Thud.
The dull sound came from deep within the house.
Lin Gui grew alert instantly. He took several steps back, nimbly hiding behind Eve.
Eve, who had also become wary, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his seamless retreat.
She remembered back at the Blackwater City cathedral, when faced with Roger’s attack, Lin Gui had also used Theia as a shield.
Though she knew he acted purely out of rational judgment...
“Mr. Lin Gui, your gentlemanly demeanor... there’s practically none of it left,” she sighed softly.
Lin Gui didn’t respond from his position behind her.
He rapidly whispered an incantation, spreading both his Wind Listening spell and his magic perception toward the source of the sound.
...Nothing?
His perception feedback was completely blank.
Had the wind simply knocked down a piece of rotting wood?
He reached out from beside Eve’s waist, his fingertips moving slightly.
A Levitation spell gently brushed aside the broken wood and rubble scattered on the floor.
At the end of his vision, within the dust accumulated in the corner—
A glass bead lay quietly.
Lin Gui raised an eyebrow.
Under his control, the bead flew into his palm.
It was warm to the touch and exceptionally clean.
In this dust-filled ruin, its cleanliness was somewhat jarring.
He examined it for a moment but saw nothing special about it.
He checked the place where the sound had originated once more.
There was nothing unusual there at all.
In that case, some part of the wooden house must have simply fallen off on its own.
Lin Gui relaxed slightly.
He looked at the bead in his hand.
After a moment's thought, he tucked it into his pocket.
“Let’s go. I might have misheard.”
He turned around, preparing to tell Eve to leave.
Right at that moment—
[Ding!]
[Special Commission ‘Moro Troy’s Letter’ has been completed.]
[Reward ‘Long-Distance Random Spatial Teleportation Scroll ×1’ has been delivered to your Storage space.]
Lin Gui: “? ? ? ? ?”
His footsteps faltered, his face filled with sheer confusion.
He questioned the System in his mind.
“The mission is complete?? When? I haven’t even taken the letter out to hand to the recipient yet.”
“I haven’t even seen a shadow of the recipient.”
The System remained silent.
Lin Gui asked again, but his words were like a stone sinking into the sea.
He focused his mind on peering into his Storage space.
Indeed, an ancient-looking scroll was suspended quietly inside.
With a thought, he opened his right hand.
The scroll appeared in his palm out of thin air.
It was roughly the length of a forearm.
It was made of some unknown dark-silver leather that felt cool and supple to the touch.
Both ends were fitted with dark, slender bone buckles.
Faint glimmers, like starlight, flowed across its surface.
Lin Gui carefully undid the bone buckles and slowly unrolled it.
The runes inside came into view.
After examining them for a while, Lin Gui’s brows furrowed deeply.
None of these were characters from any modern magic system.
They weren't even any magical runes he was familiar with.
The lines were ancient and twisted, looking like living shadows that squirmed and entwined on their own.
They also resembled fissures frozen in some fractured time and space.
They were profound and obscure, carrying a sense of disorder that struck directly at the soul.
He studied them intently for a long time.
Aside from barely identifying a few basic structures for ‘magic anchors’ and ‘energy channeling,’ he couldn't understand the rest at all.
Just then, the System’s monotonous notification sound rang out abruptly once more.
[Additional Prompt: This magic scroll is time-sensitive. It must be used within two months, otherwise it will expire.]
Lin Gui was speechless. “...Why didn’t you say anything when I was asking you just now?”
The System played dead again, as Lin Gui had grown accustomed to.
Aside from the initial binding, when it would exchange a few words with Lin Gui, it now had almost zero presence.
As a mage, Lin Gui naturally knew that scrolls could have expiration dates.
But ‘two months’? That was absurdly long.
He remembered that even for the lowest Novice-level magic scrolls, the optimal preservation period rarely exceeded fourteen days.
The higher the rank of the magic and the more complex its composition, the more unstable the mana and structure sealed within the scroll became.
As a result, their preservation time was actually shorter.
He had once tried making a Shroud of the Gloomy Night scroll, and it could only be kept for about seven days.
Setting these doubts aside, Lin Gui stared at the scroll in his hand.
He still found it hard to believe the mission had been completed just like that.
The entire process felt eerie.
The letter was still tucked in his pocket, there wasn't a soul in the house, yet the mission had been completed in an instant.
This didn't follow the basic logic of ‘delivering to the recipient’s hands.’
When he delivered a letter to Rona, it only counted as finished once he physically handed it to her.
While he was frowning in thought, a soft breath brushed past his shoulder.
Eve leaned her head over, her gaze landing on the unfurled scroll.
A hint of curiosity flashed in her purple eyes, followed by a slight knit of her slender brows.
“These ‘characters’ on here...” she said softly, her tone uncertain.
“I think... I’ve caught a glimpse of similar markings on the fragmented pages of the Holy Church’s oldest forbidden documents.”
“Lin Gui, where did you get this scroll?”
Lin Gui looked at Eve in surprise.
“You recognize these... characters?”
Eve tilted her head slightly, reminiscing for a moment.
“It wasn't in any of the conventional magic or theological texts.”
“I caught a glimpse of them in the ‘Abyss Forbidden Zone’ Archives, inside a unique volume with no cover and pages made of thin, unknown metal sheets.”
She described it with a tone of academic caution.
“The material of that book was like a greyish-white, supple metal.”
“The engravings on it share a similar essence with the patterns on your scroll.”
“However, it doesn't belong to any known existing religious system.”
“According to the deductions of the old scholars in the Research Institute, it likely came from some... Age of Gods civilization that vanished long ago.”
“The composition of those characters is extremely complex and cannot be parsed by any existing linguistic rules.”
“Because of that, the book is essentially ignored, and very few people even know of its existence.”
Lin Gui felt it was even stranger. “Then how did you...”
Eve shrugged, a shy yet slightly proud smile appearing on her face.
“The Holy Church’s Central Library has exactly 15,403 volumes.”
“During the seven years I was a Saintess candidate undergoing my training in the precepts... I basically read all of them.”
She looked up at the lead-grey clouds over the distant ruins, her voice softening slightly.
“Actually, if I had the choice...”
“My dream would be to become a librarian.”
“It would be quiet, with no one to disturb me. Just organizing books every day and sunbathing. How wonderful that would be.”
She paused, then looked at Lin Gui and asked.
“Are you interested in that book?”
“I am,” Lin Gui answered succinctly.
The Spatial Power talent rewarded by the System gave him the possibility of learning spatial magic.
However, relevant knowledge was almost extinct in the current magic system.
Any lead was incredibly precious.
Eve smiled, her expression touched with a bit of mischief.
“The Holy Church’s library is permanently reinforced and protected by multiple layers of Barrier Stones, along with Archbishop-level divine warning spells.”
“Trying to sneak in... is practically impossible.”
Lin Gui was shocked. “Using Barrier Stones to protect a library? That’s so extravagant?”
Eve sighed softly. “Well, that is the number one church that has plundered the wealth of believers across the entire continent.”
“So,” she pointed at herself, “to see that book, you need the help of someone with enough authority within the church.”
“For example—”
Her lips curved slightly upward.
“Me.”
“If you can go to Dawn City and find me before the ‘Hero’s Expedition’ begins next year...”
“Or anytime after that.”
“Perhaps I can find a way to take you inside for a look.”
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