Akira, unaware of his new unpopular reputation with the demigods, decided to see if any of the other scrolls on the stone shelf would allow him to learn anything new.

He pulled out a random red scroll from the bottom of the stack scrolls. The red scroll looked to be rather ragged and ready to fall apart.

Ding!

You have gained new information on the rare scroll of [Calm Mind].

Akira quickly read over the short intro.

[Calm Mind: Boost the strength of the reader's mind and one personal skill of the reader. The reader of this scroll can only trigger this effect once in their lifetime. Uses: 2 uses out of 100 remain.]

Ding!

Dark domain has been leveled up to rank 2!

Dark domain now has a larger area.

Those inside the dark domain are protected against mind control.

“Klyn, seeing the wear and tear of this scroll, it must be something helpful,” said Akira as he gently passed the worn scroll over to Klyn.

“Hmm, let's see what it says.”

Unlike Akira who had the assistance of the system to condense the scroll into a few sentences. Klyn took several minutes to finish reading the entirety of the scroll.

While waiting for him to finish Akira watched Fluffball who was still walking around sniffing each of the stone statues.

Ka-choo! Fluffball started to have a small fit of sneezes after sticking his nose in a pile of ancient dust.

Nearby Zundar was still deep in thought as he stared at the two large statues of his younger brothers.

“So it's like this,” said Klyn, his eyes shining brightly with a new and deep understanding.

“This scroll has helped correct many misconceptions I had about the Holy chants. With this new knowledge, I feel as though I can exert at least two times the power than before! I must tell the others,” said Klyn excitedly.

“Be careful, that thing looks ready to fall apart at any moment. It might only be able to last long enough for one more person to read it,” warned Akira.

“You're right, who should read it?” asked Klyn. He stood there for a few seconds thinking and then coming to a conclusion. “It should be Bo. With his talent already so high, if he reads this he will make great gains. The only problem with this plan is he is not that good at reading the ancient language.”

“You guys are reacting weirdly to just a few old scrolls. They're not anything that great. The library the king had back then was filled with thousands of such scrolls,” said Zundar, as he watched the two huddle over the scroll looking like starved men grasping onto a piece of meat.

“Zundar can these scrolls be copied?” asked Klyn. “It would be a shame to lose such a large amount of information written on here.”

Zundar shook his head. “There may be a few of them that you can. But if I had to guess, most of the scrolls had the protection chant used on them. This was normal procedure during the troubled times that they were created in.”

“Protection chant?” asked Klyn.

“The protection chants of the royal sorcerers allowed anyone who knew the language to read the scrolls. But, once you try to write down anything from the scroll, only garble nonsense is written. Trying to tell another person what to write does not work either.”

“I guess we'll just have to sort these scrolls the hard way, by just trying to write part of them to see which ones can be copied. If we can preserve and not damage the originals that would be great,” said Klyn.

Akira continued to help pick through the scrolls but much to his disappointment, none of them showed any reaction.

***

When they had finished inspecting the large tomb they returned to the castle to find Grand elder Hegir in his office.

“... and not only that there are several other scrolls. Many describe ways to help defend the city from something similar to the Molten Onyx plague. I even found a scroll describing the chant that was used on the lake water around Kodria giving it a holy aura.

There is also one for a purifying holy light fire. It was created to take care of the dead bodies of the infected. There were a few notes written at the bottom saying that they thought it might also work for cleansing the air of the effects of the darkness. I'm not entirely sure if the ancient darkness they speak of is the same as the dark fog that we are faced with now.”

“This... is indeed a startling and fortuitous discovery in our time of crisis. The clarifications you have mentioned make a lot of sense.

If the darkness truly is the same or similar to the Onyx plague, then with the holy shaman working with the soldiers and the city guard, we have a better chance to ward off and survive any attacks by the shadowy force behind this plague. No matter whether it is out on the battlefield or the walls of Kodria we must give it our all.”

“With so much new information I hope that you can continue to help instruct the younger generation when you have time,” said Akira.

“But of course.”

“Grandfather, what are we to do with the scrolls in the underground sanctuary,” asked Klyn.

“The scrolls are too important to leave such a small force guarding it. They need to be protected from any tampering or sabotage.”

“Already taken care of. I have given orders for a small outpost to be erected around the entrance with a minimum of 10 guards at all times,” said Akira.

“With your permission, I'll be transferring many of the training recruits and researchers to one of the empty side rooms and continue our research and training there.”

“Granted. It is best if you have a secure place out of the center of the city to do such research.”

“Grandfather, can you look at this list of ingredients?” asked Klyn.

“Is this what you want to use to create the cure potion?” asked Hegir, taking the piece of paper from Klyn.

“I found a scroll that had several ingredients listed for a possible cure, I thought that you might know them because of your skill in potions and your recent search for the other ingredients.”

Grand elder Hegir spent several minutes looking at the list and thinking. He pulled out a large book he had borrowed from the Dwarves.

While shaking his head Grand elder Hegir spoke. “It's no good. All but one of the ingredients no longer exist. Luckily, that one item that still exists is actually on the list of minerals we needed for our own potion. This saves everyone the hassle of going everywhere trying to search for the other items. Hopefully, it will be suitable with our main ingredient.”

“Grandfather, what do you think about letting Bo read the scroll? Or should I have someone else use it?”

“You are the head shaman now, you should make that decision. I am only an advisor now, so I can not decide for you. But I find no harm in strengthening Bo's control and scouting ability.”

Ding!

Announcement!

Those Infected with the molten onyx plague are on the move!

Branch 3 stage 2 updated!

There has been a severe security loss due to the large influx of people and the massive migration of monsters.

Large groups of infected including those who have gone through a Growth have left the safety of the dark fog.

Objective: Save the cities and towns that the infected have started to attack and overrun.

“We need to gather everyone quickly!” said Akira. “It seems that the Infected are on the move! They have left the dark fog!”