Chapter 24: Knowledge-T
After Nayuta and I came back we found Sophia awake and struggling to breathe as she laid on the floor, completely covered in sweat. Apparently she had been training with Haruto right after waking up.
Nayuta was really happy to see her awake and normal while I was just confused. I'm sure that she must have developed some kind of trauma but instead of looking mortified she looks...determined? I really don't understand...
Everyone was tired so we all agreed that we would take turns to keep watch while the rest slept. Naturally Nayuta offered to do it but she has been dealing with most of the monsters we have encountered so far. She might be athletic but even she has limits, so I offered to do it.
Nayuta tried to refuse but she eventually accepted, so while everyone rested, I decided to pass time by reading.
During my little adventure to confirm my theory, I stumbled upon a little diary in one of the many rooms of this dungeon. I decided to read it along with a weird book that Sophia handed me.
The book in question had [Alchemara Vol.1] as the title. When I opened it, I quickly realized the deplorable state in which it was. Most of the pages were either torn or simply unintelligible due to the passage of time. The book was old at best and ancient at worst, maybe a few decades old if not centuries. There was a portrait of the author on the back cover but no name. The man in question was weird. His body was fully covered in bandages with only one eye being visible. He was wearing what I could only guess was some kind of antique leather made medical uniform.
Although most of its contents were lost, there were some things that immediately caught my attention. Some of them weren't important, like a detailed recipe on how to make strawberry alcohol, but some others seemed really valuable, like a herbal ointment that could apparently prevent almost any kind of infection when rubbed against a wound and most importantly, the recipe to make those green vials. The book calls this medicine Healing vials. Its capable of regenerating living tissue astonishingly fast. While being incapable of things like regrowing limbs, it can deal with almost any kind of injury.
Having the recipe is great but we don't have much of the necessary ingredients. According to the book, there are five ingredients needed to make these. First, there are two types of herbs, one called the Demer green herb and another one called the blue moon herb. I haven't heard of these things before so I can only assume that they're native to whatever this place is. The other ingredients were simple distilled water, sugar and a small amount of blood. The book says that although human blood can be used, it will have better effects if animal blood is used. The bigger and stronger the animal, the better. There's a small note saying that the blood of a creature called an "Elphide" is an exception to the rule, as even though they're small their blood can boost the effect of the medicine way better than the blood of great animals. I guess that's useful information but I don't know what an Elphide is supposed to be.
Reading Alchemara was useful and enjoyable, so I decided to read the diary I found. This one wasn't in such a bad state but the contents were...mortifying.
Most of the diary was fairly normal. From what I can understand it belonged to a guard, most specifically a slave guard. This dungeon apparently exists below a place called the Beorn kingdom, a militaristic nation that is fond of taking war slaves and putting them to work. One of the main jobs they did was as dungeon guards.
Apparently the guards were all slaves, with only some upper ranks being soldiers of Beorn. In order for these slaves to earn their freedom they had to serve for ten years, after which they were either given back to their nation, or they could apply to the army in order to gain Beorn citizenship, which is exactly what the owner of the diary was trying to do. Easier said than done. Most guards ended up dead from diseases before even five years had passed, and many of them were also used as gladiators, which almost never ended well for them.
The owner was a guard with nine years' service, a veteran of these dungeons and the gladiator pit. Just when he was about to get his freedom someone called the dungeon chief blocked the exit to the surface saying that the kingdom was in a state of emergency and no one could go out.
A year passed like that, then two years and then three. The amount of people getting sent to the dungeons was increasing every day, most of them being terribly sick or mutated for some reason. It was in the third year that soldiers and nobles of Beorn started entering the dungeon in panic for reasons he couldn't guess. It was then, in the fourth year that the dungeon chief completely prohibited the exit for both guards, soldiers and nobles, saying that the dungeon had become the only safe place in the entirety of the kingdom. Rumors were that some kind of curse or darkness had fallen on the kingdom of Beorn, but he didn't believe that.
The owner of the diary was mad, but he couldn't defy the chief. He kept working as ordered until he started noticing changes in his fellow guards and himself. Their skin turned pale and their hair started to fall. Some of them died of illness during this time, but they were the lucky ones.
The rest, the unlucky, were mutating.
The giant monsters we have been fighting ever since we got into this dungeon, the one who kidnapped Sophia, the one who I killed to confirm my theory, were all former guards who mutated. I say guards and not also soldiers or nobles because apparently the guards, who were the most numerous group, apart from the dungeon inmates, massacred the soldiers and nobles. The diary doesnt specify the reason but I can guess why, they wanted to get out, however, even after killing them all including the dungeon chief, they werent able to go out, they didnt know where had the chief hid the key to the surface, and as such they were trapped inside here. The owner of the diary called it "being trapped in a well slowly filling itself with water" at this point he was delusional. He believed the rumors of a curse and like many others, believed that it was filtering inside the dungeon from above, slowly filling it and concentrating until they would all die.
In their madness, they started killing the inmates and eating their flesh. The more they ate the more they mutated. Their bodies swelled and tumors began spreading through them. I don't think the diary owner took part in this act though, at least when it wrote about it, it did so with disgust.
"This is worrying..."
High chance is that if we stay down here for too long we will mutate just like the guards did...I'll talk to Nayuta about this once she wakes up. I can't show this to Sophia and Haruto. They will be mortified by the fact that we have been killing humans. I was under the belief that these things were just like the zombies we encountered in the city...thinking back to it, I guess that their clear demonstrations of pain should have made it clear that they weren't like those moving corpses.
I have the feeling that things will just get harder from now on. Maybe I should train just like those two were doing
I put the diary back in my bag before lying against the wall. This place is certainly dangerous and scary. When we were being chased by that massive horde on the train, I felt like my heart was about to blow up from how hard it was beating. However, now...now I'm curious.
I'm curious about the nature of this place, about the "curse" that fell on this kingdom, curious about the kingdom of Beorn itself. I have always craved knowledge, of any kind. I enjoy learning and I take pride in that. Things like this diary, and most importantly the Alchemara make me drool.
Being honest, I love books and knowledge because they were the only comfort I had for years. Before becoming friends with this little group, I had nothing but books. I was an orphan, my parents abandoned me and since i was always gloomy and apathetic even when i was really small all the staff and kids of the orphanage avoided me, so my only comfort were books. That changed when Nayuta arrived at the orphanage but even still, my passion for books and knowledge never disappeared.
If this place, if this tower can grant me knowledge unknown to everyone else, then I am more than willing to keep going even if there is no exit...I know that i may regret it later, but right now i dont care, this alchemy book has granted me a glimpse of knowledge of medicine that is nothing but impossible back home, and i want to know more.
"I guess I have a purpose other than to survive now."
My priority is still the life of my friends and my own, but if I can...I will try to get my hands into as much knowledge as I can.
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