Chapter 72
Once the group was out of my sight, I slipped through the cracks into the library and regained my original form quietly. As I stepped out of the shadows, I found Erika had seemingly rearranged large parts of the library. There were hundreds of books around her desk and many stacks set as tall as her in precarious piles around the room. She had been busy.
“Erika…” I called out, but she didn’t seem to hear me. “Erika!”
She finally lifted her head in surprise. “Huh? Oh, Spirit? I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy with these books. There are countless tomes that I’ve only ever seen referenced and some that even the academy hasn’t heard of. It’s almost like this palace is connected to all ten of the great provinces. Have you discovered anything?”
“I’ve discovered a way out, but if we don’t go now, we may lose the opportunity.”
“Ah! I-is that true?” Erika looked uncertain, her eyes shifting back to the books.
“No book is worth our lives,” I responded, feeling a bit irritated.
She looked away from the books, a guilty expression on her face. “I suppose you’re correct. How are we going to escape?”
Of course, my plan was simple. If our exit was somehow blocked, then we’d borrow their exit. This would trap them inside the palace, but that wasn’t my problem. Although he was young, the lord seemed a bit knowledgeable. He might be able to find a way to escape where we’d continue to be trapped.
“The gate had reopened, but it is unstable. It could collapse at any moment.” I told her.
If I told her it’d last a few hours, then she might want to waste a few hours. The other group who entered could leave at any time, so I wasn’t like I was necessarily lying. However, while this girl was a bit more worldly than Mara, she still had blind naivety and confidence. If she knew about the others, she might want to engage with them.
She nodded, taking my word at face value, and then looked back at the book long fully. “I wish I could take these with me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve already had three days to read from them, isn’t that enough?”
She finally looked away, a downcast expression. “It’ll have to be. I’ve already filled my ring full of books and removed everything else from my storage ring, ah! Have you eaten these last few days?”
I wanted to give her an incredulous look. Had I been a mere mortal as she thought, she had all but abandoned me. As far as she knew, I had no storage space of my own. Of course, I could have returned and begged her for food and water, but this girl did live in her little world, didn’t she?
“I found enough to survive,” I responded instead, and she nodded in relief, but then a thought seemed to strike her.
“Would you… be able to carry any of these books with you?” She asked.
“We do need to hurry.” I frowned.
“It’s just…” she looked around quickly. “This pile! I’ll carry it too. You take half, and I’ll take half!”
As she spoke, she grabbed considerably less than half, and even that she seemed to be having trouble carrying, nearly teetering over. I thought about leaving her behind again, but then remembered Mara’s hopeful expression, and I decided against it for the moment.
I opened the doorway I had hidden and then helped her with the pile of books. Their weight was nothing to me, but they were somewhat bulky. I could store them inside my storage, but that would reveal that I had storage. Instead, I opted to deal with the inconvenience.
The pair of us left the doorway to the library and then I brought her directly back to the courtyard. I was still tracking the three upstairs. They were near the 2nd-floor library entrance, which was one of the reasons I had been in a hurry to leave that room. I hoped that the library would be enough of a distraction that we’d be long gone by the time they returned to the courtyard.
When I saw the subspace portal still ebbing with a slightly yellowish hue, I was relieved. I was leaving a lot of my choices based on the observations of an unfamiliar snobbish boy. If the lord lied about any part of this, it might be a disaster.
Erika gasped as she looked at the portal, dropping the books in her hand onto the grassy floor before walking toward it, her eyes wide. I quickly put my books down and reached out to her to keep her from stepping through without me, but she stepped to the side, instead admiring the lettering and designs written on the gate.
“Do you have any idea what this is?” Erika asked in disbelief.
“It’s what we came here through. You didn’t see it then?”
Erika blushed. “I’m sorry, I was too preoccupied. I didn’t notice. However, this is an Astral gate!”
“It can dial different locations,” I responded. “Right now, it’s dialed to one that won’t kill us. We need to go now.”
I was feeling anxious because those upstairs were starting to head toward the courtyard where they could overhear us.
“Yes, an astral gate is a transportation system. It can dial between astral gates, allowing for instantaneous transport across realms. It uses far fewer resources than the current transport formations and can travel farther distances, but the means of building these gates have been forgotten with time.” She gasped. “Someone must have put an Astral gate within this subspace. Even though the subspace is collapsing, the astral gate keeps it tethered to our reality. In other words, the destruction of the gate would destroy this reality.”
“All the more reason we should be leaving.” I approached her. “Grab your books and let’s go.”
“You don’t understand… this current portal is leading to somewhere else than the Schrödinger’s box. It’s much less stable.”
“That’s exactly my hope. I’d rather come out alive someplace else than dead next to the box.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Astral gates can connect anywhere. They were known for being able to distance provinces.”
“So, we’ll visit another province for a while.” I shrugged.
She let out a sigh. “I forget sometimes you’re just a commoner.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ah! N-no offense, but your view of the world is far too small.” She looked around until she found a bone that ended in a point picked it up and then began drawing in the dirt. “It’s like this. We live on the Profound Azalea Continent. It has a central area called the Great Chasm, and branching out from the Great Chasm are ten petals. These make up the ten great provinces.”
As she drew, she made an image that resembled a flower with ten petals, although the petals didn’t touch at all and were only connected by a center circle.
“Okay…” I frowned.
“Between each petal is a vast ocean. These oceans are filled with powerful monsters. We call them brinebeasts, the ocean equivalent to sagebeasts. Although they are similar, brinebeasts tend to reach higher levels of evolution than sagebeasts. No one knows why.”
“It’s because they avoid tribulation,” I suggested.
“Huh? Of course, brine beasts go through tribulation. That’s often when they are most dangerous. Brinebreasts will often come to the surface when they evolve, and their resurgence causes a surge of small brinebeasts to flee onto the land. The brinebeast floods are an issue every province must deal with every few years.”
“No, but they can… never mind. Go on.”
I wasn’t going to give her a lesson on electricity. It seemed like brinebeasts could emerge when they wanted to go through a tribulation. For me, when I was in my single-celled form, I couldn’t even break the surface. We still weren’t the same. They were most likely just evolved fish, much like the ones I used to feed off of and raise. However, with an ocean of resources and choosing to hide from tribulation when it became too much, it was no wonder they survived longer and grew bigger.
“Anyway,” She continued. “This astral gate could lead to any of the provinces. It would take months if not years to return, based on where we ended up. Although unlikely, we might end up on another continent. At that point… those oceans are impassible for anyone who isn’t immortal. Our chance of returning home would be zero.”
“I see…”
It seemed like I had underestimated things. She was a paragon and likely had better ways to travel than a commoner, but even if she felt that these distances were too great, then it was a problem. I wasn’t convinced that anywhere was impassible. I was confident in myself, even if I ended up in the ocean, I could return to what I used to do. However, it could take months or years, and while such a length of time was nothing to me, it would be a lot for Mara. I had made a promise, and I couldn’t just abandon her.
“If only we knew where this portal lead…” Erika looked at it unhappily.
“It leads to Amp Mountain of the Voltania Province.” A voice came from above.
We both looked up to see the arrogant lord standing there on the balcony I had to jump to before.
He grabbed the banister and jumped down with a single leap, landing in front of us. I made a face. We hadn’t moved fast enough. In the end, we were still found out. I had been too intrigued by the bits of information Erika dropped and we had waited too long. He looked between us like he had everything settled, I could see his eyes landed on Erika’s ring as well as the dropped books from the library.
“More people?” Erika looked surprised.
The boy was trying to climb down, not able to jump like his paragon lord. The girl looked at it and then made a face, turning to walk the other way, planning to retrace their steps to come back to the courtyard.
“What are you doing in my place?” He demanded with a sneer.
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