Burned Knowledge

"What the hell is this place?" Aurea muttered as both Unseens entered the hidden room.

Needless to say, the bedroom was full of dust, dirt, vines, and debris. The wood was burned, and the chandeliers were long rusted.

There was a door leading to another room as well, but they wanted to analyze everything inside before moving on.

Aurea took a chandelier, lighting it up with some vines to search around the place.

Zenon though… was left amazed by the amount of void revolving around the rooms. It was as fast as the void he saw in the memory, but it still made him flinch.

Since it had no direction whatsoever, Zenon also began looking around the place. The first thing he noticed was how charred most of the wood was, confirming his first suspicions.

'The Void Carriers lived here… and then the Fire Keepers killed them all? I thought the Angels didn't have any sort of confrontation until they came across Earth…'

Zenon took a random book from the ground and - even though it was somewhat burned - opened it to look at its contents. It was written completely in Runes, what does this mean?

He now could use his knowledge to decipher them.

'Charred pages… charred pages… incomprehensible Runes…'

Zenon began turning pages until he met with a slightly readable page.

'... and eventually, the stars seed bloomed. Tall for everyone to see, too far for anyone to touch. Guiding lights shone across the Hallowed Forest and Entropy of Shadows. Its vines were the salvation of our people. And its doom as well.

A beacon of hope and despair.

Two guardians descended and protected the tree. Two guardians descended and left two keys behind. Two g… it's burned. Great.'

Zenon quickly checked the other pages. The same runes were repeated multiple times. Hallowed Forest, Entropy of Shadows and star seed. The rest of the book?

Gone, burned away.

The boy leaned on a wall as he began reading the same passage over and over again. It wasn't enough to answer questions, instead, it raised another one.

Looking at his Solis Vines' Runes, he knew that the Hallowed Forest sounded so familiar to him.

[A precious tree once bloomed from within the stars. Slowly, she grew until she touched the sky, bringing light and salvation to those needed inside the Hallowed Forest.]

It wasn't hard to tie the two clues together. Zenon knew what the star seed was called.

'Solis… the tree is most likely called Solis. And this armor comes from there? I wonder how Dan got his hands on one.'

Closing the book, Zenon tried taking another one but it instantly turned into ashes. Another book? More ashes. Seems like this is as far as he goes. Zenon looked around the place along with Aurea and found a small bottle with a feather inside.

Grabbing it, he took the feather out of it, revealing a sticky black mess.

"That's ink… whoever was stuck in here, not only was burned alive but had a taste for writing. Shame all the books are charred."

"Ink you say? Looks more like slime to me…" Zenon began spinning the feather.

Aurea just rolled her eyes and continued searching around.

Letting the small pot of ink on the bed, Zenon took a last look at the bedroom before leaving.

It seemed like most of the hallways were straight-up tunnels. There wasn't a single ladder or stair to hold onto. Aurea suddenly turned left, going inside a big storage.

"Damn… you could live here for weeks, even months without having to hunt for food."

"Yeah, too bad everything's spoiled." Aurea looked at Zenon and said with devious eyes, "You like mold?"

"Fuck off."

This was by far the biggest food storage Zenon has been inside… legally of course. It was twice his old bedroom size, with a lot of shelves containing different pots filled with meals.

Aurea began searching one by one, ignoring the foul odor coming from every single one. With curiosity getting the best of him, Zenon also began checking the different pots.

"These…" Zenon began looking at every food with amazement, "I counted the Tarantula, the Emperor, Frenzied, and Fungi Mother meat, but there are way more here than I expected!"

The first three rows were filled with already known Layer Beasts meat, but there were at least six unidentified types of flesh! Of course, he had no idea whose Layer Beasts these were from.

This made his mind feel insecure. On one hand, they already knew that this First Layer had ten different types of Layer Beasts whose meat could be extracted.

On the other hand… they knew there were ten types of Layer Beasts.

"If we assume that whoever lives here has walked this Layer back and forth multiple times, then we have seven unidentified organic Layer Beasts." Aurea said to herself.

"Do the Rock Golems count as organic?"

"I don't know if I should consider them organic, but they are alive. This may be harder than we thought…"

Opening the last pot, Aurea was visibly surprised by the contents. Zenon also walked towards it and couldn't help but blink twice before saying, "Wow. This man didn't lack any wine I see."

An entire pot full of red liquid was presented in front of them. The smell was far from pleasant, as the wine has probably rested thousands of years if not more.

"I think this can be called vinegar already."

Closing the pot, Aurea left the storage room while being followed by Zenon.

They began looking at each room without much attention since most of it was completely burned. Coincidentally, the storage room was not burned and was even missing some pots now that Zenon thought about it.

Who would say no to free food?

After some minutes of walking and analyzing, they were left with only three more rooms left. The number of different rooms was astonishing and even impressed Zenon since most of them had charred books as well.

This man surely wrote a lot.

Closing on the next room, Aurea suddenly stopped, making Zenon bump on her shoulder.

"Huh? What's wrong?"

Without saying a word, Aurea threw the chandelier far away, leaving them in pure darkness. Knowing that she won't do something so stupid out of a sudden, Zenon waited for her response.

After some seconds of silence, Aurea muttered,

"Light…"

"Light?"

Zenon looked where the room was located and his eyes subconsciously widened. There was a very slim trail of sunlight coming from it.

Not wasting a second, both of them quickly walked toward the entrance and were surprised by how small it was.

In comparison to all the other rooms, this one had a single metal chair in the middle. It could fit at most, maybe three people including the one sitting.

The most shocking part was the small tunnel on top of the chair, leading way to the surface and that sweet sunlight.

"The surface…" Zenon muttered before putting his Solis Vines on top of the tunnel. In less than a second, its grayish color began disappearing, making its usual white color return.

Smiling, Zenon completely forgot about checking the surroundings of the room, which Aurea quickly did and could only be amazed by one thing.

"Ashes on the chair."

Removing the smile from his face, Zenon looked at the black cinders perfectly piled up in the middle of the chair. He sensed something… violent about it.

When he activated his Void Sense, he could see how violently the void revolved around the chair. Not feeding it but rather protecting it, making a small sphere.

"I can sense waves inside this place… but I still don't know where they are."

Zenon paid no attention to Aurea and instead moved his hand toward the sphere. As expected, the void didn't let him through.

'Why isn't it…? I'm supposed to be a Void Carrier as well, yet I can't go through. A little help here Leviathan?'

The Familiar, who was peacefully floating around the rooms, appeared on Zenon's shoulder. He looked at him, then at the chair. Without saying a word, he transformed into the Void Gloves.

'Makes sense…'

Trying again, Zenon let his hand slowly go past the protective sphere. When he let a mere finger pass, an immense power took hold of it, forcefully pulling it.

It wasn't until Zenon touched the ashes that he realized he was being controlled.

Sadly, everything went black…

—

"Let me ask you again, Prophet. Where is the Doppel."

Zenon opened his eyes, but couldn't see anything. Instead, big circles and colors filled his vision, unable to distinguish any sort of depth or object. There were several specific spheres changing between orange and yellow…

"You worry too much, young man. We are here for a friendly talk, aren't we?"

Zenon knew what was going on. Another vision was playing inside his mind, and he was inside.

But that wasn't the worst part.

'Blind… I'm blind!'