Artifacts were somewhat… deceptive as a category of magic item. What made it an artifact? In the past, when the term was coined, it was basically a category that meant ‘it’s old and we have no fucking clue how this works’.

They don't use conventional enchantment methodology, but they are still clearly objects of incredible magical power. Back then, a complete mystery. Now? Not so much. The vast majority of artifacts, the type of item one typically thinks of when you say artifact, were made by forcibly calcifying a spirit into becoming an object, destroying their identities and fusing them with magical materials to create an object that surpasses all other armaments, with the potency of a shaped object, the exotic properties of an enchanted object, and the inviolable durability of starmetal.

Well, the artifacts that were still around were made of that, anyway. Spirit courts didn’t like people using artifacts and preferred that they get destroyed, although it varied widely how militant they were on the subject. The more fragile ones have long been broken; It was why you usually saw them collecting dust in the most secure vaults a country has, only to be brought out in times of dire need. Knowledge on how to create them has been lost, presumably known to certain ancient spirits but they certainly aren’t going to tell anyone.

This minotaur’s artifact… it was a complex spirit, definitely. At least two mana aspects working in harmony. Or maybe it was multiple spirits? That was rare, but not unheard of. He could pick out fire magic easily enough, but the others… stone?

The monster finally managed to adapt to the choking curses Casimir had inflicted upon him, moving sluggishly but steadily as it thrust the spear repeatedly in an attack sequence that was beyond the skill level of your average minotaur.

That didn’t mean the attack sequence had a chance to actually land a strike, but it meant that Casimir needed to expend mana to keep up. Casimir experimentally let some mind mana loose to distract the minotaur as he slipped underneath the legs of the beast, preventing it from noticing the movement. As far as it could tell, he just vanished.

Immediately, the minotaur sank his spear into the ground the instant it realized that its foe was not in front of it, which caused spikes of stone to erupt all around the beast, nearly running Casimir through six times over. Fortunately, his armor was up to the task of making the blow merely shove him around and score a few cuts in unarmored parts of his body.

“Okay, this minotaur is stronger than me, faster than he looks, smarter than he has any right to be, and is wielding an artifact that can let him cast a few spells as fast as I can.” Casimir observed as he got back to his feet. He grinned. “It’s been a while since I’ve had an actual challenge.” Noticing that he was now near his stiletto, Casimir pulled it into his hand magically.

The minotaur charged forward with its spear. Its stance though… Ah. It intended to use the stone spike wave again when it’s close. Easy enough. Casimir stood ready, and when the minotaur shifted its spear to strike down instead of stabbing him directly, Casimir climbed up the minotaur’s arm to avoid the wave of spikes and slammed his stiletto into the minotaur’s neck again, layering two more choking curses on the beast as he checked on the status of the first three.

After leaping away and standing on a barrier in mid-air, Casimir gave a frustrated sigh. “Okay, that artifact’s definitely helping him breathe.” Casimir concluded for David’s benefit. “The air curse is being counteracted directly and the fire curse isn’t burning his lungs at all.”

“If you need some help, just holler!!” David shouted from his position next to Polium. He had already defeated the weaker monsters.

“Screw off!” Casimir shouted back. The minotaur charged once more, its roar interrupted by the hiccups Casimir cursed it with. “You? DIE!” Casimir shouted as he dodged the spear thrust and channeled mana into his stiletto.

The minotaur shed black blood as Casimir cut and stabbed the thing’s hide, staying far too close for the spear to be useful. In tandem with the physical attacks, Casimir shot a jolt of mind mana into it so as to convince it to do what Casimir wanted it to do rather than what the smart thing was.

As compelled, the minotaur threw its spear away so it could better attempt to grapple Casimir. Effective use of mind mana was all about the little nudges. Casimir jumped towards the spear, his mana senses clearly pointing out the tether of mana that attuned the monster to the weapon. Casimir swiped at and broke that tether with some well-placed cursebreaking techniques and picked the artifact up himself.

Going from three effective choking curses to five seemed to be the last straw for the minotaur. It was wheezing and hiccuping as it kneeled on the ground, and if Casimir allowed it the seconds more necessary to suffocate, the curses would break and the fight would begin again.

But that’s what his greataxe was for. Chop chop!

“I knew you were rusty from that spar, but that really showed it.” David snarked as he picked up the severed head of the minotaur. “You could have finished that in half the time.”

“Well excuse me for being cautious around an unknown artifact.” Casimir groused back. With it in his hand and able to focus solely on examining it, Casimir could more clearly make out the mana composition. It was definitely made of two two-aspect spirits, one with a familiar fire/stone mix denoting a volcano spirit and the other being an air/water mist spirit. “Polium, have you ever heard of this thing?”

Polium shook his head… then started nodding instead. “Karn knew of this weapon. The name translates into ‘Spear of Four Deaths’. You should consider yourself fortunate that you avoided any injury from the blade.”

“Oh? What would have happened?” David asked, intrigued.

“He would have exploded.” Polium replied.

“Looks right.” Casimir said. “The blade is made of a volcano spirit, and the shaft from a mist spirit. Here, watch this.” Casimir moved the butt of the spear around, generating some mist and then, with a wave, obscured the far half of the room in a fog. “I didn’t see it actually use any fire aspect, so an eruption spell or something on the blade would make sense, he only ever struck the rock surrounding us.”

“You know anyone who could use a good spear?” David asked. “Not my style.”

Casimir hummed. “Illivere uses a spear… but giving her an artifact is probably a bad idea.” The political implications alone…

Polium grunted. “I am bound by my pacts against making use of such weapons. I must insist on its destruction, if possible.”

Casimir tapped the weapon on the ground. “Starmetal, sorry. This thing is pretty much indestructible.” After a moment of thought, he added: “My Master has a pretty good vault, I could stash it there.” While Casimir wouldn’t go so far as to say Master Southwind’s personal stash of valuables was as well defended as the vaults of the Academy, much less the vaults controlled by Anima’s government, he’d be willing to bet it would stack up well against the average artifact storage vault.

“It can’t be helped.” Polium said, evidently not very enthusiastic about that portion of his pacts. “Let’s explore the rest of the dungeon.”

“Right. Let’s go.” Casimir put the spear in one of his loot bags and went off to scout some more.

After four more rooms filled with powerful monsters, Casimir huffed as they took a break for lunch. “This seems like an ordinary dungeon.” Casimir complained as he cooked some root vegetables.

“It’s not even suspiciously ordinary.” David added. “You don’t usually see distributions like this, there’s hardly any weak monsters at all. Even the lowest rank monster could stomp your average standard.” Unsaid was the fact that it also wasn’t unheard of.

“We have yet to see any hint of undead, this is true.” Observed Polium as he snacked on his bag of trail mix.

“At least we’re getting rich off of this loot.” David said, looking for the positives of the situation. There were quite a few ancient enchanted weapons in the hands of monsters, even if there was only one artifact. Much like starmetal artifacts, the only enchanted weapons that last this long are durable metals inlaid with mithril to hold the enchantments. So in other words, they were expensive.

“Loot is useless.” Polium groused. After a glance of David’s mischievous smile, he added: “I’m still demanding my share. But the point of this endeavor is the destruction of those revenants.”

Taking out his new steak box, Casimir withdrew two of the wrapped bundles and started seasoning. “How do you like it?”

“Still bleeding.” Polium said. Way to play into the shaman stereotype, man.

“Medium.” David added superfluously.

As Casimir plated and served the food, he decided to address the monster in the room. “So I don’t know about you two, but this is getting exhausting. How many more fights are you two good for?”

“Karn’s wisdom is that we have cleared two-thirds of the complex.” Polium announced. “This is the largest section of the sunken castle, but it is far from the only one. Finishing the search of this area should involve no more than three more battles, and I am confident that we are capable of such a feat.” ‘We’ in this sense meant him and his spirit companions.

David hummed. “I might need to eat one of those bombs.” He admitted. “That fight with the Yurgeim really took it out of me.” That’s what you get when you try and out-muscle something that can swallow you whole, David.

“Give me twenty minutes to bind mana and I should be able to manage.” Casimir said after taking a bite of his steak. Delicious. “David, you bind too.”

David groaned at the order. “Ugh, it’s so little mana, though.” He complained. “It just makes me tired in return for mere trickles of mana.”

Casimir snorted. “Then drink your vigor potion afterwards. Replacing that is easy. And it’s only a small amount compared to your full power, it’s plenty to get through another fight if you’re not stupid about it.” That ‘if’ is carrying a pretty big load, though. After another swallow of food, Casimir added. “Besides, a little time to digest will give you a good chunk of mana, exercise helps that.” Magnus always encouraged everyone to join him in his post-meal exercises for that exact reason. Damn sorcerers.

“That sounds agreeable.” Polium said, interrupting the brewing argument. “Loam, wash the dishes when they finish, please.” He moved a few feet away and started kneeling. “I have some rituals to attend to, anyway. The food was delicious, thank you.”

Something about this trip is rubbing Casimir the wrong way. Was Polium lying to them? He has no reason to. Even heavily destructive spirits like Karn hated undead, so there likely weren't any issues in that direction… He didn’t seem like he was going to go murderous over the artifact… What was he missing?

----------------

Whatever he was missing, it didn’t stop them from clearing the small but dangerous dungeon. Each fight proceeded more or less the same way: Polium opened with some grand magic that did half of the work for them, then David and Casimir cleaned up. Casimir took on the strongest monsters first, David took the weakest, and they met in the middle. It was like the good ol’ days, although the lack of numbers was made up by the fact that Polium was significantly stronger than Hana was. That probably had something to do with all of the alchemized mana they were blowing through to keep going.

Another one of the many advantages of spirit magic is that you could burn potions directly into magic without needing to ingest it or anything like that. Polium probably thought they were being slick about it, but Casimir noticed him pulling out reagents.

“So what’s the haul?” David asked Casimir after a thorough looting. They weren’t up for any more combat for hours, anyway.

Casimir referenced the list he had made. “In ancient top-quality enchanted items, we have fifteen weapons, one full suit of armor, ten random pieces of armor, the artifact, and this mysterious butter knife.” Casimir waved the knife around. The enchantment matrix wasn’t really familiar, and empty of power, so he’d need to figure out what kind of mana to feed into it before he could explore it.

“...Dibs.” Polium declared. Shrugging, Casimir tossed him the butter knife. Hopefully that wasn’t going to bite him in the ass.

“In monster parts, between the harvestable parts like minotaur horns and the condensed cores from the weaker monsters, I’d say they’re collectively worth about two more weapons.” Assuming you had the connections and wherewithal to actually sell the bloody things. There’s one of those cultivator sects in the borderlands of this country, right? They’re always able to use more monster parts. They could at least sell the cores to them.

“Selling this stuff is going to be a pain in the ass.” Observed David.

“We don’t need to sell all of it.” Casimir pointed out. “Especially not immediately.” He had already swapped out that sword he picked up from the kobolds for one of the three ancient swords. The guard wasn’t as fancy, but it was of a similar length, balance, and it had the same boring enchantments he had on his old one, with a bonus enchantment that made it move smoothly underwater. Made by the hand of a master, it was. There was also a short blade that could theoretically replace his stiletto, but the whole point of using unenchanted verenium was to use it to channel magic, so it wasn’t so much a replacement as a backup weapon.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” David groused as he looked at his staff. While there was a staff among the weapons, it was a fire-aspected casting focus rather than something you’d hit people with, so he couldn’t get an upgrade. Polium grabbed the staff, naturally. It could concentrate and store fire mana and unleash a narrow stream of flames, which was super-handy for a spirit mage whose fire magic came in ‘parlor tricks’ and ‘cataclysmic’, without much in between.

“Well, I’m beat.” Casimir announced. He could definitely keep going if he absolutely had to, but he really shouldn’t be abusing mind mana like that again. “Let’s stash this shit at the guildhouse and come back tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll be able to find traces of Petranis.”

There was no way they could have missed the fights, so she was definitely long gone. Hopefully they’ll find some clues.