Chapter 9: The Hidden Cellar

The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 9:
The Hidden Cellar

THE SUN SEEMED especially cheery and bright the next day. It was still morning, but it was already pretty hot. I was sweating as I stood out on the training ground. It must have been the hottest day since we arrived here, and it was the day of a very important test.

Lyrica explained the rules of today’s training. It was time to face off against her. Many of the soldiers had gathered around the area, including General Stey. This test would determine if I was worthy of the enchanted bow.

I was pretty familiar with the various stages of the test: hitting a target at long distance, shooting a ball out of midair, firing arrows in quick succession, and so on.

“Don’t you think you can beat me!” said Lyrica. “If I lose…I’ll give you the panties I’m wearing!”

Another perverse comment? Really? Now? Wait. Would getting her panties earn me LP? Urgh, I wanted to punch myself just for thinking about it.

With everyone staring at us, we began. I was a little nervous, but I treated it just like any other training day. In the end, Lyrica’s skills were too much. As someone who had only just picked up the bow, I stood no chance against her. No matter how many skills I had, nothing beat experience.

When we were done, General Stey walked over with a stony look on his face.

“You pass.”

“I figured,” I said. “I mean I didn’t—wait, I pass?”

“Of course, you’re no match for Lyrica, but I’ve never seen someone learn so fast. I’m giving you the enchanted bow. Learn how to use it.”

He handed me what looked like a normal short bow. The wood was almost black, and the design rather simple. It looked easy to use, but it didn’t seem especially powerful.

“It only has one skill, but it’s a strong one,” said Stey. “I’m sure you can check for yourself.”

He was right, I could. I went ahead and used my Discerning Eye for Items. The first thing I noticed was its name: the Enchanted Bow of Progress. Its single skill was Enhanced Archery—which made all other archery skills more effective.

“There are a variety of skill-based attacks you can use with a bow that will increase their efficacy,” said Stey. “Lyrica, would you demonstrate?”

“Watch closely.”

She drew her own bow and paused for a moment before releasing the arrow with a twang. The moment it landed in a target, the arrow exploded into a ball of flames, leaving nothing behind.

“That’s Exploding Arrow. Think you can manage that, Noir? Why don’t you try? He he he.”

She seemed pretty excited. Exploding Arrow only cost 500 LP, so I went ahead and bought it. It seemed pretty likely that it would come in handy later. I checked with General Stey to make sure it was safe, then aimed at a target with the Enchanted Bow of Progress.

I loosed; the arrow hit the target and exploded. The whole sequence was just the same as when Lyrica did it, although perhaps mine had a little more power? Judging from her reaction, it seemed so.

“Aww, General, I’m quitting archery. Do you know how long it took me to learn that?”

“Calm down now, your skills with a bow are much more well-rounded…for now.”

“I heard that! Now I really want to quit!” Lyrica sobbed and clung to his leg.

Wow, she was pretty daring to behave like that around the calm and collected General Stey. I could almost see them as a couple in the future.

“You should try it out on some of the monsters outside town,” said Stey. “Real experience is important.”

“Yes, sir, General Stey, sir!”

“Also,” he went on. “I saw Duke Schoen earlier, he asked for you and your friends to come to his home as soon as possible.”

I bet it had something to do with that door he asked about. I was free to go for the rest of the day, so I went to find Emma and the others. Leila and Lola had just left on a training expedition for close-range fighters. I would have been more worried, but they were only just outside the town walls. So, I invited Emma and Luna along to Duke Schoen’s house.

As soon as we approached the door, the duke himself came out to meet us, as though he had been waiting. He served us that expensive tea again, and we happily indulged.

“You were asking about a double-layer door, right?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Schoen. “I didn’t explain this yesterday, but there is a hidden cellar in town.”

A hidden cellar? Well, that sounded suspicious! Suspicious and intriguing.

“We believe Gaien himself built it,” said the duke. “It may be full of his tools, his documents, even his alchemical recipes, perhaps. But no one’s been able to open the door.”

Whatever was in there, Gaien wanted it well-protected.

“I asked some people with Discerning Eye to look into it,” said Schoen. “All they could tell me was that it’s a ‘double-layer door.’ That’s it. Just the name. We have no clue as to how to open it. Yet I hope something in there will help with the siege.”

Gaien’s secret room, huh? Had he ever told anyone else how to open it? Talk about interesting.

“Well, I’ll happily give it a shot, if you like,” I said.

“Please do! I’ll take you there immediately.”

He was really keen! Truth be told, me too. Maybe whatever we found inside would tell me more about Gaien’s connection to Olivia, or the cannibalism in Tonnelles.

Surprisingly, Duke Schoen took us to a church. After exchanging a few words with a priest, he brought us to a small room. It looked like a study, with shelves of books and a desk. Duke Schoen moved one of the bookshelves, revealing a hidden passage—a tunnel, and a set of stairs leading downward.

“This church used to belong to Gaien,” said Schoen. “Let’s head down.”

At the bottom of the stairs, we found a set of iron double doors—the double-layer door the duke had described. Even the brute strength of beast folk couldn’t budge it, and neither could magic or weapons. Eventually, people had given up trying to get in. It seemed impossible.

“Well, I’m here now, Noir,” Emma said happily. “So you don’t have to worry! You can use the Great Sage as many times as you like!”

Well then, we’d better get started. Oh, Great Sage, tell me how to open the double-layer door!

I repeated the instructions to Duke Schoen.

“The Stone of Stability and the Stone of Faint Light? There are records of Gaien’s love for magical stones, but we’ve never discovered anything of the sort in his possessions…”

Perhaps Gaien had hidden them? Or maybe produced them through alchemy…

Oh, Great Sage, can those stones be produced with alchemy? If so, tell me their ingredients.

Well, all of that was surprisingly common! The inn we were staying at even used light gems for illumination. Though a little expensive, they were easy enough to obtain. And I had B-Grade Alchemy, so I would be able to make them as long as I had the materials. The second I asked Duke Schoen about the ingredients, he went about making arrangements.

A few hours later, the duke’s subordinates had acquired all the necessary materials. Those guys sure were good at their jobs! The stones they’d found were just the right size to fit in the depression, and they’d picked up a rhinoceros beetle for the insect. I was especially grateful for that one. A roach would have been just disgusting.

I set about my work right away and produced a Stone of Stability and a Stone of Faint Light without issue. The Stone of Stability was light brown and the Stone of Faint Light glowed slightly. A real shocker, I know.

I picked them both up and stood in front of the door.

“All right,” I said. “Stand back. Here we go.”

I touched the Stone of Stability to the depression, and right away, the doors slid open—revealing a second set of metal doors. The Stone of Faint Light opened the second one in much the same way.

“And that’s it!”

Duke Schoen stared down the passageway beyond in awe. It kinda reminded me of the hidden dungeon, although this was probably much smaller.

“It seems Gaien was very cautious,” I said. “Who knows what’s waiting for us down there. Maybe my group should go in first.”

“No, wait.”

Duke Schoen disappeared and returned with a sword in his hand. He really was raring to go!

“I was quite the swordsman in my youth,” he said. “I hope you will allow me to join you.”

He wasn’t even Level 20, but he did have a swordsmanship skill, so we all proceeded down the hall together. The stone passage was large enough to walk three abreast. Had Gaien built this place all by himself? The passage was very elaborate—full of twists and turns.

“Uhh…gah…uuuh…agh…”

We stopped just before a bend in the path and listened to the strange sounds ahead of us. They sounded like low, pained groans. I couldn’t tell if they were human.

“I’m going in,” said Luna.

“Please do.”

She flipped her long, silvery hair out of the way as she disappeared around the corner. I followed close behind her, just to be safe. A single monster lurked at the end of the hall. A goblin—no, it had purple-blue skin and injuries all over its body. Its eyes were completely and ominously white.

Was it a zombie? I used my Discerning Eye to check, which confirmed my suspicions. It had the Zombification skill. The goblin zombie bared its black fangs and came hurtling toward us.

Psht!

A round from Luna’s magical firearm pierced the goblin’s forehead. Luna moved faster than usual—she’d probably used her new Speed Shot. But the zombie just kept coming! Time for Luna to show her real strength. As the goblin kept charging, she fired off a rapid-fire barrage of rounds.

When she’d turned the monster into swiss cheese, it finally stopped moving.

“That thing was tenacious!” I said. “If we mistook it for a normal goblin, that could have been nasty.”

“Some zombies live for hundreds of years,” said Schoen. “Perhaps Gaien brought it down here to study.”

When we set off down the hall again, I took the lead—just in case any more monsters appeared. We turned another corner and saw a door at the end of the passage.

“That’s probably Gaien’s room.”

That’s when I made a heinously bad call. I got impatient—I mean, the door was right there! I hurried forward but, before I could reach the door, the floor gave way beneath me.

“Huh?”

I’d fallen for a trap, quite literally!

“Gotcha!”

Emma reached out and grabbed my arm, but it was no use. She lost her footing, and we both tumbled down into the darkness.

***

“Owww…”

“Well that didn’t work out so well…”

Neither of us were seriously injured, but we’d hit the floor pretty hard. Sure, it hurt, but the hole we fell into wasn’t that deep. When I looked up, I saw the trapdoor above us. Closed. We had no way of getting back to Luna and the others.

“Are you okay, Emma?”

“Yes, somehow. It’s pretty dark in here.”

“At least we can see.”

I’d Bestowed Night Vision on both of us a while ago. We had landed in a big, empty space, with only one way out—a set of stairs leading further down.

“I guess they expected you to see the door and rush forward, falling through the trap floor. And I took the bait, hook, line, and sinker…”

“Well, it happens,” said Emma. “So, what do we do? Go down?”

“There isn’t really anywhere else to go, but…I kinda don’t want to.”

The trap wanted to lead us somewhere. The further we got into this hidden cellar, the more doubts I had about this Gaien person. Perhaps we really did need to look for other options.

“I’d like to consult the Great Sage again, but…would you give me a kiss first, Emma?”

“Well, I suppose I don’t have any choice, do I?”

Despite her tone, Emma happily obliged. After that, I could ask the Great Sage about any hidden paths without fear of a headache. It turned out we had two options, and both involved some kind of mechanism hidden in the wall. Emma and I quickly got to work looking for them, pressing various parts of the wall until we discovered the hidden paths. One had a set of stairs going up.

“I wonder if it leads back up to the others?” I asked.

“It is kinda weird though, don’t you think? If this whole thing is designed to catch intruders, why would you give them an escape route?”

Emma had a point, so we checked out the other hidden passage first. A short way in, we found a door. Could the door above be a fake, and this one be the real deal? If so, everything down here made much more sense.

“I’m gonna open it.”

Emma pushed the door open. Inside, we found a middling-sized room with an old, worn desk, bookshelves, and burlap sacks strewn about. It didn’t look like a trap, so we split up to search around. The sacks brimmed with bones. Human bones. Gross! Urgh, what had Gaien been doing down here? Maybe he’d used them in his alchemy?

“Noir, there’s some kind of journal over here.”

“Let me see?”

I could barely make out the words on the age-thinned pages. The entries were sporadic, the dates all over the place, but all the long passages rambled about eternal youth. Had he been trying to achieve that?

“Oh.”

I spotted my master’s name and read the section out loud.

“I met a woman named Olivia who can produce new skills. I asked her to make one that would give someone eternal life. She said anything is possible, so long as she had the LP, but when I asked her to give it to me, she refused. I tried to force her to cooperate, but she fought back. I’ve never met anyone—or anything—that strong!

“She destroyed my works, one after the other, and cut off my arm. She seemed to know everything about me, but how? She would have killed me if the townspeople hadn’t intervened. I think she could probably kill anything if she set her mind to it. Unfortunately, it may be best to abandon the idea of creating a skill to bring about eternal life.

“There must be another way! If I can’t have immortality in the flesh, I want to become immortal in the hearts and minds of the people. No, it is not a simple desire. I deserve to be immortalized! I deserve it!”

Wow, so this Gaien guy had been quite the shady character after all. Olivia only fought him in self-defense.

“Hey, look! There’s something under the floor here. I think it’s a treasure chest!”

“Wow!”

Emma had found a part of the floor that seemed out of place. Together, we pulled the chest up out of the hole. It wasn’t locked, so we opened it right away. Inside, we found precious stones, pendants, and even knives. Though it all had to be pretty old, everything seemed to be in good condition. When I checked the equipment with Discerning Eye for Items, I found every one of them had skills. Gaien’s work, presumably. I stowed the treasures in my Pocket Dimension along with his journal.

“If we’re done here, we should head back” said Emma.

“Yeah, the others are probably getting worried.”

We took the stairs up to the floor above. They stopped at what looked like a dead end, but the wall was a different color from everything around it. When we pushed against it, we came out right in front of the trap door we’d fallen through. The others were still there, and we quickly explained what we’d seen.

Apparently, Luna hadn’t just been standing around either.

“I investigated that room beyond just in case,” she said. “I found only bones, and a lot of them. I was just wondering whether I should jump in the hole and go after you.”

“There are more stairs down there,” I said. “It’s probably just another trap, though. Shall we go?”

They all agreed, so we made our way back to Duke Schoen’s house. There, I pulled out the treasure and the journal we’d recovered.

“Would you care to leave these under my care for now?” asked the duke.

“Absolutely. If any of the items seem useful, please give them to whoever can make use of them.”

“I knew coming to you was the right decision. I’ll have to report all this to the king. Was it all about eternal youth, in the end? I mean, that’s why he fought with Olivia, isn’t it?”

Yep, Gaien had been completely obsessed. The journal proved it. But, even with the highest-grade skill in alchemy, he never found eternal youth. Out of curiosity, I looked into how much a skill like that would cost…

Whoa! Olivia wasn’t joking! That was a lot!

***

When we returned from Duke Schoen’s house, Lola requested that I meet her in the town library. She was pretty exhausted after her training expedition, but she wanted to look into some things. I hoped something there would satisfy her curiosity.

“So, did you kill any monsters today?” I asked.

“I did! Though don’t you think it’s weird to make a fair maiden like myself fight?”

She seemed pricklier than usual. Upset, even. But she had gone up a whole five levels, so her training had worked, one way or another. She was going through a book about items. Every now and then, she looked absolutely spellbound by what she was reading. Once or twice, she even did a little celebration when she found something especially exciting.

“This one’s a love potion. You should read this, Mr. Noir.”

The book laid out the whole recipe. To seduce a man, the potion required the highest-grade Alchemy skill, the “fluids” of ten thousand women, blood, and ambition weed. For a woman, it was a mixture of ten thousand men’s “fluids,” blood, and illusion weed.

That seemed like a, uh, a lot. Could you even get that much of the—the stuff? It had to be way easier to win someone over the old-fashioned way! All the same, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lola wanted to make some.

“You’ll just have to wait a little longer. But I’ll get it, Mr. Noir. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to drink something like that!”

“He he, wait and see, Mr. Noir. Wait and see.”

She sounded so confident! For a moment, I worried she’d actually talk me into it.

We read for a while after that, picking through the books until someone called out to us.

“Hey, Noir, you on a date or something?”

“What are you doing here, Gillan?”

Oh yeah, of course. He was looking into Gaien and Tonnelles. Lola emanated a “stop interrupting us” vibe, but my brother never could take a hint.

“Listen, let me tell you what I’ve found.”

Gillan’s research had paid off. He’d found a memoir written by someone named Tainelles, describing the misdeeds of the people of Tonnelles. In the end, Tainelles had fled the town for fear of being eaten. He was a contemporary of Gaien, and he even mentioned the alchemist in the text.

“It’s right there in the book—this guy was a cannibal!”

“I’m surprised Tainelles got away with writing about the land’s great hero like that.”

“Tainelles was criticized heavily by his contemporaries and was considered a compulsive liar,” said Gillan. “But he was also a first-class adventurer. That’s why we have his memoir.”

The general public probably assumed the part about Gaien was made up, but we knew now. It was all true.

The text contained one more important piece of information. Gaien had craved fame and attention and had assassinated rivals on more than one occasion. He even used human bodies as material for his alchemy. That confirmed my suspicions about the bones in the cellar. Under that heroic mask, Gaien was a monster. However, he’d died ages ago, so we couldn’t do anything about it.

“If nothing else, I want to stop the villagers of Tonnelles from hurting anyone else,” said Gillan.

“Yeah, we don’t want to see any more victims.”

“I wanna get revenge for all the people they’ve hurt too.”

Lola, who had been listening this whole time, raised her finger. “Don’t you think it’s weird that so many relics here are dedicated to Gaien? Maybe studying those would give us some more information.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “We should go and check them out.”

“All right,” said Gillan. “Better bring some weapons. Then we can destroy them if we need to.”

The events in Tonnelles had really affected my brother. He hated Gaien with a passion. Setting aside the question of whether wanton destruction of public property was a good idea, the three of us left the library and headed to the central square.

Ding-dong! Ding! Dong! Ding! Dooong!

Just then, the bells rang out throughout the town. Everyone stopped in their tracks, frozen in fear. Soldiers flooded the streets.

“It’s the monsters!” they shouted. “It’s the siege! Take shelter! Soldiers, assemble on the training grounds!”

Disaster had finally arrived.