Excited, Thea rushed to the site that very night. The expedition team felt she had arrived a bit too soon, but she brushed it off by claiming she had taken a supersonic jet.
"Is this the place?"
Looking at the structure before her—which resembled a pyramid more than a temple—Thea turned to ask.
The expedition team was positioned at the outermost perimeter of the ruins. The temple itself stood like a small island in the middle of what had once been a lake; the water had long since been replaced by thick silt. Having taken the job for money, the team had not continued any deeper investigation—finding the location was sufficient to complete the task.
"This is it. Look inside—locals say this temple has a history of several thousand years. No one dares to enter, but according to what we heard, there seem to be traces of some isolated natives living on the island."
The expedition leader explained enthusiastically.
To him, this mission was easy money. No dangerous exploration was required—just visual confirmation—and the pay was generous. A task like this might not come around even once a year. Smiling broadly, he continued telling Thea about various local customs.
Thea took out her phone and instructed her assistant to transfer payment to the expedition team. The other two teams had not found the site, but they were also given some compensation for their efforts. Only after the noisy crowd departed did she finally begin to examine the temple carefully.
Hovering in midair and focusing her gaze, she estimated the structure to be roughly three hundred meters long and over a hundred meters wide, with a height exceeding forty meters. Wide stone steps ascended tier by tier, leading to a pool-like altar at the summit. The four walls of the altar were carved with scenes of primitive tribal warfare, sacrifice, and harvest.
Just as the locals had said, there were signs of native habitation around the exterior, though the numbers were small—roughly thirty people.
The atmosphere here was extremely obscure. Ripples of a peculiar frequency permeated the air. Whenever Thea attempted to peer inside using the Eye of Horus, the strange waves simply canceled the effect. Even her current, near-sublime mental power was blocked by the special reliefs carved into the temple's outer walls.
With her eyes closed, she could not sense the structure at all, despite its massive footprint.
"Interesting place."
Having arrived in haste without bringing any subordinates, Thea circled the perimeter once more. Detecting nothing that could pose a threat to her, she slowly descended toward the former lakebed at the center.
The muddy ground, layered with dead leaves, made walking in leather boots somewhat uncomfortable.
"Hoo! Woo—!"
Several natives clad in simple animal hides reacted to her sudden descent from the sky with mixed expressions—some baring their teeth in hostility, others kneeling in worship. Their language, however, was too crude to understand.
Frowning, Thea selected an elderly man who looked relatively clean and stood near the center of the group. She extended her hand, grasped at empty air, and pulled him toward her. Her powerful psychic force entered his mind directly, bypassing the language barrier and extracting memories of this place straight from his thoughts.
The results disappointed her.
The old man had once been the tribe's leader; his son now held that role. Even so, his memories contained no deeper knowledge of the temple—only an ancestral rule passed down through generations: they were forbidden from leaving this region and absolutely forbidden from entering the temple.
Such a familiar bloodline curse could only have been the work of Merlin or Morgan le Fay. Most likely, their ancestors had been sinners of some sort. This kind of story was common to the point of banality.
Tossing the old man back into the crowd, Thea ignored the natives and walked calmly toward the entrance.
The ground before the doorway was stained with dried blood and littered with weathered bones. Clearly, the natives had not resigned themselves to eternal confinement. Generation after generation, they had sent people to test the temple.
Unfortunately, every such attempt had been crushed by the bloodline curse. Over time, the stone pathway had been soaked in a dark crimson hue, and many skeletons had fused with the masonry itself. Several skulls lay scattered on the ground, jaws slightly agape, as if silently warning anyone who dared to enter.
After sequentially casting four or five detection spells, Thea confirmed that the main entrance contained no traps. Under the tense gazes of the natives, she stepped inside. As she crossed the threshold, torches lining both walls ignited one after another, as though responding to an unseen signal.
The interior layout was simple—a cross-shaped corridor. Entering from the north and exiting through the south, Thea advanced cautiously. The entire walk took less than ten minutes.
"Strange… there's nothing here?"
She turned back and walked east to west. Apart from the torches lighting up in response to her footsteps, nothing else occurred.
"Ancient mages always loved putting on airs of profundity."
Too lazy to search manually, the young lady summoned her powered armor and activated its AI scanning system. While the temple's magic interfered with the scan to some extent, the disciplines were different. After adjusting the scan frequency twice, the magical concealment gradually lost its effect.
Gideon scanned the structure thoroughly, inside and out, then began data comparison. Gaps between stones, wall composition, load-bearing distribution—ancient architecture was still architecture, and numbers did not lie. After two minutes of intensive trigonometric calculations, a hidden door was identified.
The door was not heavy. With a gentle push, it opened automatically, revealing an utterly black chamber beyond.
The darkness seemed to absorb all light. The hundreds of torches within the temple extinguished instantly. Thea felt as though she were standing in absolute void—above, below, left, right, front, and back were all pitch black. She raised her hand and cast a Light Spell. A spell once effortless now required significant exertion.
Fortunately, her current mastery of magic ranked among the world's elite. As Etrigan had once said, had she lived in ancient times, she would have had no trouble securing a position as a court mage.
"What is this…?"
Only after increasing the spell's output did the chamber's interior come into view.
At the center stood a massive dark coffin—thick, heavy, and imposing.
Yet what truly drew her attention was not the coffin itself, but the skeleton seated cross-legged atop it.
Unlike the natives outside whose remains had been eroded into unrecognizable shapes, this skeleton appeared to have belonged to someone at least one meter ninety tall in life. The pelvic structure made it clear—the remains were female.
Morgan le Fay?
Thea tried to look away—but found it difficult.
The pristine, jade-like bones radiated an eerie allure. A seductive rhythm pulsed silently, tapping against her consciousness. The skeletal hands cradled a floating golden cube. The cube rotated slowly, emitting shifting golden light and continuously transmitting knowledge of life and death, order and chaos.
Power. Status. Wealth. Beauty. Knowledge pointing directly toward cosmic truth.
This was a perfect temptation—one that no ordinary person could withstand.
Unfortunately, Thea was precisely the exception.
At first, she truly was momentarily captivated by the strange remains. But the moment wealth, status, and ultimate knowledge were laid before her, the corners of her mouth curled upward—into a faint, mocking smile.