Chapter 178: You Smell Food

The next place he checked was the training room, which turned out to be impressive, nearly forty feet square as Valerius had said, the walls scarred with the marks of past practice.

Also, there was something about the space that did not feel normal, and Elias did not think this was his imagination; it would seem that this training space may hold some hidden secrets.

There were dents in the stone where weapons had struck, burn marks from techniques that involved flame, and deep scratches along the floor where someone had dragged heavy armor.

Elias felt something almost like anticipation at the sight of it. His previous rooms at the bottom of the Asylum may have been his home for a while, but the issue of space was becoming an issue.

He would need to be practicing and familiarizing himself with his abilities and with his present strength; a slight mistake on his part would collapse the entire room.

The space of this training area seemed to be especially solid, as if he could go all out and not even damage the walls.

The armory was smaller, a single room lined with racks and stands. Most of the weapons were sized for someone larger than him. The Second Blade must have been truly massive, but there were smaller pieces mixed in, daggers, throwing knives, and a short sword that would fit his hand perfectly.

He made a mental note to return here later to restock the armory. Due to his talent, he would be adding several full-body armors to it. Unlike most Siphons, he did not need weapons, but armor was something that he would be pursuing, as he hoped to acquire several sets or a single impressive piece that would take him far.

Leaving the armory, he checked the library, which was modest, but the shelves were full. Elias ran his fingers along the spines, reading titles. Histories. Tactical treatises. Biographies of old warriors. Nothing on Lumina Vein Arts or cultivation, those were probably kept elsewhere, but enough to occupy him for months.

He only needed to notify that he was through with reading these, and new books would be stocked up.

The Storage rooms were empty, and he passed them to a small dining room with a table that seated eight. There was also a sitting room with comfortable chairs and a fireplace.

Beside it was a room that seemed designed for receiving guests, with finer furnishings and a larger communication array.

Then several large empty rooms with specific outlets that he knew could be connected to devices he needed for his Alchemistry practices, or if he pursued the other Immortal Knowledge.

These empty rooms may be one of the most important areas for Elias, as he could finally have a massive space for his personal experiments without fearing that he would collapse his small house.

Elias planned to pursue more than one avenue of Immortal knowledge in secret, and having more space for this would be an advantage to him in the long run, saving him the money and the extended process of acquiring a bigger house in the city.

With these thoughts in mind, he finally reached the meditation chamber.

It was at the end of the longest corridor, set apart from the other rooms. The door was plain wood, unadorned, and when Elias opened it, he found himself in a space that was almost aggressively simple.

There was only a single cushion on the floor, and what looked like a small altar with a single candle. Nothing else. The walls were bare stone, their surface deliberately rough, as if to deny any distraction. The only light came from a small Ember orb set into the ceiling, its glow dim and steady.

Elias stood in the doorway for a long moment, feeling the weight of the room’s purpose. Two centuries of disuse, and yet the space still felt… sacred. As if the presences of other Siphons lingered here, waiting for someone worthy to join them.

He did not enter this room because Elias needed more understanding of what it could truly do to the mind, and that exploration would be for another time.

Instead, he closed the door and continued his exploration, cataloging each room, each feature, each possibility, seeing potential in every emptiness. By the time he returned to the main living quarters, he had walked every corridor, opened every door, and memorized every detail.

Walking back to the bedroom and towards the writing desk, he set the wooden box upon it and placed the money pouch beside the desk. Elias stood for a moment looking out at the city. Somewhere down there, the bodies of four guards were arranged to tell a story, and in this space that was now his, Elias felt something he had not felt in days.

Peace.

It would not last. He knew that. Dawn would come, and training would begin, and the weight of his purpose would settle back onto his shoulders. But for this moment, standing in a warm room with a real bed behind him and a city of lights below him, Elias allowed himself to simply… be.

Tomorrow, he would become something more, as for tonight, he was a boy who did not just become a man, but also an Ascendant Candidate, and he was trying to remember what it felt like to belong somewhere.

Elias placed the crystalline key on the desk beside Chen’s box, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he slept without dreaming.

㉫

Elias woke to the smell of food. However, this smell was not distant as if someone was cooking elsewhere in the Asylum; he had grown accustomed to that over the years, Orwin’s kitchen on the lower floors sending up occasional aromas that teased at the edge of his senses.

This was different; this was close… too close, in fact, this was here.

His eyes opened before his mind fully processed the implication, his body responding to the unfamiliar stimulus with hunter’s instinct. The bed was soft beneath him, far softer than his old cot, and for a disorienting moment, he did not recognize his surroundings. Then memory returned in a rush; he was on the ninth floor, and these were his new quarters, and in front of him was the crystal key for his door, and yet someone had found their way into the ninth floor, and they were in the kitchen?

Once again, he was surprised and annoyed at how deeply he was sleeping; it was almost unnatural, as he never needed this much sleep as a mortal. Was his new body truly straining something inside him that his Status Screen could not quantify, or was this the result of having three active legacies inside of him?

The smell of sizzling meat and something warm and spiced continued to drift through the closed door of the bedroom, accompanied by the soft clink of metal on stone, the sounds of someone moving about a kitchen with purpose.

Elias rose without sound, his bare feet finding the cold stone floor. He did not reach for his swarm; it may be one of his teachers, but he extended his Perception outward, feeling for the presence in the next room.

He was surprised at what he saw; it was one person with a small figure, clearly female. She was moving with the careful efficiency of someone accustomed to kitchen work. Her heartbeat was steady, calm, and there was no fear or tension in her muscles, and Elias concluded that she was not hiding, nor was she trying to be quiet. She was simply… cooking.

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