Chapter 85: Loot [Swamp Mansion-Library]

  Alabaster

  Alley was extremely sore, granted it was the good kind of sore. The kind that you got after a hard day of training, or doing something physically demanding like helping to raise a cottage roof. There was a certain satisfaction to be had in it, especially as this was not muscular soreness but an ache in the channels of his body that converted Resonance into Life Essence.

  Alley’s insides felt like they had been somehow stretched out, inflated, improved? Even now at only the eleventh rank, he could feel the flows of energy moving inside him more freely. It was understood that a True Deck wielder had more influence over the way their body would change as they grew in ranks, but it wasn’t like Alley had gotten to select from a list of abilities. If his body had changed then he would need to figure out how the old-fashioned way.

  Fairly confident that Lady Astley’s dealer wasn’t about to slip through his grasp like Karieto’s had Alley had opted to inspect the area of the mansion he considered to hold its most important loot. The library wing of course. This section of the overgrown structure played host to books in their hundreds and Alley was almost overwhelmed with the amount of accumulated knowledge right here in front of him.

  That sense of awe faded more than a little when Alley got a chance to properly inspect the various bookshelves that lined the walls in this wing. A vast majority were rotten, water damaged, home to burrowing insects, or otherwise ruined by age. Reminding himself that Darius was presently collecting a small fortune worth of Resonance Crystals Alley still couldn’t shake the disappointment.

  Lady Astley had represented a potential font of knowledge and Alley couldn’t shake the feeling that had he not threatened her at the start of their Challenge, the tree woman might not have attacked him afterward. The weirdest part was he had never behaved like that before and couldn’t explain exactly why he had felt such a need to be so aggressive.

  Sure Alley’s hands weren’t exactly clean, he had tried to kill Soren, he had killed Karieto and a number of pirates to get to him as well. Alley didn’t feel bad about those actions, Soren was a monster that had slaughtered Alley’s family with all the passion of a man doing his laundry. Karieto had been on a quest to slaughter town after town and needed to be stopped. Lady Astley…

  The arguments he had made to justify her slaying still rang hollow, and what was worse was that he couldn’t even extract much in the way of knowledge from her books to make up for it. Rubbing his face in frustration Alley let out a little groan.

  “Why did I get so aggressive? I could be interviewing that tree lady right now!”

  To his complete surprise, there came an answer. It was the voice of Denderra, her true voice, not the gravely illusion she had been projecting. “It wasn’t really your fault you know, she had so much Doom that someone or something would have killed her in the next few years no matter what, it just happened to be you.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Slowly Alley turned around and was greeted with another surprise. He could still see her, earlier when she had been pinned to the wall of the glass structure they had been in the presence of dozens of Undeath Crystals.

  The boys had also deposited a few on the table they had sat around in the dormant kitchen. Right now, unless there were crystals hidden around the library he hadn’t seen there was nothing on hand that should be revealing the ghostly maiden. Maybe she was making some sort of effort to make herself visible without a crystal nearby.

  “Doom?” He asked with a quizzical expression. “You mentioned that before, and just like now you talked about it like it was a thing or a Resonance, not just a concept.” He paused to scratch his neck. “So please tell me. What is Doom?”

  About forty-five minutes later Alley emerged from the library wing, his heart troubled and his pack full. With the assistance of Denderra, he had found a small trove of leather-bound journals belonging to the late Lady Astley that had been protected from the ravages of time by a glass case in the corner of an upper-level office.

  The ghostly girl who was tied to Alley’s Dealer had proven herself surprisingly useful. She couldn’t get far in any one direction from the cloak on Alley’s back but within a zone of almost a half mile around him, she could move freely, unchecked by walls and other physical obstacles the ghost could quickly and invisibly investigate the nearby area with impunity.

  It had been she who pointed out the tiny corner office tucked away in the Library wing’s most upper level, and there he had found the treasure of knowledge he was now lugging downstairs. Seven thick tomes, each written in neat and precise handwriting, at least somewhat detailing the process by which Astley arrived at her strange botanical state.

  While he had little desire to know the gruesome details there, he was desperate for more information on the nature of Undeath Resonance. If a series of scientific and carefully annotated books about an attempt to create Undeath Resonance couldn’t offer him some insights he would eat the remains of his bladed hook.

  Still, more than a little concerned by the conversation about Doom that he’d had with Denderra Alley nevertheless had a small spring returning to his step. Things might not be as bad as they initially seemed, especially as he was unsure to what degree he could trust the words of Denderra. Alley's experiences with her up till this point had given him the impression she would help, but her ultimate goal was his body being inhabited by an ancient and destructive spirit.

  Besides if Doom was as bad as she had said, then how had Lady Astley lived for centuries? Either it didn’t function like the white-haired ghost girl claimed, or there was a decent chance Alley could find a way to at least stave it off in the very books he was carrying.

  Of course, Denderra had offered her own solution, and until he had more information on the topic he had little choice but to treat her words as mostly genuine. Her solution had been simple, the same one she claimed that necromancers, liches, and undead warlords throughout history had employed.

  “Hey, Darius!” He called upon seeing the red-haired boy awkwardly lugging his pack which was blatantly overfull with Crystals to the little swamp boat they had hired. “When you are done with that, come help me find Astley’s dealer, and be quick 'cause we need to talk.” Darius raised an eyebrow.

  “We do?”

  “Yeah..” said Alley a little sheepishly. “ Apparently I’m in a race against time to rank up before reality rejects me.”

  “Oh,” said the redheaded boy chewing on those words for a moment before shrugging. “That's not something you hear every day, but honestly it just sounds like the plan we already had but with a spookier vibe.”

  The Knots family have a tendency to just take things in stride lol