Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 50
🕑 Added 2023-05-22 13:09:01 +0000 UTCFelix followed behind Alan into another small room containing just an armor stand in the middle. The armor on this stand seemed to be made of giant leaves shaped into plate armor. The leaves were mostly green but they were tinged slightly orange and yellow, almost like they were dying.
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[D - Special] Verdant Shell
[Regenerative][Blood Bound][Vitality Buff]
This set of plate armor is crafted from a peculiar plant that grows on particularly large beasts. The plant roots itself into the beast and forms a symbiotic relationship with it, providing vitality and protection in exchange for nutrients.
This armor, when equipped, will root itself into your body, connecting itself to you. The armor increases the wielder’s vitality and will scale with it. The higher the wielder’s vitality, the greater the defense the armor provides. The armor will also regenerate itself based on the wearer’s vitality. The wearer is also able to feel through the armor, as if it were a part of their body.
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It roots into your body? What an innocuous name for something so… creepy.
Felix shared the identification with Alan who shook his head in disgust. They thought about doing the same thing with this armor as they had with the last but decided to just risk it. Alan reluctantly left the room after suggesting a few times that Benjamin should do it as he was likely the most resilient of them all. Felix understood where Alan was coming from, given Felix was a caster, but he suspected he was much more resilient than the other’s, especially with his energy cycling. After this was over, he was going to have to teach that skill to them. It was just too useful.
Felix took all the precautions he could with Mana Shields and spells but once again, the armor wasn’t trapped at all. Felix was careful to touch it though as he didn’t want it to root into his body at all. He carried it out and dropped it on the floor, sharing the inspection with the other two.
“Damn. That is creepy, but man would that be useful. No need to put points into endurance if the armor does it for you.” Benjamin said.
“How do you take it off if you need to…” Will asked.
“Maybe it can open up a hatch or something?” Alan shrugged.
Benjamin carefully stowed the armor and Alan finished examining the walls of the workshop, not finding any other hidden rooms. They walked back down the stairs into the room where they first found a hidden door and decided to continue forwards before exploring the larger hidden room, the second one Alan had found. They chose the left path and descended down the hallway, turning to the side and finding the largest room in this vault yet.
It turned out, both the left and right path led into this massive chamber containing what seemed to be a pool around 12 meters across and 6 meters wide. There was a tiled area around the pool but the pool consumed most of the free space in this chamber. There were some hooks and chairs but otherwise, the room was completely empty. Even looking into the water, it seemed clear and didn’t seem to contain any kind of water beast or anything of the like.
“I guess we go back to the other hidden room?” Benjamin shrugged.
“I think you’re right that this guy lived in here.” Will said.
“Yeah, seems like it.” Alan replied.
Together, they walked back into the previous chamber and turned left walking through the previously hidden doorway and ascending another set of stairs into a room that seemed to be positioned directly above the pool. Walking into it, the chamber seemed to have the same girth as the pool room but it was much longer. The room seemed to be a library of some kind with shelves covering all of the walls and forming rows in the middle. There was a fairly large clearing with a couple of armchairs, a couch and a table in the middle, creating what would have once been a cozy reading nook.
Now, the couch and an arm chair were turned over and the table pushed aside to make room for a guillotine. Lying on the floor next to it was a dried out headless corpse, the head lying on the other side. The blood was completely drained but the skin remained in tact, it hadn’t really rotted at all, instead it looked like the body had been mummified or preserved. Still held in the right hand of the corpse, was a dagger. Draped over one of the arm chairs, lay a suit of leather armor that seemed to be made from the hide of a some sort of scaled beast.
“Gross.” Will face contorted with disgust.
“Why isn’t it a skeleton yet?” Benjamin asked.
“D grade skin? Maybe a rare race? Seems like they killed themself though.” Alan said, pointing at the dagger.
“Well, looks like you got your books, eh Felix?” Benjamin smirked.
“Yeah. Mind giving me a minute to go through everything?” Felix asked.
“Course. Want to just identify the armor for us first?” Benjamin asked.
Felix nodded and walked over to the armor picking it up and visually examining it. It was beautifully crafted with layered leathers offering more protection where it was needed while still being flexible. The entire outside of the armor was covered in a layer of scales that felt more like gator scales than snake scales except for the fact that their color shifted as Felix moved the armor.
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[D - Rare] Scales of the Traveling Beast
[Regenerative][Elemental Resistance]
This set of leather armor was crafted from the hide of a notoriously resilient creature. The creature is known to travel across the land, luckily harmless, as nothing seems capable of deterring it. The creature walks through live volcanoes, vast deserts, the depths of the sea and through the frigid arctic. This armor is designed to harness it’s ridiculous resistances.
This armor provides a high resistance to most forms of damage as well as keeping the wearer comfortable no matter the temperature outside.
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He handed it to Benjamin and shared the identification then walked over to the nearest book shelf. Though he didn’t need to take the books with him, it also didn’t cost him anything to do so so Felix brushed his fingers across the edges, stowing every book he touched. Luckily, his Scan Literature skill worked on books in his inventory so he didn’t need to wait for them all to scan immediately. He wasn’t sure exactly how many, but there were thousands and thousands of books in the library in total. He was curious what the hell they were all about but he didn’t want to waste too much time so he decided he would just ask Grim later, once he had grabbed them all.
Unfortunately the shelves were built into the walls so he couldn’t take them with him but he could always make his own shelves to hold all the books. Once he was done, he flew back over to the other three and found them all staring at him incredulously.
“It’s not fair. How is your inventory that big?” Benjamin said.
Felix just shrugged.
“We still need to figure out how to open those metal doors.” Alan said as they walked back into the workshop room.
There was a diary among the books. It says how to open the doors. Want to read it?
Yeah. Did we just get lucky that it was scanned early on?
Sort of. Scanning is much faster in your inventory it seems. Also it was on a shelf pretty close to the corpse.
Interesting, inventories just keep getting more mysterious. How long are the important bits? Can I read it while we walk back over there?
It’s not long, here are the interesting parts.
Stupid Emperor thinking he was the best. I had a good life. I was respected and even revered as a master of natural armors. Then the fucking Emperor comes along and asks me to make him armor out of this great beast he had slain. I tell him the beast was cursed and what does he say, “I know” with a smarmy smirk. The armor is going to kill you I say, and he just laughs at me “I’m the emperor, I got here because I am stronger than all of these people. It’s my job to protect them and I need to push myself to keep doing so. I can handle a simple curse, can you work with it?” Of course I can, that was the wrong thing to say because then he stuck his guards on me to make me do the work. Fuck it, I made the armor. What happens? He equips it and within a day his body rots through and he dies. What an ass. Luckily I made it out. Unfortunately, with all the forces of the new emperor hunting me down I needed to find somewhere to lay low, somewhere that didn’t give a shit about my past. That’s when I found Ky’bel.
I’ve been living here for a few years now and it’s nice enough. The leader, Erolan, has these Devoured walking around doing everything. If you don’t want to work, you don’t have to. They seem harmless but I just can’t. These things are too creepy. Luckily he traded me a couple armors for a pocket space as big as my house and workshop combined back in ???.
People keep trying to bother me, get me to make them armor or something. I don’t care. Just leave me alone. I just want to live out the rest of my days in this pocket space, swimming, reading and sleeping. I still make armors every once in a while but only if I feel particularly inspired. I still can’t get over the stupid Devoured. They’re everywhere now, walking down every street, cutting grass, gardening, working shops. I can’t help thinking the Devoured were once people. Erolan insists they’re constructs. I don’t believe him.
This is it. Erolan is coming for me, I know it. I won’t be turned into one of those stupid Devoured though. I won’t let him. This is the end for me. I had a good life, I was happy. I just wish it had ended differently. Wish I could have read just a few more stories. Hopefully everyone forgets about me. About that stupid cursed armor. I know that won’t happen though. Everyone is gonna remember me as the one who assassinated Emperor ???. That’s not who I was though. I was an armorer. I made armor to protect people. Doesn’t matter anymore. If anyone ever reads this, you can open the hidden doors in the pocket space by…
The last entry went on to describe the exact location of the bricks Alan had found as well as specific roof tiles that needed to be pressed to open the metal doors. Felix walked over to one of the metal doors and used his staff to push the roof tile just as Alan had done with the bricks on the wall with the other hidden rooms. The tile depressed just a few centimeters then Felix pushed the door to the side, as the diary had described. He wasn’t getting enough friction with just his hand though so he used a force spell and the door reluctantly slid open. Using the same procedure he opened the door on the other side as well then turned back to the others.
“Did you know how to open these the whole time?” Benjamin asked.
“What? No. One of the books described how to open it.” Felix replied.
“How did you manage to read them that quickly?” Will asked.
“Skill.” Felix shrugged, “I haven’t read them all. I just have an idea of what’s in them.”
“Damn. That seems both very useful and like a waste of a skill.” Benjamin said.
Felix just shrugged and walked up behind Alan who was inspecting down the right passage from where they had first entered this workshop. Before Felix got past the turn in the hallway though, Alan was walking back with the armor in hand.
“Mind identifying this for me?” Alan handed the armor to Felix as they walked back into the main chamber.
The armor was almost entirely black with just a tinge of deep purple. It looked like plate armor but upon closer inspection, it wasn’t made of metal at all. Instead of a forged and cut appearance, the armor was made of what seemed to be natural lines.
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[D - Special] Chitinous Plate
[Regenerative][Skill: Fly]
This set of plate armor is crafted from the carapace of a large insectoid creature and has been carefully adapted to be used as armor.
This armor is equivalent to D grade Rare level plate armor and gives it’s wearer some of the abilities of the creature it’s made from. When supplied with energy, the wings on the back of this armor can extend outwards and provide flight.
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Felix shared the inspection with Benjamin and handed him the armor then walked up to Alan who was standing outside the next room.
“Might need you for this one.”
“Why’s that?”
“Torch doesn’t seem to give off any light.” Alan said pushing his arm with the torch into the hall to help explain. The further in the torch went, the dimmer it got. Alan stepped into the hall and the light from the torch completely disappeared. Felix summoned his own light and pushed it down the hall but sensed it vanish just a meter or so in. Not only did the light from the spell vanish, but the spell form itself winked out. He resummoned a light and kept it right next to him and then walked in and accompanied it. This time the spell form didn’t fall apart, but the light was still entirely consumed.
The first thing Felix tried was simply increasing the amount of light produced and slowly light appeared in the room. He kept increasing the light well past the point of being blinding in normal circumstances and continued into the chamber. He had to keep increasing the size of the light as he walked, but otherwise it was the same as the other hidden passages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
