The people waiting for Samuel were naturally Kiano and two others. These two were the magician and the archer who Kiano felt necessary to bring over.
They were both sitting down on some chairs in a small waiting room while Kiano was standing aloof until he heard the opening of a door. The person who opened it was Samuel.
"Samuel Oakley, my name is Kiano a Bosque Kingdom royal knight" Kiano said as both a greeting and introduction not saying much else towards the entering Samuel.
Samuel noted the lack of any honorifics but as he didn't think too highly of himself he only frowned inwardly in response. His Oakley name came from the noble family he wanted nothing to do with after all. If it wasn't so useful he would have surely tossed it out long ago.
"Did something urgent happen? How has the clear process been going?" Samuel decided to brush off the rudeness by skipping straight into the point. He believed that Kiano would not mind it whatsoever.
"Yes…" He was right to an extent, Kiano hadn't even noticed the slight. His previously aloof expression scrunched up and turned eerily solemn as he began to recall the events that had occurred.
"I'll recount the expedition…" He muttered after a short while. This recount included the involvement of the Sage of Space Eon.
His sudden appearance made the knights become hostile to him and refuse to cooperate with him but after finding out he held their king hostage they were left with no other choice.
Samuel wanted to jump out of his seat. Was this an opportunity to regain the crown? That was his first thought but he quickly dismissed it after some thinking.
Putting aside that they'd have to face Eon, the dungeon was plenty dangerous. There was no way to know how Eon as the sage of space had made it into the dungeon. Overall, it was best to think of the king as dead.
There were also some news of his health having been in detriment so it was after all possible that the man had perished.
The rest of the story took an unexpected turn after they decided to chase after Eon. For one, they followed him towards the wrong area. Nevertheless, they found an orc settlement which they compared to his report.
Clearly, the area had been moved but the residents were likely the same. Here was where the deaths piled up. Aside from many elite B-class knights, they lost some important figures.
Balin, the Gardener, perished alongside the Ray of light Archer. Both of these titles weren't for show. Though in the case of Ray, his death was more akin to suicide.
The company decided to save what they could and form some dungeon bases. These were commonly found in high-ranking or extraordinarily large dungeons to facilitate clearing them. Samuel had to say it was the right call.
"So you want me to help you set these bases up, right?" The Freedom Union wouldn't interfere with something that simple so Samuel had no qualms in helping Kiano with this.
"That's correct" Kiano replied sitting down on one of the waiting room chairs.
"But it's not that simple…" Kiano let the magician and archer who had a broader look on things take the floor and they explained the weird occurrences in the first three crypt floors.
Samuel frowned visibly this time while understanding where the issue might lay.
"I don't have a squad to delegate the task of delivering supplies" Kiano was likely hoping that Samuel could provide better protection for their deliveries but Samuel didn't currently have the means.
"...You don't?" Kiano was not entirely sure what to make of it. They could do the job themselves but that was a loss of combat power for such a simple task. The bone brutes weren't particularly tough enemies but they could be pretty annoying.
"How about this... help put some pressure on the Freedom Union" Samuel suddenly suggested making the three present form question marks.
"You can't? You are all royal knights though, I even heard that Balin was the representative commander" This royal company had to carry some weight to throw around.
"With our force weakened, we might be lucky not to disperse…" Kiano admitted somewhat abashed.
"But we can definitely try" There were some important things from the Union that had to cross through kingdom guards before entering the Bosque Kingdom or just its big cities. It wasn't impossible for Kiano to contact his friends and have them abstain from accepting these shipments or just delaying the process.
"Great. If you can get them to assign the dungeon a grade or at least a special exception, I can guarantee the safe transport of your things" Samuel spoke up with an outstretched hand.
"I hope you keep to that" Kiano said standing up to meet his hand. He was somewhat worried as what the knight company was about to do was slightly illegal… but what wasn't?
If the Freedom Union was clean they would be able to bring the matter to the royal family without any qualms. But they weren't. These small delays would be enough to persuade them.
Samuel smiled brightly after he shook hands with Kiano and let them out. Things sometimes had a knack for resolving themselves.
***
For Ed, finding the perfect headquarters was not an easy matter. He first had to consider which floor of the crypt it would be on and from there which section. While that sounded simple enough it wasn't really.
Ed had no choice but to spend his time crystallizing the mana around him as he wandered the crypt with his loyal skeletons.
[Crystallize has leveled up]
'Neat' Ed commented before another message appeared.
[Crystallize has met the conditions to advance, Advance Crystallize Skill? Y/N]
Ed's journey was suddenly paused by this alert. The reason was he was tempted to not advance the skill. The only issue was that unlike mana manipulation he had this skill as a skeleton alone.
That meant that experimenting with it could leave him stuck with crystallization at its current level.
'Yes, advance' Ed decided to just go for it. He rarely used the crystallization skill so it was best not to get any weird fantasies about advancing every single skill to possibly non-existent peak potential.
[<Crystallize lvl. 9> has advanced to <Materialize lvl. 0>]
'Huh? Materialize?' Ed was shocked by the skill name. Was this really the basic advancement? Or was it simply that sometimes not every skill had multiple options. Though that made the option of yes or no quite deceptive if true.
'Materialize though' What did it mean to materialize? It meant to become actual, definite, and clear, something real. Crystallize crystallized mana in the air into crystals so what would materialize do?
Ed thrust out his empty palm and activated the skill. The air around Ed suddenly started to form into a green crystal causing considerable question marks to pop up.
'Thi- this is just the crystallize skill' Was he cheated? He clearly wanted to materialize the air, not the wind mana.
'Maybe this skill can't be used on the air itself' Not yet anyway. In which case the next possible use was…!
Ed headed over to one of the flickering torches. These things illuminated the area and gave it its eerie atmosphere. But there was one other important factor to consider.
These flames did not actually burn. These flames were made of death. The fire, therefore, did not tangibly exist. But by using materialize, Ed might be able to make the fire real.
Fire was a reaction rather than a solid thing so while it was normal for one's hand to pass right on through it was not normal for there to be no heat or burning.
Ed was a skeleton so he couldn't really feel the temperature. Nonetheless, the area was quite frigid for something supposedly underground. It helped the creepy atmosphere, not so much real-world physics.
Ed's hand was placed over the flames to the confusion of the skeletons. Suddenly, Ed felt something as he activated the materialize skill. It was the sense of touch.
That made no sense but it did in the context of skills. He could chant as a skeleton with requiem and the brutes could similarly scream without vocal cords. He could absorb the knowledge of a book with a mere touch or become stronger by absorbing a literal piece of rock.
While Ed's skills weren't omnipotent, he didn't doubt that someone's might be. If such an existence existed they'd have to be some sort of god.
'I wonder if the system has any skills' Even after touching the flame Ed didn't do much else. That was because just like crystallize, materialize took some time to finish. He just had to hold onto the object and feel it slowly come closer and closer to solidification.
After about 5 long minutes, the flame which flickered weakly did so with a different vigor from the rest. Most of all, Ed could see some insignificant amount of damage being dealt nearly every 10 seconds.
The flame had come alive!
'How do I get the death element from this though?' Ed wondered briefly before quickly realizing something. Rather than touch the flame, he simply hovered his hand neared it.
A black crystal was slowly being formed and upon its completion, the flame was snuffed out.
'By materializing it, the flame lost its ability to burn forever' It was seemingly using the death element as fuel to burn weakly.
These were interesting findings for sure but where else could he use it? Could it work on… consciousnesses?