Chapter Thirty-Three: The Basement’s Harvest

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With a dull thud, the stone seat came to rest on the basement floor, unable to descend any farther.

Before Eric lay a circular underground library.

Bookshelves stood in orderly rows, while luminous ore hung on the far wall. The light was faint, but sufficient for him to make out the general dimensions of the chamber.

“There’s actually a basement hidden here…”

Eric was genuinely surprised. In his previous life, he had never heard of anyone discovering this place. Could it be a location accessible only through some hidden quest?

“Mr. Eric?”

Alena leaned her head over the opening above. Sophie and several guards from the lord’s residence were gathered around it as well. “What is this place…?”

“I have no idea either.” Eric shook his head at them. “But there probably isn’t any danger. I’ll inspect it first, then find a way back up.”

He rose and stepped away from the stone seat, looking around. The air in the library was stale and carried a strange odor, as though it had not circulated in a very long time. That was probably also why the books had survived for so long.

Eric walked to one of the shelves and picked up a book at random. Before he could even open it, the pages crumbled away like dry powder, reduced to fragments as fine as though they had passed through a shredder several times.

So much for having survived.

All that remained in his hand was a slightly stiff, thick cover, the writing upon it blurred beyond recognition.

“Windy Plains… jewel… Tia… Luthia?”

It was probably a book describing the customs and landscapes of the imperial capital, Luthia. Its full title was likely The Jewel of the Windy Plains—Luthia. That came as a slight surprise to Eric. He had assumed the books hidden here would all be scholarly works related to magic.

He tried several more. They disintegrated the instant he picked them up, and judging from their indistinct titles, none of them seemed to have anything to do with magic.

So this was simply part of Frand’s private collection?

Had he believed from the beginning that he would spend the rest of his life down here? Or had he intended to use this place as a hideout?

The man was dead, and Eric had no way of knowing the answer. He could not be bothered to dwell on it. Instead, he continued walking through the library, searching for anything even slightly useful.

The basement was circular, while the bookshelves were arranged in a cross. Eric counted sixteen shelves in all, four in each direction. The closer they were to the center, the more densely they were filled, and the books had already been sorted into categories, saving him the trouble of checking them one by one.

“This is… The Duke of Cassel? A biography?”

Upon finding a biography of Duke Cassel, one of the Twelve Founding Knights, Eric searched around and indeed found a biography of his own ancestor as well. Unfortunately, its pages had also turned to ash.

“What a pity.”

Eric moved from shelf to shelf, but found nothing of value. He had not even come across a single book that remained intact, and by now he had given up hope.

Above, the others had nearly finished smashing, carrying, and burning everything they could. Leslie crouched by the opening once more and called down to ask whether Eric needed help.

“Come down? No, stay up there. You should find a rope or something instead. I still don’t know whether the mechanism here can send me back up…”

Eric stopped before yet another shelf and picked up a book at random, answering the captain of the guard as he read its title.

[Skill Book: Firebird]

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Firebird: Condense a large quantity of fire elements into a flaming bird and send it flying toward the target, ignoring fifty percent of the target’s magical defense. Class requirement: Apprentice Fire Controller or higher. Attribute requirement: Spirit 300.

Eric’s hand jerked, and he nearly dropped it.

“Damn… a skill book!”

At last, he had found something genuinely valuable!

Unlike in a game, class instructors in this world could not simply be found whenever one wished. Learning a skill was no easy matter.

A skill book, on the other hand, was equivalent to a mentor who guaranteed instruction and mastery. As long as the reader met the class and attribute requirements, that was enough.

He had to save this for Eileen.

Eric looked again at the shelf from which he had taken the skill book and immediately felt disappointed. Unlike the densely packed shelves before it, this one held only a dozen or so books, not even enough to fill a single row.

He picked up another. It was Chain Lightning, a skill for lightning mages.

“Slow Tide… Swampcraft… Dark Veil… Wall of Gales…”

More than a dozen skill books, all without exception related to magic, though their class requirements varied. Clearly, they were not books Frand had kept for his own use. Eric guessed that Frand had collected them while studying magic at Starfield Academy.

“Starfield Academy…”

If one considered only the diversity of magical research, Eric actually preferred to send Eileen there.

The magic academy standing in the heart of the Chaotic Lands housed a bewildering variety of schools and doctrines. It even accepted necromancers. In magical research, almost nothing was forbidden, allowing the academy to flourish more vigorously than most. Even now, many of the renowned mages in the world had, to one degree or another, studied at Starfield Academy.

But for that very reason, it was also far more dangerous. Magic was already a power beyond the control of ordinary people, and Eileen was still in such a dazed and confused state. Eric had no desire to send his sister to a place so chaotic to study, even if he accompanied her.

Eileen had never lacked talent. What she needed was proper guidance to help her step through the gates of magic. The Luthia Academy of Magic, located outside the imperial capital, could hardly have been more suitable. Nearly all of its professors were former court mages, and its graduates generally went on to serve at court, in noble households, or in the imperial army. It was, in effect, the Delan Empire’s official training ground for magical talent.

“At least the teachers there are respectable. We’ll send Eileen to the capital to study for a few years and see how things go.”

Eric silently planned his sister’s future. The siblings were as close as could be, and he believed Eileen would follow his arrangements.

After taking all the magic skill books from the shelf, Eric quickened his pace and continued examining the rest.

The bookshelves in the rear contained far fewer volumes, but their contents were more closely related to magic. Before long, Eric found several sets of notes that had survived intact. He flipped through them. Some contained reflections on the study of magic, while others recorded magical experiments. They seemed certain to be valuable, so he took them all.

“Hmm… parchment scrolls?”

At the final shelf, he found only two parchment scrolls. One was rolled up and placed on top, while the other had been spread flat below it.

The concealed one was naturally more intriguing.

Eric set down the skill books and notes he had been carrying all this time, then removed the parchment and unfolded it.

The main content was a sketch depicting a massive boulder. Eric recognized it at a glance.

“The enormous meteorite beneath Starfield Academy?”

Beside it were handwritten annotations stating that the meteorite contained fluctuations of magical power and could absorb magic, among other things. Eric had already known all of that from the game.

That meteorite surely concealed some secret, but the game had never revealed it before he came to this world. And since it was related to magic, Eric doubted he would have much opportunity to investigate it. He soon lost interest and turned his attention to the other parchment.

The moment he looked at it, cold sweat poured down his face.

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Leslie and the others waited above for a while. Suddenly, they heard another rumbling sound, much like the noise made when Eric had descended on the stone seat earlier. When they hurried over to look, they saw him once again rising slowly on the seat.

After a while, the stone seat returned to the level of the hall floor. Leslie approached.

“Young master…”

“Don’t come any closer.” Eric hurriedly stopped him. “Don’t touch anything.”

“What?”

The captain of the guard was bewildered, but halted immediately.

“Take this.” Eric handed him the magic books and notes he had brought up, then ordered everyone to retreat outside the hall. He turned back toward the stone seat and began feeling around it.

“Hmm… found it. Here.”

His fingers discovered three depressions in the corner of the seat. He inserted them into the hollows and slowly turned.

Click.

With a soft sound, he drew a deep breath, tightened his grip, and applied force with his wrist, gradually lifting the entire seat surface.

Beneath it were dozens of bottles packed tightly together, each filled with a lurid green liquid.

According to the parchment, they contained the highly concentrated plague toxin Frand had spent decades extracting from the undead.

“What kind of antisocial lunatic…”

Cursing under his breath, Eric carefully removed the small bottle at the very center. It contained an explosive charge. Once triggered by the mechanism in the stone seat, it could instantly spread the toxin throughout the entire hall.

Fortunately, the mechanism he had touched earlier had not been this one.

Eric threw the small bottle into the already wrecked laboratory. It exploded with a sharp report. He then told Leslie to find a container large enough to hold the remaining bottles.

The captain of the guard searched for some time before returning with a thin rope and a large piece of torn cloth.

“Young master, what is this?”

“This is the highly concentrated plague toxin that old man mentioned. It cannot be left here. Be careful. If one of the bottles breaks, neither of us may die, but we’ll certainly lose half our lives.”

“…”

Leslie went pale with horror.

“Plague… But didn’t you say you had already found a way to resist and cure it?”

Eric bound the small bottles together with the thin rope, then wrapped them carefully in the torn cloth. He glanced at the necromancer’s corpse nearby before looking back at Leslie.

“I was just lying to him. You actually believed me?”