Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic-Chapter 463: The Downgraded Relic

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The following Sunday, Shard had intended to go to the psychiatric hospital with the doctor to find a subject for creating a Mind Crystal, but No. 6 Saint Delan Square had been fully renovated and needed his personal inspection.

The inspection process and having the workers move the furniture from the basement to the upstairs took up the entire morning. By the time all the workers had left, it was nearly one in the afternoon, and Shard left the house with Mia.

He first locked the door, put the key in his pocket, then with a smile, took the key out again and unlocked it.

Although he didn't need a key to open the door, it felt like a ritual now.

He pulled open the door, walked in with the cat, and upon closing it behind him, took a deep breath facing the stairs:

"Look, Mia, all of this is ours!"

He laughed himself, placed the key in the biscuit tin on the shoe cabinet, and then, holding the cat that was peeking around uncertainly, he turned into the basement behind the staircase.

He turned on the gas lamp switch on the wall, and the bright light illuminated the space before him. The basement walls had been repainted, now stacked with a small amount of building materials like metal pipes and stone bricks. At the side of the wall stood several wooden racks Shard had the carpenter make—useful later on when he converted this place into an underground alchemy lab or magic potion workshop.

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"Not bad at all," he said, and then went up to the ground floor with the cat again.

Unlike the upper floors, the ground floor was not divided into numbered rooms but was a single residence. The kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, and study on the ground floor were all fully furnished, with water pipes, gas lines, and steam pipes all connected. Gas lamps and curtains were styles chosen by Tifa for Shard, and the fireplace in the living room was already connected to the chimney on the roof, ready for use in the coming winter.

Although Shard and Mia had been living on the ground floor all week, he still walked through every room with joyful emotion, eventually pulling open the curtains to stand at the window behind the sofa, looking out at the bustling Saint Delan Square:

"Really not bad."

As there were no changes needed on the second floor, he led Mia through to the third floor.

The construction of the third floor was identical to the second floor. After a week of repairs and the installation of gas lamps and a waterproof layer for the walls, it looked completely different from the moldy mess it had been a week before.

He opened the two newly installed wooden doors on the third floor to find no furniture inside, similar to the empty second-floor room below. Considering Shard still thought that the house in Saint Delan Square might have temporary issues yet to be detected, he planned to use the two rooms on the third floor as functional rooms rather than as guest rooms—the three bedrooms on the ground floor would suffice for guests.

Of course, this also made it easier for Mia to run around.

"Quite nice indeed," he remarked.

Finally, he climbed the stairs at the end of the third-floor hallway up to the attic, which was about two-thirds the size of the floors below, albeit somewhat lower.

Shard ducked his head as he climbed up. Now, there was only a small cardboard box in the corner of the attic.

The smile vanished from his face, he set the cat aside, then squatted down to open the cardboard box. Mia didn't run around; she seemed to sense the change in Shard's mood and watched his actions with wide eyes.

The box—plain as it was—had been discovered by the workers renovating the third floor, hidden behind what used to be the attic's decorative wall. Of course, that useless wall had since been demolished.

The contents of the cardboard box were few: travel postcards from various places in the Old Continent and old photographs. While the photos were all landscapes with no people visible, Shard mysteriously felt certain that they must have belonged to Detective Sparrow. This was not only because Sparrow was the only person who had used the house for decades, but also because of intuition. Shard couldn't think of anyone else, except for a spy concealing their identity, who would take so many landscape photos without including any people in them while traveling.

Detective Sparrow knew he was going to die, and since he had time to train Shard, he would certainly have disposed of any sensitive items like handguns or personal letters that could reveal his identity. As for personal items from before his time in Tobesk, he probably destroyed some, but ultimately chose not to destroy these photographs that represented memories.

Shard flipped through the postcards and the landscape photos devoid of Sparrow himself, thinking that the locations on the postcards nearly covered all the well-known cities of the Old Continent. Sparrow must have had a very colorful life when he was young.

He planned to take the box down to the study. Compared to the false diaries full of complaints about the lack of business and decreasing savings, these photos were truly Detective Sparrow's relics. Sparrow's act of not destroying the photos allowed Shard, for the first time, to see another side of this now-deceased middle-aged man, beyond the persona of "Carsonrick Spy."

After walking around the house, the strange sense of fulfillment almost made Shard want to take Mia out for a big meal to celebrate the full opening of the house, but he resisted the urge, knowing that overindulgence was not right.

The doctor had already gone to the psychiatric hospital alone, so in the afternoon, Shard went to find Luviya to ask about Mr. Riddle, the Diviner from the Fifth Era.

That very evening, he could enter the winter of Year 1784 of the Fifth Era for the second time, and Shard didn't want to waste any time. When he found Luviya, she was performing a divination for someone else, so Shard had to wait a moment.

Luviya had some rather good news:

"I've already obtained some of the Sludge Riddle's life documents, and I've hand-copied the parts that may be helpful to you," she said, handing Shard the thick file folder, her face tinged with a hint of concern:

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"The gentleman's life experiences are quite trivial, and the society is only willing to disclose some of it to me. You want to find eight major events he went through, but after summarizing the information, there are probably only four.""

"No matter, the first was two experiences, the second time was four experiences, this should at least help me complete this expedition."

Shard pinched the document bag in his hand, judging from its thickness that he would likely have to spend the rest of the day reading these materials.

"But what about the third time? Are you going to keep waiting until my application goes through? Or do you have other documents? Did Miss Feliana mention this man in her notes?"

"Of course not."

Shard shook his head:

"Standing in the Sixth Era, we already know that the gentleman must have successfully left Horror Fortress, so even if my mission fails, it will not lead to Mr. Riddle's death there... This is really tricky, apart from the Prophet's Society, there is no other way, even if his life experiences are rich, he's just an ordinary man from the Fifth Era, other organizations won't record such data. Thus, I think I can wait for half a month."

"No other way after half a month, and you give up?"

Luviya raised her eyebrows, not believing Shard to be someone who easily gives up.

"Of course not, after half a month Daknis is coming. Since we've already decided to deal with him, surely we'll get some valuable information about him. Report this to the society, and then use Sludge Riddle's information as a reward, they won't refuse."

"That's a good method."

Luviya nodded, then furrowed her brows again:

"Also, I was curious about this Level 0 Relic you mentioned that could summon a deity, so I did a little investigation."

"Found anything?"

"I did."

"Hmm?"

Shard showed a surprised smile; neither the Prophet's Society nor Saint Byrons should easily release information about a Level 0 Relic, so he did not plan to check the information about that table.

"When you mentioned that relic, I felt I had heard of it. Shard, is this it?"

Luviya then handed Shard a photograph, which was black and white and had yellowed somewhat. The photographer's skills were poor, and the light at the scene of the shoot was bad. From the angle, it appeared the photographer had taken the picture slanting the camera, but the table against the wall in the darkness was captured completely, and Shard could clearly see the twenty slots on it.

For a moment, he felt as if he were back in Horror Fortress, challenging the deity with Mr. Riddle at the table. But soon he realized that he was looking at the Relic in a photo and the person beside him was not the unkempt middle-aged man who seemed not to have bathed for a long time, but a beautiful girl he knew well.

But through the ages, almost fifty centuries later, he saw the table again.

"That's the one, but what camera can take a photo of a Level 0 Relic?"

His surprise grew, and Luviya shook her head:

"It's not a Level 0 Relic, nor can it project the summoning of a deity. This is the Keeper of Secrets Level Relic 'Life's Gamble.' In the Common Calendar of the Sixth Era in the year 721, the society acquired it in the old goods market of the capital of the Slavic Principality, which is in the southern part of the Old Continent."

The Slavic Principality was an extinct nation, in the year 721 the United Kingdom of Carsonrick had not yet unified the south.

"When two Circle Sorcerers, with no more than two Levels difference, sit on either side of the gambling table, they can activate the Relic's trait. Through the gambling method you mentioned, the winner can acquire one of the loser's Spirit Runes, while the loser dies instantly. However, the winner also has to pay a price. Gaining Spirit Runes unnaturally will contaminate their Spirit and elements, making further improvements more difficult."

Luviya said, tapping her finger on the table, a habit for warding off bad things for herself when thinking about wrongdoings:

"But the most important use of this Relic is that it allows Circle Sorcerers to display the exact appearance of enemies encountered, confirming what those unknown enemies actually are. As long as one party in the gamble declares the forfeiture of the stakes at the end of the game, both only need to pay the opening Spirit cost."

"That's a very good use, but how come the ability to summon a deity disappeared? Where is that table now?"

Shard immediately asked, for if he really could not win the gamble, maybe he could rely on his knowledge of the gambling table to win in another way.

[That would be cheating.]

A voice echoed in his ear; Shard paid it no mind.