Chapter 12 - Unknown Woman

That woman in front of Willow was like a dark dot that stood out in the colorful immensity of the flowery field. Something about her aroused in him a restlessness that went beyond curiosity. 

Immediately, Willow tried to use his skill. However, for the first time, this failed miserably.

-:|:-

Name: Unknown

Race: Unknown

Level: Unknown

Description: Unknown 

Emotions: Unknown

-:|:-

Curious, Willow began to walk towards her, but suddenly his feet were stopped by an invisible barrier. He reached out to touch what he imagined being an invisible wall and felt a cold resistance, almost as if it were a wall of wind separating them.

"Hey!" Willow shouted, trying in vain to get through the barrier.

The woman didn't respond. She remained motionless, with her back to him and the parasol leaning gently next to her head. Willow noticed her long black hair, which spilled over her shoulders like a cloak, and her Victorian dress, which seemed to blend in strangely with the flowery countryside. 

Frustrated, Willow hit the invisible wall with his left fist. But nothing changed. He could see her, but, at the same time, she seemed a world away. 

"Who are you?! What is this place?"

Perhaps she heard him at that moment, or perhaps she felt the vibrations of his knocks on the invisible wall, because she finally turned her head slightly, enough to reveal a part of her face to Willow. A serious look with purple pupils, like amethysts shining under the sun, was cast by her towards Willow, and she smiled with the corner of her mouth.

"Ah... Finally, someone... You did well to find me," she said in a sleepy and drawn-out tone. 

"Who are you? Why did you bring me here?" Willow took a step backwards at being noticed.

The woman turned completely around, now facing him. That smile, however, remained indecipherable. She raised her right hand, and the parasol disappeared in a flash of black smoke. 

"I see... You're making an effort to... talk to me... but I assure you, it's useless. At least for now... However... I'll give you something as a reward... for finding my grimoire... and maybe next time... we see each other, we can talk... really."

With her right hand on her chest, she extended her left towards Willow, and a white orb began to float towards him. When this orb collided with the invisible barrier, it passed through it like a stone, breaking the surface tension of a transparent lake, and finally stopped in front of Willow's eyes.

"With this... you can continue your... journey. By the way... I almost forgot to... introduce myself. I'm Seraphina Ambertoes Valendoor."

Willow's eyes widened. The Wizard Valendoor was actually a woman?! 

At the height of Ether Online, theories about who the Wizard Valendoor was and whether he would one day appear in some form in the game world were very popular. There were also many concepts about what the Valendoor Mage would look like. Some pointed to it as a man with a long cloak and white hair, always with a bored expression, while others thought he would be a loli with blonde hair, pink clothes, and pupils shaped like blue butterflies. 

Willow, in particular, believed that the Mage Valendoor would be a classic mage who served a king, because many of its records referred to it as a very kind person, but who was also obsessed with progress and magic, to the point of crossing ethical boundaries.

In any case, no one knew what Valendoor would look like. And Willow now knew...

As soon as Willow's fingers closed around the orb, he didn't feel anything very different. However, a system window appeared in front of him.

[You have obtained a Secondary Skill Tree.]

When he opened his left hand, the orb had disappeared.

"You now hold... one of my spells... It's not much, but... it will help you on your journey... If you want more power or answers, look for the... Arcane Points left by me... all over the Aethoria Kingdom. Don't... worry about getting off your... path. Keep following your heart... And when you feel my book talking to you... Follow it... Our time is... running out, but I'm sure... we'll meet again..."

At that moment, like the strong blow of a gale, everything Willow's eyes had been seeing was swept away and disappeared. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, he was back in the same dark vault as before.

Willow looked down at his hand holding the Grimoire of Valendoor and saw that the grimoire, once dirty and old-looking, had taken on a new appearance. The black cover had adopted the tone of a more common leather — light brown — and the letters on the cover no longer read 'Grimoire of Valendoor' but 'Grimoire of Willow'. It was normal for the titles of grimoires to change when the bearers of the grimoires changed.

Grimoires were such clever objects that some wizards would even talk to themselves with them, believing that their grimoires could hear them. Willow used to think this was pretty silly, but he didn't know what else to think.

Willow scratched the back of his head and said:

"Arhhh! What should I do now? Maybe it's a bit silly to say this out loud, but I really thought that the Grimoire of Valendoor would be a grimoire like any other, except for more powerful spells than usual. Seriously, I really didn't imagine that it would result in a spiritual, mystical, or whatever encounter with the Magician Valendoor herself!"

Willow's outburst echoed through the chamber, reminding him once again of where he was. He looked back and saw the place completely dark, not least because now he had neither the light of the torches nor the glow of the crystals to illuminate the underground crypt. He could see perfectly a few feet ahead, after all, that's how he saw the change in the cover of his new grimoire, but the rest was almost impossible to see.

"Seriously, how am I going to get out of this place?"

Just then, the grimoire in Willow's right hand emitted a purple light from the letters. Willow looked at the book, obviously surprised that it had practically heard him.

"Thank you?" He said that and started walking.

The light wasn't enough to illuminate everything around him, but it was certainly better than no light at all. Then Willow came out of the vault and saw that the body of the Blackened Goliath was still there. He approached it and remembered that he hadn't picked up the fragment from this boss yet.

"I wonder where this would be." He asked aloud as he searched the corpse with one hand and then looked at the grimoire and said, "It would be nice if I could use both my hands instead of holding you down, wouldn't it?"

Once again, surprisingly, the grimoire seemed to understand what Willow had said. It vibrated slightly, as if protesting, and Willow knew almost instinctively what it wanted. So Willow dropped the book and one part of him expected the book to fall to the floor. Only another part of him knew exactly what was about to happen. It was then that the grimoire not only began to float on its own but also opened and, from its yellowed pages, cast a much stronger and more intense light that illuminated the golem's body as if it were a powerful flashlight.

Incredulous, Willow let a little air out of his mouth while flashing a slightly silly smile. He knew that mages were highly favored on Ether Online, he just didn't know that this included having an intelligent partner like his new grimoire seemed to be.

With the help of good lighting, it wasn't long before Willow managed to find the fragment of the Blackened Golem inside his left heel. Searching for fragments inside creatures' corpses was like a mini-game, and the bigger the creature, the bigger the fragment. In this case, the fragment was the size of a closed fist and had a purple hue like the crystal that once shone on this creature's chest.

"I hope this makes at least 50,000 Drakis." Willow said as he put the fragment away in his inventory.

As a former holder of the Explorer Class, Willow possessed a greater knowledge of item pricing than most ordinary players — he needed this knowledge so as not to be passed over; after all, even 1 Drakis made a difference to him, who rarely obtained shards. 

Of course, Willow was exaggerating by expecting 50,000 Drakis from a single Blackened Golem fragment, which were relatively more common creatures when the Crypts of Valendoor became more and more famous in Aethoria, but Willow was right to expect a large sum. The Crypts of Valendoor would only become known in a few months, just after the discovery of the Blackened Crypt and the sale of the Grimoire of Valendoor, so a fragment like this was still quite rare.

So the first thing Willow did on his return to Pavagar City was to go to a Unique Goods and Magic Items store called "Carnatic's Bag". It was a modest store, in fact, even a bit old to be selling an item like this, but Willow knew the opportunistic salesman of this store from past dealings and knew how he thought. It was easier to negotiate a high price with someone you know how to deal with than someone who doesn't.