novelonline Chapter 3573 Rune Locks and the Dream of the Icefield
Chapter 3573 Rune Locks and the Dream of the Icefield
Chapter 3573 Rune Locks and the Dream of the Icefield
Even though the area around the staircase turn was small, and they could pass through almost instantly, danger still loomed large. On the 30th floor, the sudden increase in gravity almost made Shad unable to move his legs, and Miss Novare was directly crushed to the ground.
This level of gravity was enough to turn an ordinary person into a mixture of flesh and bone, so there must be some evil entity manipulating gravity in the corridor on this floor. Fortunately, the evil entity did not show itself, and they managed to pass through that area with difficulty.
When they reached the 33rd floor, the light from the candles and candlesticks vanished instantly. The deadly feeling in that darkness and the pain in his left arm holding the candle made Shad instinctively parry to the side with his right-hand longsword. He was then sent flying back down the stairs by the force of the impact.
The longsword clattered onto the stairs. As the candle in Shad's hand relit, Miss Noire's scream echoed from the darkness. Relying on his memory, Shad reached back into the darkness and pulled her back down the stairs. The vampire girl's left arm and shoulder were now shattered, but fortunately, vampires possess an astonishing regenerative ability.
What's in the darkness?
This was the first time they had encountered a situation where the match light was unusable, but fortunately, Shad lit ten matches at once, and the light from the numerous matches finally illuminated the darkness. They crossed the 33rd floor during the brief burning period of the matches. After the matches went out, the vampire girl looked down into the darkness with lingering fear:
"I could feel the brutal and furious gaze directed at us, and when it attacked us just now, it only injured us instead of killing us outright. What on earth was it?"
On the 37th floor, an unknown evil entity used illusion magic, almost causing them to stray from their path and actually enter the corridor instead of the stairs. On the subsequent 38th floor, spatial anomalies occurred, limiting Shad's [Enhanced Spatial Perception], and he wasn't sure where he would end up if he took a single step.
In the end, he chose the direction to step by tossing the gold coin that the god had just given him, which led Miss Noire across the 38th floor.
Strangely, the corridor on the 39th floor appeared perfectly normal; it actually looked quite similar to the corridors below the 10th floor. Returning to the ground floor via the same route was impossible; the danger they had just faced might still be waiting for them. Therefore, they had no choice but to choose a floor near the 40th floor and take the elevator back.
Since floors 37 and 38 are extremely dangerous, floor 39 seems to be the most suitable choice for taking the elevator. As he passed the 39th floor, Shad, holding the elevator key, checked the elevator room; it was the first one on the left side of the stairs.
But they didn't stop on the 39th floor; instead, they continued upwards. They needed to rest, heal their injuries, and think about solutions to their problems while climbing the stairs. Ten minutes had passed since they started from the 25th floor.
"The gods say that some force has caused the 40th floor to no longer connect with the other floors. Guess what's happening to the 40th floor now? Has it completely disappeared? Or is it now spatially restricted to going up or down?"
As Shad stood at the corner between the two floors, holding a candle and looking up, he asked a question. Miss Novares, with a serious expression, did not answer but also looked up.
Both were prepared for the light to illuminate danger, but what was being illuminated above was merely a layer of purple barrier.
"Ok?"
At the top step of the staircase connecting to the 40th floor, a purple barrier completely blocked the passage into the corridor. Shad tossed a pebble upwards, then tried to move a few steps closer, making sure the barrier wouldn't attack, before continuing with Miss Novare.
They stopped five steps away from the barrier, but even at that distance, they still couldn't see what was behind it.
The purple barrier didn't emit a particularly strong light, but it was covered with densely packed runes. All the runes revolved around the central "ouroboros" symbol. Shad could tell it was a rune lock, but his knowledge was insufficient to unlock it.
“Miss Novare, since you have been exposed to the power of the sun, is it possible that you are also an expert in the field of rune locks?”
"Are these two related? I'm sorry, I don't know much about rune locks either."
Shad continued upwards until he was close enough to activate the Key to the Gate before using his magic. He then realized that even his extraordinary abilities couldn't open such a complex runic lock. He had opened much older runic locks before; this time it was because the person who set the runic lock must be on the 40th floor, and still maintaining this barrier.
This greatly increases the difficulty of unlocking.
Not only Miss Novare, but Miss Cohens and Lady Gerd are not runelock masters either. Although the latter is knowledgeable, she mainly engages in research in the fields of potions and medicine.
Thus, the problem of the 40th floor was presented to the two of them in a simple way. It was neither strange nor bizarre, nor did it require courage or perseverance to face. All they needed was some knowledge and wisdom, but unfortunately, neither of them possessed such abilities.
Although he didn't know how to crack rune locks, Shad, who had at least received the "Felian Anna Medal," knew how to observe the characteristics of rune locks and record their key structures.
“Since we can’t solve it, I’ll go find a professional to help me after I leave this time. I’m actually studying at a very prestigious university, so I can ask the professors for help.”
The records in the [Moon Library] are currently unable to handle information that is too mysterious, and this rune lock obviously also has the characteristic of preventing it from being recorded by similar magical arts. Therefore, Shad can only record it manually, and recording the characteristics of the rune lock and the dense rune information on it took him nearly twenty minutes, twice the time it took to climb the building.
Even so, Shad felt that what he had recorded was still insufficient. Runelocks were extremely complex things, and even if he had enough time, a day and a night would not be enough for him to record all the details of the entire runelock.
But time was running out; 100 minutes seemed like a long time, but it wasn't infinite. He calculated the time, closed his notebook, took one last look at the runes flowing within the purple barrier, and then walked down with Miss Novare.
The 39th floor seemed to be fine. Shad had prepared himself for an attack as soon as he stepped out of the stairwell, but nothing unusual happened until the elevator returned to the 10th floor with a rumbling sound.
Their absence was rather long, and Ms. Gerd was genuinely relieved to see them return safely. The good news, however, was that Miss Cohens had actually woken up during their half-hour outing.
The witcher was not fully recovered, only intermittently waking from her coma. She spoke a few words weakly to Shad and Miss Novare, and after learning from Shad that the demon had been sealed on the 25th floor, she burst into tears, and then fainted again while crying.
“She can’t handle such a dramatic emotional rollercoaster right now. Even if she leaves here, she’ll need a long time to recover.”
Although the demon has been sealed away, the problem of the 40th floor remains unresolved. Lady Gerd admits that she is not exactly a master of runelocks either, so it seems that this problem can only be solved by Shad returning to the Sixth Age.
With less than ten minutes left, the shrewd Shad had no intention of wasting any time:
"I will return to the stairs later to inquire with the gods about the eye my friend left behind. But before that, I want to visit her dream."
He sat before the fireplace, pointing to the still unconscious black-haired witch. She lay flat on the soft mattress, watching the firelight illuminate her profile, and suddenly felt that the profile looked somewhat familiar.
But among all the black-haired girls he knew, there shouldn't be anyone who looked like that.
"I'm not in good condition right now, so I won't enter your dream with you. I can only use magic to assist you."
Miss Novares, also seated by the fireplace, spoke, the bottle of blood wine beside her. The two of them tacitly kept their earlier discussion about her a secret from their companions.
"No problem, I'm just going into a dream briefly to see what's going on. After I fall asleep, you count to 200 silently. If I'm still not awake, you should forcibly wake me up."
Lady Gerd's potion was ready. Without resting, Shad drank the potion and lay down beside the strange witch. Miss Noire, on the other hand, bit her left index finger and pressed the bloody mark onto the foreheads of Shad and the black-haired witch.
As she softly chanted the incantation, Xia De's tense consciousness relaxed until he fell into a dream.
When the feeling of falling subsided, Shad looked around and found himself in the middle of an endless ice field. A cold wind swirled snowflakes in his face, and visibility was extremely poor.
Even with the double protection of the potion and the vampire witch, he still felt a chilling cold.
The sky was overcast, but fortunately there were no large-scale signs of demonic corruption around it.
Shad then went to search for the owner of the dream, the witch, but he looked around and couldn't find her in the snowstorm.
"That's strange, shouldn't I appear directly next to the dream's owner?"
But this was, after all, a demon-possessed dream, so it was normal for strange things to happen. However, this dream of the icy plains had almost no constraints on Shad, so he simply took to the air in the snowstorm, wanting to look down on the surroundings from a higher position.
The higher he flew, the worse the visibility became. At a height of 100 meters above the ground, he could not even see the surrounding terrain clearly, and could only vaguely see a golden light in the distance.
So Shad flew over and landed near the golden light, only then noticing that the golden light came from one of two adjacent, enormous hills.
After landing on the side of the hill, he saw the light emanating from beneath the ice. Standing on the ice, he could vaguely see a huge, circular, golden ritual radiating light from beneath the ice, and it possessed powerful miraculous elements.