Looking at the rather straightforward attitude of the Night Eagle Chief Aglior, Nick smiled and answered.
“I am Epsilon. It is a pleasure to meet you, Night Eagle Chief.”
The Night Eagle Chief had obvious admiration for Nick’s ability to best out his son’s sneak skill. Nick liked this about the Night Eagle Chief.
For Nick, this was not hard at all. Courtesy of his Wave Radar, not only the Chief’s son and the other creatures of the Night Eagle race, Nick could easily locate the Tribe’s Chief himself.
Aglior did not ask Nick about how he was able to do this. Instead, he continued the latter part of their conversation about a potential trade-off between his race and Epsilon.
“Please tell me Epsilon, what do you want from our race?”
Nick did not answer immediately but thought a little.
“I am open to any knowledge or information, whether it is about magical abilities or anything to do with the island. But I am especially looking for information of this nature from outside of the island as well.”
Aglior pondered on Nick’s request, took a deep breath and answered.
“I am sure by the time you found out about us, you had already visited another race living on this island.”
Nick smiled in acknowledgement.
“As expected of the Chief; I am sure you already understand this.”
Chief Aglior looked around himself for about two seconds and resumed talking.
“I don’t have much to tell you about this island other than the matter of the Pyramid that you might have seen on your way here. However, as we are a race that is capable of flight, we have more ways to discover other things. I am not sure whether I have something for you on magical spells but I can give you information about other islands and places.”
Nick listened with great care, with a thoughtful and serious expression on his face. He knew that Aglior’s point was correct and what it implied. The Night Eagle race was the only intelligent race capable of flying on this island. This meant that their ability to discover and explore new possibilities was not the same as the other races. They had an incomparable advantage.
Nick’s first query though was about the black stone pyramid that had blocked his Wave Radar spell earlier. This matter still made Nick slightly uneasy.
“I can trade you 10 of these stones in exchange for the information about the pyramid.”
Nick said this, simultaneously shook his hands and threw 10 Ether Stones at Aglior.
Aglior skillfully caught the Ether Stones. After inspecting them, he put one in his mouth. He was instantly hit by a surge of energy in his body, and the pace of the power up was nothing to scoff at either.
The Night Eagle Chief nodded and looked at the remaining nine Ether Stones. He then began informing Nick.
“The official name of the pyramid is the ‘Grey Spirit Ancient Pyramid’. It is said that it was built by a race that called itself the ‘Grey Lords’. They looked like some kind of animal, but their shapes resembled ours. At present, much about them is hearsay and we don’t have any credible information to go on.”
“According to what the other races and what we know about the Grey Lords is that they were are an intelligent race with great capability for constructing structures and for magic itself. They must have built this pyramid more than 100K years ago. But now, there aren’t any more Grey Lord race members that anyone knows of. The last seen member was over 50,000 years ago.”
“The information on their whereabouts or why they were never seen again were equally mixed. Some believed they must have vanished or gone extinct. Others said they migrated to a different place or continent and have forgotten about this island completely.”
“Magical abilities do not seem to work in the area surrounding the pyramid. And without any magical capability, nobody would want to enter it. Due to this, the pyramid was not explored and there is no information about what is inside the pyramid itself.”
Nick listened to Aglior attentively and started discussing.
“This place was built by the Grey Lords. But their last seen member was over 50,000 years ago. It is most likely they reached a turning point in their civilization and left the island.”
In Nick’s mind, he was reasonably certain that the race was neither destroyed nor extinct. Even if the current details pointed in that direction, his reasoning was based on the fact that this was an intelligent race, capable of complex building ability and possessed magical abilities.
If these beings were capable of achieving so much more than 100K years ago, then 50,000 years after that, they would be a much more improved and advanced version of themselves, with knowledge and magic abilities of a similar scale.
These things enticed Nick to enter the pyramid sooner. However, a part of him was still anxious. Without the guarantee that he was capable of creating an exit or retreat route for himself, that did not rely on any outside help, Nick did not intend to enter the Grey Stone Ancient Pyramid.
Like Nick had suspected earlier if the pyramid could block spells, who could say that it could not attack those that entered the pyramid. Maybe this was the reason why the pyramid was not explored until now.
Maybe the people and other creatures that entered the pyramid, never had the chance to leave it, keeping the secret of this Grey Stone Ancient Pyramid hidden deep inside.
Nick was not going to make this mistake before he was more confident about himself and had more magical power and capability to bypass the pyramid’s ability to block his magical energy.
Once Nick settled his thoughts, he flicked his fingers and 10 more Ether Stones appeared. He tossed these towards Aglior, who directly accepted it. Nick then asked.
“Please, tell me about what is outside this island. What do you know about the places or things?”
Aglior cleared his throat and answered.
“We, as the race of the Night Eagles, are located in two different islands and on two different places within these islands. We have located other intelligent beings living here and by establishing communication channels with them, we learned about the name of these two islands and the names of the places we found within them.”
“The first island, which is half the size of our Grey Stone Island, is called Blue Rock Island. We spoke with the race of Blue Dwarfs there. They told us that the most important place on this island was the Blue Rock Manor that was located on top of the tallest mountain there.”
“As for the second place, they told us it was called Humanity Statue, which shows a statue of a creature that does not look like any of the original inhabitants of this island.”
The Night Eagle Chief did not notice the change in Nick’s expression when he heard the words ‘Humanity Statue’.
