Chapter 35
Chapter 35
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: The Library of Hell
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The fear and terror people felt toward the House of Duke Sachsen were by no means an exaggeration.
Even if the Black Magic Tower under Lord Black’s regime was pursuing a policy of appeasement unlike before, the old-world darkness their clan had built was not so shallow as to vanish overnight.
*The Book of the Black Goat* was the very crystallization of evil, symbolizing the darkness of their clan.
*‘Only the young lord may enter the Library of Hell.’*
The underground passage of the Apostolic Palace. Recalling his promise with Cardinal Nikolai, Dale walked on. A staircase shrouded in deep darkness stretched endlessly before him.
*‘Furthermore, the Church will bear no responsibility for what happens in Hell…’*
He could bring out only one grimoire. And in exchange, Dale and the House of Duke Sachsen would vow eternal silence regarding the “Church’s shame.”
The above was the deal struck through the contract magic the White Magic Tower prided itself on… a Geas.
A divine oath. A binding pact secured by the hearts of the two parties to the contract, Dale and Nikolai.
As long as the Geas was in effect, the secrecy and trust were beyond doubt. The moment a party became aware they were breaking the contract, the Geas’s curse would activate and burst their heart.
*‘Besides, it was information of little value to spread around.’*
Revealing a truth known only to the Hero and ruining a few high-ranking cardinals would change nothing now. However, by being bound to them as partners in fate through the Geas, the Church would have no choice but to become an ally of House Sachsen.
Winning the Church's favor was the same as winning the Goddess's.
What Dale had obtained in the Sistina Papal State was a harvest so great that “killing two birds with one stone” hardly did it justice.
That was, of course, only if he could make it out of this place alive.
At the end of the underground passage, where the dim light of a crimson lamp flickered. The entrance to Hell. A stone gate, inscribed with an ominous phrase, blocked Dale’s path.
[Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.]
And the moment he read those words.
“Kiiiiik!”
In that place, where not even the slightest breeze stirred, the artifact ‘Shadow Cloak,’ disguised as a black surcoat, began to run wild. Suppressing the shadows that danced ecstatically in the shade at his feet, Dale looked up.
A resonance of darkness.
After raising his head, he stepped forward without a hint of hesitation.
Beyond the gates of Hell.
***
They didn't call it ‘Hell’ for no reason.
It was a massive dungeon masquerading as a library.
And the forbidden books confined there were not designated for trivial reasons like harboring impure ideologies.
They were ‘Forbidden Grimoires’ that held powerful magic in their own right and wielded that power solely in the form of malice. Uncontrollable treasures that destroyed their owner's mind and brought forth disaster.
But just as a famed knight is accompanied by a legendary sword, to a magician, a grimoire was like a knight’s sword.
Who could fault a knight’s desire to obtain a fine sword? Even if it was the blood-soaked sword of a demon, stained with the blood of countless victims.
Magicians were no different. No, their yearning for grimoires was on a level that could not be compared to that of knights.
*‘The sword of a magician…’*
Like *The Scales of the Heart* owned by Dale’s father, Lord Black, or *The Book of Blood* that Lord Crimson boasted of.
In the suffocating darkness, Dale extended his arm. To find the one grimoire that would become, in the truest sense, ‘his sword.’
“...!”
It was at that moment. From beneath Dale's feet, blades of pure blackness shot up and began to orbit around him, sensing a sinister presence from beyond the darkness.
“Grrr…”
It wasn’t difficult to discern its identity. A guardian of the Library of Hell. A puppet that had sworn to become a sword protecting the Church even after death, of its own will.
A Mummy Knight.
Armed with white armor and a sword forged with the divine power of white mages, its corpse showed none of the usual ghastliness, thanks to a thorough post-mortem preservation process akin to pickling in formalin.
A white undead, revived by the divinity and blessings of white mages and priests.
But as a puppet that could not die even in death and moved by the power of magic, how different was this being from the ‘Death Knights’ the Black Magic Tower prided itself on?
*‘Truly…’*
In ancient times, there was the ‘Black-and-White Magic Tower,’ which explored the principles of life and death. And there, two perspectives on life and death divided into two factions, leading to a great battle.
A battle later named the Great Battle of Black-and-White by historians.
And the defeated Blacks, along with their leader, ‘Immortal Duke Frederick,’ were exiled to the northern frontiers.
As the price for their defeat, he was forced to surrender *The Book of the Black Goat* to the Church and the White Magic Tower, and he swore that his descendants would serve for generations as a shield, protecting the Empire and the continent against the demon territory in the north.
He was called the first Master of the Black Magic Tower, Frederick of Sachsen.
That was the origin of House Sachsen and the Black Magic Tower, and the reality of the deep-rooted darkness that had been passed down to Dale’s generation.
The Black Magic Tower, which broke away from the White Magic Tower’s pursuit of the light of wisdom to seek truth in the darkness—
*‘They are no different.’*
His words were true.
The confrontation with the Mummy Knight was brief.
*Thud!*
The Mummy Knight kicked off the ground. The divine sword in its hand swung.
A white undead, animated not by the dark magic of the Black Magic Tower, but by the light magic of the white mages.
It sensed the water and dark magic within Dale and deemed him an enemy to be eliminated.
*‘The Church will bear no responsibility for what happens in Hell.’*
In other words, if Dale were to meet an untimely end here, it would be his own fault.
The White Magic Tower’s Geas was like a 21st-century insurance contract; its clauses always had a loophole to slip through.
*‘I can’t let things go their way.’*
*Clang!*
A jet-black blade suddenly shot up from under Dale’s feet. It blocked the Mummy Knight’s swinging sword, and he kicked off the ground to create distance. In the darkness where one couldn't see inches ahead, a place where an ordinary person would be unable to hide their bewilderment and fear, Dale was neither afraid nor flustered.
Instead, he felt a sense of liberation, as if his body could fly.
He didn't need to be a mere 3rd-Circle magician, nor did he need to present himself as the greatest genius in the Empire or the prodigy of a ducal house.
He could simply show his true self, as he was, without being conscious of others’ gazes.
With his ‘Shadow Cloak’ fluttering wildly behind him, Dale opened his mouth.
“Shadow Bullet.”
This was not the crystal of cold he had shown before.
It was a bullet made from the Shadow Cloak, from the malicious darkness squirming at his feet.
And it did not stop at a single shot. Following the fluttering hem of his cloak, he meticulously crafted shadow blades into the shape of bullets and flicked his fingers. As if pulling the trigger of a heavy machine gun, a barrage of shadowy bullets rained down.
The armor, forged with the divine magic of priests, was battered and shattered into a honeycomb of pieces. The pale flesh, seemingly dried with formalin, was no exception. The black bullets burrowed into the Mummy Knight’s body and began to eat away at its insides like insects.
Literally becoming ‘living bullets of darkness.’
It was a magic filled with a malice unlike anything he had shown before.
Leaving the feebly fallen Mummy Knight behind, Dale continued onward. To obtain the true treasure he desired in this veritable labyrinth of hell.
***
Just because a book holds so-called ‘dangerous ideas’ doesn't mean it will directly harm or devour a person.
But a ‘Grimoire’ is different.
Magic is the power to turn ideas into reality, and just as an author's ideas are embedded in a book, a grimoire is ultimately a book imbued with a magician's ideas.
‘Forbidden Grimoires’ are those among them filled with ‘extremely malicious and dangerous ideas.’
That was precisely why this place was called the Library of Hell.
A different world, twisted by powerful malice and profane ideas.
*‘Finding my way properly in a place like this is next to impossible.’*
But what he had to do was all too clear.
He condensed his cold magic to crystallize a blade of ice and slashed it across his own palm.
*Drip.*
A drop of blood fell from the wound.
“I, Dale of Sachsen.”
The blood of a kinsman who inherited the darkness of House Sachsen.
“A rightful heir of the clan that inherits the blood of the Immortal Duke, I declare here.”
*Drip, drip.*
“...O, Black Goat of the Forest, with your thousand young.”
*Drip, drip, drip.*
“Fulfill the contract you made with the clan of darkness, and I command you to reveal yourself before me.”
And by the time a pool of blood began to form at Dale’s feet.
「Blood, it’s blood! Blood with very powerful magic!」
「Fresh magician’s blood!」
「It desires a contract with us!」
「Come here, child! I will give you power!」
From all around, whispers like auditory hallucinations began to be heard.
Here, where the boundary between reality and thought was blurred, the thoughts of the grimoires were drawn to Dale’s temptation. Like a school of piranhas that had smelled blood in the water.
It was at that moment.
「Move! That child is my contractor!」
The whispers of the books ceased, and a powerful malice, enough to send shivers down his spine, descended upon him.
「I can feel it, that hatred and killing intent! It’s the smell of slaughter!」
And the surrounding scenery transformed.
The ‘world of ideas’ dwelling within the grimoire unfolded before Dale.
The world within the book.
Corpses scattered everywhere, severed arms and legs, spilled entrails. A landscape of slaughter stretching endlessly to the horizon. And from within a pile of bodies, the grimoire’s avatar revealed itself.
— I will slaughter all of your enemies.
It was an executioner holding a blood-red beheading axe.
— I will hold a festival with the corpses and seas of blood of those who stand in your way.
From this scene, there was only one grimoire that could be inferred.
*‘The Book of Massacre.’*
The blood grimoire containing the mental world and dangerous ideas of the infamous blood mage, Dushane. The secrets of a heinous blood magic that held the essence of mass slaughter. Its power and value would be beyond words.
*‘I can only take one grimoire.’*
Despite that, Dale slowly shook his head.
“You are not the one I am looking for.”
And he answered the grimoire, *The Book of Massacre*.
“Stand down.”
— You dare to refuse me?
Dale nodded again, and the Book of Massacre… the grimoire’s avatar, brandished its blood-red axe menacingly. For Dale’s refusal could only mean one thing.
— And you think you can leave this place alive!
The executioner’s blood-red axe glinted with a chilling edge.
“I don’t see why not.”
Dale nodded, unfazed. With the endless landscape of slaughter behind him, he fused the chilling cold with refined dark magic.
The blood-red world held by the grimoire, *The Book of Massacre*. Yet, it was a truly mundane world that failed to evoke even a flicker of emotion in Dale.
Not when compared to the memory of that white, dark winter’s night.