Vivi blinked, then read the text again. Shivenar, Ancient City Of Runesmithing.

“No way,” she said. “This can’t be real.”

“Shivenar, huh?” Lucius said. “That could be a good destination. The city is its own country outside the Empire. It’s unlikely that Zand’s bounties make it that far. My old wielder liked the alcohol there.”

“You’ve visited Shivenar?” Vivi gushed.

“Yes?” Lucius said. “It’s a decent city.”

Vivi blinked. “This can’t be the same city. Grandpa always talked about Shivenar. It’s where all of the ancient dwarves crafted their legendary swords. Hank, Eledgar, Qico, they’re all from the Shivell mountains. Shivenar is the city.”

“Shivenar was a legendary city thousands of years ago,” Lucius said. “It has a rich history, and the city is still alive today. But it’s mostly a trade city. Shivenar has great connections between the sixth level and the upper levels of Ingfried’s Empire.”

“It’s not a runesmithing city anymore?” Vivi asked.

“There were a lot of runesmithing shops around, if I recall,” Lucius said. “Runesmithing is a big part of the culture. Runesmithing is popular everywhere these days, not just in Shivenar.”

Vivi stared at the map. From the way Grandpa talked of the ancient city—with awe and jealousy of the fact that he could never visit to show off his swords—Vivi had always thought that the Shivell mountains were deep in the bottom of the world in some unreachable corner.

Recalling Grandpa’s excitement sent a jolt through Vivi’s chest. She bit her lip.

Grandpa may have been dead, but his dream was right there

.

“It’s right underneath us,” Vivi said. “Just a layer of levelstone separates us from the city of runesmiths.”

“We’re far from the city, Vivi. The nearest entrance to the fifth level is there.” Lucius pointed at a city closer to the middle of the map with his paw. The city was circled red. “That’s over half a thousand miles from us. The city might be underneath us, but getting there will take months.”

“It’s right underneath the blight,” Vivi said. “Doesn’t that red circle mean there’s an entrance to the fifth level? There’s one right there.” Vivi pointed at the blight. The red circle was small and located deep into the coarse red zone in the map, but it was certainly closer than the one westward.

Lucius frowned. “That’s inside the blight, Vivi.”

“Well, we have a guidebook,” Vivi said. She summoned the book she’d bought from the innkeeper.

Lucius floated in front of her, whiskers moving slightly. “Listen, Vivi. Surviving in the blight is not just tough. The monsters are crazy. Surges are rampant. Bosses spawn everywhere. Bosses that don’t actually drop all that much loot. There’s poison, there’s death, and there’s almost no food or water. Historically, only lunatics and scientists have visited the blight. It’s one of the worst places to exist.”

Vivi was about to open her mouth but Lucius spoke over her, louder. “And even if we manage to survive there, navigating in the blight is impossible. This map is generated with landscaping magic. Landscaping magic leaves imperfections, which map-makers have spent years fixing and smoothing out. The map of the fifth level is accurate because of the map-makers’ hard work making things accurate by hand. But they did not hand-craft the blight. What you see of the blight here is more like a representation drawn with landscaping spells. And that exit there, its exact location isn’t marked. It’s just somewhere in that direction.”

“So we’d need to search aimlessly,” Vivi said.

“Yes, and pray to whichever god of your choosing that we somehow find the entrance. And mind you, the entrance might not be any wider than a rabbit’s burrow. All the while deadly monsters that don’t drop ether will be chasing us while you sleep.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Vivi leaned back to think. “But we do have a guidebook.”

Lucius frowned.

Vivi sighed. She believed Lucius, of course. If her crazy cat said that the blight was too dangerous and not worth her time, that was probably correct.

But what was even less worth her time was trotting through hundreds upon hundreds of miles of stale gray wastelands only to loop back to the direction she’d come, just a level lower. If she took the long way, she’d have to pass through Ingfried’s Empire. She’d probably be followed the whole way through and hunted all the way to Shivenar.

In comparison, some forest with monsters sounded slightly less awful. Still not great. This wasn’t an adventure Vivi would have liked to embark on. But at least the blight didn’t have ether hunters or demonic knights trying to kill her.

Why does everything have to be so damn difficult… Vivi thought. She was far too tired for this kind of journey. With Grandpa dead, she was probably the last inside-carving runesmith alive. It was up to her to bring Grandpa’s invention to the world. The task just felt so daunting. It felt like the world didn’t want to see Grandpa’s invention.

Or rather, the world didn’t want her behind the invention.

She stared at the map of the fifth level for multiple minutes, gathering her thoughts. Somewhere in the back of her head, a tiny spark of anticipation remained. Despite everything, she still wanted to visit Shivenar.

That slight hope was enough to bring her to her feet. Her muscles ached, and her head hurt. She ignored her pains, turned east and said, “The blight sounds decent enough.”

Lucius floated after her. “We might just die.”

“If we die on our way to the city of runesmiths, maybe that’s a sign that inside-carving was never meant to be invented,” Vivi said.

“What?” Lucius asked. “How is that supposed to make sense?”

Vivi continued walking and opened the guidebook. “If you want to live, you better start translating this before I step into the blight blindly.”

Lucius floated after her with a look of genuine worry.

“Go on,” she said. “Translate the book.”

“Fine,” Lucius said. “If that’s what you wish.”

He flew to her core and began translating the book. Vivi read while she walked. With maxed-out reserves, she didn’t need to look in front of her to know when she was about to walk into a tree. She stepped to the side to avoid obstacles.

The guidebook itself, it turned out, was written more like a novel than an actual guidebook.

The author, Antinio Giovann, seemed knowledgeable enough, or at least so the introduction to his book claimed. He was apparently a drop-out scientist, who, instead of having a prosperous career through the normal path, spent twenty years studying the blight. Most of that time was spent on the outskirts, but he had organized a few larger ventures deeper into the blight, only one of which ended up with his group getting eaten alive by monsters.

His writing style was far more humorous than Vivi would have hoped. He laughingly wrote that the blight was a good place to visit for those that struggled to fall asleep at night, since sleeping in the blight was far too dangerous anyway. Most of his jokes about the blight’s dangers were mind-numbingly dull. The first few pages were filled with them alongside warnings not to visit.

Vivi skipped a few pages ahead to the actual advice regarding survival in the blight. The next section was titled, “So, what am I supposed to eat?”

Vivi couldn’t figure out whether the paragraphs below were jokes or not. One of the most common food sources in the blight supposedly came from “tallhead poison mushrooms.” The mushroom only grew on corrupted “redsoil”. Its cap and stalk were venomous to touch, and the redsoil usually housed worms with teeth. The mushroom itself was entirely poisonous with no antidote in existence.

However, the mushroom’s small roots were edible—but only if boiled with clean water at precisely twenty degrees below the boiling point to clean the roots out of corrupted soil. Any hotter than that, and the nutrients in the roots would burn. Additionally, the tallhead poison mushroom was not to be mistaken with the “deeproot agaric” or the “toad-face mushroom” which both looked nearly identical with the only difference being that tasting the two others would lead to a swift death.

“This can’t be real…” Vivi muttered. “Are you sure you’re translating this right?”

“I warned you about the lack of food,” Lucius said. “I am translating this as literally as I can. It’s a pain, let me tell you.”

“That must be why the jokes don’t work,” Vivi said.

“Look, this really isn’t a good idea.”

“Can spatial storage store water and food?” Vivi asked.

“A little bit,” Lucius said. “But food will rot, and space is limited, and if food touches venerium, it will get ruined.”

“Right…” Vivi thought. “We’ll have to find food in the blight, then. Ether will help us eat less.”

“The journey will last for weeks, if not months,” Lucius said. “Unless we’re the luckiest adventurers in the world and accidentally fall through the world into the fifth level.”

“That’s possible?”

“Not unless we find the exit,” Lucius said. “Which will take ages.”

“Well, let’s keep reading…” Vivi said.

Lucius rolled his eyes, but translated the next page. This one was filled with the author’s hilarious jokes about finding water that wasn’t the color of blood.

After a five-hour long trot and a massive headache from trying to make sense out of the goddamned guidebook, Vivi’s nose became aware of a rotten scent, and a crimson-red treeline loomed ahead.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep