Chapter 788: The mystery hidden under the Secret Pathway part 1 |
Proofreader: M_W Miss Fierce
After tens of minutes of walking, Leo could finally vaguely see a room in front of him.
"That's probably the Alchemy room," Leo thought to himself. If his guess is correct, the main reason the sign at the entrance of this path showed that there would be an Alchemy room was simply that there's indeed going to be one once he finally reached the end.
Not long after, Leo arrived at the room.
Without wasting any time, he started observing around the Alchemy room.
In front of him, he quickly found dozens of racks with different Alchemy bottles neatly arranged in separate groups depending on their sizes and designs. There were also a lot of tools for Alchemy on top of the tables that were spread across the room. What's common from all of them is that there are clear signs that these items were never used for a long period of time now.
At the right side of the room, he could see a blackboard stretching from both ends of the room. Unfortunately, most of the words written on the blackboard were already erased by the passing of time.
On top of the blackboard were a bunch of books, empty papers, and posters that were torn down, either because they were old or someone had deliberately pulled them. Based on the remaining pieces on the wall, it's most probably be the former.
Turning his head to the left side, he saw a huge bookshelf. There were only a few books on it since most of them had fallen on the floor below. According to the way the remaining books on the shelf were arranged, it's pretty evident that someone had deliberately ransacked it. And they seemed to be looking for something.
"This is indeed an Alchemy room, particularly used for conducting experiments for new potions," Leo said. But, he added, "Though, this Alchemy room is somewhat bigger than I had previously expected,"
Initially, he thought that there would only be a small Alchemy room waiting for him at the very end of this path. But based on what he had seen, the size of this room is more or less thirty square kilometers, even bigger than the usual size of an Alchemy room.
Of course, there isn't that much of a problem if the Alchemy room is this big. However, based on his observation so far along the way here, the purpose of this secret pathway is to act as a Labyrinth, specifically to confuse people and prevent them from reaching the secret that it's hiding. Thus, the rooms at the very end of the paths are more likely to act as the dead-end and nothing more than that. So, it's pretty useless to make it big since the space it would occupy could also be used to create even more paths. Unless, of course, if these rooms don't serve as a dead-end but for something else.
Leo turned his head towards the direction of the blackboard on the right side of the room. Strangely enough, from the moment he arrived in the Alchemy room, the green-colored String of Fate has always directed him towards the blackboard, as if telling him that something is hiding behind it.
From the start, he had chosen this pathway because he intended to find Elvis. He followed the green-colored String of Fate here in the Alchemy room, thinking he would eventually see the latter. However, right now, he had reached a dead-end, and there were still no signs of Elvis.
There's only one thing that this means; this is still not the end of this path.
Leo quickly ordered his Earth Elemental to approach the blackboard and feel the wall behind it and confirm if there is indeed a hidden path or not. Most likely, there will be one since that's what the green-colored String of Fate tells him.
It didn't take that long for the Earth Elemental to report to him that it had found a small hidden pathway underneath the blackboard.
"Do you know how to open it?" Leo asked the Earth Elemental.
Hearing Leo's question, the Earth Elemental nodded its head before pushing a particular part of the wall underneath the blackboard.
In the next moment, a muffled noise sounded as a small pathway soon appeared. It was merely one-meter square in size, which means to say he needs to crawl in order to enter.
Nevertheless, he wasn't worried even in the slightest. That's because his Earth Elemental had already informed him that this path would expand similar in size to the path he had traveled to get here after crawling for ten meters.
Although just for assurance purposes and to take precautionary measures in case something dangerous would unexpectedly happen while he is crawling inside, Leo summons another Earth Elemental. He ordered one of them to go in front, as he then followed next, and lastly, the second Earth Elemental crawled behind him to protect his rear.
…..
Meanwhile, deep inside the path that Leo is currently taking, Elvis and hundreds of soldiers from the Evergreen Royal Family are busying themselves, exploring the last remaining pathways that they haven't explored yet.
That's right, the remaining ten percent that was still undiscovered were actually located behind the blackboard in the Alchemy room that Leo had arrived.
No one was able to notice this secret until Elvis joined in this operation. The reason for that was because he had read a book during the reign of King Elfin the Third. This book coincidentally describes about an Alchemy room used by the number one Alchemist of the Evergreen Royal Family during that period.
According to the book that Elvis had read, somewhere under the Emerald City, an Alchemy room exists where the number one Alchemist would conduct numerous experiments. It was said that the number one Alchemist chose that location for two important reasons. Firstly, in case of anything wrong happens, there would be no casualties aside from himself. And lastly and the most important reason, there is a secret location in the room that leads towards a place, or more like a garden, where all the materials the number one Alchemist uses for the experiments are being cultivated by him personally.
With that information in mind, Elvis was able to eventually locate the hidden entrance, which then led them to the remaining pathways of this secret pathway.
As soon as they got inside this secret place, they soon discovered ten different floors. These ten different floors respectively lead to only a single location each, unlike before where all of the pathways would have multiple paths interconnecting around it. However, in order to reach the end of these pathways, they would have to face numerous traps that are even more dangerous than the traps they have previously encountered. Extremely dangerous to the point that until now, they have only finished exploring two paths, which are both not what they wanted to find, and at the expense of losing over one hundred soldiers.
At this moment, Elvis has now become the leader of this operation through the majority of votes from all the soldiers present right now. The main reason for that was because he was more capable than all the other people who were previously in his position combined.
Honestly, such a situation wouldn't have happened, regardless of how excellent Elvis' capability was. However, because of the current predicament of the Emerald Tree Kingdom, no one can afford anymore to waste time trying to do multiple trials and errors with the remaining pathways to look for the correct one.
The only possible way for them to finish exploring these remaining pathways before it's too late is for someone to have the necessary knowledge to deal with the traps. And that's why Elvis was chosen to become the leader of this operation.
"How's the investigation on the first floor?"
"We lost ten people in total, sir Elvis!"
"I already gave you a layout of the possible location of the traps, and some soldiers from your group still died?! Hayst… Tell your group to recuperate. I'll be sending the fifth group next to explore that area," Elvis shook his head in helplessness. Honestly, he really can't blame these soldiers that why they were still receiving a lot of casualties. Who can expect that the remaining paths would be extremely difficult? Just how difficult exactly they were? Well, the location of the traps would constantly change with every passing minute. That's why the only thing he could do was make a layout that shows the possible areas of where the trap would appear next. Despite that, there's still no guarantee that the soldiers will get it right. In other words, exploring the remaining paths is akin to a suicide mission for everyone.
