Regaleon: The Forgotten Knight

When they followed behind Aelric and crossed the threshold, it felt as though they had crossed the demarcation between their world and another entirely.

The eight of them had seen beauty before, the kind that left them breathless and awestruck. The waterfall, with its magnificent scenery and picturesque surroundings, was perhaps the finest example.

Yet compared to what now lay before them, that waterfall suddenly seemed to fall short, reduced to something almost mundane and ordinary.

Honestly, the place they had entered felt like somewhere that should never have existed within a purgatory such as the Nether Lands. It could have been called an elysium, or perhaps a paradisiacal sanctuary, but whatever name one chose to give it, there was simply no way anyone would associate such a place with the Crimson Forest.

The trail of the tunnel had finally come to an end and beyond it lay an open cavern.

An enormous subterranean chamber stretched before them, its sheer scale so immense that it was difficult for the mind to comprehend. Gasps of shock and awe escaped their lips almost simultaneously.

It was unlike any natural structure they had ever seen.

The ceiling soared so impossibly high that their vision could only reach so far before the rest disappeared into the darkness, despite the crystalline radiance that permeated the chamber. Just like the walls of the tunnel, the vast subterranean chamber was also littered with Essence Crystals.

In fact, saying that the cavern was littered with them was an understatement.

Every nook and cranny seemed to glimmer with crystalline radiance, causing the entire place to resemble a colossal celestial firmament trapped beneath the earth.

Yet unlike the tunnel walls, where the crystals had been scattered seemingly at random, the formations here were different.

They were arrange in such a deliberate, precise, and almost artistic way that it was as though a god-tier artist had descended into the depths of the Nether Lands and spent countless millennia arranging every individual crystal with meticulous care.

The crystals formed natural patterns across the walls. Some resembled vast blooming flowers carved from light, their crystalline petals unfolding across the stone.

Others looked like frozen rivers of starlight, flowing across the walls without ever moving. A few even resembled towering celestial trees, their branches spreading outward in intricate patterns of luminous crystal.

It was almost as though the night sky itself had been shattered into countless fragments and painstakingly embedded within the cavern walls.

Even sections of the ground were covered with crystalline formations.

Despite the uneven terrain, the ridges, and the shallow depressions scattered across the cavern floor, crystalline structures rose several meters from the earth like luminous trees, their trunks branching into dozens of glowing extensions.

Others hung from the ceiling like inverted chandeliers, their crystalline branches suspended above them in breathtaking formations.

Their combined radiance illuminated the cavern in an astonishing spectrum of colors—blue, turquoise, amber, violet, and countless shades between them. The colors overlapped and merged, bleeding into one another until it seemed as though the entire chamber existed beneath an artificial aurora.

Honestly, the beauty of the place was so intense that, for a moment, it washed over the group completely, threatening to overwhelm their senses with a flood of dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins.

Yet it wasn’t merely the beauty that threatened to overwhelm them, the atmosphere itself almost did.

Although they had already felt the strange effects of the air before even stepping into the cavern, being here suddenly made those effects considerably more pronounced and pervasive.

If anything, it felt as though the atmosphere itself had become tangible; a mystical mist that settled over the cavern with an otherworldly serenity, reflecting the brilliant radiance of the crystals and splitting it into myriad iridescent hues.

Everywhere the group looked, there was only splendor, tranquility, and magnificence and for several moments, they could do nothing more than stare.

They simply stood there, staring at the impossible scenery before them, trying to convince themselves that what they were seeing was real and not some fantastical vision conjured from the fragments of their own imaginations.

Their reactions were almost comical.

They resembled country bumpkins seeing a great city for the first time, completely overwhelmed by sights they had never imagined could exist. And considering that these eight had once possessed noble status before their exile, that alone spoke volumes about the sheer peculiarity and uniqueness of the chamber.

Even Aureleah, who was usually so cold, detached and indifferent toward most things, wore an expression of astonishment.

For the first time since their exile, the group might have been able to witness a flicker of wonder upon the usually stoic silver-haired Assassin’s face had they not been too thoroughly captivated by the tangible majesty of the place themselves.

Regaleon had maintained a tense posture since the beginning of their journey.

Even when it appeared that he had been distracted by the Essence Crystals lining the tunnel, that did not mean he had abandoned his alertness or vigilance.

But upon entering this cavern, something changed.

Suddenly, the tension seemed unnecessary and the constant vigilance he had maintained suddenly felt like a burden; one he no longer felt compelled to carry.

His usually serious and stern face, perpetually marked by stoicism and composure, now showed faint traces of calmness and pleasure.

Not the kind of pleasure born from intimacy nor the exhilarating pleasure driven by adrenaline, danger, or the thrill of combat; this was something entirely different.

It was the kind of pleasure one experienced when finally arriving somewhere they had been searching for without even knowing they were searching.

The kind that settled quietly into the soul.

The kind that made a weary traveler stop beneath the shade of a tree after years of wandering and realize, perhaps for the first time, that there was nowhere else they needed to be.

For Regaleon, the cavern seemed to offer something he had almost forgotten existed... Peace.

However, while both Regaleon and Aureleah might have reacted to the cavern with quiet wonder, the same could not be said for everyone, especially Valmyr.

The failed Vanguard had been deeply disappointed after being forced to leave the Essence Crystals behind in the tunnel. Even knowing that they might be able to collect them on their way back did little to diminish the temporary sense of loss he had experienced.

But the moment he saw the kind of wealth contained within this cavern, that disappointment vanished as though it had never existed.

It was replaced by something far more powerful... Greed.

The failed Vanguard’s eyes practically gleamed. Honestly, he might have been more monetarily motivated than Caelestra herself, despite her being the merchant among them.

That was because when he first laid eyes upon the cavern, his mind did not immediately admire its beauty nor did it contemplate the mesmerizing effect the chamber had upon the senses.

Instead, his mind went straight to one thing, wealth.

How many Essence Crystals were here?

How much would they be worth?

How many resources could be extracted from this place?

How much could they use?

The calculations began racing through his mind almost instantaneously and honestly, that was just so quintessentially Valmyr.

As for Caelestra, the failed Merchant had already lost whatever remained of her composure.

She had been stupefied by the tunnel alone, but this cavern existed on an entirely different level.

Her mouth hung agape, her eyes were widened to their fullest, and her body stood completely rigid, frozen in place as she stared at the cavern with an expression of absolute disbelief.

If one did not know better, they might have thought the failed Merchant was an animated statue carved from the very stone of the cavern itself due to her petrification.

But that was not the case as she was simply too overwhelmed to move.

The entire group displayed varying degrees of reaction to the cavern, each expression revealing a different facet of their personalities.

For a moment, they remained trapped within their respective states of astonishment, unable to tear their gazes away from the impossible spectacle before them.

Until, finally, unable to bear the silence any longer, Aelric cleared his throat.

The sound echoed throughout the enormous cavern.

"Ahem."