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"Oh, okay. Wait, maybe not, actually." Lumine swore under her breath as a slice from the enhanced ruin guard nicked her arm and pushed her out of Bennett's healing circle.
"Lumine!" Bennett yelped as he narrowly dodged a spinning attack from one of the geovishap hatchlings.
"I'm fine!" Lumine yelled back. She held a tight grip on her right shoulder where she had been injured.
Quite a few months back, the adventuring team had discovered a tablet resting in front of what seemed to be the closed doors of a temple. The area itself held the aura of history buried deep into the soil and tall broken pillars scattered all across the slope.
The tablet, clearly aged and chipping at the ends, was inscribed with a few bits of lettering.
' —Thus, we lay down nine pillars to bring peace, to end here the conflicts that plague this world.
If one who comes after will break those pillars and enter, war shall once again consume the world.
O you who read this tablet, claim the treasure that lies within, and bring peace to Liyue.'
With natural curiosity that came from having two full-time adventurer's on their team—and the greed of one small floating fairy, their quest of solving the puzzle began.
They had first started with inspecting the pillars themselves to search for clues.
"Yahoo!" Venti giggled as he deployed his wing gliders and floated from the wind of his self-summoned wind current.
Lumine and Bennett let out their own shouts of excitement as they joined the bard onto the wind current.
"Please be careful." Ei exclaimed from her spot on the ground to look out for any threats and warn as quickly as possible. Who knows when a Hilichurl Shooter might have a god-like aim and a vendetta?
Bennett gave her a thumbs up once he had landed on the thin edge of the structure. "We will–"
Bennett yelped as his foot tripped and almost fell off the edge of the pillar only to be saved by a quick save from Lumine who grabbed his arm. "Benny, you okay?"
Bennett sheepishly looked between Lumine's worried face and Ei's unimpressed expression. "...sorry 'bout that."
"C'mon!" Venti interrupted, startling both Lumine and Bennett while Ei glared at him. He purposely chose to ignore that last one. "It's already evening, we don't have that long to finish this!"
"Right!" Bennet perked up at that. "I can climb up first so we don't use too much stamina?"
Lumine hummed. "Sure. We'll make sure you don't fall."
Bennett grinned. He turned and began to scale up the surface of the square pillar, he ignored the small ache in his hands as his fingers clutched onto the edges of the face of the pillar.
He had reached almost completely all the way to the top when he noticed a rounded indent that was surrounded by brown designs circling around it. He faced down to call to the others. "Hey guys?"
Three heads looked upwards to give their fourth member their full attention.
"Yeah?" Lumine called back.
"There's this little curved hole here," Bennett gestured a hand towards said indent. "Looks like it's missing something."
Lumine turned her head back down and crossed her arms for a moment. She let her chin rest on the fist of one hand before snapping her fingers. "Oh!"
Venti and Ei both turned their focus onto Lumine. "You got something?" Venti asked.
"Give me a minute," Lumine waved a hand and a small cluster of tiny stars formed in front of her. She used the same hand to turn and adjust the position of the cluster before reaching one hand towards a constellation. "Here it is."
Venti moved closer to get a better look at the object Lumine had summoned. "Wait, isn't that the rock we got from that blockhead's statue?"
Lumine nodded. "Mhm. Stone of Remembrance."
The stone itself was a round, ball-like shape and coloured with an enchanting gold. The middle of the stone looked like it had been damaged causing it to crack open and reveal the fully internal gold of the stone.
"That looks like it could fit!" Bennett yelled.
Lumine summoned her star cluster once more and this time reached for another constellation. The stars suddenly disappeared and Paimon appeared from her own cluster beside Lumine.
Paimon let out a yawn. "Mm. Why did you wake up Paimon?"
Lumine stared at the fairy fondly. "Could you float this up to Benny?"
Paimon looked up to where Bennett was perched near the top of the pillar. She grabbed the stone and hugged it close to her body and grumbled as she floated up towards him.
Bennett accepted the stone and smiled. "Thank you, Paimon!"
Paimon merely let out another grumble and disappeared back to whatever pocket dimension she goes when she rests.
Bennett chuckled and turned back to the empty space beside him. "Well, here goes nothing!"
Bennett inserted the stone and nothing happened for a moment. Disappointment washed throughout the adventuring team before the area beside the Stone of Remembrance started to glow a bright gold.
Venti and Bennett cheered while Lumine and Ei smiled before the pillar started cracking.
"Benny!" Venti and Lumine screeched.
Ei scrambled to catch the screaming form of the young adventurer as the pillar continued to crack.
"Oof!" Benny groaned from the impact of the fall and now being held up by nothing but Ei.
"Are you okay, Bennett?" Ei looked over Bennett for any injuries that might have occured.
"Yeah, 'Am fine." Bennett mumbled out.
They turned towards where both Lumine and Venti had gasped and witnessed that the pillar's walls had completely cracked open to reveal another version of itself that had glowing gold details and intricate designs.
"So we know that works." Venti humoured.
"Mhm." Lumine hummed.
The adventuring team had spent a few months after that incident to slowly finish gathering all of the Geoculi to restore the Statue of The Seven and access all the other Stones of Remembrance. It wasn't so much as hard as it was tedious.
(Both Venti and Ei had a very passionate talk with a certain geo-deity when they found out that the last stone was received on the last level of the restored statue.)
But they did still manage to collect all of the Geoculi eventually.
However, even after the four of them had completed collecting all the stones needed to unlock the domain, it had taken another two months for all of them to finally be free—with Lumine being busy helping to set up and celebrate her second Lantern Rite Festival and most of team being occupied with the Irodori Festival—to explore the domain.
Once they had finally made it to Cuijue Slope, where the domain resides, and had carefully inserted the remaining stones into the pillars they finally entered the domain.
On an important note, no one from the Adventurer's Guild really had any information on this particular domain. Nothing was known about it except for what was written on the tablet and that the adventurers had dubbed the temple as Nine Pillars of Peace.
So to be completely truthful, the team wasn't truly aware of how difficult this quest would be.
Now, when half of your team consists of literal gods, you'd think any quest considered 'difficult' would be just a breeze, right?
Wrong.
It would have been just a breeze if the temple didn't have a ruin hunter and two geovishap hatchlings. Why was this so difficult? You might ask.
Ruin hunters and geovishaps cannot be picked up by anemo due to sheer weight and the team foolishly enetered the temple with none of them having their elemental burst ready.
Now here we are witnessing the adventuring on their fifth attempt of completing this domain after numerous tactical retreats.
Lumine gritted her teeth and shouted. "Alright. Time for Plan G!"
Bennett looked on confusedly as he striked a flaming slash to the base of the ruin hunter. "Don't you mean Plan B?"
Lumine chanelled her elemental power and stomped one foot onto the ground to summon Wave of Earth's geo spikes. "No, we tried Plan B a while ago." She aimed a Starfell Sword at one of the geovishap hatchlings. "I had to skip over Plan C due to technical difficulties."
Venti released a Skyward Sonnet wind current then faced to where Lumine and Bennet where fighting. "What about Plan D?"
"Plan D was that desperate attempt to sneak around the enemies into the chamber an hour ago."
"Ah."
Bennett laid down another elemental burst and grinned when Ei gave an appreciative nod. "What about Plan E?"
Lumine laid down another meteorite just before Venti and Ei released their elemental bursts. "I'm hoping not to use it. I'm afraid we might have to sacrifice Venti in Plan E."'
Ei, who had been almost completely silent from the start of try number 5 and is still ruthlessly attacking the enhanced ruin hunter using divine punishment, commented. "I like Plan E."
"I– Excuse me?!" Venti stuttered with offence.
Lumine tried to muffle a chuckle as she finished off the last geovishap hatchling.
"Lumine! You traitor!" Venti gasped in fake offence as he immediately turned to the traveler.
"What? I'm innocent." Lumine teased back. She turned her focus back onto the ruin hunter just as Ei finished her burst and started her cool down. She gasped. "It has less than a quarter hp left!"
Bennett and Venti—who momentarily forgot his supposed insultedness—let out matching cheers.
Lumine faced back to where Bennett was. "I have my burst up. What about you?"
"Mine's ready!"
"Alright, one last bang, yeah?"
Bennett sprinted towards the ruin hunter and skid to the left to dodge a slice.
Lumine followed his lead and stood right infront of the mechanic robot.
"Everybody stand back!"
"Starfall!" Lumine released another wave of geo spikes and followed it immediately after with a Starfell Sword.
The Ruin Hunter disintegrated into blue ashes and a broken down groan. The ground quaked a bit as the doors to the core of the temple opened themselves.
"Woo!"
"Heck yeah!"
Lumine, Venti and Bennett all raced towards the door as Ei stared fondly as she trailed after them at a much slower pace.
They entered the inner core to reveal three luxurious chests and two exquisite chests. Paimon suddenly appeared in a flash of stars.
"Treasure!"
Venti grabbed her by her cape before she could race off to the chests.
"Hey!"
"Now what did you do to help, you floating food?!"
"Lumine!" Paimon whined. "The tone-deaf bard is bullying Paimon!"
Lumine chuckled. "C'mon you two. Let's just claim our hard-earned rewards."
Ei merely picked up Paimon from where she was still held by Venti. "We can go get food after we're done."
Bennett perked up. "Please, I am so hungry."
Venti and Lumine gave their own sounds of agreement.
The team all happily claimed the chests's rewards and stared curiously at the ancient ring until—
"So. Do you want to explain what Plan E was or...?"