“If I were you, I would have done something even more radical than that, so there’s no need to look down on yourself.”
Lenora thought Roland was comforting her, and her heart warmed as she gave a reassured smile.
“Thank you for the comfort. I still don’t know what it feels like to be a mother, but if I ever have a daughter, I’ll definitely give her the best of everything and let her choose her own path in life.”
“The best of everything…”
Roland realized she had never actually asked Mia what she thought, nor did she know what Mia liked or wanted. Now, she had even left the girl all alone at home.
‘Once people fall into anxiety and internal conflict, they tend to go to extremes. Lenora is a living example of that. What if Mia runs away from home too?’
Thinking of this, Roland felt even more hurried to clear the labyrinth. She failed to notice the flames spreading to the book’s edges until they caught fire. She hurriedly extinguished the flames with magic and sighed in relief after confirming the contents weren’t ruined.
The book was mostly dry now and ready to be read.
According to the records in the book, this palace was originally the royal palace of a certain king. However, the king murdered a mermaid princess, causing the mermaid race to place a curse upon him. The entire kingdom was plunged into continuous, heavy rain. To prevent the kingdom from being submerged, the king ordered his mages to construct drainage channels to divert all the water toward the sea.
Before the drainage channels could be completed, the kingdom fell due to internal and external troubles. Most of the residents and mages drowned; only a few who were lucky or powerful survived.
The ruins of the kingdom sank underground, eventually becoming the Anides Labyrinth over the passing years. However, no one knew what power drove the labyrinth’s rotation or where that power came from. The secrets hidden within were countless.
“No wonder there’s so much water in here. It turns out they offended the mermaids.”
Lenora rested her chin on Roland’s shoulder to read the book. Her blue bangs brushed against Roland’s neck, making her want to scratch the itch.
Pushing the face that was too close away with her hand, Roland said heartlessly, “Don’t get so close. I don’t want to become as stupid as you.”
“How am I stupid?!”
“Gluttonous, lazy, and you don’t do any work. You’re just like a stupid pig.”
“Slander! I can do plenty of work!”
“Like what?”
“I can cool you down!”
“If you freeze me to death, no one will be here to clear the labyrinth with you.”
“Then I’ll just throw you into a fire. That’ll definitely save you.”
Ignoring the nonsensical dialogue, Roland continued flipping through. Unfortunately, due to the excessive moisture, most of the handwriting was blurred. While spending a lot of time might make it legible, it simply wasn’t worth the effort.
“There’s nothing else helpful here. Let’s go check other rooms.”
Lenora put on her warm shoes, and the two walked down the deserted corridor. They observed the relief sculptures of drainage channels covering the walls and pillars as they moved through empty rooms, occasionally seeing pools filled with dirty water.
They even stumbled into an observatory on the second floor, where they met aggressive magical books. Countless torn pages floated around the books, attacking the intruders in swarms like living creatures.
Having finally encountered enemies, Roland was about to test her new magic’s power, but Lenora acted first. She fired several ice spikes to pin the books down, and combined with the damp air, they froze instantly.
She turned to Roland with a smug look and said, “How’s that? Am I amazing or what?”
“Show-off.”
Even so, Roland felt Lenora’s magic was decent; its application was just too one-dimensional.
The books hit by the magic didn’t disappear. Instead, they released a strong surge of mana to break free from their bindings and continued the attack.
Seeing that ice magic was ineffective, Roland extended her wand. Fierce flames erupted from her magic circuits, burning them all to ash.
As her understanding of magic deepened—especially after studying the journal—she could now manage to retain core elements while performing simple deconstructions and reconstructions of magic. For something like the Fireball spell, she could change its form before releasing it.
No matter how powerful the magical books were, they were still flammable. The moisture inside evaporated into steam before it could even cool them down.
Seeing Roland solve the problem so easily while her own magic couldn’t even control the enemy made Lenora suddenly feel a sense of inferiority.
‘Am I really not suited to be a mage?’
“What are you dazing off for? Come over here and let’s see if there’s anything good.”
Following the principle of “since we’re already here,” Roland searched carefully for missed items or hidden compartments, hoping to find something previous adventurers might have overlooked.
It wasn’t that she was desperately poor; she simply wanted to make the most of things.
At first, they found nothing except for the occasional book that grew wings and flew out, startling Roland into reflexively spraying fire.
Just as the two were about to give up, Lenora accidentally tripped. She pressed her hand against the wall to steady herself, and it sank in. A hidden compartment opened right before their eyes.
“There actually is one?” Roland picked up the item inside and found a sapphire necklace. It looked very exquisite. She handed the necklace to Lenora and said, “Here.”
Lenora looked at the necklace in disbelief. “You don’t want it?”
“No. I didn’t find it, and since you’re so vain, you definitely want it.”
Seeing Roland’s sharp tongue return, Lenora snatched the necklace and put it on. “Then I’ll be vain just for you!”
After searching a bit more and confirming there were no other hidden chests in the observatory, the two went to the central hall located in the middle of the corridor.
A torn red carpet stretched intermittently from the entrance to the base of the throne. The entire hall was larger than half of Roland’s own castle, but it lacked decorations and furniture. There was nothing but the throne, murals, and pillars.
Coincidentally, Royce and Cameron were also there, circling the throne as if searching for something.
Roland walked up to them and asked, “What are you two doing?”
Royce, who was crouching under the throne, tried to look up but accidentally hit his head on the armrest. He clutched his head and crouched back down.
“My head!”
“Brother, can you please pay a little more attention?” After criticizing her clumsy brother as usual, Cameron explained what they were doing. “We’ve tried all the puzzles, but none of them worked. Now we’re testing the last one.”
“The last puzzle?”
“Yeah. You’re just in time, because this puzzle requires four people to solve.”
“What do you need us to do?”
“Simple. Next, we trigger the throne’s mechanism. It will release two spirits who were once a knight of the Goddess of Hope and a mage of the Gate of Truth. Their strength was roughly at the Earth Star-rank for adventurers when they were alive, but as undead, their power is greatly diminished. Less than one-tenth remains. As long as we work together, we can defeat them.”