Chapter Fifty-One: The Castle

When Vale took in the scene before him, his first reaction was sheer astonishment—utter, absolute awe. Enclosed by stone walls, a circular bookshelf nearly eighty meters high and over two hundred meters wide surrounded the entire room. Every shelf was packed with books. Vale made a rough calculation: if each bookshelf was divided into a hundred tiers, and each tier held twenty thousand volumes, then a single bookshelf would contain two million books! Two million books—what kind of concept was this?

Vale couldn’t help but take a sharp breath, slowly circling the massive round bookshelf. Occasionally, he would pause at a title that piqued his curiosity, carefully return it to its place, and continue his exploration. This stop-and-go pattern lasted for half an hour before he finally completed a full circuit of the immense shelf, mentally mapping out its contents.

The books ranged from broad subjects like politics, economics, history, and medicine, to finer arts such as floristry, craftsmanship, nomadism, and metallurgy—almost every discipline known on the continent. Yet what shocked Vale even more was that at the very center of the room stood twelve rows of shelves, each three meters high and about four meters wide. These shelves contained almost nothing but tomes on magic, from the simplest studies of elemental theory to the most advanced incantations—some of which Vale had never even heard of. He casually pulled down a volume titled “Continental Table of Magical Elements,” gently blew the dust from its cover, and carefully opened the first page. A thick musty odor surged up to greet him, but Vale didn’t seem to mind; instead, he read with great interest.

Although Vale was so familiar with the elemental table that he could recite it backward, encountering the script and magical texts of a previous era stirred an inexplicable sense of nostalgia within him. He read every page with attentive care before finally closing the book and returning it to its place with a sigh.

What kind of place was this? Who had constructed such a labyrinth, and built a library of this scale within it?

“A labyrinth? A labyrinth? Wait…” Vale muttered aloud as he pondered, and suddenly a flash of insight struck him, making everything clear.

“That’s it! Who would build a maze three hundred meters underground just to house a vast library for storing precious books? Nonsense! Anyone with the wealth to construct such an immense underground labyrinth would hardly lack storage for books. The only explanation is… this isn’t a labyrinth at all!”

“Or perhaps this library is just one part of a much greater underground fortress!” As this thought occurred to him, excitement involuntarily lit up Vale’s face. If his theory was correct, then he had stumbled upon something extraordinary—

An underground fortress to rival an imperial palace.

Vale hurried out of the library and returned to his original passageway. He closed his eyes, placed his hands against the surrounding walls, and used his senses to probe for magical fluctuations in the environment.

Sure enough, after only two hundred meters, he detected a faint magical field emanating from a wall, identical to the one he had sensed before the library—a magical stone door, sealed by the arrangement of elemental forces.

Vale realigned the disordered magical elements within the array, and the stone door shuddered, a crack splitting down its center as the immense door slowly opened, powered by the activated magic.

What lay beyond was immediately apparent: hundreds of ashen stone tables. Vale recognized them at once—they were made from a special stone called lode-stone, used exclusively by magicians as laboratory benches. Each table was crowded with various experimental apparatuses. Most were related to magic, but Vale also spotted some used in alchemical experiments, such as crucibles.

These instruments were far from new; each bore traces of use.

Gazing at the equipment, Vale’s curiosity only deepened. He was now desperate to know who had built this underground fortress.

Leaving the laboratory, Vale discovered over three hundred more rooms within half an hour. Examining these rooms together, he realized that this underground fortress was, in fact, a colossal alchemical laboratory.

The entire underground complex was composed of two main parts: the outer maze and the inner alchemical laboratory.

Although centuries had passed, traces of human habitation lingered in the vast laboratory. But what puzzled Vale most was this: for such a grand laboratory, every tool and rare material was perfectly preserved. Why, then, had it been abandoned underground?

Vale replayed every sight and detail in his mind, hoping to find a clue, but ultimately he found nothing. Resigned, he resolved to search the entire underground fortress once more. Just then, a strange surge of magical energy jolted him to attention.

All the magical fluctuations he had sensed before were faint and stable, but this one was wild—yes, wild, as if a raging beast had been unleashed! It was the kind of turbulence that precedes a magician’s spell, when magical elements coalesce chaotically.

For a moment, Vale instinctively feared he had triggered a magical trap. But he soon realized the disturbance came from a wall he had not previously examined.

Placing both hands on the wall, Vale immediately sensed the violent magical current. To his astonishment, the source was not a magical array inscribed on the wall, but something hidden within the stone itself.