The Young Master in the Shadows

After searching the entire floor of the Forbidden Zone in the library for 30 minutes Victor didn’t find any books of interest. Most of the knowledge here was elaborations of things he already knew.

Hell, some of the books here were ones he had read back then in Trilaria. Whoever came here to retrieve that said Artifact, must have come here too!

There were also some Demonic magic books placed behind iron doors, but they were nothing authentic, just copies of copies containing explanations and philosophical discussions about demons. Looking at them he couldn’t understand a thing like many of the people who read them before him and wrote a lot of stupid commentaries on their margins.

WHY DO DEMON ATTACK WORLDS?

BECAUSE THEY WANT TO EAT MEN?

DON'T THEY HAVE MEN IN THEIR WORLD?

WHAT WOULD THEY DO AFTER ALL MEN ARE DEAD?

DO THEY HAVE A SYSTEM?

WHERE DOES THEIR POWER COME FROM?

ARE DEMON GIRLS HOT?

WHAT ARE THEIR RANKS?

Many unanswered questions.

So other than giving them a flip to record them using his Edicate memory, he did nothing.

Without much time to waste he quickly headed to the floor below passing through many guard checkpoints in the process.

The floor below had two guards standing at its doors indicating that it was an off-limit zone. This intrigued Victor a little, but with just one look at the title of the hall above the door, he lost all interest.

SUPREME GENEALOGY HALL

This was probably where they kept things about noble titles, lineages, and such boring things. In his past lifetime, the library also had such a hall, but due to the Imperial family's brief history on the throne, it was only composed of a small room where no one went and the librarians used it to make out… Ah… He could still remember the nights he spent there ‘studying’ elvish with that princess… Nothing beats ‘studying’ between the bookshelves.

Shaking his head, Victor turned around, headed to the stairway, and descended an additional floor to finally reach the bottom of the library where a large silvery gate stood with four level 200 guards standing in front of it.

Ah… Yup… There was definitely something worth seeing inside!

He didn’t try to break through the gate, he could feel a strange energy reverberating through it. According to his knowledge, both old and new which he got after fully digesting Demon Artificer’s memories, Mirthil had the nasty ability to absorb magic, and this would not only make it change color and alert the guards, but it might also cause his shadow shift skill to break mid execution making him get stuck inside the gate!

Thinking for a moment, he turned and returned to the previous floor. Although this area was off limits, it was not that hard to walk past the guards and shadow-shift through the door to find himself in a large hall where stacks upon stacks of genealogy documents were placed and some old men were busy checking them and making certificates.

Victor ignored them as he began to walk, counting his steps until he reached a spot where he could feel that the floor was the thinnest. From the way the library was built, he could tell that the floors got smaller the further down they went, like a spiral. Using this he could roughly guess the size of the floor below and was at the moment sure that he was at its center.

“AH!”

“HARDER…”

A middle-aged librarian was making out with his secretary behind a large cabinet … Wait, wasn't that one of the techniques in that book? No… The man was using it wrong... If he continued to do it like that it might really break…

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”

“WHAT?”

“IT…. BROKE… AHH”

“WHAT? IMPOSSIBLE…”

“AHH… DON'T MOVE…”

"BUT...."

"AH!"

Victor sighed, reminding himself to do some more studying before trying this with Margret. Then, ignoring the poor couples who were having trouble separating, he checked his surroundings again to make sure he was at the right spot.

He took a wooden stick, and using the shadow shifting skill he pushed it down then drew it back up.

It was missing a part from its end…

SHIT!

The walls and ceiling of the chamber below were plated with Mirthil too it seemed. This made Victor’s desire to break into it even more. Mirthil was very expensive, usually reserved for royal weapons and such. And if it were to be used in architecture, it usually only applied to the throne room, the Imperial vault, and maybe a very secure prison cell.

Using it here meant this place was important!

But breaking in was a problem, using shadow shifting to get in was no longer an option. Using his gate creation skill was also not feasible as it was still in cool-down after he used it to escape the Sun lord.

He frowned. Should he just brute force his way in?

Nah… That was not his style. And this would create too much of a commotion and might hinder his future plans.

Then?

He quickly got an idea!

First, he took a measuring tape and measured the stick that was cut, making note of its remaining height to know the floor's thickness.

Turning around and making sure that the couple was no longer there, he took out his trusty fishing pole, he fixed it firmly to one of the shelves, making sure that it was very stable before measuring a part of its ethereal string and then wrapping it around his trusty treasure cauldron.

This thing was an X-ranked artifact, so the Mithril would not affect it!

Using his shadow shift skill again he dangled the Cauldron down little by little.

The moment it touches the Mithril plate on the other side it stops advancing. He stretched his hand and pushed it down harder, the more he pushed the more difficult it became until he nearly used all of his strength to push it for an entire little more before he quickly pulled it back up and frowned.

Although it was feasible, the energy consumption was too large. Nearly a third of his Mana was consumed.

He quickly took a Mana potion as he weighed his options. Even if he were to force it, the excess mana might cause all the Mithril inside to change color, including the gate. This would definitely alert the guards.

Thinking for a moment, he stretched his hand into the cauldron and from it, he fished out a spear.

ZIL SPEAR OF PAIN, SS

MAKES THE VICTIM EXPERIENCE THE PAIN OF BEING STABBED BY A MILLION SPEARS.

MADE OF MITHRIL, 100%

Thinking for a moment, he pricked his finger and began drawing a strange array on the spear shaft, finishing it in a moment before taking the fishing string that was already connected to the Cauldron wrapping it around the array, and tying it tightly.

For the first time, he was using the Artificer knowledge he got in a practical way.

Making sure everything was secured and that his Mana was filled back completely, he pushed the cauldron back down, this time pushing the spear right next to it. Since this spear was made as a weapon, the array inside of it allowed him to use his skill on it without it being interrupted.

As the cauldron was pushed down, once again it stuck resistance, but this time he could see that spear in his hand slowly changing color from silvery cyan to deep blue as a portion of the energy that was being absorbed by the mithril planting was transferred to it then the blood array on it shone as it began to transfer the energy to the fishing pole.

He could feel it as the energy drawn from him had lessened a bit, and this allowed him to push down even further and further until he should have been about an inch or so into the mithril… That’s when the resistance no longer grew and he knew that the cauldron had passed through the entire plate! It was an entire damn inch! What the hell are they keeping down there?

He knew that he would find out very quickly as he now had a serious problem. The cauldron at the moment was stuck in the shadow realm, constantly consuming his Mana, and despite the rudimentary circuit he created alleviating a part of it, it was not efficient at all.

.If his energy were to run out and the cauldron were to materialize the entire floor inside might break, so he had to act fast.

First, he drank another Mana potion then used the shadow shift to pass through the flooring, and entered the cauldron through its top. The cauldron didn’t have any set direction of entry after all and could be used as long as one touched it. This was the same for the exit that the owner could specify at will.

So, upon exiting the cauldron again from the other side, Victor found himself falling down, he quickly used his levitation skill and began to look around!

…

It was a domed hall lit by bright shiny orbs that were arranged around in a geometric manner.

Inside There were only 27 bookshelves arranged in a circle around a five-sided central table that had five strange symbols engraved in gold around it.

Victor slowly landed beside it.

Made out of Divine wood? He never read this material before. Though its effect was nice to have! He frowned and inspected the symbols on it.

A Storm, A Sun, A Dragon, A Rose, and A Penis…. No wait, that thing is a mushroom. Definitely a mushroom. It had spots on it after all… No wait… What if it was a…. He shook his head at the disturbing idea. Can't they make those things clearer?

Anyways, what did those mean? The Storm was the same Tornado shape he saw on the insignia Aerith used before. Could those be seating for the Lords?

He frowned and glanced at his Mana meter… Shit, Already half gone. He didn’t have much time!

Victor drank another potion as he looked around hesitating for a moment as he looked at the bookcases full of old leather and metal-bound books.

The system didn’t tell him anything about them, so they were mostly normal books. The important stuff was definitely the info inside of them. Wait… He could feel some sinister demonic energy from one of the libraries that had its book cased in lead boxes.

The problem was that he didn’t have the time to check any of them, let alone all of them.

Thinking for a moment he ran toward the large door. He frowned for a moment then used his Akashic scholar skill.

WHEN WAS THIS DOOR LAST OPENED?

He asked.

Shit… Did this have to do with it being made of Mirthil?

Victor thought for a moment then knelt to the floor next to it… As expected he found scratch marks there, and carefully inspecting them he tried again.

WHEN WAS THIS AREA LAST SCRATCHED BEFORE TODAY?

Still expensive, but he quickly paid for it.

AH! DAMN, IT! He should have asked the system to only use years, he would have probably saved some order points!

Never mind that… If this place hadn’t been accessed for so long then he could act freely without fearing being a suspect!

Without thinking any further, he quickly used his disguise skill to make the illusion as if everything was in place then began grabbing the entire shelves and throwing them up at the cauldron that had its bottom part sticking from the ceiling that was slowly turning Bluish.

It all took about a minute as Victor cleared it all taking everything including the cleanly sliced part of the wooden stick he used before.

A few things resisted entering the cauldron, but the moment he gave them another push using his authority, they went right in!

Giving the chamber one last look to make sure he forgot nothing, he jumped up and entered the cauldron.

Appearing on the other side, he almost immediately, pulled everything out of the ground just as his Mana was about to get completely dry out.

SHIT! That was close!

He quickly took another mana potion and drank it whole, then turning around, he untied the fishing pole and the spear. Putting them with the cauldron in his storage space before hurrying back up toward the reading room which was exactly the way he left it.

Thankfully, due to everyone thinking that they knew what he was doing in there, no one really dared to enter and check.

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