∼ Day 50 ∼

Not sparing the desecrated and gaunt corpse of the Mistress another glance, I strode towards the exit of the spacious hall that had now become the resting ground of my most hated enemy yet. However, before I even walked a few steps, I stopped, a pondering expression on my face. I hadn't really registered much while I was divulging in my dark desires of revenge, so the fact that my sense had found something odd didn't manage to rouse my curiosity.

But now that my sanity had returned... well most of it... I realized that my presence and mental senses, which had gotten a massive increase to their capabilities, had picked up on a certain oddity in the structure of the hall. With my sense fully unfolded, it managed to spill into what seemed to be a corridor or a tunnel of sorts, discreetly hidden beneath the very altar in the center of the hall where the Mistress had taken her last breaths.

Walking back, it didn't take me long to find a mechanism that looked like some kind of lock hidden beneath some thick carpet at the base of the altar. Well, it wasn't exactly a lock, but rather something that seemed to hold the altar in place. Flipping it open, nothing happened. Inspecting the surroundings and finding nothing potentially dangerous about what I was trying to do, I began shifting my weight onto the altar.

With no small amount of effort, I managed to barely shift the large stone altar to the side, like the lid of a coffin. Now completely unhindered, my mental sense flooded into the dark and dank corridor that had a staircase leading downwards. Making sure that no enemies or hidden dangers were in the vicinity, I made my way down to whatever had been so important that the Mistress had decided to hide it.

Walking through the continuously descending corridor, I didn't see anything for a while, but suddenly my sense reached what looked to be a small room at the end. I didn't find any boobytraps or any other measures against unwanted visitors, so I walked into the small room. To my surprise, the room looked to be a mix between a government official's office and a mad's scientist laboratory, various instruments, vials, notes, documents, and a mishmash of many other things I had no idea were for being stacked haphazardly everywhere. There was even a bookshelf with a few ancient-looking books.

Looking through the documents and containers of dubious content I realized that these were the notes of her experiments. Some were even ancient texts that I could not decipher, but it was obvious they were not the Mistress' own writing and knowledge.

Where had she found all these ancient texts?

There was no doubt that almost all of these ancient texts were related to the practice of magic, even though I didn't understand them. But the depictions and drawn imagery were more than enough to show their relation and magical nature. Walking over to the bookshelf, I noticed that the vast majority were old, withered, and had not much importance put on them. But three neatly stacked books that while they looked worse for wear, had obviously been cleaned and taken good care of.

Pulling one down and flipping through it, I realized that it was in the same undecipherable language as the other documents. But in different places of the book's pages, there had been placed different parchments and papers that did not belong to the book itself. Each of these were all written in Rathian, and I soon figured out that these were translation attempts from the Mistress herself.

Closing the book, I looked at its front where a piece of parchment had been stuck over the text. It said;

Golemancy.

With my figurative eyes going wide with the realization, I almost whooped out loud. Once again opening the book, I flipped through it again, this time much more thoroughly. Once I recognized the familiar imagery of unknown magical glyphs, I felt like I had struck gold. Redirecting my gaze from the book in my hands, I locked on to the two remaining books sharing the same ancient and archaic look.

A smile blossoming on my lips, I furiously began inspecting all the books to gain a vague understanding of just what had landed in my possession.

[Language - Minithian, has been learned 10%]

It didn't take long before I found out what each of the three books contained, and with it, I learned some of the written language that the texts had been put on paper with.

The first book was on the intermediary level of golemancy from the looks of it, but it was the least translated of three books. The second book was on the magic of summoning, however, it seemed more haphazardly translated. Lastly was the third book, and also the one almost fully translated; the magic of corruption.

It didn't require a genius to figure out that was the type of magic that the Mistress had managed to fuse with her Shadow Magic. She seemed to specialize in taking control of others with her magic and corrupting them for her use.

Although these books were possibly massive boons to my magic, there weren't the only things of interest in the room. On the desk centered in the room, were two items that looked to be have been under inspection and experimentation. The objects of the Mistress' curiosity was easy to determine because of the many instruments and tools laying all around them like she had been tinkering with them just before her untimely demise.

The items were a seemingly inconspicuous, but large, bronze ring and a small even more inconspicuous wooden box. Walking closer, I gave them both a stern glance before I picked up the bronze ring. However, the instant I touched the ring, a prompt invaded my vision.

[Minor Ring of Holding - Ownerless]

[Do you wish to bind the ring to you?]

[Yes/No]

Incredulousness filled me but was soon replaced by giddy enthusiasm.

Is this what I think it is?!

If one of the greatest injustices to me ever since arriving in this game-like world was to be named, then it would be the utter and complete lack of an inventory. I had long mulled over the troubles of not having one, having endless amounts of treasure that I would most likely find on my adventures in this world but ending up having no ability to take them with me would be a travesty of the highest order.

Mentally accepting the prompt, I just stood there with both bated excitement and hope of my speculations being true.

[Minor Ring of Holding - has been bound to you!]

What followed that prompt affirming my new ownership of the bronze ring was not another prompt but rather a visage of an empty space directly projected into my head. At first, I was confused at what I was seeing, but I soon realized just what it was I was seeing.

This was the space within the ring itself!

The space was about 5x5x5 meters, nothing amazing, but it was something. I could barely contain my excitement, as my worries of having to carry everything valuable directly on my body had been swiftly dashed with this new revelation. I also noticed that the overly large ring had reduced in size, now fitting my index finger perfectly. I didn't hesitate to put it on, appreciating how snuggly it fit.

I didn't know why the Mistress wasn't personally using this useful item, but only attributed it to her studying instead of actively using it, mostly due to where I had found it and all the tools around it. But when my mind crested on how the hell I was supposed to get things into the item, I was a bit stumped. Standing before a magnifying glass laying on the desk, I tried a mental command while focusing on the item.

Nothing happened...

Frowning, I tried a different approach. This time I picked up the glass in my hand and made a mental command. To my immense joy, the glass immediately disappeared and entered the space portrayed vividly in my mind. I was honestly amazed at the ease that it all happened, and it seemed to I only had to be physically holding the object to put it into the item.

With a simple command of retrieval, the item once again reappeared within my hand. I tested it a few more times and created a somewhat reasonable hypothesis about the rules of putting items into the ring and retrieving them.

To store items, you had to be physically holding them, and the ring would only store items that could fit within the 5x5 space. If you wanted to retrieve an item, it would only appear within the palm of the hand the ring was situated on, or at the fingertip of which finger the ring was on.

Done with experimenting and testing the convenient and useful item, I turned to the next item of interest; the wooden box. Simply from looking at the various instruments like hammers, chisels, and saws, I could see that the Mistress probably had much trouble opening it. However, the box seemed even more inconspicuous than the ring now on my finger which caused a small seed of confusion to bloom in my heart.

From just visually observing the box, it seemed to be made of any ordinary wood with a metal plate holding the two segments of the box together. I couldn't find any locking mechanism other than that metal plating, but it did have a suspicious indentation in the metal like it was to put something there. But from looking that all the tools in various states of disrepair, while the box looked completely unscathed without even a single scratch, I doubted that this box was anything but ordinary.

However, when I picked up the unusual box, I immediately got an inexplicable urge to drop a drop of blood on the small indentation of the lock. Without coming up with any better course of action after a lengthy time of pondering, I complied with the instinct. Prickling my index finger with my clawed thumb, I let a drop of blood spill into the indentation of the box and was succinctly rewarded with a prompt.

[The blood of a Promethean Candidate has been detected]

[The Sanctioned Lord has yet to reach the 4th-tier, the relic will remain sealed]

Promethean Candidate? Sanctioned Lord? Relic?

What the hell...