Vivid Stars Online

The next morning, I returned to looting with renewed fervor. While there was still a limit to the amount that the robots could carry, they were large and strong enough to more than triple our carrying capacity.

I used this to load them up with the rest of the power tools we had been unable to carry earlier, as well as dozens of parts from the broken robots scattered throughout the facility.

I figured they were probably worth more than nearly anything else I could find here. The parts would allow the government to study how the robots worked without tearing the four working ones apart. With enough parts, they might even be able to build another couple of functioning ones.

After spending half a day on that, and loading down my new minions as much as I could, I returned to the ritual chamber. I had always planned on trying to level my archaeology skill here and while I had wanted more time, half a day would have to be enough.

We were already pushing our supplies to the limit by staying here this long, and I couldn’t justify the risk of spending another day. With that in mind, I began focusing on the carved pillars.

I was far from a trained archaeologist in real life, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. Still, I tried my best to document the site, taking pictures and writing down any impressions I had of the carvings.

Eventually, I finished with the pillars and moved on to the throne itself, where I did the same analysis. The strangest thing that struck me during this process is that the entire place was carved with nature scenes just like the first ritual chamber I had encountered.

This felt rather odd given that it gave a purely technical ability and I eventually decided that it had to have some kind of deeper meaning to Arkathian culture.

Perhaps they revered nature or something like that? Or it's representative of some kind of balance, nature scenes to offset the technical nature of the ability? There really isn’t enough information to prove either idea, perhaps Dr. Henceforthe has an idea?

Resolving to discuss my findings with him upon my return, I continued my documentation until it was time to sleep. Just before I finished, I was rewarded by Archaeology increasing to level 2, proving my idea on how to increase it.

We slept in the hangar again that night before leaving early in the morning. Much as I had expected, it was all I could do just to get all four robots walking down the mountain with us. I wasn’t sure if this was because of my ability only being at Journeymen level, or if perhaps I was pushing at the edges of what it was intended to do.

Either way, it took most of my focus on the way down, leaving Adam and Linnea to keep us safe. Luckily, the two of them were more than capable of doing so and we made solid progress on the way down.

Given our limited supplies, it was lucky that there were no delays, meaning that ran out the night before we were due to arrive back. The next morning, we had to skip breakfast before meeting up with Brian ten miles from the base of the mountain.

It was a good thing that Brian’s VTOL held eight people, as it allowed us to just barely fit in ourselves and the four robots. Brian was surprised to see our find, to say the least, however, he was still happy to fly us all back to the city.

We split up upon arrival after I thanked my two companions and assured them I would have the rest of their payments within two days, as agreed. That left me alone with the somewhat monumental task of selling everything that we had gathered.

While most of it would be taken directly to the palace, I still had dozens of Beast cores to sell first, including the massive one from the giant bird we had defeated. For now, I paid Brian a thousand credits to allow me to keep the robots on his landing pad while I dealt with that.

On the way to sell the cores, I sent a message ahead to Dr. Henry Henceforth, the head of archaeology at the palace. I figured it would be best to get pre-approval to bring the robots along to avoid any unfortunate incidents with the guards.

While they were crude adaptions, I was still essentially bringing four heavily armed combat robots into the palace. While I didn’t actually have enough control to use them offensively, that would be hard to prove.

As such, giving them advance warning and allowing them to prepare countermeasures seemed like a smart idea.

While I waited for my response, I dumped core after core on the shopkeeper's table until he was shaking his head in disbelief. The Grand Mountain Bird core went for an insane thirty thousand credits just on its own, while the motley collection of other cores went for another seventy-six thousand credits.

While that would have been a crazy amount of money before, it was only about a third of what I owed Linnea and Adam. Still, it was a good start, and I was confident that the massive amount of loot from the facility would cover the rest.

By the time I had finished with my sale, I had a response from Henry. After parsing through several paragraphs of over-excited rambling, I found he had scheduled a meeting first thing in the morning at seven AM.

Apparently, the palace guard wanted me to be processed before most of the other guests would start arriving, thus preventing any panic over my robotic minions. They had also arranged for me to arrive via one of the palace’s private VTOL landing pads.

That was a relief, as I hadn’t quite figured out how to get the robots through the city yet. I sent a message on to Brian asking him to fly the robots and me the next morning, and after a bit of grumbling about the early start, he agreed.

With that organized, I returned to the Explorers guild and booked a room for the night. A quick check of the guild database showed they were still happy with my progress, though I would need to contribute something in the next couple of weeks.

That meant finding something useful on the way to the third facility, as I wasn’t about to delay my progress in exploring all of them. Having seen the advantages that Journeyman had brought to me, continuing to upgrade my ability was my highest priority at the moment.

The next morning, I was up earlier and on my way to Brian’s VTOL. It was a quick trip from there, though we had to wait for nearly fifteen minutes before we were allowed even after having organized it the day before.

After landing, I hopped out of the vehicle to find it surrounded by sixteen guards split into four squads. Just as with the guards at the front gate a Psion led each squad and all of them were heavily armored.

“Jared Hope?” One of them asked curtly, as he advanced toward me. At my responding nod, he continued. “Bring out the robots slowly and with no aggressive movements.”

Turning, I focused on doing just that. One by one, the robots filed down the VTOL’s ramp, each laden with the loot we had gathered. The guards looked them over carefully, focusing on the weapons still welded to their arms, before eventually gesturing me onward.

I was led to a large warehouse on the western side of the landing pad where I was instructed to walk my robots inside. Two of the squads accompanied me, while the other two left.

I hoped that meant they had decided to trust me somewhat, though it may just mean that they weren’t particularly worried about the robots after seeing them. We had killed a dozen on our own after all, I doubted the two heavily armed squads with me would have any trouble with four.

Inside, I found Henry waiting with another dour-faced man. Unlike the aristocratically dressed doctor, his companion wore a set of plain overalls and a large tool belt.

“Jared!” Henry called out as I entered. “You’re back so soon and with so much more to give me!”

“Yeah,” I responded with a wave as I walked forward, commanding the robots to follow me. “I could actually fully explore the place this time, rather than leaving it all locked up.”

“Excellent, excellent!” he responded with an enormous grin before gesturing toward his companion. “This is Martin from our R&D division here to examine the robots you brought back. You’d be surprised at how often our divisions overlap when it comes to the Arkathian'd so he is a regular visitor here.”

Martin greeted me with a nod before turning his attention to the robots behind me. I directed them to lower all the stuff to the ground, before gesturing him forward to have a look.

While he examined them, I returned to the doctor and began discussing the ruin. He was enthusiastic as usual, particularly once I informed him that there was a second ritual chamber geared toward granting the same ability.

He actually laughed out loud as I said that, before immediately bringing up a screen and sending off a message. “Oh, the Dutchess will be pleased with that,” he said once he’d calmed down. “While any ritual chamber is valuable, multiple ones granting the same ability are rare.”

“The Arkathians had hundreds of abilities that we have documented so far, many of which we only have an initial source for. This makes any guaranteed upgrades valuable. Why I might need to petition the Duchess to allow me to use them, it's been some time since I’ve gained another ability.”

That sounded great to me, if they were this happy with just two of the same type, what would they think once I reported all four of them? I could barely wait to see the rewards I might get then.

I also shared my documentation of the room that, while being rather amateur, was still met with excitement from him. Apparently, few explorers did this kind of work, with most of them being more interested in looting as much as possible in as short an amount of time as possible.

I could see why that would be, the extra time I had to pay Adam and Linnea for the half a day spent examining the room wasn’t insignificant. Still, I felt that the time was worth it and Henry even offered me ten thousand credits for my research.

I agreed happily, before turning to face Martin as he moved back over from my pile of loot.

“The robots are interesting, though not the best quality we’ve seen from a ruin before. Honestly, I’m surprised that AI you encountered could change them to this extent, most of the old Arkathian ones have too many restrictions for that.”

“What I’m actually most interested in, though, are those power tools you found. They're of quite high quality and many of them appear to still be functional. The R&D department will be more than happy to purchase them and the robots from you.”

After that, we did a bit of haggling, before he eventually offered me twenty thousand per robot, a hundred and thirty thousand for the assorted power tools, and forty thousand for the robot parts and assorted electrical doodads.

This came to two hundred and fifty thousand credits just for the loot we had found. I also kept back the two additional Arkathian tablets we had found, not wanting to risk them finding the remaining two locations before I did.

Henry also assured me that a reward of sixty thousand credits would be coming my way once they confirmed my information, which was a fifty percent increase over the last one. I could only imagine that this was because of the second chamber.

With the money I had just made plus the cores I’d sold, I had the money to pay Linnea and Adam. When you factored in the cost of supplies and the multiple VTOL trips I had organized over the many weeks, the journey had taken in total, I had just barely made a profit, only about thirty thousand credits. This translated into less than a month of living expenses I had made in over five weeks of travel.

While it meant that I hadn’t gone broke, I also wasn’t getting anywhere fast. It showcased that I couldn’t afford to just keep throwing money at these expeditions, I had to figure out a way to make them cheaper if I was going to survive long term.

My real-world funds were dwindling after so long with no money coming in and I would soon need to draw money from the game to live on.

Thinking about it left only one solution. There was plenty of money in exploration, just not enough to keep funding multiple people all the time. I would have to start doing at least some of the work on my own.