Chapter 83. Enchanted walls

I was in front of a wall made of wood, more exactly it was the wall that surrounded the Witch Clan.

It had a simple design but it did its job of keeping the monsters away.

From what Flora told me those walls were enchanted to produce magical mist and keep it out of the compound.

The magical mist had the properties to make anyone who goes through without a special token, be lost or pass the compound.

It was a fascinating thing to see, unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to study the token, even if I said that I was willing to trade for it.

Froggy wasn't too interested in the enchanted walls, so instead he opted to take care of the Slime farm in my place since I forgot to help the witch farmer with feeding the slimes like I promised to.

I wasn't too bothered by this, since I'm already pretty used to working alone, and this was more of a personal project than something that needs to be urgently done.

The wood in front of me looked like any other wood Ive seen in my life.

There were no writings on it or any glow effects as I've seen in any other enchanted items.

I walked along the walls in case I saw something that caught my eye, but even after 100 blocks, everything looked normal.

The next patrol of guards will arrive in an hour, so I'll have to be careful with the time to not be found out.

I didn't get permission to study their secrets after all.

With one look around me to see if I had any audience, I decided fi break the wall. Hoping no defense mechanism will start attacking me, or the whole enchanted wall will break.

With my iron axe in hand, I broke the wooden block in no time, and beyond the new hole I could see a dirty blue block.

It was a laspis block, but on a closer look, I could see small writing all over the block.

Those were red enchanted letters, they looked pretty similar to the floating letters that appeared when I used the Enchanting table.

Which means that it's the highest language you can use when enchanting something.

But it's a lost language, not even the Sandstone Kindome understood what those letters meant, and that was their specialty.

Not only that, it was all densely written on one side of the block.

It was written with redstone ink similar to the cursed enchantment, which showed once again that this was designed by a human, not the system itself.

Each latter was one pixel tall, and they used every pixel of the block to write something on it.

I was afraid of what enchantment it would have if I managed to somehow get the block to my inventory.

But I wasn't crazy enough to break the enchanted block, I don't know if it has some defense mechanism or something similar to that, and even if it doesn't for sure the enchanted wall will break.

Which will put me in hot waters with the rest of the Witches.

So I only studied what I could see.

One careful touch with the blue block showed a glowing ripple like an invisible barrier.

This got me curious, so I broke a few other blocks from the wall and to my horror, every block was the same as the first one.

All the lapiz bloks were filled with red writing, and on closer inspection, I could tell that it wasn't imprinted like what I did with the cursed book, instead, it was all handwritten by someone.

It was scary to think that hundreds of similar blocks were all hidden under a layer of simple wood.

I put the wooden blocks back in their place since everything was similar to the first one I saw.

There's no point in risking getting found out if I only needed one block to study.

I had to get back with the others after a few minutes to get some paper and writing tools, there was no way for me to memorize everything on that wall.

But with everything ready I was constantly trying to copy everything that I saw on paper.

It took me a whole day for me to perfectly copy what I saw.

It's not because I'm a slow writer, it's more the constant threat of being found out by the guards every time I got emersed into writing I heard steps walking on top of the walls.

And then I remembered about the guards, and block the hole before hiding somewhere.

The second reason and the hardest one, was because I was writing an enchantment, and when you write man-made enchantment you can't make any mistakes.

In the end, I wrote four pages that I'm pretty sure are correctly calibrated.

Theoretically, I could put those pages in a book and place them on the Enchanting table and see what they are.

But I don't know if I'm at the right level to be able to enchant those.

So I put everything like before I was here and went back to bed.

----

The next day I went to have breakfast with Froggy, and of course, I had to wake him up first, otherwise, I'd only be able to see him at lunch.

"So how was your meeting with the slimes?"

"It was pretty fun to play with the little ones, even though it's hard to believe that they're able to eat that kind of food and still walk afterward. The farmer told me hed show me how they butcher the slimes later when they get a big one. I don't know how I should feel about killing such cute creatures."

"Don't worry, you'll be taken by surprise once you see what this mob is capable of."

"Is it a good surprise or a bad one?"

"No comment. Did anyone ask about me yesterday?"

"Yes, Catharine asked about you since she didn't see you together with me, but I told her that you were busy studying the book that Elder Flora gave you."

That was a pretty good excuse, that wouldn't raise too many eyebrows, but just to be sure I'll visit the Elder today and request a book to study.

After a good night's rest, a new idea came into my mind. What if there are other enchantments on the rest of the block?

That would be a crazy idea since one face already had a complicated enchantment, if any other face of the block had another enchantment it would be madness.

But it's better to be sure and check than to ignore the possibility of that happening.

I told my plans to Froggy after we finished eating, and asked him if he wanted to join me.

"Sorry Trader, but this is a great opportunity for me to learn about my people. And I don't know how long we're going to stay here so I want to learn as much as I can."

That's a fair point, it's not like I need him to accompany me to stare at a wall, and from what I could remember he doesn't have any knowledge related to enchanting, so I don't think I will be able to even bounce off the ideas that I'll get.

So in the end we said our goodbyes while I walked towards the Elder's house.

After a short knock, the butler opened the door while inviting me inside.

I couldn't go directly to her study room since I wasn't theoretically invited.

But after a few minutes, the Butler was back and told me that I was allowed to go upstairs.

And with that, I was back to the study room with the Elder but this time I was alone, and the top of her desk was clean of any excess books.

"Trader, what brings you today here? And I see you alone this time."

"Hello Elder Flora, I came today to borrow a few books so I can study some more. As for my friend Froggy, he's too excited to explore this place, so I don't think he'll be back here anytime soon."

The Elder seemed to smile at that and permitted me to take any book from her library, with the promise to take care of them.

With the permission given, I looked over the shelves filled with books, all written by people and not made by the system.

After an hour I decided to take three books.

"Life of a Witch"

"Enchanting for beginners"

"Monsters encyclopedia"

Elder Flora was interested in what I chose but didn't stop me from taking them.

I planned to read them while I was taking a break from copying the enchantments.

"Enchanting for beginners" had some actual level 1 enchantment inside, and I want to copy them.

Initially, I came here in search of information about the Piligers, but instead, I found a treasure trove filled with ancient information.

I'm sure the Palace in the Sandstone Kingdom had similar information, but they made sure to keep it away from my reach.

But here, I could learn something and I was excited.

I took some food on the go so I didn't have to come back anytime soon and walked to my previous spot on the wall.

But this time, instead of breaking the wooden block, I started to dog down.

What greeted me was not what I expected, under the lapiz layer, there was a row of obsidian blocks that protected the enchanted blocks.

Good thing that I'm prepared for situations like this.

Ever since the obsidian prison, I try to have a diamond pickaxe always on me.

And this one was enchanted with Efficiency 3, which broke the obsidian block I'm only 10 minutes.

A new record for me.

As I looked over the enchanted block I could see the tiny red writing.

And as I theorized, it held a different enchantment than the previous one.

"Whoever did this was a madman, but I have to respect the work. It's nothing like I ever seen."

Just to be sure, I dug the walls on the exterior as well to see if it had another enchantment, and it did.

"I think every face of the cube has a different enchantment. I'll have to move to the corners of the walls if I want to see more."

But two new enchantments were already more than enough to keep me occupied for a few days.

There was no need to rush things up.

So with that, I got more comfortable, I covered the entrance that I recently dug and put a torch as a light source to help me underground.

My nonexistent neck had to suffer a lot from me constantly looking up at the enchanted block.

But after a few days, I managed to write it down as close as possible to the original.

I had to cut my time short because I was getting unwanted attention with me missing so much most of the day.

No matter how many excuses Froggy gave me, there was a limit before people started to get suspicious.

So I spent most of the morning writing down the enchantments from the block and the rest of the day hung out with Froggy and his new friends.

The problem was that while everyone was cursed and united by this, they still had smaller communities separated from each other.

That's why there were 10 Elders, one representative of each community.

So when Froggy came into the picture, they all tried to recruit him towards their way.

The farmers tried to allure him with a pet slime, which was hard for him to turn down.

The researchers wanted to allure him with books of knowledge. Unfortunately for them that would've worked for me, not so much for my friend Froggy.

The miners showed him the riches that they mined, which got his attention but not for long since he didn't want to stay underground for hours upon end.

Instead, I was the one who spoke most with them and exchanged tricks of the job.

I told them about strip mining, and they told me about their method of drinking night vision before entering a cave system.

The monsters won't bother them, and they don't have to constantly put torches down.

For me, I could drink an invisible potion on top of that to have the same effect, for a few hours.

More people talked with Froggy, some of them he liked, while others didn't catch his eye.

But for the past few days, people started to notice Froggy's presence, and with him, I also got a reputation.

A week passed and I managed to get two more enchanted faces of the lapiz block.

While this lifestyle is similar to what I did in the Sandstone Kingdom, it was more lax with no deadline hanging over my neck.

I was starting to have fun.