Evolving My Undead Legion In A Game-Like World

Chapter 803: Books

They moved deeper into the building, the firelight flickering against walls that had not seen warmth in a very long time.

Most of what they found was useless.

Containers that had once held liquids or materials had long since dried out, their contents reduced to brittle residue that crumbled at the lightest touch. Shelves along the walls still held the outlines of where things had once been stored, but the items themselves were gone, either decayed beyond recognition or turned to dust so fine it had settled into the stone floor like part of it.

Michael opened one container after another. The same result each time. Whatever this place had been built to preserve, time had not been kind to it.

Rynne checked the platforms and tables with more care, running her fingers along edges and seams, looking for anything that might still hold value. She found fragments. Pieces of metal that had not fully corroded. Small shards of glass that still carried faint traces of color. But nothing whole. Nothing useful.

"Two thousand years," she said quietly, almost to herself. "It’s been too long for most materials."

Michael nodded, unsurprised.

They moved from room to room, corridor to corridor, the pattern repeating. Dust. Decay. Silence. The building was large, and most of it was dead.

Then Rynne stopped.

She had paused at a doorway Michael had almost walked past. The entrance was narrower than the others, set into a recessed section of wall that could easily be overlooked if you were not looking for it.

"This way," she said.

Michael followed.

The room beyond was smaller. More contained. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves, and the shelves were full.

Books.

Dozens of them. Perhaps more than a hundred, packed tightly together, their spines facing outward in uneven rows. Most were coated in a thick layer of dust, some so heavy that the covers beneath were invisible. A few had collapsed entirely, their bindings rotted through, pages fused into brittle masses that fell apart at the slightest pressure.

But not all of them.

Rynne moved to the nearest shelf and carefully, almost reverently, drew one volume free. She held it close to the firelight Michael was still carrying above his palm.

The cover was worn but intact. The pages, when she opened them gently, did not crumble. They were brittle, yes. Yellowed. But they were readable.

Rynne let out a breath.

It was not a large sound, but Michael noticed the way her shoulders shifted, the way her grip on the book softened into something closer to care than examination.

"This is remarkable," she said.

Michael raised an eyebrow. "A book?"

"Not just a book," Rynne corrected, turning a page with the edge of her fingertip. "A book that survived two thousand years in a realm no one has visited. Do you understand how rare that is?"

Michael considered it. Rarity, in his experience, correlated directly with value. He did not argue the point.

Rynne set that volume down carefully and began scanning the rest of the shelf, her eyes moving quickly, fingers hovering over spines without touching them. She pulled a second book free. Examined it. Nodded to herself. Set it aside.

Then a third.

Michael watched her work for a moment, then looked down at the nearest open volume on the shelf. The pages were covered in symbols he did not recognize. Dense, angular script filled each line from edge to edge, some sections broken up by diagrams or markings that might have been illustrations or annotations.

"I can’t read this," he said.

Rynne glanced up, unsurprised.

"No," she said. "You wouldn’t be able to."

She closed the book in her hands and held it against her side, turning to face him properly.

"This is the language of the civilization that built this place," she said. "I’ve been studying it. It’s how I pieced together the method to reach this realm in the first place."

Michael tilted his head slightly. "How well do you understand it?"

Rynne hesitated, choosing her words.

"Enough," she said. "Not perfectly. There are gaps. Some of the older phrasing is difficult, and I’m certain there are nuances I’m missing. But the core structure is familiar to me."

She looked back at the shelves.

"These books could contain anything, but I need time to translate them properly. Rushing it would be worse than not reading them at all."

Michael considered this. He had no use for books he could not read. The information mattered, but the format did not, not to him.

"Then take them," he said. "Translate what you can. When you’re done, give me a copy of anything relevant."

Rynne nodded, clearly satisfied with the arrangement. She turned back to the shelves and began selecting volumes with deliberate care, testing each one for stability before adding it to the small stack she was building.

Michael leaned against the doorframe and watched the firelight dance across the rows of old books.

They left the library not long after.

Rynne stored the selected books carefully.

Though she did not say anything, to build trust, Rynne had Michael choose half of their findings to keep. When she finished translating the ones she had taken, she would give him a copy and the original version, while she kept the ones he selected.

It was a simple action, but it did make Michael view Rynne in a better light.

Once the books were secured, Michael and Rynne resumed their search.

They moved through the rest of the structure first, then out into the surrounding cluster, checking adjacent buildings one by one. The pattern repeated itself over and over. Large halls that once bustled with activity now stood hollow. Smaller rooms filled with broken tools and useless remnants. Storage chambers stripped clean long ago or reduced to dust by time.

Nothing of real value remained.

It was not disappointing so much as expected.

If anything valuable had been easy to take, it would not have survived until now.