When I found the strange book inside the bedroom on the 40th floor, I noticed that the second half of it had all of its pages completely black.
Still, thanks to the light mote next to illuminating the pages, I was able to notice that the last page had words engraved in it, almost as if they had used a needle instead of a pen to write it.
I only noticed it because the light reflected on the ink’s texture, allowing to catch a glimpse of it before using my hands to feel the grooves of the letters.
’A gift from Alejandro...’
"Was this, like, the first ever book in this world or sothing...?" I pondered to myself.
When I t up with the rest of my companions, I showed them the book, and lina showed us another set of scrolls she had found in another room.
The scrolls ntioned that the people living on the 40th floor were the rulers of the previous cities we had seen, except for the City of Eternal Night, which apparently was like its own small country.
From what we understood, half of the population on those floors were evacuated when the demons took over G’Henna’s castle, while the other half stayed to fight as soldiers, which made wonder if the reason they obscured half of the book was to hide the nas of all the escapees.
Surprisingly, there were no devils on that floor, so we decided to stay there and rest, as we needed to save up our energy for the higher levels. Even though it was still early in the evening, we had a long day.
Still, knowing that we weren’t in a safe area protected from devils, Vespera stayed awake the entire night to keep watch of our group.
I ended up sleeping next to lina on top of a mat, where we both sat against a wall while she leaned her head on my shoulder. We would’ve gotten a more comfortable spot, but we needed to be prepared in case anything happened.
By the ti the sun started to rise outside G’Henna’s castle, I felt sothing weighing down my right shoulder that made slowly open my eyes and turn my head.
Ovi, the baby dragon that had been riding my shoulder since the beginning, had suddenly increased by three tis his size.
"Hmm?" I humd, rubbing my eyes with slight disbelief, thinking that my eyes were playing tricks on after waking up.
Nonetheless, after a few more seconds, I realized his size change was real, prompting to stand up with both excitent and curiosity.
Ovi was the size of my palm when we entered G’Henna’s castle, which was the reason he was able to hide under my poncho. However, he was now the size of my arm, and while he didn’t feel too heavy when sitting on my shoulder, it was still very different from before.
The rest of my group started to wake up shortly after, and Vespera ntioned that she had seen Ovi’s growth in the middle of the night.
She explained that the baby dragon crawled out of my shoulder as his body produced an orange glow, and after getting off my shoulder, the glow beca brighter and flashed Vespera for a brief second.
When she focused her gaze on the baby dragon once again, he had already grown to this size.
"I didn’t know dragons grew up this quick..." I muttered, and Arashi interjected, explaining that it should have taken at least ten more years for Ovi to grow that much.
"It seems like my brother transferred quite a lot of his own vitality into this child..." Arashi comnted, and at that mont, I rembered how Fuego would transfer vast amounts of MP into the egg.
I thought he was doing that to make sure that the baby ca out strong. I an, I didn’t know how dragons took care of their children, so I assud that’s what he was doing.
"With all that extra energy, my brother was able to make this child bypass the first stage of a dragon’s growth..." Arashi said, placing a hand on her chin and inspecting the baby dragon from up close.
"He probably won’t skip to the next stage—that could take at least thirty more years, though he still has a lot of extra MP dwelling within him..." she continued.
’Why did Fuego want his child to skip an entire growth phase? Did he know that he was going to die back then...?’ I pondered, glancing to my right shoulder, where Ovi was happily sitting down.
"You are gonna need to be more careful from now on. I can’t hide you under my clothes anymore," I said to the baby dragon, who locked eyes with as if acknowledging my words.
lina approached Ovi and started petting his head as we prepared to keep moving up the tower. After sending a voice ssage to the other teams to check up on them, we made our way to the staircase.
For so reason, the climb to the 41st floor felt much longer than the previous floors—not counting the ones we skipped by using the elevator, of course.
I was sure that we had gone up at least seven hundred steps, but there was no sign of the stairs’ end in sight.
When we finally arrived on the 41st floor after twenty minutes of running up the stairs, we were pretty shocked at the room’s layout.
Every floor in the tower was the size of a small town, except for a few select ones that seed much smaller but also had other functions to them, like the hell-ring fighting pit.
However, this room was as big as the previous large floors we had seen, but the big difference was that the 41st floor was wholly empty.
The floor and the walls were covered in white marble, and there were pillars connecting the ground and the ceiling that seed to stretch all the way to the other end of the room.
"Ugh, I’m not a fan of these liminal spaces..." lina comnted, and honestly, I shared the sa opinion.
If I stood looking to one side of the room and then turned around to look behind , the sight was eerily the exact sa thing, so there was no way to tell which side was which.
"We should leave so breadcrumbs... Just in case we lose our sense of direction later on," I said to my group.
Using fire magic to light up my right index and middle finger, I was able to write an arrow pointing forward on the white marble. That way, if any of us got lost, all we needed to do was follow the arrow’s direction.
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