Forbidden Constellation's Blade-Chapter 158: Their Hero Had Arrived

The Administrator’s room was nothing like the rest of the mine.

The walls had been carved smooth, reinforced and decorated with fitted wood rather than stone. A single lantern hung from a metal hook above.

A desk sat at the center.

Ryn moved to it immediately.

Ledgers lay stacked neatly, their pages worn from frequent use but carefully kept. He flipped one open, eyes scanning down columns of numbers and data.

His brow furrowed.

"..."

Nearly ninety percent of the manalite yield had never stayed in Khaz Vordun.

It was recorded, taxed, and transferred straight into the royal treasure, indistinguishable from legitimate resource collection. From there, it was sold off in fragments to dozens of different merchants.

Yet, it was always in small shipments, going to different routes, to different buyers.

Forming a spiderweb that made it almost impossible to trace under normal circumstances.

Ryn closed the ledger slowly.

It was clever. If anyone investigated, all they’d find were shady dealings from the crown to independent traders over normal transactions. It would basically put the dwarven royalty in the immediate firing range.

If it was anyone other than Ryn.

An Administrator had been stationed here.

Ryn didn’t need proof beyond that.

The Cult of Evernight didn’t supervise mundane trades or babysit supply chains unless their motives aligned with it.

Which begs the question:

"All of this..." Ryn murmured.

Snow padded closer, peering at the table before tilting its head in confusion.

Ryn’s fingers tightened against the edge of the desk.

But the question refused to settle.

Why this much?

There was no way they’d need this much manalite just to test their capabilities of producing Evernight Beasts.

They’d succeeded partially, haven’t they?

The creatures that attacked Moran had proven that. Their limitation hadn’t been power.

It had been range.

Unless...?

Ryn stopped himself.

Coincidence was the easiest answer. And the laziest.

He reached for the next document. And found his answer immediately.

The note wasn’t long, or wasn’t secretly encrypted.

Just a single page that was written in precise language, yet almost careless strokes.

"Administrator,

Confirm whether the Blessing is still stabilizing post-insertion.

If control degrades, increase the number of dead specimens sent for adjustment, and release the ones that slip.

—Pisces"

Ryn stared at it.

"...So that’s how you did it."

The pieces snapped together with absolute clarity.

He’d wondered how they managed to implant manalite into living bodies without immediate rejection. The answer was simple.

The beasts were killed first.

A corpse didn’t resist intrusion. Didn’t fight back. Didn’t reject foreign Essence being forced into it.

Manalite shards were embedded into the body, along with that same black substance he’d seen in Moran—the very thing his own body had absorbed.

Ryn shuddered.

So the manalite was the battery, used to power something that shouldn’t exist in flesh.

Pisces...so he was the crux of the operation.

Part of Ryn felt a grim relief. They hadn’t yet figured out how to mass-produce Evernight Beasts just yet.

But the other realization scared him far more.

The Seats were surfacing. One after another.

First, it was Gemini’s name he discovered in Raias. Now it was Pisces he’d discover in Khaz Vordun.

Not to mention Cancer, the name repeated over and over by that elven Administrator.

This was far larger than he’d anticipated.

Ryn exhaled slowly and looked back at the note.

At the final line.

"and release the ones that slip."

Understanding settled in his chest.

That was why the beasts near Moran had behaved the way they did. They were just...leftovers, experiments that failed and were promptly rid of.

Ryn folded the note and set it aside.

That was when he noticed the blueprint.

It had been rolled and stored separately, tucked beneath the ledgers as if the Admin tried her hardest to hide it.

He unrolled it slowly across the desk.

It was a blueprint.

Lines, angles, and drawings formed a certain piece of technology that Ryn didn’t recognize. It didn’t seem like any forge or anything that the dwarves would usually make.

Ryn frowned.

He rolled the blueprint back up and left the room.

The dwarves were gathered near the cavern entrance, watching him with wary, hollow eyes. He stopped in front of them and held the blueprint up.

"What is this?" he asked.

The reaction he got was far from expected.

Absolute silence.

The tied-up dwarf’s eyes widened, just as he turned immediately away from Ryn, avoiding all eye contact. Another clenched his jaw so hard his teeth audibly ground together. A third raised her hands as if trying to shoo Ryn away, yet her eyes were filled with panic.

"I can’t," one of them finally choked out.

Then he pressed his lips together and refused to say anything else.

Ryn’s eyes narrowed.

He’d seen this before.

Dheam.

It happened before, when he made the mistake of pushing too hard. The same unnatural restraint that bound them from saying any more.

"...A curse," Ryn murmured. "Fine."

He didn’t press them further.

Instead, Ryn rolled the blueprint back up and slipped it into his storage ring.

His first thoughts went to Jay. But given everything, Jay was relatively new as an alchemist and mechanic, so Ryn was doubtful.

He’d just have to look for someone else that could understand it.

They left the caves together.

The dwarves moved slowly, shoulders slumped, tools left behind. No one spoke as they passed through the abandoned tunnels and back into the open air.

By the time they reached the Mining Guild, word had already spread. Workers stood in clusters, whispering as they watched Gordon return with dust still clinging to his boots and exhaustion etched deep into his face.

Ryn handed the stack of documents over.

Gordon took them with both hands.

They didn’t go inside.

Instead, Gordon led him to a side office. A small and plain area, used more for storage than meetings. He shut the door behind them, and leaned against it for a long moment.

Ryn laid the papers flat on the table.

"Can this expose the crown?" he asked.

Gordon didn’t answer right away.

He thumbed through the ledgers again, slower this time.

Finally, he shook his head.

"...No."

Ryn watched him carefully. "Why?"

"Because there’s no one to expose them to," Gordon said. "Not here. Not in Khaz Vordun."

He tapped the royal seal at the bottom of one page.

"This is the highest authority. The crown signs the orders. The treasury moves the coin. Any accusation made with these just circles back to the same people."

Ryn frowned slightly.

"So the truth doesn’t matter."

"It does," Gordon said. "Just not immediately."

He pushed the papers back toward Ryn.

"The people are already uneasy. You can feel it." He paused. "They’re starting to doubt."

"But doubt isn’t enough," Ryn said.

"No," Gordon agreed. "Doubt needs a spark."

He leaned back, eyes hollow.

"Either something happens that forces the people to look at the crown differently... or someone higher steps in and makes the accusation stick."

Ryn was quiet for a long moment.

"And until then?"

Gordon gave a bitter smile. "Until then, these papers are just paper. Dangerous paper—but paper all the same."

Ryn gathered the documents.

"Then I won’t burn them," he said. "And I won’t use them."

"Yet," Gordon added.

Ryn nodded slowly, and produced the blueprint from within his dimensional ring.

"One last thing," he said, unfolding the blueprint and laying it on a nearby crate. "Do you know what this is?"

Gordon hovered over the blueprint for a solid ten to fifteen minutes, before letting out a soft hum and leaning back.

"It’s some kind of generator," Gordon continued. "Or at least, that’s what the framework suggests. But it isn’t meant to power anything conventional."

"Though that’s only the secondary purpose," he continued. "Seems like its main function is something else entirely."

Gordon shook his head. "That’s as far as I can tell."

Ryn frowned. "You’re the guildmaster. If you don’t know—"

"I’m not," Gordon said.

...

"What?" Ryn looked at him again. "Then who is?"

Gordon opened his mouth, but his words were swallowed instantly by something else.

A deep rumble rolled through the air above them, vibrating through stone and metal alike. The guild windows rattled as shadows swept across the ground.

Ryn stepped outside.

An airship hung overhead, its hull etched with reinforced plating and glowing runes. Engines roared as it descended, heat washing over the square as docking mechanisms engaged.

Dwarves poured out into the streets, pointing, whispering, some dropping to one knee.

Ryn narrowed his eyes.

At the forefront of the ship, standing beneath the open ramp, was a single figure clad in heavy armor, posture unyielding as the machine settled around him.

Gordon came to stand beside Ryn.

"Well, speak of the devil," he said quietly. "That’s him."

"You mean...Khaz Vordun’s Hero Candidate?" Ryn replied hesitantly.

"Yep," Gordon continued. "Khaz Vordun’s hope...and the man with the most brilliant dwarf ever known."

The man looked down at the city like it was already his battlefield.

"Braum Aegis."