Chương 570: Chapter 561: Darkness

The giant wall of light teleported us into another room. This room looked almost like it had been pulled out of a horror movie and dragged into reality. It was very dimly lit. I could still see, since there were a few floating candles in the air, and a glowing padlock floating in the center of the room. However, there were no other sources of light, meaning that even with my high perception, seeing in here was a bit difficult.

Apart from the teleportation wall we had entered through, there were three exits to the room. All of them were sealed tightly shut, with doors made of a metal I couldn't identify. There were also several wisps of essence drifting around the room, almost like motes of light and energy. At first, I thought that they were some kind of spell, or perhaps a trap - but I quickly realized that these wisps of essence were totally inert.

They might do something when certain conditions were met, but as it stood, they were harmless. In the corner, I saw the corpse of what appeared to be an eight year old girl. She had no eyes or legs. I suspected she had once been a member of the Market - though her stumps were covered in red blood, which seemed to suggest she was a prop, or perhaps the corpse of an invader.

"Is this the entrance to the inner district?" I asked. Something about this didn't seem quite right. Would an inner district of the Market really have such a strange entrance? I could certainly see the Market using quirky visuals to advertise its products, but areas meant for people to buy stuff from were usually still open and accessible. This was the exact opposite of open and accessible.

"Maybe the doors are decorative?" said Sallia. She strode over to one of the exits and tried opening one of the metal doors, before she grunted with effort and yanked harder. The door remained sealed shut.

"Nevermind," she said.

"I can't open it." She checked the other two, just to be sure, and they were also sealed tightly. I checked the doors with my unique vision types, but I couldn't see anything from them. I had no idea how to leave this room. The rest of us spent a few minutes messing with the doors, and at one point, Anise even checked our exit, just to make sure that we weren't trapped in here. We could leave at any time - but none of us could see any way to 'unlock' the doors or otherwise mess with them.

They seemed like normal blocks of metal.

"Perhaps the room itself has some kind of incredibly esoteric and unusual method of opening the doors located inside?" said Felix.

"That doesn't really make much sense though, does it? Why would anyone design a commercial district this way?" I asked.

"I have a new guess," said Felix.

"What if this isn't a commercial district at all? What if it's someone's home, or a type of shop that we haven't encountered before? Or perhaps a museum?" I paused. If this was meant to be a private residence, or a museum, things would make a little more sense. I couldn't understand why the doors were so heavily fortified if this was a museum, but perhaps, if this had been a private residence before it was a museum, the original owner had been very wary of thieves or attacks? I shrugged.

"It makes more sense than this being an inner district, at least," I said. Valeksi and Kexley both also nodded, although they still seemed a little doubtful. I also felt something wasn't quite right, but I was out of ideas for now.

"Regardless, I think we should keep trying to move further in, at least for now," said Valeksi.

"This place still seems like a good fit for our current needs, and we'll learn more as we push deeper."

"Give me a while to look at the room, then. I'll see if I can figure out how to get these doors open." This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Felix spent the next five hours fiddling with the room, while the rest of us did our best to help him. He occasionally 'borrowed' my eyes and made me look at things from certain angles, before sharing my vision via communication bracelets.

Anise also had some input into how a few specific chunks of essence in the room might work, although since the room used all four essences in fairly complex and unique structures, untangling how the room's locks were supposed to work was still a massive headache. Eventually, Felix grinned.

"I think I figured it out. The entire room works off of some kind of enchantment system - probably from a world with a very heavily specialized magic system, or perhaps a magic system that was custom-built just for creating enchantments like this. Luckily, it's at least somewhat similar to a weird hybrid of my alchemy system and Anise's magic system, plus a few other things that we've never seen before.

Some of the principles behind it were absolutely fascinating - but I won't get into too much detail, since I doubt you all want to listen to me ramble.

"Short explanation for the room itself - the motes of essence we see floating around us are meant to act as a kind of… security device. Basically, they constantly poke at our souls and look for a very specific 'key'. If we don't have the key, they jam up and stop us from exiting this room. The glowing padlock in the middle of the room is actually decorative - it's meant to trick intruders into wasting time on it. It's an illusion with no substance.

Finally, the corpse of the little girl in the corner isn't actually a decoration at all. The hair bow she's wearing is some kind of miniature item that can give people the 'keys' that these motes of essence are looking for. Basically, if you use essence to mess with various threads of essence inside of the hairbow, once you get them into a certain position it will spit out a 'key' and imprint it on you.

I think that two of the keys also need some other condition to be met, but I can give us all the first key right now."

"That seems really convoluted and impractical," noted Anise.

"Why would anyone design a security system where new intruders to the mansion can eventually decode the way to escape the room by playing with the hair bow of a prop corpse in the corner? That's a very strange design choice." Felix paused.

"I'm not sure, actually. I'm starting to have yet another guess about the origin and purpose of this mansion, though. We'll need to go a bit deeper before I can verify my guess, though." He shrugged.

"In any case, for now, I'll grant us all keys to the first door, and then we can see what lies beyond?"

"Sounds good to me," said Sallia. Felix continued fiddling with the hair bow of the 'corpse' in the corner. A few minutes later, I heard a set of 'clicks', as some of the motes of essence in the area lit up. Then, one of the three doors leading out of the room opened. Felix cackled, almost as if he was trying to do an Anise impression. Then, he froze as a layer of dust spilled out from the door he had just opened. I scratched my head in confusion.

If a layer of dust appeared in the only exit we could access to this room, did that mean that the monsters in this mansion weren't very mobile? I knew I had seen lots of monsters in here, but there weren't any in the first room, and lots of dust meant that little movement had occurred. <Keep an eye out for monsters that either have no physical bodies, or aren't very mobile. Perhaps they're disguised as decorations or something, > I said. <Got it, > said Kexley.

We moved out of the room, where we found another giant portal made of light. Sallia strode through it first, before she let us know that there was no immediate danger on the other side. The moment the rest of us passed through the portal, Felix cackled.

"I got a new Ability! I thought so," he said.

"This isn't a shop at all - at least, not a traditional one. Do you remember that Garden world we entered during our fourth life? The one where the entire world was engineered to make us learn certain kinds of Abilities, and the laws of reality were even tweaked to make those abilities more readily accessible?" Valeksi and Kexley looked rather disturbed by Felix's question, but I nodded.

"I remember. Why?"

"I think this mansion is the same thing," said Felix.

"Solving a single puzzle to open a room got me a new ability that I can learn if I feel like it, which is way easier than it usually is to learn new abilities. The Ability isn't that useful for me, sine all it does is improve my ability to open magical locks - but I'm pretty sure this mansion as a whole is built around helping us earn Abilities." At Felix's words, I also grinned. I hadn't been expecting that - but I was certainly excited.

This might not be exactly what we were looking for - but in a way, it might be even better than our original target.