"Not just language?" Jack echoed with a questioning tone.
"Not just language." Reina firmly said. Still in the same ancient tongue. Her voice carried a specific rhythmic cadence. One that denoted respect for the listener. A nuance she hadn't known existed seconds ago.
"Don't you realize it, Dear?" She continued. "It's not just words and their literal translation. I don't just know what the words mean. I know why they use them."
She explained further. "I know that for these people's language, 'sunlight' and 'joy' have the same root word... because nature and emotion were inseparable to them. I feel their belief. Their pride. Their manners. It's like a culture was shoved into my head along with the dictionary."
Jack nodded. He felt it too. It was a 'perfect' language acquisition. It was not like usual translations that just swapped words. Leaving the speaker sounding like a clunky automaton.
This was different. He understood the idioms, the nuance, the subtle shifts in intonation that could turn a compliment into a deadly insult, and the cultural reasoning behind every words.
"It's a comprehensive download." Jack muttered. Switching back to his internal analysis. "Handy. Saves us the trouble of learning from the scratch."
He looked at the stone plate again. It was a treasure.
Jack's eyes lit up. And if it was a treasure, he could take advantage of it. He was not just a steamrune engineer after all. He was also a treasure hunter.
His 'treasure hunter' second class gave him a different perspective on objects of power. He reached out his hand. Activating the specific resonance of his treasure hunter class. He didn't just want the blessing. He wanted the source concept.
His palm pressed against the cold, fading surface. A new prompt flickered in his vision. Distinct from the regular system notifications. It was now emblazoned with an ornate border.
[NEW SPELL CARD ACQUIRED!]
[SPELL CARD: OMNILINGUISTIC SENSE]
A fancy tarot-like card materialized in the air. Shimmering, spinning and hovering in front of him. It had a classic painting of a stone stele with ancient letters on it.
Jack immediately called upon his [Eyes of Judgment]. His vision shifted. The world was faintly superimposed with a grid of data and raw magical flow. He focused on the new card.
[Spell Card: Omnilinguistic Sense]
[Type: Blessing]
[Effect: The caster gains the temporary ability to understand, speak, read, and write any language... be it mortal, beastial, or divine. This includes the ability to decipher encrypted magical codes and dead dialects. The user also gains an intuitive ability to detect hidden meanings regardless of the language used.]
[Requirement: Usable by any transcendent. Caster must possess a minimum Mysticism of 30.]
[Maximum Duration: 15 minutes]
[Cooldown: 6 hours per use.]
"Not bad." Jack said. He took the card and put it in his growing deck of spell cards. "A universal translator with a built-in hidden meaning interpreter. It'll make communications with foreigners much more entertaining."
Reina watched him. A faint smile on her lips. "Truly a fascinating class this 'Treasure Hunter' of yours, Dear. Even without taking the treasure, you could still gain benefits."
Jack grinned. "Efficiency is a virtue, Love. Now, let's see what this place is actually trying to tell us."
They left the small hidden chamber and stepped back into the main cavern. This time, they understood. The drawings on the walls weren't just 'strange pictures' and 'unknown hieroglyphs'. They were a story.
Rune, the mechanical fairy, floated beside them. Her body pulsed with a soft, steady amber light. Illuminating the carvings.
She didn't speak. But the way she hovered near the start of the mural suggested that like them, she also understood the language. Understandable. Her mind was linked in a unique way to Jack after all.
Jack and Reina walked along the wall. As they looked at the images. The 'Ancient Elder Trentree' knowledge in their minds activated. The pictures didn't just stand still. They seemed to dance with meaning.
The story began to unfold. It wasn't just a plain, boring history. It was a rhythmic epic.
Jack found himself reciting the meaning of the carvings in a low, poetic tone.
"In the cradle of the emerald sea,
where the roots drink, deep and slow,
the Trentree walked with heavy limbs,
beneath the almighty sun's eternal glow.
With eyes of fire and skin of bark,
they tended patientky their orchard's grace,
A hardy race of tranquil strength,
in a sun-drenched, wonderful place."
Jack stopped. His eyes narrowed. "These people... they weren't like normal humans. Look at the proportions. They had such long limbs. And they seemed to be extremely tough despite their slender builds. Their physical fitness must have been off the charts."
Reina traced the carving of a Trentree farmer lifting a huge boulder as if it were a bale of hay. "Very strong."
She then pointed at the fire drawn in their eyes. "And their eyes. The 'fire eyes' might suggest that they had red eyes or they had mystical power in their eyes. This should be an extremely powerful race. But they were extinct. What could possibly bring them down?"
They moved to the next section of the wall. The tone of the carvings shifted. The lines became jagged. Chaotic.
"But the heavens wept a jagged tear,
a stone of blazing crimson flame,
From the void between the stars,
the silent nightmare cruelly came.
It struck the heart of the orchard's life,
and bled its corrupted poison so deep.
Waking the trees from ancient dreams,
to a hollow hunger that would never sleep."
"A stone of blazing flame from the space? A meteor?" Jack noted bluntly. "A classic catalyst. Cosmic-borne corruption. It mutated the trees."
"Look at the drawings." Reina whispered. Pointing to the depictions of trees with gnashing maws and whip-like vines. "They turned into monsters. The very things the Trentree took care everyday became their executioners."
The next panel showed a desperate war. The Trentree people were being slaughtered by the tree monsters from their own orchards. But then, two figures appeared in the drawings. They didn't look like the long-limbed tribe members. Their proportion was like normal humans.
"When the sap ran red as dying suns,
and hope was then a withered leaf,
a stranger came in bone-white plates,
to offer the hard and needed relief.
A warrior clad in the dead's embrace,
with a younger sister... small and bright,
They wove a cage of silver steel,
to hold back the budding dark night."
"A stranger in bone armor?" Jack raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like a high-level necromancer. Or a specialized warrior. And he had a little sister with him. They must have been incredibly powerful. Able to turn the tide against a meteor-spawned plague."
Reina nodded. Tracing her fingers on the drawing. "The Trentree people were losing until these two arrived. The stranger fought with this bone-like hammer. And the sister... I supposed this was her. Glowing? Support mystic power?"
The mural continued. Showing a great battle where a massive, multi-headed tree monster was finally toppled.
"The vine-king fell,
its roots severed,
the victory won,
but blood scattered,
And grief is a seed,
that grows too fast,
in a heart drowned
by madness of the past.
The Trentree King, in a madman's rage,
for all the children he could not save,
chomped the root of the fallen beast,
and found his life a living grave."
The Trentree King ate the root of the fallen tree monster? Jack let out a sharp exhale. "Eating the source of the corruption? For Vengeance? This king was... dumb."
"And he became the very thing he hated." Reina added.
The next few panels were horrific. They depicted the king transforming. His limbs stretched into grotesque, thorny appendages. His fire-eyes became swirling voids that seemed to show dark hunger.
"The King became a hollow god,
a nightmare made of flesh and wood,
He turned his teeth on his own kin,
as only a heartless monster could.
He struck the girl of the bone-clad man,
and she fell down like a broken bird,
And the stranger's cry was a silent scream,
that even the ignorant heaven's also heard."
Jack's expression darkened. He understood the stranger's position. No matter how kind someone was, there was a certain bottom line where kindness should cease to exist. To save people and have them murder your family in return... That was a debt that could only be paid in death.
"The stranger lost his sister to the one he had just saved." Jack said in grim tone. "That king just signed the death warrant. And probably also for his entire civilization."
He was not wrong. The final sequence of the mural was a masterpiece of destructive imagery. The stranger in bone armor was depicted standing on a cliffside. His arms were raised. His armor turned dark. With swirling aura drawn around him.
"No mercy for the sap-stained soil,
no peaceful death for the biting king,
The stranger wove a final curse,
the song that the shadows badly sing.
The earth did crack,
the islands broke,
the sea rose up,
to drown them all...
He dragged the land to the crushing deep,
and pulled the kingdom to its final extinction."
The drawings showed the islands split apart. The Trentree people were shown in chaos as the ocean swallowed them whole. The king, now a distorted entity, was shown being dragged into a trench by thick chains.
"A total wipeout." Jack muttered. "The stranger didn't just kill the king. He sank the entire land. Talk about overkill. I like his style though."
Reina looked at him. Half-amused. "He destroyed an entire culture because of one man's mistake, Dear."
"That one man is the leader. And his mistake killed... probably the only thing the stranger cared about." Jack countered. "I didn't say the stranger was right. But, his action was understandable. Besides, if he was strong enough to save a kingdom, he was definitely strong enough to bury it."
They reached the end of the wall. There was one final drawing. Quite separate from the epic. It was smaller. It showed a single Trentree survivor... definitely the one who had written this. Straddling a piece of driftwood. Landing on this very islet.
Beneath the survivor's image was a map.
It was a map that was similar to the current West Coast of Vestrose and its surrounding waters. Except, there was one big island that didn't exist in current map. The island was circled with a strange, glowing pigment. One that hadn't faded until now.
"The Trentree Homeland." Reina whispered. "This should be the island where the Trentree people used to live, before it sank to the bottom of the ocean. It was... actually not that far from here."
Jack pulled out the 'fake' treasure map Adam and Alice Lingreen had given him. He laid it next to the wall carving. The marks matched. Well, not exactly perfectly. But, the final mark on the Lingreen map was very close to where the survivor had marked the legacy.
"The twins didn't give me a wrong map." Jack said. A smirk played on his lips. "The paper and drawing are definitely not authentic. But the content is actually accurate."
He looked at Reina. His eyes were glinting with the thrill of the hunt. "Well, Love? Shall we go see what's left of the Elder Trentree Homeland?"