Chapter 282: The Black Throne of Khestra

With the world boss on the move, I had to speed up even more. No more taking time walking between clusters of enemies. As soon as I saw one, I had to teleport straight there and get rid of them. Although it was completely unreasonable for the giant skeletal monster to be able to cross eight hundred kilometers quickly, there were far stranger things in this world.

Soon after this massacre began, the leggings dropped, and then a small shield. However, I didn’t stop. Since the monsters in this dungeon didn’t respawn, I had to make sure that I eliminated each and every one of them, lest the last monster on the map dropped a crucial item.

Halfway through, I had to stop to restore the books that Diane and Bella were reading, but otherwise the hunt was smooth. My only concern was that I did not find a headpiece no matter how long I searched. Was the crown on the boss’s head meant to represent that the headpiece wasn’t needed? I wasn’t sure, so I just kept going.

It took over an hour of nonstop shuttling around to finally destroy the last sand knight, which I found standing off behind some corner at the back of the castle. Its placement was such that if I didn’t have True Sight, I might never have spotted it.

When this final knight died, it dropped a sheet of golden metal, two feet wide on each side. On the top of the metal were two footprints. Understanding what was needed, I teleported back to the throne room again.

As soon as I arrived, the metal plate flew out of my hands, landing squarely in front of the throne. I pulled the boots out of my inventory and lined them up on the footprints next, and then a flash of light spread out, one that perfectly matched my Timeless Traces skill. When it faded, the boots were solidly affixed to the plate.

Next was the armored leggings, the chest plate, gauntlets, and then the shield and spear. Each piece let out the same glow as it attached to the growing construct. Finally, the last thing that I added was a necklace that dropped during my hunt. It had the same black and gold pattern as the rest of the items, with the pendant on it resembling a black spear.

Once the pendant had affixed itself to the standing armor, the entire armor set suddenly began to move. I stepped back defensively, ready to fight if needed, but the armor simply sat down on the throne behind it, as if it were completely natural. Once it had sat down, holding the spear on one side and its shield across its lap, it went dormant yet again.

Naturally, I reported this phenomenon to Diane and Bella, as well as letting them know that I had cleared out the monsters. All that was left were the three chests that I had originally spotted when we first entered the dungeon.

How are you two coming with those books? I asked as I made my way back to the library.

Just finishing up. We’ll explain after we leave. When I saw Diane’s message, I just teleported to the two of them and quickly took them around to check the chests. Unfortunately, the only things in the chests were coins and potions. Not even a single piece of equipment appeared, which seemed highly improbable, but that could have just been a feature of this dungeon.

Either way, we were done here, so I teleported us away from the dungeon entirely. Not wanting to get stuck in the growing storm, I took us straight to Fallcry, earning looks of relief from the halfling and elf.

“So, what did you find?” I pressed, eager to learn the lore of the dungeon, and whatever other secrets they may have found.

“Well, first of all, the true name of the dungeon should have been Black Throne,” Bella began with a smile. “It was later changed to Sand Castle as part of the plan to prepare for the Sundering. The whole place was built by the traditionalists as a defense platform.”

“A defense platform?” I asked in confusion, and Diane nodded her head.

“That’s right. It’ll make more sense once the Black King reaches the throne. The whole place was shrunken down so that future explorers would be able to prepare it for his return. Anyways, that dungeon isn’t important anymore. It’s only designed to activate again if it detects the New Bloods on Khestra.”

I looked at Diane, blinking again. “The Traditionalists thought that the New Blood faction would persist all the way to the present day?”

“They seemed sure of it, actually,” Bella answered. “They couldn’t predict what form they would take, but they were positive that the faction wouldn’t be destroyed with the Sundering.”

“Right,” I muttered, looking at the two of them. “Did you find anything else out? For instance, the next dungeon that we should visit?”

Bella answered quickly once again. “There were three other dungeons that we found mentioned in the Desert Reclamation Plan. The first was the water recycling plant that we already cleared, which as we know by now was meant to kick-start the climate.”

“The second dungeon is called the Seed Bed. It’s a facility where various seeds are stored,  and once conquered, those seeds will be released into the clouds to mix with the rain and fall over Khestra. According to the plan we found, the seeds are fast-growing, and will help to restore the greenery of the desert.”

“As for the third, it is called the Sandstone Trial. Though, I’m not really sure if we should go to this one anymore…” Bella’s voice trailed off as she said that, so Diane took over.

“This is another dungeon where you are meant to be training the Timeless Traces skill by restoring old murals. It doesn’t have a direct effect on the terraformation process, but the murals themselves might shed some light on the story of the Sundering.”

I nodded my head at their explanations, before a rather pressing question occurred to me. “I wouldn’t be against going to both of those other dungeons. However, the problem becomes ‘how do we find them?’” I looked at the duo as I asked that. “Previously, the Mountain Crown was our guiding landmark, used to point the way to all three of the dungeons we’ve been to thus far.”

“At this point in the quest chain, the Black King isn’t supposed to be moving yet, so the directions for these two dungeons should still reference the Mountain Crown, right?”

The two fell silent as I asked this, as if I had struck a sensitive topic. “By now, the crater where the boss monster rested should be in the process of filling with water. There are no discernible landmarks around that area now that the boss has gotten up and left. How are we going to determine where the specific peaks were to find the last two dungeons?”

Bella pursed her lips, unable to provide an answer. After a few moments of thought, Diane muttered something to herself, her eyes slowly widening. “We can reverse engineer it,” she said in a confident tone.

“We have the position of the previous dungeons on my map, since we flew there manually. Knowing what the crown originally looked like, and the angles that represent those dungeons, we can reverse engineer the locations of the other peaks to use for the guide. Like how you can triangulate something’s position and figure out its orientation by knowing where it is in relation to other objects. Here, we already know the position, so all we need is its orientation.”

I looked at Diane in surprise. I understood all of the words that she had just said, and yet none of them made any sense to me at all. “Can you do it?” I asked seriously, and she gave a firm nod of her head.

“Give me the rest of the day to get it done. I’ll need to export some of my screenshots from the game and use a modeling program, but I should be able to get a map ready by morning.” After she said that, Diane’s brand dimmed, and her Chosen blinked, looking at myself and Bella.

“For the record, I have no idea what she was talking about either,” her Chosen admitted. The three of us sat down for a late lunch before getting to our individual training. Since we had nothing else to do for the day but practice, we needed to make the most of it.

The next day was Thursday, so Diane logged in later than usual, since she had to do her weekly checkup with the doctors. When she finally logged on, she had a triumphant glint in her eyes. “I’ve got the orientation figured out. I’ll need you to teleport us to the Stilled Shadows dungeon and fly straight north to the pole. Since the largest peak points directly to that dungeon, it is the easiest landmark to orient everything.”

We had already had breakfast, so the three of us didn’t waste any more time and got on the move. Out of curiosity, I used Beyond Horizons to check the location of the Sand Castle, shuddering at what I saw. The former dungeon was gone. Instead, a giant stone platform  spread across the ground, an armored skeleton sitting atop a massive throne.

The storm was still raging across Khestra, with rivers flowing constantly between the dunes. Lightning lit up the clouds like twisting serpents, and I had to create a barrier to protect us from the wind.

Once we were in the car, I followed the compass built into the dashboard and drove straight north. It was always hard to orientate yourself properly after a long-distance teleport, so I was immensely thankful for this compass.

Since we were avoiding teleporting so that we didn’t lose our orientation, and the rain was battering down against my barriers, the drive took over an hour before we reached the gaping pit of the desert. Water rushed in from all directions, forming a quickly-growing lake that rose up towards the rim.

“Alright, Diane, this is your time to shine,” I said, looking over at the halfling seated next to me while flying directly above the center of the lake. “We just came from the highest peak, so which way do we go now?”

Diane bit her lip beneath her facemask, seeming to study images only she could see. “If we’re going to the Seed Bed first, then, that way!” she shouted, pointing forward and off to the right. I created a glowing road in the air to follow the direction that she pointed, confirming that I had gotten the angle right. Then, I turned the car and began driving in a straight line once again.

“So, once we’ve finished the terraforming questline, is Khestra going to become another forest realm like Blossom Vale and Verdantia?” I asked, trying to make conversation since there weren’t any monsters nearby.

“I don’t think that it will go full forest,” Diane muttered. “But there should be a lot of greenery. As for oceans or anything else, that will depend on how the sand ends up settling, I guess? There wasn’t any information on that in the books from the Sand Castle, so I don’t have anything to go off of for that.”

“I think it’s going to be a swamp,” Bella chimed in, causing Diane to look back at her in confusion. “Because we were too early with the water, I mean. Normally, we should have taken care of the Seed Bed dungeon first, dispersing the seeds into the air and across the realm, and then moved to the Water Recycling Plant. But now, it’s been storming nonstop for nearly twenty-four hours, causing the water to build up beyond what they would have prepared for. That should have some impact on how the foliage develops, right?”

Diane simply chuckled under her breath, looking ahead once again. “A desert turning into a swamp, huh? Well, I’ve seen crazier things.”