Chapter 194: Secret Study

“You look like shit, Snow,” Opal supplies helpfully. My eyes drift over the rest of our group, and as the others all slowly nod, I smile brightly.

“I sure do!” I supply. Frankly, I am looking a lot better by now. During the walk, my mana regenerated quite a bit, and I used it to heal myself. Mostly. I still have two holes in my body. Turns out regenerating those is a lot trickier. I’m missing one of my lungs, which makes breathing troublesome. “You should see the other guys.”

“Guys?” Sylves asks, raising an eyebrow. “How many of them did you take?” 

“Two,” I reply. “Raven and Vincent.”

Inu frowns. “Vincent? He was in here?”

“The zoof we had with us, Bofoy. Was a disguise.” 

Slowly, the kind girl nods, then grimaces slightly. Her eyes trail over to Anna, who still looks a little bit traumatized by the whole ordeal. I suppose killing someone like that might be rough on her. Luckily, Inu will take care of that. Which makes it less of my problem.

Instead, I walk over to Sylves. “Hey. Got some replacement clothes for me?” I ask. 

“Why?” she asks in reply. 

I blink. Then I pull open my cloak a bit, and show off the fact that I am positively drenched in blood, and the stuff I’m wearing is ragged. 

“Ah,” she says. “That’ll do it.”

Then, slowly, I bring something out from my cloak. It’s a single feather that I hold out to her. “I brought this to trade,” I say. Sylves tilts her head. I infuse mana into the item, and Raven’s puffy feather-cloak expands again, feather appearing as if fanning out. Instantly, Sylves’ eyes go wide, and she snatches it from my hand.

Giggling maniacally, the faerie strokes the feather like a precious treasure. “Oh yes, wonderful. I can learn from this… Yes, that’s more than worth some clothing. I will make you the softest things you’ve ever worn, Snow, dearest.”

I smile brightly. Worth it. Then, I search for new clothes with Sylves for a while. In the meantime, I make sure that nothing happens to the two precious items I stole from Raven and Vincent. They’re something I need to play around with in the future.

- - -

Time passes easily as I heal the others. We use my old mana-core again to transfer mana between us. By now, I’ve upgraded it a few more times, but it can’t store nearly as much mana as my vessel can hold. Still, it’s plenty to empty the others out over a few transfers. Which means I get to stitch them back up.

“Everyone else is still alive,” Thatch tells me. “Our fights were mostly stalling. But without Raven, they’ll be affected by the Ire.”

“So will we,” I hum. “There’s just ten of us now, after all.”

Thatch nods quietly. “Troublesome,” he says. Another banshee appears, but I [Deconstruct] it. The castle feels a lot more quiet after everything we’ve just dealt with. Inu sits, brushing Anna’s back. No one else wants to fight - Coldscar and his group must’ve retreated. Dove was still alive, but also terrified of Sylves. She must’ve made a real impression.

Then, Inu flinches. “She’s here,” she whispers. And I realize that, apparently, getting back to the others took me a full twenty minutes. I suppose I was sprinting for most of the time I was running away from Raven, so it’s not too surprising. But it does mean we have to hurry.

With a small sigh, I bring my aching body to my feet. “Let’s go, then,” I say quietly. “Can’t be too far.”

“Actually,” Thatch cuts in, “there’s something I’d like to check out.”

Hm? Well, now he has my curiosity.

- - -

Thatch knocks on a stone wall. And, indeed, as he promised, it sounds hollow behind it. There’s no door to access it, though. Just something that’s perfectly sealed up. How interesting. If only we had Bay with us. Surely she could have blown it up. Tragically, as it is right now, I need to actually do the work and figure it out.

[Observation] hums to life and I kneel before the hollow part of the wall. There’s little lines of mana flowing through the stone, but it’s hidden. I shift my [Observation], condensing it down to pierce the hidden spell. It takes me a few tries, but eventually, I make it through. A little like twisting the dial on a microscope until the image sharpens. 

[Observation 23 > 24]

Tiny flows of mana line the inside of the stone. Little runes shaped for very specific purposes. One of them, for example, detects that I can see it and stabs a spike of solid mana through my hand.

I pull back my bloody appendage and take a bit more distance as I continue watching. Jean moves in to heal me and I let him, choosing to keep my attention on the inscriptions. There’s one about withdrawing focus that would make the thing attack me again, which might kill me. Scary.

Trailing my perception across the inscriptions, I search for some way to activate them. Where there might be a section of magic threads I can trigger to open the door. And I do find a promising one, quickly activating it. Then it hums to life, and I throw myself low to the ground.

Another mana-spike stabs where my head just was. I take a deep breath - as deep as my fucked up lung lets me - and sigh. Not that one, then.

Another five minutes pass, people behind me slowly getting tenser, but one by one, I find the traps, then deactivate them. [Annexion] helps me, as with every new configuration my archive of runes and my intuition relating to them grows. It feeds me a bit of essence as I go through the door, and I can already tell that these will be useful for me making more traps in the future.

Eventually, I find the correct sequence, buried under multiple layers of false signatures, and trigger them in the right order. Three quick infusions of mana and it was finally done. In a swift but silent motion, the stone in front of me pulls inward, swinging on invisible hinges. It’s small, just enough to let us crouch through.

“Got it,” I whisper happily. Then, Inu volunteers to head in first. Which proves to be a good decision. After about three steps, there’s a trap. And I begin to feel like we could really use some kind of danger sense. Metal spikes scrape against Inu’s armor, and I see her body trying to crunch into itself.

After a moment, though, the spikes return into the wall again, and Inu gives a relieved breath. Despite that, she just gives me a confident smile. Which is nice, because I do worry, even though I try not to.

We walk, bit by bit, and three more traps trigger. The door behind us closes once everyone is in the tunnel, smooth stone sliding back into place. I breathe, and am once again reminded of the hole right through me. Even now, all my mana is busily getting used to redirect my blood vessels. 

Efficiency helps me work through it, though. My oxygen absorption seems to be more efficient, so I still feel alright, even though I should definitely be feeling winded at this point. After a few dozen steps in the narrow tunnel, it opens up into a simple stone-brick room - fully warded.

The walls are covered in dense runework. Sprawling lines of magic spiral out, condensing around nodes of mana-cores. The walls are lined with bookshelves, and in the middle of the room stands a desk, with a single book on top of it. A thick, dusty tome. There are more papers strewn about, partially covering the floor - most of which is a nice, soft rug, except for the trapdoor. 

Instantly, we swarm forwards. I check the inscriptions, roughly at first, and find that they seem to mostly be warding-related. Keeping mana in and out. It’s an air-gapped room. Completely sealed.

Which means no banshees can make their way here. “All safe,” I say raggedly, and one by one, everyone starts taking a look around. Once more, my eyes are drawn to that desk in the middle. My curiosity spikes. Now what could that be?