Chapter 216

Outside the bedroom stretched a grand corridor. Overwhelmed by the vast space she faced the moment she stepped out, Nerys hesitated, unsure which direction to take.

If this place were real, surely someone would come looking for her. With that thought, she removed one of her hairpins and dropped it in front of the bedroom door. It was the most suitable item she had for such a purpose, and with her hair neatly pinned up, she had plenty of them.

‘Anyone who enters here will know I was here.’

If she dropped them one by one at intervals, they would serve as a trail to follow. Of course, that assumed people who knew her could enter before she starved to death.

Was no one living here? It seemed unlikely that those who had lived in such a magnificent place would simply abandon it by choice. Yet if the place had been destroyed, wouldn’t the bedroom and this corridor be in worse condition?

Or was someone secretly living here?

The surroundings were silent. After some thought, Nerys chose the left. The corridor stretched endlessly either way, so it was simply a matter of chance.

She walked a long distance along the corridor to the left of the bedroom, dropping pins as she went, before finally discovering another door. Compared to the bedroom’s standard-sized door, this one was three times taller and twice as wide.

After hesitating, she grasped the astonishingly intricate handle and gently pushed as she turned it.

The door opened more easily than expected, without so much as a creak. And inside—

A library.

Soft yellow-hued magic orbs densely filled the ceiling. Bookshelves stacked to twice a person’s height lined the room, stretching so far they seemed to disappear into an optical illusion. The scent of old book dust lingered in the air.

The end of the library was faintly visible—so distant it was almost laughable, like a horizon.

‘The palace library could fit inside here three times over.’

And despite the height of the shelves making them impractical for humans, there wasn’t a single ladder in sight. As if… it had been made for something not human.

‘Or maybe the ladder is tucked somewhere deeper inside.’

Nerys brushed aside her own wandering thoughts. The books themselves were only slightly larger than normal, after all.

Most books were neatly shelved, but one lay on the floor, open with its spine facing upward.

Nerys picked it up without much thought. Though aged, it didn’t crumble at her touch.

‘It’s written with characters similar to Imperial script. I don’t know the content, but still.’

Strange. She didn’t know every language in the world. But if a civilization advanced enough to build this place used script similar to that of the Empire, shouldn’t she have heard something about them in a history lesson somewhere…?

Her eyes froze on a familiar-looking word. The spelling differed slightly, but it resembled the Divine Language word for “to wage war,” ‘belio’. A few unfamiliar variations were attached, but the root was unmistakable.

Once she noticed it, she started spotting familiar characters all over the page. ‘Kato’, meaning “cat”; ‘primera’, meaning “one”…

The Divine Language and Imperial script used the same alphabet. This book—

It might have been written in a dialect closely related to the Divine Language.

The Divine Language’s structure differed little from major languages like Imperial, Common Lundish, or Verlaine Language—only more complex. Much more.

If nouns changed four times by case in Verlaine Language, they changed twelve times in the Divine Language. If present tense verbs changed three ways by subject in Common Lundish, they changed six ways in the Divine Language. But once the rules were memorized, there were almost no irregular forms.

If this book used a variant of the Divine Language with similar vocabulary, she could roughly understand the meaning.

If so, perhaps she could read other books as well. Learn what this place was and how to escape. A library this large surely held answers.

As someone who loved books, she couldn’t help the excitement rising in her chest. She’d restrained herself for years due to work, but in her past life she had the habit of reading a book cover-to-cover once she opened it.

Unable to look away, Nerys extracted familiar roots from the text. After identifying frequently repeating words, she judged which parts were the original forms and which were inflections.

‘Numbers are almost identical to the Divine Language, but the spelling is closer to Pizan… same words but slightly different orthography… second-person singular verbs always end in “-s,” same as most languages…’

At first, the unfamiliar words seemed to bounce off her eyes. But gradually, she adjusted. All of it.

She unknowingly sank deeper into deciphering this strange, yet intellectually tempting language.

❖ ❖ ❖

The area before the heavy door was a mess. Blood and corpses cluttered the door, the floor, and everywhere around it, the stench of death thick in the air.

Some monsters gathered possessed humanlike intelligence; others were no smarter than a pack of wolves. Yet the scent of blood—and of an enemy—tempted them all.

The orcs were enraged and fearful. The smell of a human stirred their hatred. The gnolls watching coldly were equally agitated.

A human… an enemy. A being who came to kill them… something that must disappear. And a good meal, besides…

The “room” was forbidden territory. Entering it meant “she” would be angry. But if a human was inside, perhaps entering was allowed.

Thud. Thud. A Stone Golem stepped forward and pounded on the door. Twice the height of an orc, its massive rock body made the entire corridor quake with each blow.

Crack—! Before long, the door shattered. Unable to restrain themselves, the orcs slid past the golem’s legs and charged into the room.

They had entered a storage chamber. Countless treasure chests were stacked like bundles of straw. These were items priceless outside, yet the monsters never touched any of them.

The storage looked empty at a glance—quiet and peaceful. But the monsters sensed the human scent growing stronger.

Grrrrrr—! They growled as they tracked the scent. Most of them converged toward one place: the tower of chests to the right of the door.

But once they reached it, they froze in confusion. Behind the stack was only a piece of cloth—human-made fabric. The scent had come from there.

Ffft, ffft, shff. Before the orcs could sniff further, a soft windlike sound rang out, and several monsters collapsed, dead. The intelligent ones among them looked up sharply, recognizing the gold pins embedded like butter in the backs of their skulls.

Too high for orcs to see—atop the chest tower stood a human.

“Chiiik! Chiik! Come down, human! Cowar—grrk!”

The shouting orc died as its throat was pierced. A gnoll whispered to the Stone Golem.

“Hissss, knock those chests over, hissss!”

The golem, not very intelligent but the strongest, obeyed. The stack it grabbed collapsed like a building falling.

Chests burst open, spilling plum-sized jewels in an endless cascade. Cledwyn jumped lightly from the falling pile, frowning.

“What kind of jewels are stored like this?”

He too had seen more gemstones than he could count. He had inherited an old title and continued to earn wealth—he owned more mines than he bothered to remember.

But the size, clarity, and craftsmanship of these jewels… jewels scattering like gravel, illuminating the room with thousands of lights… This was something out of a greedy man’s delusion, not the real world.

Cledwyn clicked his tongue and threw the pin he held. He had picked it up on the way here.

Nerys’s hairpin. She was definitely somewhere in here. The pins were spaced apart; her limbs were free.

A relief. It meant he could use them as markers. Monsters nearby screamed and died.

The frightened gnolls hid in the shadows. Idiot orcs, idiot goblins—this human was strong. They would have to wait until the Stone Golem killed him. The golem didn’t eat humans, so they could claim the meat.

But before their eyes, the Stone Golem shattered instantly. Its core barely had time to reform before it was crushed again into sand.

Run. The gnolls signaled each other. But they met the same fate as the rest. All but one.

Cledwyn spared a single monster he could sense. Pressing his blade to the gnoll’s neck, he asked coldly:

“Is there another human nearby besides me?”

The gnoll quickly calculated. This human was searching for a lost companion. There was only one lie that could save its life.

“Hisss! Y-yes! Our gnolls! Hisss! We have one! If you hurt me—hiss! That human will die!”

“Really? What does that human look like?”

“Hiss! I-I don’t know! Hisss! I just heard it was human!”

“A smart answer. Trying to keep me from killing you.”

Hic. The gnoll hiccuped. The human saw through its intent.

Cledwyn smiled faintly and tickled its neck with his blade. Lie or not didn’t matter. If she was here, he needed to clear the area.

“Stand up. Lead me to where your friends are hiding and is trying to kill me. But if the person I’m looking for isn’t there, all your friends die.”

The gnoll nodded.

❖ ❖ ❖

Something had collapsed in the distance.

Having spent a long while reading, Nerys lifted her head. Reluctantly, she approached the library doors and peered outside.

Rumble… crash… thud. The repeated echoes reverberated loudly. Something had definitely fallen apart.

‘Or something worse.’

She glanced at the book she had been reading.

She didn’t know the language perfectly, but she understood enough of the pages to grasp what they were discussing. And she still couldn’t believe it.

‘…Either way, I can’t just sit around.’

She needed to move. And escape this place as quickly as possible.

Nerys plucked another pin from her hair and dropped it on the ground.

Clink. The pin rang lightly against the tiled floor. She began to run.

A gargoyle carved into a nearby pillar quietly opened its eyes and watched her flee.