Yarra’s Adventure Notes

Chapter 48 - 48 38 Trap_1

?48: Chapter 38 Trap_1 48: Chapter 38 Trap_1 (After a morning of deliberation, I decided to release two chapters for today as a token of gratitude for your great support.

P.S.: For our friends passing by, your collection and recommendation would be greatly appreciated.

It’s the last two days on the new book ranking list, I’m hoping for a grand send-off from all of you.)

“For the Mage Tower, the detection zone is usually set up outside the tower.

Passing through the detection zone to the main entrance of the Mage Tower is the reception area, which is typically placed on the first floor.

This not only makes it easier to receive visitors but also prevents visitors from spying on any secrets in the Core Area.” Vivian walked into the hallway that belonged to the reception area.

Casually, she pushed open the door to a spacious room furnished with a round, solid wood table, accompanied by seven or eight wooden armchairs.

“Can it really still be used?” Lina touched the table and chairs, finding them still intact.

She sat down to test the strength of the chair and it proved to be sturdy.

Surprised, she exclaimed, “I never thought wood furniture could last this long.”

“I didn’t expect it either.” Vivian admitted, “I guess because it’s dry here and there’s no wind, the lifespan of the furniture was prolonged.”

Lina nodded but then curiously asked, “However, why is the reception room completely empty, furnished only with a table and chairs?”

“What else do you want?” Vivian retorted with a hint of self-mockery, “Mages are a group of creatures impoverished of hobbies.

They understand nothing besides their studies.

Do you expect to find elaborate furnishings into the reception room used by these creatures?

Have you not seen my bedroom before?

Just think about it and you’ll understand.”

Thinking of the monotonous arrangement in Vivian’s bedroom, Lina understood, “Then there likely won’t be any items relevant to our mission here.

Let’s go.”

“Let’s open each reception room.” Vivian walked out of the reception room and reminded, “Otherwise we might miss something interesting.

We can simply take a look, no need to search thoroughly.”

“I noticed that the size of each reception room is different and the lengths of the porches also vary.

Why is that, Vivian?

Is it because different guests are received in different rooms due to their status?” Lina asked with interest after opening several meeting rooms.

“I don’t know.” Vivian, who was equally luckless, admitted.

She hadn’t held high hopes, so there was no disappointment, “The reception rooms of other Mage Towers I have visited before were all the same size.

I have never encountered such a situation.”

“It’s probably because of the varying sizes of natural caves.” Pannis, closing the door to the last room, answered, “This place should have been built using a group of natural caves.

Otherwise, if it was entirely artificial excavation, it would take the labor of all humans in Yarra several decades to centuries to complete, let alone a small country.

So, the varying sizes of the caves resulted in rooms of different sizes as well.

I guess it’s like this.”

After walking through the corridor of the reception area, lined with rooms on each side, they opened a relatively heavy door.

Having experienced this twice before, they had some idea that such heavier doors separated different areas, and passing through them meant entering a new area.

Inside the regular doors were various rooms within the same area.

After leaving the reception area, an annular corridor came into view.

The outer side of the corridor was a smooth wall, while the inner side was filled with many small doors leading to several rooms.

“This should theoretically belong to the residential area.” Vivian guessed uncertainly, “In other Mage Towers, the second floor is often the residential area.

I don’t think this would be an exception.

However, this area should house common people, like errand runners and guards.”

They casually opened a few doors, each leading to room of the same small size, each for two people.

Once furnished with two metal beds, a small two-layer cabinet and two boxes, pretty much all the space in the room was occupied.

The bedding, simple cloths, had decayed over time, but the remaining items, made of metal, were still relatively well-preserved.

“Should we search the rooms one by one?” Catherine asked Vivian’s opinion, “Although there are quite a few rooms.”

“No, our mission items wouldn’t be here.” Vivian denied Catherine’s idea, “As for other valuable items, regardless of their value, if these people were able to get such items, they would not be here running errands.

You must understand, doing odd jobs in a place that can only be entered through teleportation, one would probably not get a holiday to go home for several years, maybe even decades.

There wouldn’t be many people willing to come here if they had another choice.

So, we don’t need to waste time.

Just cross the circular corridor directly to the opposite side.

The door to the next area should be there.”

“Did you notice a problem?” Pannis, who had been silent when they entered the area, asked while stroking his chin, “I estimated that there should be more than thirty odd jobs rooms here.

Two people living in each room, there should be more than fifty people living here.”

“About that.” Vivian nodded, “Is there a problem?”

“Did you see any bodies?” Pannis asked.

“What bodies?” Vivian didn’t react immediately.

Catherine, hearing Pannis’s question, immediately understood the anomaly and was somewhat surprised, “Yes, why aren’t there any bodies?

Weren’t the people in the research facility said to have been contaminated and demonized by the sudden outbreak of demonized energy in this area, causing them all to die?

Why haven’t we seen a single body so far?”

“Perhaps, maybe…” Vivian scrunched her face, exercising her imagination, “Right, the Demonized Energy pollution also requires a process, maybe they discovered the eruption of the Demonized Energy and gathered together to resist the pollution as much as possible?

No, that’s not right, the eruption of the Demonized Energy is gradual, it’s difficult for anyone in the midst of it to sense changes in the surrounding Demonized Energy, especially in such a closed environment, it would be hard for anyone from outside to detect anything.

By the time it could be discovered, the severity of the pollution has usually reached the brink of demonization, these people wouldn’t have had the chance to gather in advance.”

“Exactly.” Catherine chimed in, “Moreover, the pollution from the Demonized Energy would be hard for an average person to bear, most ordinary people would die under the pollution, not even having the chance to demonize.

So, the suggestion that they gathered after demonization doesn’t make sense, dead people don’t have the chance to gather.”

“Could it be that these people didn’t get demonized and didn’t die here?” At this point, Vivian also couldn’t be sure, scratching her head while thinking hard.

“No, they definitely died.” Pannis suddenly turned around, walking a few steps backwards, opened a previously opened room door, and approached one of the beds,”Look at these markings.

Death here might not lead to decay, just desiccation, but it will leave traces anyway, and these marks were left by the bodies.”

“Were there other people here?” Catherine’s expression gradually turned serious, “Did they take away the bodies?”

“Not recently.” Pannis shook his head, “This mark shows that it’s been a long time, the body seems to have been removed at least hundreds of years ago.

But, think about the person who attacked Rachel and others before, recall the clothes he had, does that give you any idea?”

“I have no clue.” Catherine responded candidly, “I’m completely confused.”

“Exactly, I’m also completely confused.” Pannis suddenly turned back, confronting Gaston, “We have no idea what happened, do you?”

“Me?” Gaston was startled by Pannis’ abrupt question, pointing at his own nose, “How could I possibly know?”

“Oh, so you don’t know either.” Pannis let out a meaningful sigh,”No matter, let’s keep going deeper, there will be an opportunity to uncover the mystery.

Vivian, what’s the next section?”

“Next?

Oh yes, the next area should be the living quarters for the research Mages.” Vivian turned around, seemingly losing interest in examining every single room, she lead the group around the Circular Corridor, through a three-meter-long passage, into the next area.

Upon entry, they were met with a hall of more than three thousand square meters, with a hundred sets of tables and chairs.

There were several open rooms on both sides of the hall, although the items on the tables had decayed, they seemed to have been entertainment items like chess sets.

“This is the dining area and the place where the Mages rested.

It seems that at most, there were about a hundred Mages conducting research here.” Without lingering in the dining area, Vivian went straight through the door at the other end of the dining area.

Facing the door, were six oval-shaped spaces arranged in a straight line, with six or seven doors on each side of each oval-shaped space.

“Here are the living quarters for the Mages, from here on we need to explore carefully, especially anything like notes could be crucial.

We might be able to infer the position of the mission item from the contents.”

“Six corridors, counting up to seventy or eighty rooms, are we going to examine them all thoroughly?” The one who raised the question was surprisingly Gaston.

He asked worriedly, “How much effort would that take?”

“You can just wait at the entrance, no need to come in for the search.” Vivian was quite cold towards Gaston, in fact everyone was cold towards him,”We can do the search.”

“Forget it, I think I’ll just go with you guys.” Gaston looked at the dim and quiet corridor, where apart from them, no one and no other sound was there.

He said uneasily,”We could take care of each other if we go together.”

“Huh.” Without commenting, Vivian just smiled noncommittally, walked to the first room and placed her hand on the doorknob.

“Hey, there is a mark here.” Gaston suddenly pointed at the wall across from the door and shouted, “It looks man-made.”

“What mark?” Hearing that, Vivian turned back to look, but her hand instinctively turned down the doorknob, opening the door.

With a soft “click,” coupled with the sound of the door opening, the two sounds blended together, making it difficult to distinguish between them.

As the sounds echoed, a blob of liquid dropped from above, falling right on Vivian, who had already half entered the room but was still looking back.

At this moment, her attention was diverted and she didn’t notice the liquid falling from above at all.