Chapter 430: The Mummy in the Container

As the Daylight Magic faded, the fluorescent glow of the plants once again illuminated the gloomy space. The barbarian, who lacked Dark Vision, pressed her entire body against the glass, eyes wide as she peered into the container. After only a few seconds, as if she were a spring compressed to its absolute limit, her whole body shot back from the container!

“Holy hell! I really saw a ghost this time!” The barbarian snatched up the Grip of the Vast Wave in a reverse grip, poised to shatter the container before her. “There’s a desiccated corpse in there!”

The others all looked in the direction Sera’s sword was pointing. Aive and a few of the braver ones even wiped down several other nearby containers. In the end, they were all forced to accept a single fact:

Just as Sera had said, every container held a desiccated, dehydrated corpse—they were all coffins!

“Isn’t this a bit too extravagant…” Victoria couldn’t help but say. “This glass alone must cost several Gold Coins a piece! And this whole place is filled with it?”

“And what about those metal casings? I bet they aren’t cheap either, right?”

“A few Gold Coins a piece is the price for ordinary glass,” Jilannis said coolly. Her experiments required a lot of glassware, so she was familiar with the market. “For one-way glass like this, it would probably cost over ten, or even several dozen, Gold Coins to buy a single piece.”

“Besides, it’s not something you can get just by having the money. Very few artisans know how to make it.”

The Moon Elf couldn’t help but glance at Ron. ‘He actually recognized this type of glass. If he were born in this world, could his origins be confirmed now?’

‘Eight… no, twenty-five to twenty-eight, to be safe,’ the Sword-Singing Lion Armor muttered. It certainly didn’t need a Mind Link to talk to itself. ‘Counting the families I’ve actually encountered, that’s about the right number.’

“Speaking of which, haven’t we seen a similar scene in your bedroom?” Ron turned to the Vampire and asked again. “Your servants lying in their coffins, arranged in a circle around your bed. Isn’t that somewhat similar to the scene before us?”

“You wouldn’t be hiding something from us, would you?” Ron’s eyes narrowed, a look that made the Lord Count’s heart pound in his chest. “You’ve actually… been here before?”

“No, no! I swear I’ve never been here! I’ve never even heard there was a secret chamber down here!” Count Richthofen swore up and down. “And I didn’t get that ritual from here—no, I did get it from *there*, but definitely not *here*!”

“It was that entity! The entity I made a deal with! He’s the one who taught me the ritual and a few other things!”

“Sir Ron, please, think about it. If I had really learned it from this place, why would I have made do with ordinary coffins? I’m a Caster myself. I couldn’t possibly ignore such a massive variable!”

The Vampire pointed at the glass and metal of the chambers, his meaning perfectly clear: first, he couldn’t afford such expensive materials; second, he had no connections to buy them; and third, even if he were to find substitutes, he would have at least chosen materials like copper or iron, right?

He was a nobleman, after all. No matter how much he might cut corners, he wouldn’t do it so shoddily. The only explanation was that he had no idea these things were required in the first place.

Ron nodded, accepting his explanation. “In that case, there are two possibilities.”

“Either that entity itself belongs to this place, or at least learned some ritual from here, and therefore taught it to you; or, it taught even these creatures their ways. Which do you think is more likely?”

“If we only consider the time since the Delusional Land came into being, the latter possibility is more likely,” the Elf Grand Mage responded immediately. “But considering that entity has likely not yet reached omniscience and omnipotence—in fact, it’s probably very far from that level—we can’t rule out that it later learned this ritual from these creatures and then casually passed it on to Mr. Richthofen.”

“However, judging by both the scale and the meticulousness, the Lord Count’s version is far too inferior,” Silvia said, sizing up the “coffins” before them. “If you had been able to truly replicate this ritual, perhaps you could be resting in peace just like them, hm?”

“Rest in peace…” The Vampire listened and shook his head. Given his current form of life, resting in peace was impossible. A violent death, on the other hand, was something he could shoot for.

“How about we crack open these coffin lids and figure out how they died?” Having confirmed there was no strange or immediate danger, Sera’s courage swelled once more. The tribal Chieftain, showing no respect for the dead, made her proposal to the group. “We’ve got several bright minds here, right? Maybe we can figure something out.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The few Casters exchanged glances and agreed with Sera’s suggestion. Ron snapped his fingers, using a small flame on his fingertip to carefully burn away the vegetation near one of the chambers. “From the outside, even if these really are coffins, they aren’t ordinary ones. I’m more inclined to believe they’re controlled by some kind of mechanism.”

“The metal walls haven’t rusted, so the mechanism probably isn’t too badly damaged. As long as we find it, we should be able to open this thing.”

“And what if we can’t find the mechanism, or it’s broken?” Sera pressed relentlessly.

Ron’s gaze fell upon the greatsword in her hands. The barbarian was stunned for a moment, then it dawned on her. “Ha! So you guys also have to consider using brute force!”

“If that’s the case, why don’t we just get to it?”

“It’s best if we can open it normally, without damaging what’s inside,” Ron said, running his hand over the chamber’s bare outer shell, feeling the flow of Magic Energy within its grooves. “If we smash it open, what we can learn from the contents will be entirely up to fate.”

“Oh, found it. It’s here.”

As Ron’s fingers traced the rear side of the chamber, a slightly raised square panel made his spirits lift. “Alright, you don’t have to smash it open. Let’s see just who is lying in here!”

With the faint hiss of an airlock releasing, Ron pressed the button beneath the square panel. The one-way glass and its surrounding metal casing flipped upward, revealing the true face of the deceased within.

Several heads immediately crowded together, everyone eager to see just who was lying inside. The result, however, was not quite what they had imagined.

The corpse inside was indeed desiccated. The loss of moisture had wrinkled its grayish-white skin, and fissures had appeared in some of the tauter areas. But no matter how Ron looked at it, something felt off. Given his familiarity with human and animal tissues, this didn’t quite look like the mummified remains of a humanoid creature. The outer layer seemed more like… an exoskeleton?

‘The Insect Race?’ But its facial structure and limbs were close to human. Ron reasoned that, unless there was a very specific reason, an Insect Race evolving into a humanoid form would be unlikely to deliberately discard one of its three pairs of legs just to keep two. It made no sense.

Just as everyone was feeling bewildered, Anastina’s voice suddenly rang out:

“Hey, you guys think this thing looks like one of those Spore People from outside?”