Chapter 192: [Laborious reading]
Sofia pushed forward to see if she could find the Necrotic ooze. As expected, it wasnt there. There seemed to be a large room at the same emplacement, but it was behind a closed set of stone doors.
This How do I even make a map?
The general layout doesnt change, but everything else does? Are there several different versions of the same rooms and corridors that are exchanging places with one another when Im not looking? Or am I the one being teleported to another similar but different maze every so often without realizing it?
Ugh. I liked the moving walls better.
With things being that weird, Sofia gave up trying to rush things so much and patiently let the last bits of her mana refill before summoning her birds and putting on a rune. She also started to annotate the places on her map.
For the room in front of her, she marked :
1- Necrotic Ooze
2- Closed doors
3- ?
Depending on how this works, I could use this to my advantage to avoid unpleasant stuff like the Ooze by crossing the room in one of its less putrid versions, if thats a thing. Ive yet to understand what prompts the change, though, and how far it extends.
After the ten minutes of channeling required to activate [False immortality], which felt like they lasted forever, Sofia summoned the graveyard crew to phase Pareth through the door.
I feel safer now. Lets see what we have got in there this time.
As Sofia guessed, the ghostly skeletons couldnt get through the walls and floor, but they could still phase through the door. They slowly carried Pareth through, and Sofia got to see the inside of the room.
This was some kind of large living quarters, with tables, a fireplace, a kitchen counter along a wall, and shelves scattered here and there. Like everything else in the maze, it all was old and decrepit, a thick layer of roots entering from who knows where had even grown all over the floor. It was very militaristic, not only due to the blazons decorating the walls but also the many weapons and shields lined up on racks everywhere. That and the twelve armored knights.
As if stuck in an eerie painting, twelve fully armored knights with closed helmets were frozen in place doing everyday things. One of them, for example, was sitting at a table, in position to polish his rusted, broken-in-half sword with an invisible rag he was holding. Another was getting ready to eat out of an empty bowl with his wooden spoon. Some were relaxing on chairs, sitting around a table, and some were leaning against the walls.
Did they die and get stuck in place for eternity? Some kind of petrification curse?
I have never seen anything like that before. The tree kind of looks like a black primus, but not quite. One more thing to look up later; again, maybe Zerei will know more, or Valeure.
Ah, but we cant speak about the trial Well, maybe if I dont say anything about where this comes from. Hmm. Annoying. Ill see when I get there, I suppose.
The only other thing of any interest in the room was the book on which one of the knights had been hunched over before they all took life to throw themselves at Pareth.
Unlike the other book she had found, some text survived. Due to the unclean handwriting inside and the lack of a title on the leather cover, she guessed it was some kind of journal. She read the passages that she found. It was a real pain to make sense of because they were all in Ancient Human and very faded. That and the worse-than-usual calligraphic skills of the author
Our liege again in his sleep. There no stop uncovered artifact.
Many lines are missing, even on the better-conserved pages
Deeper thousands of workers all for care despite
And thats it for this page. The mention of an uncovered artifact is intriguing, but that doesnt say much without context. Maybe the goal of the trial is to find the artifact? There are two more with readable words, so lets hope they hold more information on this place.
It was around the middle, I think There.
extending to no e Since the Sculptor recrea madness.
Thats all there was? I might have been a bit too optimistic. Last usable page then, near the end Hey, thats at least three readable lines, kind of.
Only the ever faithful and the desperate are still inhab of our liege.
and these doors are the last bastion of our sanity. We guard them day and night. Only nightmares await on the other side.
We can no longer leave even if no signs for weeks, probably dead, or worse pagan rituals from the twis consumed by the encroaching too late.
I do not know what I expected, but not that.
Very reassuring.
