Valterion: The Space/Arch? Mage

Location: Solar System; Earth; Outside of Shanhai; Song Medical

"You know the drill," I say, and point at the dark hole before us. "Lucy goes first with a shield, and we follow."

She looks at me with wide eyes. "You want me to go first? Down there?"

Is she afraid? But she's never been afraid before… Hmm, the dark hole looks kinda scary. Luckily, I have a solution for that, and cast a light spell and move it into the hole. My light illuminates the darkness, revealing a series of stone steps leading downward. "Better now?" I ask, and Lucy sighs in relief.

"Yeah, thank you!"

She casts her transparent Shield spell before her and starts moving down the stairs. The further down she goes, the more her Shield curves and elongates to cover the space above our heads. That's some expert spell control right there! I mean, the tunnel is ancient, who knows how stable the roof is?

We follow her into the tunnel and reach our first obstacle after about five minutes of walking. The tunnel before us has partially collapsed, and debris bars our way. At least the tunnel isn't too narrow, and two people can stand next to each other rather comfortably.

That's why Tim moves up and stands next to Lucy, who extends her Shield a bit more to also cover the roof above the collapsed section. Tim, our resident Master Utility Mage, then casts a series of spells on the debris before us. The larger pieces basically separate into dust, and he telekinetically separates them into two small piles.

He's only cleared out about a meter before us so far, and I start to ask myself what he's planning to do when he casts another spell and the pile to the right starts melting. What the hell? He's been holding out on us! Well, I guess there hasn't been a chance yet for him to show off all his spells.

"Can you move your shield a bit away from the walls, Lucy? I'm going to reinforce them with the debris that's in front of us."

She looks as surprised as I am when she turns to him. "You can do that?"

He nods. "Sure, it's not that hard. Here, let me show you."

Lucy does as Tim asked and moves her Shield, which is now shaped in an inverted U, a bit closer to us, making a 5-centimeter gap appear between the walls and the Shield.

Tim doesn't waste time and uses his Telekinesis spell to move the dust and the now syrupy liquid of melted stone along the ground and then up along the freshly created gap, until both parts have reached the roof.

He holds everything into position, and if I see it correctly, mixes both parts, then casts another spell which makes the dust and syrup fuse together and also fuse to the damaged roof.

His magic drops, and he claps his hands. "Done, now we just have to repeat the process until we're through the collapsed sections."

Lydia is the first to shake herself out of the shock of seeing Tim cast such crazy spells and holds up her hand for a high-five. "That was amazing, Tim! I didn't know Utility magic could do such cool things."

He chuckles softly. "Bah, that wasn't that impressive… You should see the real experts in the construction field. That's what I call impressive. I'm just dabbling a bit in it…"

Lydia doesn't let his nonchalant answer dim her excitement. "Nonsense, my idea was just to move the pieces out of the way and pile them up behind us… But you stabilized the tunnel… Probably even making Lucy's Shield unnecessary," she looks at Lucy. "Not saying you should stop your spell, that would be reckless."

I chuckle at her antics, and Nick claps Tim's back. "Accept it, bro. That was impressive!"

Tim smiles awkwardly, but accepts the praise in the end. For the next hour, he's the star of the show and cleans up the tunnel before us. Almost ten meters have collapsed and are now freshly reinforced and safe to walk through.

From then on, we continue down the tunnel until the same thing repeats itself. If I'm not mistaken, we're now almost at our destination. Maybe another 50 meters until we go under the walls. Tim sighs and sets off again. Unfortunately, this time, the collapsed section is way bigger, and after 25 meters, Tim's out of juice. We decide to leave the tunnel and take a break. He grumbles all the way back to daylight about stupid, inefficient spells and his own laziness.

After Nick tried unsuccessfully to cheer him up once, we collectively decide to let him grumble it out by himself. Once we're out of the tunnel, Lucy looks at me pleadingly and asks if we can return to the yacht so that she can whip up a real meal. I take in the hungry expressions from everyone around me and chuckle. "Sure, we can do that." It's obvious that I want to make the others happy – my own grumbling stomach has nothing to do with it!

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Anyway, one short teleportation later, and we're back inside the yacht. Lucy takes over the small kitchen while the rest of us sit down on the sofa and chairs in the room. Soon, a nice smell fills the kitchen, and my mouth starts watering.

The food is nothing special, just noodles with tomato sauce, but Lucy still manages to make it taste sooo good! Now, we're full of energy again and head back out. I teleport us to the tunnel entrance, and Lucy takes the lead again. This time we're much faster, and after five minutes of walking, we're back at the collapsed section.

Tim gets back to work, and the debris turns into building material to reinforce the roof and walls. The process is slow, but definitely visible, as we're making headway steadily. It takes almost 30 minutes, but then the final piece of powdered debris finds its new purpose on the roof of the tunnel, and Tim lets out a long and exhausted sigh.

"That's it… I don't think I'm good for much more today. Let's hope this was the last collapse, or we have to wait for tomorrow."

I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Good work, Tim! I think we're through now… If I'm not mistaken, then we have passed the building's walls a few meters ago. We just have to reach the exit, then we're done."

Upon hearing this, Lucy sets out with new vigor and walks down the tunnel. We quickly follow her, and after a 90-degree bend, she lets out a whoop of joy. Right before her is a closed door with a metal wheel with handles right in the middle. It looks a bit like the door of a safe. Also, the last stretch of the tunnel is much broader so that the six of us can stand in a half circle before the closed door.

"Guess we found the end of the tunnel," Alina chuckles.

"Seems that way," Lydia replies. "Who wants to have the honor of opening it? Sara?"

I shake my head. "No, you go ahead… I was already the first one out of the ship, now it's your turn."

"Okay…" She replies and takes a step forward. Her hands grab the wheel, and she tries to turn it. Her face turns red in effort, and the veins in her neck pop out. She lets out a groan and tries even harder. Alina walks up next to her and grabs another two handles to help out. Now they both groan, but finally, the wheel starts turning. First, very slowly, barely a few millimeters, but then, as if something broke, it almost turns by itself, and both girls stumble.

They land in a heap on the ground and groan even more. Standing back up, they dust themselves off and glare at the door. Alina points at Nick and Tim. "You guys can swing it open!"

The boys exchange a look and shrug, then Nick casts a Telekinesis spell and latches it onto the now unlocked door. His face scrunches together in effort, but the door doesn't move.

Lucy looks at her boyfriend. "You're pulling, right?"

Nick's face flushes, and suddenly, the door opens up in our direction. The dark tunnel continues beyond the threshold. "I was pulling, yeah," he says in defense while still being completely red in his face. "It was just a coincidence that the door gave way when you said that, Lucy!"

I laugh out loud and slightly punch his shoulder. "Of course, Nick, of course…"

"It's true!" He exclaims, but his blush doesn't vanish. His further denial has the others join in on the laughter, and he buries his face in his hands.

In the end, we take a short break, and then Lucy takes point again, and we continue. Time to see what secrets this building is hiding!

The tunnel ends after a 90-degree bend to the left, and a set of stairs invites us to ascend. We arrive at something that can only be described as a security gate. Or at least it probably functioned as one all those years ago. Now, only the metal frames are left, and the glass windows lie on the ground in pieces so that we can walk through the gate without any security clearances. Not that it would have held me back, as I could have easily teleported through the gate with a line-of-sight teleportation.

To the left of the gate are the remnants of a cubicle, and I can imagine bored security guards sitting inside, checking the credentials of new arrivals before they are allowed through the gates. There was probably a full set of sensors and scanners, too, but none of them survived the ravages of time.

Anyway, we still stop and examine the security checkpoint and take a lot of photos after I illuminated the whole room with my Light spell. Alina is the first one to discover something about fifteen minutes after we entered the room.

She shouts out from within the cubicle. "Guys, I found something, but I don't know what it is… Looks like part of a computer if I have to guess."

I'm immediately intrigued, as old computers have always been a good source of information, especially during my first stay here on the planet. I'm the first one to arrive at the cubicle and ask her to show me what she found.

She hands me the small circuit board, and I start to examine it while the others arrive too. It doesn't take long until I identify it and smile at Alina. "Nice job, Alina! You just made our first major discovery," I hold up the thing in my hand. "That's a data drive! If we manage to get a read on it, we can access the data stored on it! We've got some equipment on the yacht, so if you don't mind, I'll be getting it real quick."

The eagerness is clear in my voice, and the others quickly agree that I should teleport to the yacht to get what we need. Now that we're inside, Clara can safely use the coordinates for me to jump back inside the building.

I take the data drive with me and vanish with a purple flash. Back on the yacht, I open up one of our storage boxes and take out a beefed-up tablet. It looks a bit like an abomination as it has about 100 different connectors all around its frame. The big battery pack fixed to its back doesn't help either, but is necessary if we find a server that's in need of power, for example.

Anyway, I start trying out the connectors and am successful on the 27th try. The data drive slots in with an audible click. I let out a small whoop of joy and teleport back into the security room where my friends are waiting.

Upon arrival, Tim hands me another data drive with a grin on his face. "We found another one, but I'm not sure about that one…"

I take a look and have to agree. It's bent at a weird angle, more than 90 degrees, almost U-shaped. My gut says it's a goner, but who knows, maybe we'll still manage to get some data out of it.

I hold up the tablet with the connected drive. "Okay, are you guys ready to see if there's any data left?"

They give me their affirmations and gather around me. I press the power button on the tablet, and it starts to boot up. It takes a while, as it's running on an ancient OS to be compatible with those older drives. This reminds me again how crazy good Maja is at this stuff… She basically managed with a jury-rigged cable and her own wits.

Anyway, the tablet finishes booting, and a single line of text appears on the display:

"Data drive detected, open Explorer to access data."

Nice!