verify this.]
Lexuror murmured with fresh emotion as he gazed at the artificial sun.
Somewhere, the sound of birds chirping rang out, and small birds flitted through the air.
With a forest and flowing water, animals lived here too.
Small creatures like squirrels and field mice watched the group with curiosity.
That an entire ecosystem had been realized underground was astonishing in itself.
This was technology on an entirely different level from simply building a greenhouse.
[This is why the Lumenis Church tried so desperately to stop me when I said I was going to look for Hyperborea.]
Lexuror had thought the Church opposed him simply because his methods didn’t align with theirs.
That was true—but it wasn’t the fundamental reason.
There were still many remnants of the old world that the Church had not completely erased.
Because Lexuror set out to find them, the Church deemed him dangerous.
In fact, when he declared his intent to go to Hyperborea, they openly hunted him down and tried to kill him.
The official cause of death was injuries sustained while fighting a forest spirit beast.
But the decisive factor was that, even before that, he had been utterly exhausted in both body and mind from the Church’s pursuit.
Had he been in peak condition, Lexuror would have been injured—but he would not have died.
[The more I think about it, the angrier I get. Damn it. I wanted to see this sight while I was alive.]
Leaving his soul engraved into the ruins had been his choice—but in truth, he’d had no alternatives.
Dying as he was, he had to do something, and this was the best option.
[So. Now that you’ve seen it, what are you going to do?]
“That’s the dilemma.”
Finding something like this in a ruin made it hard to simply walk away.
And it wasn’t just anyone who had seen it—Veronica had.
She was a companion, but her allegiance ultimately lay with the Empire.
Ludger lived in the Empire as well, but Veronica’s loyalty to her homeland was far stronger.
“Honestly, I do want to take it,” Veronica muttered awkwardly.
“But... can we take it?”
It wasn’t just anything—it was an artificial sun.
Right now it only felt warm, but what if the moment someone tried to touch it, it became scorching like a real sun?
Cold aura?
How would you freeze an artificial sun capable of creating a vast tropical rainforest in a glacial region?
Even a master-rank knight couldn’t handle that output.
Casey turned her gaze toward Ludger.
In a whisper Veronica couldn’t hear, she asked, “You. Can you take that?”
Ludger paused to think.
Could he take that artificial sun?
Considering the sheer amount of energy it emitted, it was truly on a transcendent level.
What would it take to take something like that?
“That thing is linked to the ruins. Its heat spreads underground through the ruin system and disperses outward. In other words, that’s the core, and the entire ruin is a device that generates geothermal heat.”
“So pulling just that thing out on its own would be difficult?”
“First, we’d have to shut down all the ruin systems.”
“And if we do that... the forest outside will be in chaos.”
Ludger nodded.
“If the heat maintaining the forest disappears, a cold wave will hit. Countless lifeforms living there will die.”
“...What about the spirit beasts?”
“No matter how exceptional they are, they can’t survive a sudden, extreme environmental shift.”
Of course, a few highly adaptable individuals would survive.
But in Ludger’s estimation, more than ninety percent wouldn’t meet the threshold.
Spirit beasts were extraordinary creatures, but they still belonged to an ecosystem. When the ecosystem changed, even spirit beasts had no answer.
Well, they were intelligent enough to relocate—but then where would they go?
“Stopping it is also a problem. From what I can tell, the ruins themselves absorb that heat and distribute it outward. The moment we shut it down, there’s no guarantee what will happen to the heat with nowhere to go.”
If the outward flow stopped, all that thermal energy might concentrate in this cavern.
And then?
It would become an environment no one could endure—except perhaps a Fire Elemental Lord.
“It would truly look like a pseudo artificial sun.”
Could he secure it alone, without any support?
After a brief consideration, Ludger answered.
“I think it’s possible.”
“.......”
Casey stared at Ludger with a dumbfounded expression.