The Garden of the Abyss (3)
"No windows, and not even a handle."
When we finally arrived at the mansion's main entrance, we found no door handle in sight. Instead, right in the center of the double doors, a single keyhole was set into the wood.
"Looks like it's designed so you can't enter without finding the key first."
It was clearly a rule enforced by the gate itself. In cases like this, even hacking away at the mansion with a pickaxe would barely leave a scratch. The mystical laws governing a gate could never be overcome by brute physical force alone.
"Yeah. There isn't any handle on the inside either," I noted.
If there had been an inner handle, I could have used Leap to slip past the threshold and open it from the other side. But at this point, it hardly mattered. We had the Caduceus Key.
"Will that thing really open anything?" Uncle asked.
"It's an S-rank item. It should at least be able to do that much."
"Fair point. Item ranks never lie." Uncle chuckled softly, eyeing the towering facade of the estate. "I can guess what the gate originally intended. A tight time limit, survival-type mission. It wanted us to fight our way through, craft the key, and break inside."
"Right. The interior is either a safe zone, or it hides a secret room."
"Considering it's an alchemist's mansion, probably the latter, wouldn't you say?"
"We'll find out once we step inside."
Unexpectedly, this place might actually serve as a safe sanctuary. The design might have meant for hunters to solve the puzzle outside to escape the surrounding danger. My suspicion stemmed from Chunbae.
Will the alchemist show up too? How strong is he?
—I cannot say with certainty, Chunbae replied through our mental link. Yet the alchemist I once knew will assuredly not appear. At your current level of prowess, Lord Han Hye, he is an adversary far beyond your ability to confront. Even this garden has had its difficulty calibrated to a significant extent.
He was really that formidable?
—He was a man of infamous cruelty and power. While the probability of his manifestation remains slim, should he appear, his strength will have been reduced to match this gate's recommended tier.
Setting aside speculation for now, I slid the Caduceus Key into the keyhole.
"Oh?"
The key had visibly differed in size from the slot, yet the moment its tip touched the opening, it shifted and reshaped itself until it slid into place with a satisfying, snug click.
Clack—
The heavy lock disengaged effortlessly, and the doors swung inward. Normally, picking locks like this was the domain of rogues.
"Guess our guild won't ever need a rogue," Uncle remarked with a grin.
"Huh? A loot-ninja?" Minjae blurted out, his eyes widening in shock as if he had misheard.
"A rogue, a rogue, you little punk! Don't go spouting derogatory gamer slurs like that. Now you're the one acting suspicious. People only hear what they're already thinking, you know..."
"Wait, me? No way! Come on, Uncle, mages aren't exactly a popular class either!"
"Hmm. Very suspicious indeed."
"Focus, both of you. We're going in."
With an unexplored mansion waiting before us, I stepped in to cut short their bickering. Scanning the interior, my spatial awareness didn't pick up any immediate threats. The first thing that caught our eyes was a massive stone structure erected in the very center of the grand foyer. Flanking it on either side were staircases leading up to the second floor, alongside wide hallways stretching into the wings of the estate.
Inevitably, our attention gravitated toward the central stone dais.
"Doesn't that look a lot like the fountain outside?" Uncle asked.
"It does."
Surrounding the circular platform in the center stood six stone pillars arranged in a hexagram, perfectly level with the dais. Unlike the outdoor fountain, there were no engraved runes or levers to provide any obvious clues.
"It doesn't look like a crafting station."
"You're right. There's a key sealed inside that central pedestal."
Faint though it was, my spatial perception detected a key nestled deep within the stone. A groove matching the exact contours of a key had been carved into the core, sealed tight beneath a flush stone lid.
"Can't you just yank it out with your Subspace?" Uncle asked.
"The gap is far too tight. Opening a subspace rift requires at least a little bit of physical clearance."
If it were resting on the other side of a wall, I could link two dimensional folds like a portal and retrieve it without issue. But against a solid block of stone encasing an object with zero clearance, that trick didn't work. Lee Shinhee, who had been quietly examining the surroundings, spoke up.
"Could it be a mechanism where we have to search the mansion for contraptions to unlock it?"
"Like the fountain puzzle outside?" I asked.
"Yes. Six pillars, six devices—the count matches. Considering this is a survival-type gate with a short time limit, there are almost certainly annoying monsters guarding the switches scattered through the rooms."
Her assessment was spot-on.
"Should we just smash it?" Uncle asked, raising his spear.
"It probably won't break. Gate mechanics rarely give way to brute force."
Uncle shook his head in exasperation. "What a ridiculously convoluted setup."
"Seriously."
A five-hour limit on a survival mission, with plant monsters outside that continuously regenerated over time. If a raid team had to fend off endless waves of regenerating creatures while piecing together every puzzle in the mansion just to claim the hidden piece, the difficulty would be brutal. It was an exceptionally demanding dungeon design.
"Not that it matters to us," I added with a smirk.
Searching through hostile flora for clues, forging a key at the fountain, and then unlocking the stone dais to claim another key—all of that tedious busywork could be bypassed in a single stroke with the Caduceus Key.
"Right, we've got that master key of yours!"
"Exactly. We got lucky."
To be honest, when I first obtained the key, I had been thrilled that my Subspace could produce an S-rank item, yet I had also wondered when I would ever actually use it. A skeleton key is useless without a lock. Besides, given the nature of my abilities, I could already bypass most mundane barriers anyway.
"Without that key, we might not have cleared this place at all," Uncle muttered.
"No kidding," Minjae agreed. Neither of them was particularly fond of mental gymnastics.
"Tsk, wipe that look off your face, kid. Why're you looking at us like you're any different? You're in the same boat as us brawn-over-brains guys."
"Don't try to lump me in with you, Uncle. Birds of a feather flock together, but I'm an intellectual."
These two are uncanny. Just as I was secretly congratulating myself on being the brains of the operation, Uncle saw right through me.
"Huh? Me?"
"Who else would I be talking about?"
No, really, I'm genuinely smart! I shot a wronged, pleading look toward Lee Shinhee, but she politely looked away, her shoulders trembling as she fought back a laugh. I'm going to have to reestablish guild discipline one of these days.
"Let's drop the banter for now," I cleared my throat. "Shall we track down where the actual keyhole is?"
"Sounds good!"
"Right, hidden piece first!"
"Hey, those suits of armor over there... don't they look like living armors?"
"Most likely, yes."
"They're pretty rare monsters, regardless of how strong they are. But why aren't they moving?"
"They probably activate when someone touches the mechanism for the key, or when someone steps within aggro range."
Chatting quietly, we made our way straight up to the third floor. While it was always possible that the prize lay hidden on the first floor right under our noses, starting from the middle was far more efficient. By now, the range of my spatial awareness extended roughly forty meters. Standing on the third floor, my senses could easily encompass the entire structure.
"Alright, that's it. The fifth floor is the roof, and I can sense all the way to the tip of the spire."
"And the hidden piece? Is it in the spire?"
"Not there. Surprisingly, it's completely empty. Give me a second."
Normally, I avoided processing every single scrap of information provided by my spatial sense because it drained mental stamina too quickly. It had been overwhelming at first, but with steady training, I had adapted. It was like sight: even when your eyes take in an entire landscape, your mind only registers the details of what you choose to focus on.
"Hmm."
Right now, it was time to concentrate fully. I didn't need to dissect every single corner of the estate. The extreme edges of the outer wings were slightly beyond my reach, but we could check those simply by walking down the halls later. Closing my eyes, I delved deeply into the space within my perimeter.
There are creatures prowling inside several rooms... grotesque shapes. Chimeras, maybe?
On the second floor, I detected a ornate treasure chest, but a bizarre writhing mass inside betrayed it as a mimic. True to its nature as an alchemist's workshop, the manor was crawling with rare, bizarre monsters just as Uncle had guessed. In the rooms containing monsters across the first, second, and third floors, I also picked up levers mounted on the walls—undoubtedly linked to the mechanism on the ground floor. Occasionally, my senses brushed against hollow hidden compartments, but every single one of them was rigged with lethal traps.
Wait... what's this?
As my awareness swept upward floor by floor, a distinct anomaly caught my attention near the staircase on the fourth floor. It came from a framed painting hanging on the wall. Within the wooden frame, there was a minute spatial void—a tiny hollow precisely the size and shape of a keyhole.
"I think I found it."
"Already?"
Having watched me stand in dead silence with my eyes closed, the party widened their eyes in surprise.
"There are monsters and levers inside the rooms. Chimeras, mimics... they look significantly stronger than the flora outside."
"Makes sense since we're deeper inside the gate," Uncle agreed.
"We can deal with them if needed, but let's secure the hidden piece first. It's right above us on the fourth floor."
"Alright, lead the way!"
Thrilled by the news of an easy hidden piece, Uncle grinned from ear to ear and took the lead up the stairs. Reaching the fourth-floor landing, he planted his feet, widened his eyes, and began craning his neck left and right.
"Which way from here?"
Minjae raised a hand eagerly. "Uncle, want to make a bet? I'm calling left."
"Hey, I was going to pick left!"
"Then I'll take right."
"Coffee bet once we clear the gate?"
"Deal!"
The two of them bantered excitedly while Lee Shinhee watched with an amused, exasperated half-smile, looking like an older sister indulging her mischievous younger brothers.
"Minjae, look at Hye," Uncle chuckled. "He's making that smug 'I'm a genius' face again."
"Hyung, you can't be serious, right? It's either left or right—there aren't any other hallways!"
Tsk, tsk. Fools who know nothing.
The time had come to teach these spacially challenged mortals the sheer gap in our abilities.
"You're both wrong."
"What?"
"Come on, the only paths are left and right! There's literally a dead-end wall ahead of us!"
"Right in front of you."
At my words, Uncle and Minjae snapped their heads forward. Exactly as they said, the hallway only split to the left and right; directly ahead stood a solid stone wall. But hung against that wall was an elaborate painting.
"Don't tell me... it's in this painting?"
"Impressive... wait, no, doesn't this have nothing to do with being smart? That's just your spatial cheat skill!"
"Quiet down, kid. Just look at the canvas."
The oil painting depicted winged angels stirring a cauldron filled with a radiant golden liquid using long ladles. It seemed a fitting artistic tribute to an alchemist's grand obsession. Uncle squinted, pressing his face close to the canvas.
"I don't see a damn thing."
"Right here."
I pointed toward the ladle held by the angel on the left. Blended seamlessly into the paint's texture was an imperceptible keyhole, masked beneath a layer of hardened, tinted varnish. Even an expert at hidden-object games would have had to scrutinize the canvas for hours to spot it.
"Whoa... they hid it like this? That's utterly insane!"
"Seriously. Even if someone found the key, they never would've discovered this without Hye-hyung."
Minjae was entirely right. What good would it do to scour the entire mansion and obtain the key through normal means? No one in their right mind would inspect every single painting with a magnifying glass under the pressure of a ticking clock. In a sprawling estate like this, reaching this spot in time would have been near impossible.
Yet one universal truth of dungeons held firm: the harder a secret was to uncover, the greater the reward.
"That just means whatever's inside is worth the trouble."
I slid the Caduceus Key into the concealed slot. Just as before, the metal shifted and flowed, molding itself seamlessly to the intricate tumblers. Anticipation surged within me.
Where is the hidden compartment actually going to appear?
What puzzled me was that there was no secret passageway or hollow space behind the painting. If a hidden door existed in the wall, my senses would have detected it instantly. Would it trigger an opening somewhere else in the manor?
Click—
The moment I turned the key, the painting suddenly came alive.
"Whoa!"
"Eek!"
The party leaped back half a step in shock. Even I felt my breath hitch. The angels hadn't physically burst out of the frame into the hallway; rather, the figures within the canvas had begun to move with fluid, lifelike grace.
"What in the world...?"
Beneath the painted cauldron, magical flames flared to life, causing the golden fluid to bubble and churn. The painted angels stirred the mixture vigorously. Then, as a brilliant flash of light erupted from the cauldron, the angels scooped the liquid into a delicate glass vial and extended their hands outward toward us.
In that exact moment, the glass vial containing the shimmering golden liquid phased clean through the canvas and breached reality.
"Huh?"
Instinctively, I reached out and caught the vial. The instant my fingers closed around the cool glass, the painting lost its vitality and froze once more into an ordinary, static artwork—identical to how it had looked before, save for the fact that the cauldron within the frame was now empty.
And resting quietly in the palm of my hand...
Once again, an S-rank treasure rested in my grasp.