Chapter 155: Schaub Empire Ruins

Cain steps through the portal, finding he is indeed underground, and there is none of the odd feeling that indicates he's in a dungeon instance. Two of the Oath Breakers guard this side of the portal, and he can see where they carried sand and rubble away from the Exit, moved here over time, something that doesn't happen inside a dungeon. 

The others follow him through, leaving two Oath Breakers to stand guard outside and look around this underground space. They seem to be in the middle of an abandoned city, crumbling stone buildings, cobblestone streets, and some sort of bioluminescent fungus or moss in the roof, hundreds of meters above them that gives the whole area a light blue glow. 

Cain looks into the building beside him, that appears to have been a shop of some sort and finds a few ragged cloth pieces hanging from racks, as if whoever was here last simply packed up everything worth taking and left. No sign of destruction, looting or anything else. Which seems awfully strange for an ancient ruin with a portal in the desert. Surely someone happened upon it before them, but why wouldn't they have taken or even damaged anything? 

"Did you guys find anything strange about the entrance when you came in? Something that might have prevented this place from being looted?" Cain asks the Oath Breakers while looking around at the huge pile of rubble they've made. 

"We had to teleport because it was blocked, if you didn't you would just be crushed on arrival. See the blocks there? The wind filled the gaps with sand like mortar."

That makes sense. The residents must have barricaded the Exit when they left, and without any time to cast a spell, anything without an innate movement ability that would let them shift past the rubble would be stuck in the portal and trapped for eternity or crushed to death by the force trying to expel them, then fall back in and be left on the other side. 

"Alright, let's take a look around, but try not to damage anything. Some archeologist would love to find this place." Misha says, sticking her head through a nearby doorway to look inside. 

Some of the buildings are mostly intact, the ones made of solid stone and not thin brick or wood. Their roofs have fallen, except a few spires the group can see, but they give the impression of exquisite craftsmanship.

There's a golden sign with writing on it in what looks like multiple languages laid on a black granite dias in the middle of a now dry fountain that marks the middle of the courtyard that the portal opens in to. Looking it over closely, Kone recognized Elven as one of the languages. It's a bit archaic, and her grasp of the language isn't perfect, but all Spirit Folk transfers get basic knowledge of it as part of their racial skills. 

"Welcome to Schaub Empire. Then something I can't read because of the dirt, then Home of Engineering Academy and then something about Elves and war and dancing that doesn't make sense. I think this was written in the Dark Elven dialect, which is mostly understandable by anyone who speaks Elven, but any slang and obscure item names are just gibberish to me." Kone explains. 

Cain calls for a pair of Dark Elven Clerics as his Epic Supporters, hoping they can speak a language he knows. The clones of Kone can talk now that they've been upgraded to Epic by his skill, so that shouldn't be the issue. And these ones should speak Dark Elven, they swore at the party in it continually when they met in the dungeon. 

"Wow, you called me somewhere interesting. Is this one of the Lost Cities? It looks like it." The cleric to his left says, looking up at the glowing roof moss.

"Can you tell us what that plaque says?" Cain asks, before the chatterbox Elves can get on a roll. The one who spoke walks into the fountain and wipes off the plaque before reading the contents out loud. 

"Welcome to the city of Muzz, and the Schaub Empire. Home of the Gnomish Engineering Academy and the Royal Elven War Dancer Regiment. That's what it says. This really is one of the Lost Cities." The Elf reads the plaque out loud before getting excited and running off to look in various buildings. 

They're not expecting any trouble in here, as it's been abandoned for centuries, so Cain calls out the rest of his Supporters as Dark Elves to help them read any signs they find, receiving similar responses of excitement from all of them. 

"Don't break anything. We're here to explore, not to destroy the place. If you find anything interesting or valuable, let me or one of the Guild members know so we can come check it out." Cain gives his general instructions and everyone begins to spread out, each group taking a Dark Elf with them to translate, leaving Cain with two Clerics and a Primordial Shaman. 

"Where do you think the War Dancer Regiment would have been stationed? I'm in need of combat skills." Cain asks his partner, who points at a huge marble building with a black dome that hasn't collapsed yet due to age. 

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"That's the mark of a Dark Elven Royal facility. If it's not the barracks and training grounds, they should be near there."

"You recognized this as a lost city, do you know why it was abandoned? The entrance was barricaded when we arrived to keep people out, but the place looks immaculate, like they didn't leave in any particular hurry."

"Water. The desert started taking over the surface, and the surface Cities built dams and diverted rivers to feed their growing needs. But that caused the aquifers and ground water to dry up even more, speeding the advance of the sands. Usually the Schaub Empire refers to the cities on the surface, this one was a special city, one with both Dark Elves and Gnomes."

"So the whole Empire wasn't Dark Elves and Gnomes?" Cain asks, having thought that the legendary sword fighting styles he was looking for were Dark Elven. They were described as graceful and dual wielding, and he's seen them fight that way in dungeons, so it made sense to him. 

"It was primarily Gnomes, their engineering made the advanced society possible, or so we're told. My Grandmother would know better, she was stationed here in her youth. But the surface cities mixed in the local races, mostly humans and Fae, while the only Dark Elves you would find on the surface would be the Royal Guards, who vowed to protect the Gnomish King." She elaborates as they look around what used to be an apartment building. 

There's indoor plumbing, light bulbs, and what looks more like a garage than a horse stable. That's Cain's next target, he wants to know how they got around this huge city. The garage door has partially collapsed, dry rotted into powder, but the side door is entirely fallen, and was left open to begin with. 

There is no car inside, instead a row of tire racks that look like they were for bicycles and a collection of wiring are visible through the ruins of the fallen roof. Carefully exploring through the rubble, Cain finds a bunch of parts on a bench, a tire, some sort of battery and off in one corner, the battered frame of a moped that was clearly in an accident, as no roof parts have fallen on it. That means what he's seeing in the middle of the floor are storage racks to hold the mopeds, along with charging cables. 

Gnomish technology appears to have been very advanced, even hundreds of years earlier when this city was abandoned. 

"Where did they all go? You said your grandmother is still alive?" Cain asks and the Dark Elf smiles. 

"It hasn't even been a thousand years, of course she's still alive. Old and cranky, but alive. She moved to the Underwood Empire, to the south of the Desert, underneath what used to be known as the Elven Woods. That's where all the Dark Elves that stayed on the continent are. Most of the Gnomes left for their homeland across the ocean, but some are likely still on the west side of this continent, across the mountains. We don't get much news from there, as we closed the entrances to Underwood to stop the attacks during the last war and never opened them again."

So they might find motorcycles and electric lights after they reach level 200 and head across the mountains? That's encouraging news, but Cain wonders how far technology would get in a world filled with Mages.

They've got mopeds though, which would be great for riding around town. It's unlikely, but if a textbook or repair manual survived, Cain wants it. The Dwarves would work wonders building custom bikes if he could find out how the Gnomes powered them.

Misha is on a much different adventure, along with her translator and one of the Primordial Shamans, who has decided that they need extra protection, or simply that they're too interesting to ignore. The duo has led her into the old shopping district. Magical clothing doesn't deteriorate with age, and in a city full of Dark Elves, they have high hopes to find something good. The cleric Supporter is convinced that Misha would look great in Dark Elven Fashion, and she's on a mission to find it. 

Kone and Su, along with the majority of the Primordial Shamans are actually taking their exploration seriously, making notes, drawing maps and taking a rough inventory of each building they pass, under the assumption that everyone else is doing the same. Cain at least is making a mental note of the layout of the city around him, and Laura is starting a map as she flies overhead, savoring the cool underground air, but that's a close as her assumption gets to being correct, as Vala and Nemu both grabbed a cleric and disappeared somewhere.

That's fine, they won't get far in a sealed off city. 

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