Dagger - Chapter 113

“No way out of here? Seriously?” Dorothy raised one of her eyebrows.

Allen nodded, “The shop where I got our armor came from an armory near the wall. I tried to climb it up but the same energy that is protecting us repelled me back to the ground.”

“I also attempted to break through the wall with our current strength, but I wasn’t even able to scratch it.” He added.

“I know you have a teleporting technique; did you use it?” Dorothy questioned.

“It’s different from teleport, I need to see where should I be flickering first before I could initiate Flicker or else it will not work.” Allen answered.

Teleport and Flicker might seem like the same types of technique, but their requirements and sometimes results were different.

Flicker could be used more or less in an instant as long as one could see his or her wanted destination.

Meanwhile, the Teleport technique or spell could be used for long-distances unlike Flicker.

However, the prerequisite was that the former needed to have a drawn mechanism like what Allen did with the array or only utilizing mana if one doesn’t know how to create a teleportation array that could be used by both magicians and internal energy practitioners.

In addition, Teleport could be used even without seeing one’s destination as long as he or she knew the coordinates to that particular place one wanted to go to.

“What are we going to do then?” Dorothy asked.

“Do you have anything in mind?” Allen questioned back.

“No.” She shook her head.

‘The speediest way to get out of here is to teleport. But I don’t have the correct strength of level to initiate it, and even if I do have, the teleportation array in terms of fastest time of drawing that I know of can only bring the caster.’ Allen thought.

“How about we stay here until the protection wears off?” Dorothy suggested.

Allen disagreed, “We are up against a city-eating monster that can eat this whole place in one second. If we keep staying here until the orb disappears, we might not even know if we are already in its jaws.”

“Good point.” Dorothy made a nod and gazed at the ceiling, deeply thinking of a solution.

Suddenly, another idea struck her and she suggested, “How about we use the underground passages? I’m sure those tunnels will be present in this kind of a large community. Like a sewer system.”

“Then let’s go find the city hall.” Allen said.

“What for?” She asked.

“If there is indeed an underground tunnel, then it should be in the records of the city hall.” Allen replied.

Dorothy: “I think I saw the city hall at the corner of my eyes when we were in the square.”

…

Arriving back at the square, the first thing they noted was the protection orb on the fountain.

The glow of the orb was obviously weaker than it was before.

“We still have a few hours.” Dorothy said.

Shortly after, their eyes landed upon a stone building. Its facade was neatly designed with stone pillars that had intricate old writings on it.

It was none other than the city hall.

As they approached it, Allen stopped walking, crouched down, and closely inspected the writings on the pillars.

Dorothy also paused on her tracks and asked, “Hey, what are you doing? We don’t have much time.”

“The inscriptions on the pillars are rather old.” Allen said. “The books provided to us didn’t have a specific timeline to what era did the Visergoroth Eater live, but this might determine it.”

“Why do you want know about it?” Dorothy asked.

“That information could help us later.” He replied. Every information available on a foe that they were going to fight against might be able to help them. In the earlier illusions, there had been many types of info on plants that they were battling against hidden around in the area.

“I can’t seem to identify this language.” Allen said, “But I can tell that it is a variant of a word during the Supreme Dominions Era.”

“It’s during the peak of Pertheon Empire?” Dorothy asked.

The Supreme Dominions Era was the time where the Pertheon Empire rose to its most powerful level where its lands comprised of the western holy kingdoms, Western Mountainous Region, to the now Trigurniburg Kingdom; with the Federated Eastern Republic also existing at those times.

“No, it looks older, it might have originated from before the Supreme Dominions Era.” Allen then stood up and said, “Let’s go inside.”

After walking inside, they were met with the grand yet seemingly humble interior of the city hall.

Inside the main hall, they spotted the magnificent interior, where one could see the decorated rows of pillars on each side holding up the ceiling.

However, the most striking of which were the overflowing amount of ivories adorned all over the place. The arches that led towards the other parts of the government building were made from pure ivory, the top of the pillars were also made from ivory, there were ivories intricated between the tiles on the floor too!

Even the drawings on the ceilings had ivories inserted of them!

Nevertheless, what made it seemingly humble was that they weren’t that noticeable and could be mistaken for any simple stone.

“So many ivories. I never seen anything as grand as this.” Dorothy looked all around her, mesmerized by the sheer whiteness and smoothness of the said stone.

“Did you attend the recent auction?” Allen asked.

“I did, but what I mean is that there is so much ivory. The venue of the auction didn’t have that much of those things.” Dorothy replied.

“But it was shinier.” She added, “And didn’t have those drawings of people on the ceiling.”

“These kinds of designs most likely came from another part of the kingdom, or possibly from outside the lands of the kingdom.” Allen replied and he approached the receiving table where there was a small directory of the city hall. “Maybe from the location where the Visergoroth Eater was seen.”

“Are you sure? Those old men could have incorporated weird designs like these to make the city hall look more expensive.” Dorothy said.

“Those old men will never add something insignificant.” Allen answered.

Afterwards, he said, “I found the way to the records office, follow me.” He told Dorothy as he entered through an ivory arch.

Dorothy followed him from behind. As they entered the corridor, she called out, “Hey Allen.”

Allen: “What?”

“If you don’t mind, can I ask you a personal question? We did this once with Airein and Gavin a few years ago in Alchem Town.” Dorothy asked. “You were the only one who didn’t answer.”

“Okay.” Allen nodded.

Dorothy braised herself and asked, “What was your life before you became an alchemist?”

He replied back in a second, “I was a thief.”

Waiting for several seconds, but seeing Allen didn’t continue anymore, Dorothy let off the topic.

“We are here.” Allen said and the two of them stopped in front of a door. He turned the door knob and pushed it open.

As the door was opened, what greeted the two were the multifold rolled scrolls kept within cylindrical containers inside a wide room.

There were scrolls on the shelves, on the tables, in the barrels, in open boxes, and many more to the point some of them littered the floor!

“Let’s not waste time.” Allen turned his head to Dorothy, “Go look for the map of the community, surely there’s a copy of that in here, start at that big table there. I will look for the map of an underground passageway if there are any.”

“Mhm.” She nodded and approached the biggest table.

Meanwhile, Allen activated Energy External Sense which he controlled to cover the whole room.

He scanned each and every content of all the cylinders. A few moments later, he deactivated the technique and walked towards a barrel.

Afterwards, he dug in his hand and pulled up a container.

He opened the container and took out a furled brown paper. Unfurling it, he saw it contained a drawing of different passageways.

It was the map of the underground canal.

On the other hand, Dorothy said, “I found a map of the city!” She pulled out an unfurled cartographer’s paper from a large drawer and went back to Allen to show it.

Allen nodded then also looked on the graph of the underground canal.

Allen pointed at a spot of the underground canal graph, “The basement of the city hall is connected to a tunnel that will lead to the canal.” He folded the graph several times and hid it in his pockets.

“Let’s go.” Dorothy also folded the map she was holding and kept it.