Luge ultimately agreed to the succubus lady's proposal, as his instincts told him that even if the act fell apart, he was unlikely to be the one losing his life. Even so, he obtained a rough map of the castle, drawn by the one-and-only succubus scholar. He intended to make a few attempts of his own.
Compared to the succubus lady, he would likely enjoy much greater latitude to move around.
Naturally, that still needed to be tested.
The beautiful succubus scholar could not stay in the young master's quarters indefinitely, and the old butler appeared at just the right moment to escort her away.
Luge said a prayer for her, hoping that the day's disruptions would allow her to return to her own room tonight rather than remain trapped in that classroom. In the succubus's words, Luge's arrival was like casting a stone into a lake, prodding the dust-shrouded castle back onto its crippled legs.
Before she left, he also asked about the powerful City Lord she had mentioned.
The succubus only knew that the City Lord had entrusted the castle and the young master to Butler Izel. By all rights, the City Lord was supposed to arrive shortly after they entered the Abyss; the final order Izel received was to remain in place upon arrival and await him.
The castle's descent into the Abyss had been sudden, leaving many retainers and servants behind outside. Once in the Abyss, most of the servants fell bedridden with illness, so Butler Izel carried out the City Lord's commission by sealing the castle, waiting solely for their master's arrival. Borne by trust and reverence for the City Lord, the occupants remained hopeful—even this succubus, who had followed him for merely two years. Yet that wait had stretched for over three hundred years.
During her two years in the castle, the succubus scholar had rarely interacted with Butler Izel.
Ever since the castle was sealed, however, she had found him increasingly unhinged. Then, on a certain day after the lockdown, the old butler suddenly notified her to prepare for lessons—leading to the scene where she and Luge first met. In those initial days, servants had still brought her delicious meals, while Izel merely told her to wait there for the young master. She spent day after day simmering in anger, but gradually, the servants stopped coming. Eventually, she learned from a servant she knew well that many of them had died.
The old butler waited for a City Lord who seemed destined never to arrive, while she remained trapped in the classroom, waiting for a young master who seemed destined never to appear.
Recalling and untangling these facts, Luge suddenly felt small, and felt that they were terribly insignificant too. Who knew how many quiet corners in this world harbored such bizarre events? To those trapped within them, fate might be shifting with the violent intensity of an epic saga, yet it remained entirely noiseless—for they were simply too small, and the world could not hear their voices.
He unrolled the map drawn by the succubus. In his hand was an exquisite hardwood pen, which possessed a natural core capable of absorbing ink for writing.
When handing it to him, the succubus had mentioned that it was a specialty of their planar world. In front of the original castle had been a garden lined on both sides with these dwarf trees. On the side near the study and library, one only had to open a window to snap off a slender twig, and those willing to take the trouble could even hire a craftsman to engrave beautiful patterns into the wood.
He studied the map, hardwood pen in one hand, while using the other to scratch at the fine hairs freshly sprouting behind his head.
Had he not cast Fetid Skin beforehand, he would truly have thought someone was standing behind him, teasingly fiddling with those few hairs on the back of his head.
Suddenly, an intense itch struck, and he reflexively reached up with both hands to scratch it.
The hardwood pen tumbled down, inadvertently tracing a circle across the map.
He blinked, but rather than inspecting the map closely, he whipped his head around. Behind him was utter emptiness, devoid of any anomaly; in the uncleaned areas, the dust showed no strange disturbances.
Yet he knew something was there, or at least had been a moment ago. The instant the hardwood pen fell, that strange itch vanished.
"Are you still here?" he ventured, extending his mental power to sense his surroundings.
With Fetid Skin active, he could roughly deduce that the other party harbored no malice, and exerting any influence over him must have cost them great effort.
He took a deep breath and looked down at the map.
The circle drawn by the falling pen happened to land squarely around a place he had already intended to visit—the castle's library.
When giving a brief overview of the map, the succubus had mentioned that nobles in their planar world were obsessed with constructing these inverted castles. The higher one's status, the further down one resided, whereas special-purpose rooms like the library were situated at the surface level—which meant he would have to ascend many floors.
"Do you want me to go there?"
He tried speaking aloud, glancing left and right, but naturally received no response.
Dismissing further idle thoughts, Luge simply engaged in a brief session of meditation to steady his nerves, then lay down to rest.
Knowing an invisible person might share the room proved somewhat hindering to his sleep, but fortunately, Fetid Skin never triggered.
Pillowing his head upon the Black Codex, he lay on the floor.
Since someone else was likely present in the room, it was very probably the young master, so Luge preferred not to touch the bed—not to mention it was unusable anyway without a thorough cleaning.
*I wonder if things went smoothly for Old Gold Tooth,* he thought.
Originally, he had intended to return and check whether Old Gold Tooth, after being injured, would respond just like Big Dumb Hum.
After all, aberrant dragons always possessed peculiar traits. Old Gold Tooth had previously concluded dragonborn kobolds lacked such an ability only because he didn't know the black fruit had been soaked in the peculiar blood of an aberrant dragon. Such regenerative power was immensely useful at lower ranks, especially for beings like dragonborn kobolds whose combat style was crude and straightforward.
His mind drifted aimlessly until, at some unknown point, he drifted off to sleep.
When he woke again, his face was covered in dust; without realizing it, he had rolled beyond the area he had cleared.
From beyond the door came the periodic knocking of the old butler.
"Young Master, breakfast has been prepared. Shall I deliver it to your room?"
Luge accepted the butler's offer at once; he had no desire to go and eat that unrecognizable muck again.
Today was the first day of playing house with two centuries-old elders, and he still needed to confer with the succubus scholar regarding the details cut short yesterday. He also intended to try heading to the library, to see if the old butler would bar his way.
Soon, the old butler returned pushing a dining cart. Bidding Luge to enjoy breakfast in high spirits, he turned and left.
Luge gently lifted the golden dish cover. Sure enough, it was the muck he had anticipated.
He tossed it into a corner, and a slip of paper fluttered out from beneath the cover.
Written upon it in scrawled Abyssal were the words:
"I know you are not him, but I cannot control myself. My mind is muddled; perhaps only once every day, or two or three days... do I regain a brief moment of clarity. Earlier and later events jumble together in my memory. When I saw the sturdy servants collapsing one by one, succumbing to death, I knew that this was the Abyss's curse upon us defectors. Wizard from another realm, I beseech you to grant my plea: take the young master to your world. I believe he might be able to live there. This is the last thing I can do for him...
"Please forgive my disorganized words. Upon waking to lucidity, I only knew that I had to do this, that I must do this, so I could only scrawl it here in haste, praying you would see it. Hearing that wizards are erudite, I chose to write in Abyssal. I am already inextricably bound to this castle—perhaps I have already died. The core power of the castle protects the young master deep within the library, not in the lowest tier of the castle where most nobles store their treasures. Such was the City Lord's wisdom.
"Lord Wizard from another realm, if you have any doubts, you may seek out a succubus whom I have protected. Days ago, I diverted the castle's power to isolate her within the young master's classroom; presumably, she remains there even now. I only hope that during my bouts of madness, I remembered to instruct the servants to look after her.
"From the moment we left our homeland and reached the Abyss, I already guessed that the City Lord would never come."
Chapter 56