Chapter 229 - Playing apprehensions
Scarlett’s attention was fixed on the broken device before her, studying the damage that had been done to it. She’d had her suspicions, but seeing tangible proof was a different thing entirely.
To anyone else, this sight, by itself, might seem insignificant. Even if they recognized it as odd that the device was in the state that it was, they wouldn’t understand its implications.
Scarlett did, though.
With purpose, she crossed the chamber, stopping in front of the round platform on which it stood. Her attention shifted from the twisted, charred remains of the device’s frame to its base. The platform, fractured into pieces by deep cracks, held faint traces of what could have once been runes, now scorched beyond recognition.
This was another Zuverian teleportation artifact, similar to the Kilnstones. Unlike the Kilnstones, however, this one established a one-way connection to another set of concealed ruins near Kilsfell. In the game, the player could only use it once before it broke.
Just like this one had.
Scarlett wasn’t exactly sure why it broke. She vaguely remembered something about age having been a factor, but the specifics escaped her. What mattered was that, in the game, this device was the primary means for the player to access the ruins she was currently in, suggesting it was likely operational just a few months ago, when the game’s timeline originally started.
Given the activated traps she’d passed to reach this chamber, she felt reasonably sure of her assumption that someone had recently used this thing.
The number of potential suspects wasn’t exactly long. In fact, other than the Hallowed Cabal—which she thought unlikely—only three other possibilities to explain this came to mind.
One scenario was that this world’s timeline had diverged enough from the game that someone unknown to Scarlett had discovered and used the teleportation artifact near Kilsfell. Since she knew the Cabal could defy fate—at least slightly—the events she knew to expect weren’t completely set in stone. That said, she had yet to encounter a situation where a detail like this had changed.
Another, more plausible scenario involved Princess Regina. Scarlett knew the princess was going around the empire, exploring Zuverian ruins similar to this one. In the game, including the princess in the party was one of the easiest ways to locate this site. Scarlett had even anticipated that the princess might uncover this place ever since learning that the woman had disappeared.
But there was still a third possibility. One that could very well go hand-in-hand with the second.