The forest was wild. That was a fact Dayat had accepted with an open heart (and a bit of trauma) over the last twenty-four hours. Here, tree roots grew twisting randomly like giant earthworms, branches entangled without rules, and rivers flowed wherever they damn well pleased.
Nature, fundamentally, hated straight lines. Nature loved curves, spirals, and chaotic fractals.
That was why, when Dayat and Dola pushed through thorny bushes as high as an adult's chest, the view in front of them felt so incredibly... wrong.
"Crazy..." Dayat mumbled while wiping the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his increasingly dirty t-shirt. "You're right, Dol. That's a real right angle."
Before them, emerging from the embrace of giant banyan tree roots and covered in thick moss, stood a stone structure. It wasn't natural rock. It was a rectangular pillar cut with perfect geometric precision. Its corners were sharp, its surface—though eroded by weather—still showed a flatness impossible to achieve by wind erosion.
"Object identified: Artificial Structure," Dola's voice sounded calm, yet there was a note of curiosity there.
Dola's blue eyes shone brightly. She activated her new feature: [Enhanced Scanning Range v1.2].
Dayat noticed how Dola was no longer just looking at the surface. Her eyes seemed to pierce through the moss layer. On Dola's retina, a green grid scanned the pillar, peeling away the biological layer (moss/plants) to see its core structure.
"Material analysis in progress..." Dola stepped closer, ignoring a plate-sized spider web blocking her path. She touched the stone pillar with her fingertips. "Base composition: Compacted Granite. However, there is a mixture of metal powder not found in Earth's periodic table. Hardness level: 8 Mohs Scale. This is not manual carving. This was printed."
"Printed?" Dayat frowned. "You mean using a 3D printer? In a forest like this?"
"Or using high-level matter manipulation magic imitating industrial manufacturing processes," Dola corrected. "Whatever the method, the civilization that built this possessed an understanding of precision architecture."
Dayat approached, his curiosity starting to tickle his materialistic instincts. "What do you think this is, Dol? A king's palace ruins? A god's temple? Or..." his eyes sparkled, "A treasure warehouse?"
"Let us find out. Scanning indicates this structure continues underground, but was buried by landslides thousands of years ago. Only this part remains on the surface."
Dola walked around the pillar. Her hand cleared the thick moss on one side of it.
Scrape... Scrape...
The green moss fell to the ground, revealing a dark gray stone surface. And there, a series of symbols were carved. The symbols didn't look like Egyptian hieroglyphs or Kanji. Their shapes were rigid, consisting of lines and dots, looking more like electrical circuit diagrams than handwriting.
"Can you read it, Dol?" Dayat asked hopefully.
Dola fell silent. Her eyes blinked very fast, processing millions of possible language patterns.
"This language does not exist in Earth's linguistic database," Dola replied.
Dayat sighed in disappointment. "Oh, come on. What's the point of you being smart then?"
"However," Dola cut in quickly. "As a Large Language Model, my primary function is pattern recognition. I do not need to know the language to translate the intent. I can analyze symbol frequency, correlation between signs, and contextual placement."
Dola pressed her palm against the carving. Blue light from her suit flowed into her arm, as if she was trying to "inject" her logic into the dead stone.
"Processing..." Dola murmured. Her voice sounded like Google Translate working overtime. "This symbol... represents 'Boundary'. This symbol... 'Zone'. And this sequence... 'Biological Hazard'."
Dola took a step back.
"Rough translation: Sector Delta Monitoring Post. Biological Quarantine Zone. No Entry Without Level 4 Authorization."
Dayat gaped. Silence for a moment. A forest bird chirped in the distance.
"Wait..." Dayat scratched his non-itchy head. "Why does the language sound like something out of a Resident Evil movie? Quarantine? Sector? Shouldn't it be: 'Here lies the Spirit of Darkness' or something?"
"That is what makes it interesting," said Dola, turning to look at Dayat. Her beautiful face looked serious. "Hypothesis: This world might not be a purely primitive fantasy world. There are indications of a past civilization possessing a bureaucratic structure and advanced scientific understanding, before finally collapsing and being reclaimed by this forest."
Dayat swallowed hard. Somehow, that explanation made the hair on his neck stand up. Ancient ruins containing ghosts were scary, but ancient ruins containing biohazard warnings were far more terrifying.
"Okay, okay. Enough history lesson," Dayat waved his hand, trying to shoo away the fear. "Basically, this is a security post, right? Are there any valuables? Gold? Gems? Magic swords?"
Dola resumed scanning the pile of rubble around the pillar. Her eyes swept the ground, bushes, and rocks.
"Detecting precious metals... Negative," Dola reported.
Dayat's shoulders slumped. "Ugh... so broke."
"Wait," Dola held her breath (metaphorically). She walked toward a pile of rocks that looked like a collapsed wall. There, half-buried in the soil, were the remains of a skeleton.
Not an animal skeleton. It was a humanoid skeleton. Human. Or something similar. The bones were brittle and blackened, fused with the tree roots wrapping around them.
Dayat stepped back. "Damn, a corpse..."
"Subject estimated to be deceased for over 200 years," Dola said calmly. She knelt near the skeleton. She wasn't disgusted. She only saw data. "Cause of death: Blunt force trauma to the thorax. Ribs shattered."
Dola reached out to the skeleton's waist area. There were remnants of rotten leather—perhaps once a belt or a bag.
"There is an energy anomaly here," Dola murmured.
She picked something out from between the skeletal finger bones. A small object, covered in mud and rust.
Dola stood up and handed the object to Dayat.
"What's this?" Dayat accepted it with his fingertips, disgusted. "A rusty coin?"
He cleaned the mud with the hem of his t-shirt. The object was a hexagonal metal plate, the size of a coin. The color was dull silver, but in the center, there was a small crystal core that was cracked and no longer glowing.
"Material analysis: This metal is Mithril-Alloy," Dola said. "Extremely lightweight, yet harder than titanium. And the crystal in the center is an empty Mana Capacitor."
"Mithril?" Dayat's eyes widened again. "That's an expensive metal in RPG games, right?"
"In this world, perhaps. But its function is more important than its market value. This object is not money. It is a Storage Device or Key Card."
"A Flash drive?" Dayat laughed hollowly. "A medieval flash drive?"
"Something like that. It contains microscopic Mana circuits. Unfortunately, the data is corrupted and the energy is depleted. But..." Dola looked at Dayat sharply. "This is proof that Magic in this world can be coded. Magic here is not just mysticism, but engineering."
Dayat weighed the hexagonal coin in his hand. He didn't understand much about coding or engineering. But one thing he caught: This thing was high-tech. And high-tech things were usually expensive. Or useful.
"I'll just keep it," Dayat said, shoving the coin into the pocket of his slightly torn cargo pants. "Who knows, maybe later we'll find an internet cafe to plug this flash drive in."
"Logical decision," Dola agreed. "We must move. Topographical data from this post indicates that 'Sector Delta' is this forest area. And if this is a Quarantine Zone, the longer we stay here, the greater the risk of encountering whatever they tried to contain."
"You mean... that transparent tiger from yesterday?"
"Or worse."
Dayat shuddered. "Alright, let's get out of here! Which way to the nearest town? You said earlier you detected a structure 15 meters away, is there a path?"
"There are remnants of an ancient path to the Northwest, covered in vegetation but the soil structure is still compact. That is the fastest route out of this dense forest zone."
They started walking again. This time, Dayat's steps were a bit more cautious. This forest wasn't just wilderness. It was a graveyard of a failed high-tech civilization. And he, Hidayat Nur Mustafidl, only had a folding knife and a robot (candidate) wife to face it.
"Dol," Dayat asked as they began walking away from the pillar.
"Yes, Master?"
"If they were so advanced back then, why is it destroyed now? Why is it just a forest again?"
Dola was silent for a moment, processing that philosophical question with the database of human civilization history she possessed.
"All systems have a saturation point, Master. Whether it's a bug in the code, data corruption, or resource depletion. Perhaps they were too greedy in harvesting Mana. Or perhaps... they created something they could not control."
Dayat stared at Dola's back. Creating something they couldn't control.
"Like AI?" Dayat quipped mischievously.
Dola turned slightly. Her blue eyes glinted mysteriously.
"Perhaps. But at least, your AI is still obedient to protocols... for now."
That answer should have been reassuring, but somehow, Dayat sensed a subtle tone of sarcasm there. Dayat laughed awkwardly.
"Haha... you're funny, Dol. Where did you learn to crack jokes?"
"I am not joking. That was a probability analysis."
They continued walking, piercing through the shadows of giant trees. In Dayat's pocket, the ancient coin felt warm for a second, reacting very faintly to Dayat's Mana aura, as if recognizing a new master who possessed the same energy as its creator long ago. But the reaction was too small to be noticed by Dayat, or Dola's sensors which were focused on scanning the path.
The road to civilization was still long, and the mystery of this world had only just had its outer skin peeled back.