Chapter 210: Inside the mouth
Lady Slave took her time replying. "Where else would it lead? Into that room."
Vacuse tightened the whip. "What is in that room except for the magical instrument that would lift that seal? That you were not even sure was there?"
She shrugged. "What else would be there? What else would a necromancer hide so deeply and with such advanced magic? It is a body!"
Vacuse narrowed his eyes. "Oh? Hide so deeply. Is it not quite easy for you to open it? All you have done was draw a circle and kill some slaves. I do not think the Lord of Eboncrypt was trying to hide anything that hard."
She sneered. "What do you know? This door right here is one of the crafts created personally by Cold Barren. It was given as a gift to Lord Pale who put the lord of Eboncrypt in charge of Eboncrypt."
Some things instantly became clear.
Eboncrypt fights for Lord Pale while Umbracrypt must be for Lord Shroud. Whatever is in that door must be related to the war.
"It took years to build a spell to counter it and a war to make the Lord of Eboncrypt leave his seat. So it is not in any way easy."
With that she stepped into the circle and raised her hand. She began to whisper a spell, slow at first but faster the more she spoke until it turned into a chant.
The two fingers trembled, then rose into the air, claws pointed at the door.
The door shuddered and sighed. Then slowly it opened.
Gleaming white teeth the size of a spear, a thick tongue and the smell of mold and rot bellowed out.
Lady Slave was sweating but her whole body radiated satisfaction. She looked back at Vacuse, shrugged, and ran into the open mouth of the door, yanking the whip, but Vacuse was just right behind her, cursing her.
They stepped on the thick blackened tongue that felt spongy and slick, but a moment later they forgot all about that as they immediately appeared in a room.
The room they found themselves in had an air of strangeness.
It reminded Vacuse of when Whispered Blade used the Toll of Severance. There was just that sense that they had been cut off from the world.
But luckily, a portal spun from where they had come from, the same size as the mouth outside.
The room was small and...
Vacuse frowned. "Isn’t this supposed to be a room made by Cold Barren? Why does it look so... unrefined?"
The room was dusty.
Old crumbled papers littered the floor and the tables were filled with half opened books. Cobwebs covered everything else, including the coffin that was thrown to the side as if it were an afterthought.
"This... a a Necromancer’s room?" Vacuse asked.
But Lady Slave did not answer.
She jumped from one end of the small room to the other, looking through the shelves and the crumbled papers on the ground, mumbling to herself.
Vacuse shook his head subtly. ’...Magus should be called scholars, and maybe that is why they are so bad at fighting...’
But Vacuse did not let such a thought sink into his mind, as that would mean underestimating his enemies. The Magus he had met were weak, but then again, it was also they who built the dream-eating monster above.
He yanked the whip, tightening the rope on her neck. "You do not forget, do you? Look for what is supposed to unseal us!"
She gritted her teeth and shot him a glare. "All of you non-Magus are like animals that do not know the worth of books!"
"All right, all right, I will look for it! You do not have to twist my neck off!"
And it did not take her long to find it; in fact it was just inside one of the drawers of the table.
What she brought out was like a small coin etched with different symbols that glowed softly on the golden coin.
Vacuse looked at it with suspicion. "What in the hell is this thing? How is it supposed to work?"
She gave him a curious look. "Indeed, it was made with the power of hell."
Vacuse blinked. "What?"
"Do you not know anything about magic? This coin is made with the power of hell using contracts and borrowing magic. Well, technically it was made with the gate of hell."
Vacuse sighed.
He knew things like hell existed. But it was just the type of magic that was far from the Soulbearers that he did not have any reason to learn about.
In fact, Soulbearers deal more with the body than magic. But still, he frowned at his own ignorance about many things. "How are we supposed to use it?"
Lady Slave glared again. "The door of hell is absolute in that it can shut out anything and open anything. This coin, one side to shut out anything and the other to open it. Absolutely."
Vacuse frowned. "How do we use it?"
She shook her head. "Normally, this is charged with the power of the owner before it can be used. But fortunately for us, with the war ongoing, the Lord of Eboncrypt has charged all of them temporarily.
"What you need is just to drip it with a single drop of blood."
Vacuse walked toward her wearily and took the coin from her. Although he could feel a sense of power from it, he did not find anything strange about it.
But did he even know what he should look for?
And this is where Vacuse’s dilemma lay.
He did not trust a single word from her and at the same time, he did not want her to go first.
If she unsealed herself before him, she would definitely turn on him, but if he followed her instructions, what would happen? It might be a trap.
Vacuse grinned. "Let us go outside and test it on one of the workers."
Lady Slave smiled back. "None of the workers are sealed."
"Then... we will simply return to the slave pit to test it out."
Lady Slave shook her head. "If you take that coin out, it is going to link with the others of its kind outside and draw attention to you. Besides, we really cannot get out of here."