The Chair Explores the Cave

We wandered into the darkness – a single vine dictating our path. Observing our surroundings, the cave itself was normal so far, or at least the portion we could see. The lantern barely lit our general vicinity: the walls only slightly illuminated. The ceiling was completely shrouded in darkness; however, I could tell it grew further away the deeper we dived. Without some kind of night vision, every object looked like a silhouette, indistinguishable from the backdrop. It was impossible to judge any kind of distance.

Walking for a bit, Aster looked over to the side, signaling us to stop. She went to one of the walls, staring at something peculiar jutting out: a black cylindrical tube with a sort-of translucent cover that you would see on lights. Nothing seemed to connect to the object, so it was likely powered by mana. After all, why would wires be embedded into the wall? They would’ve stopped their investigation there, but Rufus made a peculiar comment.

“It’s strange how clean this lamp is. I doubt that the bandits actually cared about maintenance or put something like this up, so where did it come from?”

Ai looked at it closely, wrapping her vines around it. “Mana has passed through here within the last few years.” Well, that was rather useless. Anything that had mana pass through could hold traces for that long.

“Could you narrow it down further?”

“Impossible. I already told you, the mana density here makes it difficult to sense anything. I can only get that much because my vines are literally touching the source. However, I have no idea who could’ve used it.”

While they were focused on the lamp-like object, Aster diverted her attention to a broken part of the wall, noticing something. She placed her hand on it, channeling a bit of mana, causing it to faintly glow.

“These walls are entirely made of crystal.”

“Then these things must be lamps to see in this dark cave. But why would there just be exposed crystal unless… Ai.”

“I got it.” Ai burrowed her vines deep into the ground. “There are a lot of bones and metal things buried down there. Most of them are broken.” Ai then extended a vine from her hand up towards the ceiling, searching the area. “Yeah, there’s a hole up there.”

“Any chance they are the bandits?”

“With how far down they are, unless the bandits died over a thousand years ago, I doubt it.”

“Hmm, but shouldn’t the bandits have noticed the exposed crystal? I don’t believe they would leave it alone like this.” Huh… that was a valid point. Did not think about that. Luckily, Ai managed to come up with a plausible explanation.

“Maybe they didn’t get close to the wall, like us.”

“Hmm… I guess.” Rufus didn’t believe so, but there was no other evidence to say otherwise. Then, Ai’s face darkened a bit. “What?”

“I went a bit further down, and there are definitely some bones that have been ripped to shreds. Whether it’s from a dragon beast, I don’t know. But it happened over two thousand years ago, and it strangely has the same mana density.”

“Interesting,” Rufus commented, but gave it no further thought.

Aster, on the other hand, furrowed her brows slightly.