Valterion: The Space/Arch? Mage

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

The stairway is longer than expected, and we descend more than a hundred steps. Lucy leads the way as always and therefore is the first to announce that we've made it after almost two minutes of walking straight down.

We arrive in another small room that features another desk to the side. The sole exit is yet another security gate. Thanks to Lisa, we make short work of the locking mechanism and quickly open the sliding glass doors. Beyond that, it looks like we've finally hit the jackpot.

What I now see is how I expected a research lab to be! A big open space with tables left and right. The typical lab equipment is everywhere, and giant boards at the sides are filled with scientific scribbles.

"It looks like everyone left just yesterday, not 11,000 years ago," Lisa says after a moment of silence, and she's absolutely right. This looks even more preserved than the level above.

Hmm, with the distance we've traveled down, this could very well have been a doomsday bunker once upon a time…

Anyway, we stop dilly-dallying and finally enter the big open space and start to explore the different workstations. Now that we've got three A&D Mages with us, we don't have to stay that close together anymore, and so everyone gets to choose their own workstation to investigate. Lucy even goes so far as to do a quick sweep through the whole room and soon gives us the all-clear. That's when Lisa and Alina drop their Shield spells too and walk over to another set of unoccupied workstations.

I now stand before a desk pretty far into the room. It's located at the far left side and therefore very close to one of the whiteboards. Now that I'm closer, I can finally identify some words on the board. The words "spell variants" immediately catch my eye. That looks promising!

Unfortunately, everything below that is completely unrecognizable. Not that this'll discourage me. No, I just let the board be and turn back to the desk before me. Specifically, the drawers below it.

They are locked, of course, but a rough use of Telekinesis makes quick work of the simple lock – just turn it with enough force to crack the locking mechanism wide open. The first drawer is an immediate jackpot! I've found another tablet, and with just a little luck, it'll work too.

My first try to switch it on fails, but there was a slight flicker on the screen. That's promising… Maybe it's just the battery that's dead. But that's a quickly solved problem. I walk back toward the entrance where we left our equipment and take one of our battery packs. Then I return to my workstation while quickly looking at how the others are doing.

Lydia is elbow deep in a box below her desk while Tim also tries to switch on a tablet. Lucy and Nick share two adjoining workstations but are currently studying the scribbles on a nearby board. Alina seems to be trying her best with one of the bigger pieces of lab equipment. And lastly, Lisa is sitting down with a frown on her face. She looks very thoughtful, but I decide against walking over to her and asking what's the matter. The tablet takes precedence for now!

I arrive back at my desk and plug the device in. To give it a bit of time to draw some power, I lay it to the side and open the second drawer in the meantime. There's a whole stack of paper inside. Real paper! Like the stuff that's made out of wood and no one besides the Estriduros Republic is using anymore. I read the first words and let out a shout of triumph. It's research notes about Healing spells! Just the stuff we've come looking for.

Finally!

I reach in to take out the stack of paper, then let out a shout of anguish. "Nooooooo!" The paper crumbles to my touch, and a giant cloud of it gets swirled up. It envelops my head, and I fall into a coughing fit. That's when I realize that I didn't actually breathe any of it in thanks to the air filtration system of our clothes.

Still, the others come rushing and ask what's wrong. I tell them, and we all grieve for a little moment before they return to their respective workstations. My eyes wander over to the tablet on the table, and I shrug. It's been a few minutes… Might as well test it. I press the power button and wait for the thing to power up. The screen turns completely blue for like five minutes before it changes to the Song Medical logo with the rest of the screen turning black. I rhythmically tap my fingers on the table while waiting for something else to happen.

The thing is so slow that another paper incident happens in the meantime. This time, the cloud of dust comes from Lydia's desk, and she calls out a string of creative curses.

Then, finally, the Song Medical logo goes away and is replaced by a login screen. The previous owner must have used the Remember Me function, as the username is still filled out. I laugh at the name "RaunchyStallion69" and happily shove the problem of cracking this guy's – because the previous owner definitely was a guy – off to our resident technical expert, Clara.

She gets to work while I open up another drawer. Let's see what else I can find…

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Of course, my luck has run out, and the remaining three drawers contain a whole lot of nothing. The most exciting find is a mug with the words "I Love Shanghai" written on it, with the "Love" being replaced by a big red heart. I decide to keep it and place it on the table, right next to the tablet where Clara is still trying to crack the password.

"You made any progress?" I ask her over the AI Talk spell, and she denies. A bummer.

I glance at the others, just to see that they're not much better for now. With a shrug, I focus on the final piece of interest at my workstation: A weird device that's standing at the edge of the table. It's a white box with tubes and wires coming out of it. There's also a screen on one of the sides that's slightly angled upward. Unfortunately, the screen is completely spider-webbed, and there's no chance in hell that this thing is still working.

The wires end with small round thingies that have a polished metal surface on one side that looks like it's meant to connect to something. Considering the medical aspect of things, this could be part of an ECG device. I have no clue about the tubes, though.

Clara interrupts my thoughts with a shout of triumph. "I'm in!"

I immediately step back over to the tablet and look at the now-unlocked screen. Instead of different programs and applications, the home screen shows a bunch of folders. Some of them have very promising names, but the one right in the middle catches my eye as I've read those words before! Research notes on Healing spells, just like the stack of now-dusted paper. Obviously, I immediately double-tap the folder to open it and let out my own shout of triumph. If I'm not mistaken, I now have a digitized copy of exactly those papers before me.

The whole folder holds more than a hundred documents, each with multiple pages, which translates to way more than I could read right now or in the foreseeable future. But luckily, I don't have to because Clara is way better suited to do so. "That's amazing, Clara, can you summarize the texts for us, please?"

"Sure, I've already done so, and it's everything we've hoped for. You might want to call your friends over before I tell you, though."

I nod and follow her advice. "Hey, guys, can you all come over?"

A few minutes later, we're all gathered around my workstation, and I set down a small, handheld holo projector on the table for Clara to visualize things. The first thing she shows is a spell explanation. She gives us a second to study it, and I immediately notice a few things. Most importantly, it looks clunky and unwieldy. There are also frowns on the faces of my friends. "What are we looking at?" Lucy asks as she's the most unfamiliar with Utility spells.

Clara uses the speaker that's integrated into the small projector. "That's the oldest version of a working Healing spell I could find within the tablet's database. There are hundreds of iterations on that spell and even a few completely different approaches with their own iterations. Look at the most recent one in comparison. It's very similar to the one that's most commonly used today."

The projection changes parallel to her words and now shows two very similar spell explanations right next to each other. I recognize the left one, as this is the one that Ronja is learning under Doctor Philipps. Crazy that so little has changed over the past 11,000 years.

"Now, while the results as usable spells are well and good, the real prize is the notes attached to every single step they took in their research. I'd go so far as to say this is priceless data, as it offers a firsthand view on how humanity discovered their first spells."

Lisa nods along. "True, while a lot was probably saved during Project Exodus, they definitely didn't get everything… My mother would pay a fortune to get data like what we've in our hands right now."

I chuckle slightly. "Oh, I think she has it already."

"What do you mean?" Alina asks.

"Think back to the paintings in the hallway… I think those were a recent addition to give us a way to solve the riddle on the floor. The Empire had a year or maybe even more to prepare for this competition here. While we're the first ones here to explore officially, other people have definitely been here already and checked out all the important places."

Alina's eyes widen slightly. "Huh, that makes so much sense, now that you say it… But what does that mean for us? Is our discovery worthless?"

Lisa shakes her head. "No, not at all… We'll still get credit for the discovery and, even more importantly, this will definitely earn us a lot of points! Early spell theory is a hell of a find. Good job, Sara and Clara!"

We all cheer, and Clara finishes her short presentation. She tells us a bit more about how the research was conducted. Mostly, the people down here in the lab worked very closely with the people in the hospital above. The patients often had incurable sicknesses and hoped that some experimental magical treatments could help them. According to Clara, they managed to cure 90% of the people as soon as they had their first working spell, and the number only went up with each iteration of the spell. Even better, it was all charitable work! No one had to pay any money to be cured by Song Medical – A key principle of the company that's still holding true today. Li-Ming Song didn't want to take money from sick people… She had other ways to make a living.

The most important one is the second big mainstay of Song Medical: Longevity Treatments! We don't really find much about that here in the lab. Most of the stuff here is centered around Healing spells. Only two workstations had a few minor projects running on longevity, but that's it.

That said, we finish going through the lab quickly after Clara is done explaining what she found on the tablet. Guess I lucked out and walked straight to the best workstation there is.

The others discovered a few things here and there, and we decide to take it all with us. We collect it in the center of the room, and when we're all done, we stand in a circle around a small pile. The weird ECG device is there too, and Lucy insists on also taking a fridge where they've kept blood samples. I just shrug, I can teleport it all anyway.

That's exactly what I'm doing. Clara gives me the coordinates for the open space before our yacht, and I trigger the spell. After that, it's loading all the things and then another quick teleport to get our PA400s. I could also have teleported us directly to the Stargazer, but we're all yearning for real beds, so we decide to stay up there for the night. And as we don't want to leave the yacht unattended, we take it with us. As soon as we're in the hangar, everyone says goodbye to Lisa, and I teleport her back to her ship.

Back up on my starship, I take a very long shower and jump into my bed immediately after. I'm asleep in seconds and sleep for like ten hours straight. The next morning, we meet in the living room to discuss where to go next. It's a heated discussion between going for another company and possibly risking the location because of Prince Kai's challenge that starts in a few days, or taking it slower and going sightseeing for a bit.

But all that is forgotten when I receive a call from Maja in the evening… Something happened, and she needs my help.

Guess we're going to Venus for now.