Chapter 273: God’s Stone of Retaliation
Roland surveyed the cavern roughly — maybe the size of a football field, he decided, though it was difficult to hold the scale in his head. The walls were sheer. A narrow stone staircase cut into one of them descended from the tunnel entrance to the floor below.
He crouched at the head of the stairs and brought his torch close to the stone.
The marks were unmistakable: knife and axe, fine chisel work in the notches, old grit packed into the cuts.
“I assume you didn’t carve these,” he said.
“Of course not, Your Highness.” Carter shrugged. “When we found the cave, the steps were already here. They’ve been here for decades, at minimum.”
“Or centuries,” Anna said quietly.
Lightning nodded. “Border Town is only seventy years old. Whoever made these stairs has nothing to do with the town or even the kingdom.”
“But Graycastle didn’t even exist back then,” Carter said. “Who was living in the Western Territory four hundred and fifty years ago?”
Roland stood and patted the knight’s shoulder. “A people history has mostly forgotten.” He raised his torch toward the floor below. “Let’s go down.”
Twenty or thirty First Army soldiers already stood at the center of the cavern. Roland led his group to the nearest column of God’s Stone of Retaliation and stopped at its edge.
It was only standing here, close enough to touch it, that its true scale registered. He spread his arms. He could not span a tenth of the column’s circumference. Above him the prism climbed — smooth, flawless, shining with its cold purple light — to a height of nearly thirty meters. Eight or nine stories. A small building standing upright in the ground.
He tried to reason through the light. Radioactive decay? The ionization glow from radioactive materials brightened with shorter half-lives; soldiers had been down here for several minutes without consequence, which ruled that out. Fluorescence required an external source, and there was none. No light source had been brought down this deep before they arrived.
The light came from somewhere else — or it came from nowhere, which was the honest answer.
He also noted that the stone’s surface, though it had a crystal prism’s geometry, lacked the characteristic striations of ordinary crystals. It was as smooth as glass.
“The Church sells thumb-sized chips for several gold royals,” Carter said, staring upward. “Something this size — you couldn’t pay for it by emptying all four kingdoms’ vaults.”
“So you want to give it to nobles to kill witches with?” Nightingale said.
Carter stepped back, out of her line of sight. “That’s absolutely not what I—”
“I’ve never seen it glow like this,” Lightning said, circling the column slowly, tilting her head. “Usually it’s transparent. White.” She looked at Roland. “Could you take some of this home and skip the candles at night?”
“I would rather have a room so full of candles it’s stuffy,” Nightingale said, both hands pressed flat against her chest. “For witches, this is a prison. Shackles the Church holds. If there were no God’s Stone of Retaliation in the world, the world would be better for it.”
“Sister Nightingale, you can’t read in the evening anyway,” the young girl pointed out, licking her lips. She bent, picked up a small rock from the floor, and looked at Roland. “Can I take a piece as a souvenir?”
Roland nodded.
She raised the rock and swung it hard at the edge of the nearest prism. A sharp ring — and the rock in her hand cracked apart. The column was unmarked.
Carter stared. “What — shouldn’t God’s Stone of Retaliation be fragile?”
“Maybe these shine differently,” Lightning said. She threw away the broken chips and drew her dagger. She tried cutting, scraping, prying at different angles. Nothing. Not a scratch.
Roland looked at Nightingale. “You try.”
She drew her revolver, aimed directly at the column, and fired. The shot cracked through the cavern’s silence and the echo came back from every wall simultaneously. Sparks leapt at the impact point. When the smoke cleared, the column’s surface showed nothing — a small dark smear, no deeper than soot.
The durability of these columns exceeded homogenized steel plate.
“Even the gun is useless?” Carter frowned. “How does the Church manage to cut pieces off to sell?”
No one had an answer. The silence afterward had a particular texture.
Roland had broken God’s Stone of Retaliation before — the necklace he’d taken from around Anna’s neck, two or three pulls and it had crumbled to white dust between his fingers. But that was ordinary stone. What stood before them was something else.
Then Anna, who had not spoken since they reached the floor, said:
“Your Highness. Do you remember the treasure map Ferlin Eltek drew?”
Roland’s memory surfaced slowly. A triangle. Three edges, each pointing somewhere: the Holy City of Taqila, the stone tower in the Concealing Forest, and — he followed the third edge in his mind until it touched ground. The foot of the Northern Slope Mountain.
Not the foot. Here.
“Don’t tell me—”
“I don’t think it was pointing at the foot of the mountain,” Anna said. “I think it was pointing here. Underground. To where there is a great deal of God’s Stone of Retaliation.”
They searched the entire cavern.
Beyond the columns themselves — towering, immovable, impervious to blade and bullet — they found nothing. No tools. No remains. No ancient books, no writings scratched into the walls. Only the stone staircase, old beyond reckoning, its chiseled notches packed with centuries of grit.
This troubled Roland. The staircase alone represented an enormous effort — cutting into sheer rock, maintaining footing on a steep descent, the constant risk of falling, of losing equipment. Accidents should have been frequent. Yet the floor was clean. Not clean as in swept, but clean as in empty, as though whoever had last used this place had carried everything out with them when they left.
Back at his office, he called for Scroll and had her reproduce the Knight’s drawing in her Book of Changes. The result matched his memory exactly. The southernmost vertex of the triangle rested at the foot of the Northern Slope Mountain.
If Anna’s guess is right, this was a map left by the Church — marking the location of a natural deposit of God’s Punishment Stone. But then why go to the effort of building a stairway to the bottom, only to abandon it? If the Church had maintained a presence here four hundred and fifty years ago, Border Town today would look nothing like it did. Given what they charged per thumb-sized chip, they would not willingly walk away from a deposit of this magnitude.
Taqila was a forbidden zone — no one reached it now. The stone tower in the Concealing Forest remained the only other point on the triangle. Perhaps the answer was there.
Or perhaps it would remain unknown. That too was a possibility, and Roland had learned to hold it without flinching.
Chapter 273 God’s Stone of Retaliation
Roland roughly estimated the size of the underground cave, the area below was almost the size of a football field, and was surrounded by steep mountain walls. The road connecting it with the other cave started in the middle of one of those mountain walls, and next to the tunnel entrance he could see a narrow stone staircase, which extended straight towards the bottom.
“I guess this staircase wasn’t cut out by you,” Roland said while he squatted down and brought his torch near the ground. In the torchlight, he could clearly see marks carved out by knives and axes, with piles of dust and rock bits that were within the notches.
“Of course not, Your Highness. At the time we discovered the cave, the stone steps had already existed.” Carter said and shrugged his shoulders, “I guess they must have already been here for decades.”
“Or since hundreds of years,” Anna suddenly spoke.
“I think so too,” Lightning nodded in agreement, “It is only seventy years since Border Town has been established, it is unlikely for the stone staircase to be related to the locals here or even the kingdom.”
“There were already some people living in the Western Territory several hundred of years ago?” Carter questioned, “Graycastle hadn’t even existed back then.”
Roland patted the knight’s shoulder, “Four hundred and fifty years ago, there existed a group of people who have already been forgotten by history.” Then he lifted the torch and said, “Let’s go down and take a look.”
Twenty to thirty soldiers of the First Army were already standing at the center of the cave, so he took the knight and the witches then went next to one
of the God’s Punishment Stones without delay. Only when he stood at the edge of this stone pillar was he finally able to realize how huge this actually was. Even by extending his arms as far as he could, he still wasn’t able to surround even a tenth of it.
He lifted his head and looked at the top, the tallest pillar made out of God’s Stone of Retaliation already came close to thirty meters, which was almost equivalent to the height of an eight or nine story building, and was shining in an ominous purple light.
In theory, stones could emit light either by having a radioactive material, or by containing some fluorescent components. But, the rays of light emitted by the God’s Stone of Retaliation obviously had nothing to do with any of these possibilities. The light from the former was from the ionization in the air as the elements decayed. Furthermore, the shorter the half-life, the greater the brightness would be. But according to these very words and taking the stones’ brightness into account, the soldiers who had already entered the cave for several minutes, would have died from ionization radiation by now. While the latter possibility would need an external light to shine on it, but there was no light source here at the bottom of the mine, which could support it enough to send out the light continuously.
Roland also noted that although the God’s Stone of Retaliation had a crystal’s commonly seen prism shape, its surface didn’t have the veined pattern that came from crystals, but was instead as smooth as glass.
“The Church sells a thumb sized piece of a God’s Stone of Retaliation for several gold royals. However, a piece of this magnitude… it is something impossible to acquire even after emptying the vaults of the entire Four Kingdoms.” Carter couldn’t stop himself from lamenting.
“You want to give it to the nobles to slaughter witches?” Nightingale asked with a fierce glare.
“Uh, this isn’t what I meant,” The Chief Knight answered quickly, while unconsciously moving out from her line of sight.
“It is the first time that I have seen God’s Stone of Retaliation shine in these colors, shouldn’t they be transparent white—” Lightning curiously looked at the pillars, “In case you take them back with you, won’t it be unnecessary to use a candle in the evening?”
“I’d rather bring a candle into an already stuffy room filled with dozens of candles, than use this for light,” Nightingale murmured while placing both her hands on her chest, “For us witches, they are a prison cage, the stocks and chains that are held by the Church! If the world didn’t have these damnable stones, it would be better off.”
“Oh, Sister Nightingale, you couldn’t read a sentence in the evening anyway…” The little girl licked her lips, picked up a stone from the ground and looked at Roland. “Can I take a piece of it back with me as my spoils of adventure?”
Roland nodded, “If you don’t hate these kind of things.”
She held a stone and raised her arm into the air and swung it towards the stone pillar. It smashed against the edge of the prism, only to hear a “ting” as the stone in her hand splintered while the prism showed not even the slightest scar.
Seeing this, Carter shouted in shock, “What’s going on?… Shouldn’t the God’s Stone of Retaliation be fragile?”
“Perhaps it is because this chunk is shining differently,” Lightning threw the remaining stone chips in her hand away and took a dagger out of her waist purse. However, even after a good deal of tossing around the prism, with all kinds of scraping and cutting, it was still to no avail.
Feeling that something was wrong, Roland looked at Nightingale and said, “You try it.”
The latter merely nodded, took out her revolver, aimed directly at the prism then pulled the trigger. Immediately followed by an enormous echo splitting the silence in the cave, and the birth of some sparks at the impact area of the God’s Stone of Retaliation. After the smoke cleared, the group walked over
to the stone, merely to discover that the bullet wasn’t even able to do anything more than leaving a small stain on the God’s Stone of Retaliation’s surface.
This suggested that the durability of these intensely shining stones already exceed that of homogenized steel plates.
“Even the gun is useless?” Carter asked with a frown, “In the end, how is the Church able to cut a piece off and sell it?”
No one could answer this question, causing everyone’s expression to cloud up.
Even Roland had been able to use his own force to break the God’s Stone of Retaliation, like that time he’d broken the necklace around Anna’s neck for instances. Just two or three pulls from him had been enough to turn the pure and limpid stone into a pile of white dust.
But at this moment, Anna who had been silent until now, suddenly opened her mouth, “Your Highness, do you still remember the ‘treasure map’ that Ferlin Eltek had drawn?”
“Treasure map?” Roland asked confused. He could vaguely remember that there was a triangle occupying more than half of the drawing. One of the three edges pointed at the Holy City Taqila, one at the stone tower in the Concealing Forest and one at the foot of the Northern Slope Mountain… hold on, at the foot of the Northern Slope Mountain? Suddenly a lightning spark flashed through his brain, “Don’t tell me…”
“I don’t think it was pointing at the foot of the Northern Slope Montain, rather it was pointing here,” Anna said slowly, “This is a place which contained a lot of God’s Stone of Retaliation underground.
…
Even after a careful search, besides a large number of indestructible God’s Stone of Retaliation, they hadn’t been able to discover anything else that was of value within the cave.
Not to mention remains of ancient books, there weren’t even chiseling tools used for the stone staircase left behind, which was very strange. According to the current level of technology, if they wanted to chisel out a staircase in such a steep cliff, it absolutely would be a tremendous and arduous undertaking. Things such as accidentally falling or losing tools should have been frequent occurrences. But for the current scene, besides the stones, and even more stones, it seemed as if the cave had been thoroughly cleaned before they’d left.
When Roland returned to his office, he immediately called for Scroll, and had her reproduce the Knight’s drawing on top of her ‘Book of Changes’.
Similar to the pattern in his memory, the southernmost point was indeed located at the foot of the Northern Slope Mountain.
If Anna’s guess is right, can it be a map left behind by the Church, contains new veins of God’s Punishment Stones? However, why would they spend all that time and effort to dig out the stairway to the bottom only to abandon it afterward? If the Church had already built a church in Border Town four hundred and fifty years ago, I am afraid that the current Border Town would look completely different from now. In accordance with the God’s Stone of Retaliation selling price and its usage, it is unlikely that they would willingly give up the natural resources in this mine.
Nowadays the Holy City of Taqila had already become a forbidden region, that was fully out of reach. Perhaps the only remaining possibility for finding the answer lies hidden within the stone tower… or perhaps it will remain unknown forever.