The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive
Chapter 249 : Chapter 249
Chapter 249: The Secret Chamber
She continued moving among the vast rows of shelves, collecting as she went, her steps light and her eyes shining with hope.
With every precious volume—already believed to be lost forever—that she carefully stored away, she felt the burden on her shoulders, the burden called the future of her people, grow just a little lighter.
Never had the hope of reviving her race felt so clear, so tangible, so close within reach.
Without realizing it, she followed one of the passages between the shelves into a relatively remote corner deep within the library.
The bookshelves here were older than those outside, their wood darkened into a deep, heavy tone. Thick dust covered them, as though they had lain silent and forgotten for countless centuries.
The volumes on these shelves were no longer the beautifully bound, neatly categorized books from the outer sections. Instead, there were stacks of ancient scrolls, thick bundles of notes tied together with rough string, and large quantities of loose manuscripts in differing hands. Many of the pages were curled and frayed at the edges.
It looked more like a neglected area of unsorted research notes or discarded materials.
Ilyss gave it a glance and was about to turn away, intending to continue gathering books from the more important sections.
The Royal Princess’s task had been to obtain valuable ancient knowledge. These chaotic piles of papers did not seem to rank highly in priority.
But at the very moment she turned to leave—
the royal sacred relic hanging against her skin, disguised as nothing more than an ordinary silver-leaf pendant, suddenly gave off an extremely faint, but unmistakably clear, pulse.
It was like a sleeping heart being gently struck by another heartbeat from far away that shared the same rhythm.
A resonance from the same source?
This feeling was even clearer than the one she had felt when she encountered that white crystal.
Was there something here that resonated with her royal bloodline—or with the inherited relic itself?
Ilyss stopped at once.
The violet in her eyes sharpened like a hawk’s as she carefully examined this dusty corner.
The dust was thick, nearly covering everything. But when her eyes fell upon the bottom of the oldest shelf in the innermost part of the corner, her pupils contracted slightly.
Near the join where the bookshelf met the wall, low along the floor, there was a faint curved scrape in the otherwise even layer of dust.
The mark was extremely subtle, as though something there had moved ever so slightly a very, very long time ago, after which the dust had slowly settled back over it. Without close attention, it would have been impossible to notice.
It looked like a concealed door or mechanism had once been activated there.
She crouched down, held her breath, and gently brushed away the loose dust over that curved mark with the lightest touch of her fingers.
Beneath the dust, in the dark wood of the shelf’s side panel, a carving was revealed—
an elven rune, hidden with extraordinary care, its lines fine and elegant, almost perfectly merged with the natural grain of the wood itself.
Ilyss recognized this rune.
In High Elven, it symbolized concealment, secret knowledge, or proof of bloodline.
It was usually used to protect the most confidential or important places, and could only be opened by those of a specific bloodline or those bearing the proper token.
Without hesitation, she bit the tip of her right index finger and squeezed out a small drop of blood, crimson with the faintest hint of gold shining within it—
the blood of the royal bloodline.
Then she lightly pressed that fingertip against the hidden rune.
The instant blood touched the rune, it gave off the faintest hiss, like a drop of water striking heated metal. The blood was rapidly absorbed into the wood and vanished.
At once, the dull rune lit with a weak silver glow.
It flashed and vanished so quickly it might have been mistaken for an illusion.
Click...
In the next second, the massive blackwood bookshelf before Ilyss, which had appeared impossibly heavy, slid inward without a sound by about half a foot, revealing behind it a narrow gap barely wide enough for a single person to slip through sideways.
A smell completely unlike the cool, book-scented air of the library outside immediately poured out from the opening.
It was an indescribably foul and complicated odor.
The tang of rusted iron, the lingering sickly-sweet and sour smell of old magical potions mixed together, and something else...
something like the heavy, stale scent of meat beginning to spoil.
The light coming through the gap was also different—far dimmer and murkier than the soft radiance of the library outside.
Ilyss’s brow drew tightly together, and a slight wave of nausea stirred in her stomach.
The smell inspired instinctive disgust.
But the bloodline authentication of the rune had succeeded. That meant the space beyond was also a hidden area built by the ancient elves, and one that permitted entry to someone of royal blood like herself.
What was inside?
Why did it smell so strange?
Perhaps it was a place for storing special experimental materials, or dangerous magical objects?
Driven by curiosity and by the responsibility of completing her mission, she did not hesitate further. Turning sideways, she carefully squeezed through the narrow gap.
Inside was a room far smaller than the main body of the library.
The light truly was dimmer. Several pieces of moonstone set into the walls appeared to be nearly exhausted, giving off weak, ashen light that only barely illuminated the chamber.
The first thing that forced itself into Ilyss’s line of sight was the enormous stone table in the middle of the room.
The tabletop was made of dark stone so deep in color it was nearly black. Its surface was not smooth, but covered in crisscrossing marks of different depths and lengths, as though something sharp or heavy had scraped and slammed against it again and again.
Most horrifying of all were the great patches of dried stains covering it.
They had seeped deeply into the stone and darkened into brown and nearly black-brown blotches.
The stains lay over one another in layers, their edges blurred, as though large quantities of thick liquid had been spilled, run across the surface, and dried there countless times.
Scattered across the floor around the table were all manner of discarded objects:
several twisted metal forceps with suspicious dark residue on their tips;
a few crystal vessels whose inner walls still held dried remnants;
several broken hollow transparent tubes;
and various oddly shaped metal tools whose precise purpose was impossible to guess, all of them heavily worn at the edges, some even chipped or curled from use.
The air was so saturated with that mixed stench of rust, decay, potion residue, and sweetness that it seemed almost tangible, creeping into her nose and clinging to her throat, forcing Ilyss to breathe more quietly without realizing it.
This was not a study.
It was not an archive.
It did not even resemble an ordinary alchemy or enchantment laboratory.
It looked far more like a laboratory—
or, to speak more plainly—
an operating room.
Ilyss’s amethyst eyes swept over the deeply unsettling stone table and the scattered instruments before finally shifting to the far side of the room.
There were no bookshelves there.
Instead, there were only a few crude wooden racks, roughly made from poor materials, standing in sharp contrast to the beautiful, weighty shelves in the library outside.
There were no books on those racks either.
Only great heaps of loose papers piled together in chaos, curled parchment rolls, and notebooks of various sizes.
The condition of these papers was generally poor. Many were curled, torn, or stained. The writing across them was mostly messy and frantic, utterly different from the orderly, elegant elven script in the books outside.
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