Chapter 5

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Chapter 5: Book of Dungeons

Everywhere she looked was pitch black.

Whether going forward or backward, up or down, all she could see was the same sight. It was abnormal to even have light, as the ghost Tasha was possessing was underground in solid earth. It had been hours since she left the hall, and so far, she had gained nothing.

Tasha was adapting well to her situation, but she didn’t think the days of peacefully farming underground would last forever. What lay outside this building? It could be beautiful landscapes or unknown frightening places, she didn’t want to face unknown challenges unprepared. Playing with pets helped relax her, but getting lost in it could be dangerous.

Tasha decided not to let the moles dig further. The slime farm could handle the accumulation of Blue Ore, there was no need to take risks digging into unknown places. During the time she played catch with Ahuang, she realized the ghost’s function: reconnaissance.

Ghosts can fly silently, disappear in the air, and move through various obstacles, making them excellent scouts. Tasha, unable to see beyond the halls and tunnels of the building, can possess a ghost to explore those areas and easily return if needed.

Therefore, Tasha left the safety of the hall and began to explore the unknown area.

Starting from the hall, she circled around clockwise, scanning all nearby areas. Using the majority of souls in the hall as a reference point, Tasha’s movements were precise, like a homing pigeon. However, navigating underground was more challenging than she expected, with uncertainty about what might be above or below in the same plane.

Let’s take it one step at a time.

Tasha decided not to fly vertically upwards, fearing that the ghost would be exposed to light and vanish. She prioritized exploring spaces in the same plane as the hall, hoping to find any surviving parts of the massive city.

Passing through soil felt like passing through a mist, even though the ghost itself was the mist. The soil was unaffected by Tasha, but she could sense the outlines of objects enveloped by the ghost’s body.

She discovered some broken remnants, with most stones shattered beyond recognition, making it hard to differentiate them from natural underground rock. Among them were corroded metal fragments and a few human skeletons in the sand, one of which was unusually small and sturdy, possibly a dwarf. Tasha had no knowledge of determining causes of death from skeletons but knew that these remains were ancient. The scarcity of human remains in such a vast area was peculiar.

Tasha found no written records (or couldn’t recognize any if she did) to speculate about the events that occurred there.

She spent the whole day exploring but found no intact remnants. The buried city either suffered extensive destruction or had been eroded by time, leaving little behind. However, why was the hall preserved so well compared to the unrecognizable parts?

Tasha went back to the hall, and Ahuang raised its head from sleep and twitched its nose at her. Absentmindedly, Tasha patted its head and looked around at her new body after being reborn.

The stone pool was glowing, and the bottom layer of blue now looked like an ocean made of glowing fungi, shimmering with sparkling lights. The ruby floating above it looked much brighter than before, shining like a red lighthouse illuminating the whole hall more brightly than the blue light below.

The most obvious difference between here and the other shattered parts was this stone pool.

Wait, not the stone pool before it was filled, not before the runes were activated, the earliest anomaly came from this ruby. Tasha leaned in to look, the fist-sized ruby was very irregular in shape, neither like it was artificially carved, nor like it naturally formed.

Her gaze followed a particularly flat cut down and saw a huge crack running through the stone pool.

The crack had been there from the start, like an old scar, not affecting the stone pool’s ore collection, so Tasha had always seen it as just another ordinary crack in the hall. Now, thinking about both, maybe the same reason caused damage to both the ruby and the stone pool.

Upon closer inspection, the crack not only went through the stone pool, but also spread on the ground, a shallow trace crossing the entire hall. As if a huge sword had split the gem, the stone pool, and the whole hall.

Impossible, right? Tasha looked up at the ceiling, which was still intact. If a sword had really come down from the sky, the hall would have collapsed long ago.

It’s as if something blocked it for a moment.

This idea was like a seed, once it sprouted in Tasha’s mind, it took root. She felt inexplicably that this was the truth, her intuition kept pointing towards the ruby. Perhaps this magical ruby had blocked a part of the disaster, preserving this relatively intact hall – this idea sounded unscientific, but in this strange place where stone moles ran everywhere, slime could grow ores, and buildings could host wandering ghosts, such a strange conclusion might actually be reasonable.

Wait, if it can really block something…

Tasha flew downward, the ghost passing through the thick ground, sinking deeper and deeper until a light shone in front of her.

Right beneath the hall, there was a space similar in size. Just as Tasha had guessed, there were rooms preserved below the hall.

The room was lined with tall, orderly bookshelves. Were they bookshelves? The shelves were empty, and if this was supposed to be a library, these towering shelves reaching the dome were too high, one would need to fly to reach the books on the top. These enduring bookshelves were made of an unknown material, not wood, not clay, not metal, nor stone. The room was incredibly bright, she looked up and saw a starry sky on the arched ceiling.

Tiny grains of fluorescent sand formed a Milky Way, eye-sized night pearls emitting a soft light. The stars illuminated the entire room like little night lamps, making Tasha think of softly lit cafes, where reading wouldn’t strain the eyes. She was mesmerized by this unexpected beauty, and without realizing, she landed on the ground, her feet planted firmly, her ghostly body not passing through the floor.

Tasha looked down, and the stone floor was carved with countless strange patterns, forming an inexplicable scroll. They were like rare characters in a book that you should know but just can’t read. Tasha furrowed her brow, staring at them for a while, words stuck on her tongue, unable to figure them out. She shook her head, stepping towards the center of the room.

A single bookshelf stood alone in the center of the room, unlike the neatly arranged rectangular bookshelves. It looked more like a podium priests used for placing the Bible during worship. On this podium, there was the only book here.

The book’s pages were open.

Luckily it was open, or else the ghost couldn’t flip the book. Even though the ghost probably can’t read, Tasha thought as she looked at the book, where there was a blank page.

At least when Tasha first saw it, the page was still blank.

A faint light flashed across the pages, the yellowed pages seemed to ripple, suddenly coming to "life". One second ago it looked as old as hundreds of years, but one second later it seemed like it had just been printed, effortlessly shaking off the passage of time. Tasha saw a line of dark writing appear on the page, the ink seeping out from the middle of the page.

"Welcome, my dear friend!"

She almost wanted to step back, but managed to stop herself, realizing that the writing on the book was not in Chinese. The writing reminded her of a burning bonfire, with a chilling beauty, definitely not any writing Tasha recognized, yet she somehow knew what it meant.

"Don’t be afraid," the book said, "You are exploring this dungeon to find me, aren’t you?"

"Dungeon?" Tasha repeated, confused.

The page remained still, perhaps it had no ears. Tasha reached out her hand towards the page, the semi-transparent mist forming the ghostly figure flowed into the page like flowing sand, shaping the ashen-like writing.

"What does it mean?" the writing inquired, as Tasha had hoped.

"Don’t you know?" The next line of words appeared immediately, "Then why are you here?"

Tasha had no idea why she was here, or why the other person thought she had a purpose. She cautiously asked, "Don’t you know?"

"Ah, I see now," the book said, "a lost soul, not belonging here."

Tasha’s hair stood on end, and she released her fingers from the book page.

"You don’t know why you’re here, or where this is?" the words continued, "You don’t even remember what a dungeon is, despite your deep connection that binds you here. Poor thing, you’ve forgotten everything, brought before me by fate but thinking it’s a mere coincidence."

"Who are you?" Tasha asked.

"Me?"

The pages seemed weightless, fluttering gently like flags in a strong wind. They flipped rapidly from the first page to the back, patterns on each page forming a continuous flow. The sight made Tasha close her eyes involuntarily, and when she opened them again, the book had turned to the middle, revealing a vertical yellow eye. Just being stared at by it made Tasha feel goosebumps all over.

"I am the deepest knowledge, opening your eyes to see the truth; I am the crimson key, unlocking that bone door for you." The words on the pages wrote frenziedly, appearing and vanishing, "I am the pass to immortality, the contract of controlling fate, the answer to all your questions, the remedy to all your pain."

In the second part, Tasha heard a voice in her head. It sounded like a mix of roaring and whispering, like many voices coming together. A pale pen appeared in Tasha’s hand, with yellow eyes watching her. Somehow, she felt like the book was smiling at her.

"I am the Book of Dungeons," it said. "Come, write down your name! Then power, authority, wealth, answers… everything will be yours."