1 The Mysterious Hardcover Book

In a small, dark room, a dozen children slept on a three-tiered bunk bed. All the kids were between eleven and thirteen years old. As war orphans from the battle against demons, they all felt like family. They huddled close to each other, but none slept soundly, to the point where they couldn't even take their hands out from under the sheets.

"They've finally fallen asleep..."

A candle light suddenly flickered to life on the wall to the left of the bunk bed. The boy pretending to sleep on the far left was completely dazzled by the candlelight. He huddled under the quilt in frustration and kicked the boy on the right.

"Ouch!"

The boy who received the kick furrowed his brows and, in his dreams, kicked back at the boy on the left. This led to a series of kicks throughout the top bunk, with each child returning kicks until one particular boy who had started it all opened his eyes.

"Well, it seems not everyone is asleep." Damian muttered quietly. He rubbed his knees, which had been kicked from different directions, and sat up on the bed for a few moments to fully wake up.

"Damián, hurry up, or that old man will pluck out your eyes and sell them at an auction." A sleeping child murmured these words upon sensing a slight movement on the bed.

Upon hearing these words, Damián took a black band tied to his hand and wrapped it around his special eyes, as he had observed for some time. The wound on his forehead, still open, sent slight stings of pain, ultimately dispelling his drowsiness completely.

He quickly jumped out of bed, put on the servant uniform hanging on the wall, opened the cabin door, and hurried out to a place where trees that seemed to reach the sky surrounded him.

Close to the servants' cabin was a long, curved hallway with wooden flooring. Further ahead, there was a door every few meters on both sides of the hallway. Under the wooden structure connecting to a huge old wooden house, there was a corridor lined with walls where a chandelier did its best to dispel the coldness.

Damián, noticing a bit more light, looked over his left shoulder at a slightly glowing silhouette. At that point on his body, there was a strange hardcover book the size of his palm.

"Hasn't this strange thing disappeared from around me yet? Maybe it's not just my hallucination, and it has truly cursed me for cleaning that old wizard's things." Damián shook his head, feeling increasingly depressed.

All these events, which some might consider magical, had started since he traveled to a parallel world a few days ago. The book had been floating around his shoulder since he was tasked with cleaning the old wizard's books, who lived in that tower like many others.

Damián had asked the other children if they could see the book, but it was invisible and intangible to them. Like any fantasy book, Damián sought help and consulted his imagination for an assistant, a god who could stand by his side, an angel, something called a system or a chip, but he received no response and ultimately could only attribute the existence of something magical as a hallucination caused by the wound on his head when he woke up in this place.

Damián had assumed that the reason he woke up in the small body of an eleven-year-old boy was that this child died from the fall and the blow to his head, awakening in this place and taking the life of an unfortunate orphan who lost his family at the hands of a demon like the rest of the children in this place.

When he discovered the book on his shoulder, he thought it was a curse or hallucination, but now the hallucination shouldn't last so many days without disappearing, and the curse should somehow cause him noticeable harm, shouldn't it?

But now, regardless of whether it was an illusion or not, Damián had his own things to do and no time to study or speculate all the time.

The place where he found himself is a tower of wizards. Since he traveled to this parallel fantasy world, Damian has never left this tower. Additionally, as a servant here who had been rescued from the war, he woke up around four in the morning every day and mopped the floors of the corridors from the 11th to the 13th floor. There should be no obvious dust or garbage stains left; otherwise, his body would be cut up and used as fertilizer for flowers, as the ugly old man of this place, better known as the housekeeper, said.

The task of cleaning the corridor must be completed before the candlelight changes from a dim yellow to a bright white flame. Otherwise, if that ugly old man notices him or any of the wizard apprentices in this tower, they might hit him or use him as an experiment for their terrible spells.

All those wizard apprentices looked strange, had very bad tempers, and were, most of the time, very impatient, as if death were chasing them every day.

The owner of the body Damián was in was killed by a wizard apprentice who was practicing a wind spell. Damián's body was thrown from a tremendous height and was almost discarded as trash when it didn't react.

Fortunately, he had woken up, and the moment he left the service room with his face still stained with blood, even the old man who was the guard at the tower entrance thought he would die in the coming days.

But after confirming that he was still alive, the housekeeper immediately assigned him a job, and Damián was sent to work before he had time to recover from his injuries, and that happened until today.

After remembering what he had to do, Damian first went to the service room next to the guard's room to fetch a mop, a bucket of water, and a trash can. He placed them on a small cart table and pushed them forward.

It is said that these wheels have been enchanted with a mute spell to avoid bothering the extremely irritable wizard apprentices. Damian had carefully observed the patterns two days ago but found nothing except a slight headache.

As for the bandage over his eyes, which was special to enable him to see even with his eyes covered due to his special light blue pupils, he had received certain memories that a wizard apprentice was annoyed by his eyes because they reminded him of the sky, so he gave him this black bandage to cover them up.

Of course, Damian now believed that these wizard apprentices were more than just spoiled idiots. Yawning, he walked towards his new day of work in the beautiful, dark morning.

Arriving at the place, which was a semicircular hallway, Damian noticed the numerous doors every few meters on the left and right sides. There were numbers that Damian concluded were Roman numerals on the doors of the rooms, and he didn't know what function they served.

The body Damian had awakened in was considered illiterate, but after a few days of exploring the new things in this world, he began to regain some common sense and broken memories belonging to this body. While cleaning the eleventh floor, Damian heard crying behind a door.

Every time there was crying, the candles on both sides of the door would sway gently, making the shadows larger, which gave an eerie feeling. Damian tightened his grip on the mop handle, and that cold shiver woke up all his drowsiness.

He quickly pretended not to know anything about what was happening, as if he hadn't heard anything, and quickly finished mopping the floor. There's a weird bug on the twelfth floor who likes to throw trash outside his door. Hairs, torn papers, unknown pieces of meat...

Damian, who had received memories and been doing this same job for five days, had grown accustomed to cleaning up these strange things. After a while, he gathered all the trash with the small shovel hanging from the side of the trash can, and when he turned around to take out the trash, he heard a faint creak.

He quickly turned around and saw that the door behind him had a crack, but nothing could be seen in the darkness behind the door. Damian immediately felt every hair on his body stand on end; his hands trembled slightly, and he wanted to flee, but he also feared that the wizard apprentice in the room might think he was being rude.

He had only traveled through this strange and terrifying place for a few days, and what he was taught most was to maintain the utmost respect and humility towards all wizard apprentices. Damian was now just an eleven-year-old child without skills and with a small body. The powerful wizard apprentice could kill him with just a few movements of his hands.

As for the wizard, well, given his condition, he still couldn't even see him very often. Damian waited in fear for a while. There was no movement behind the door. Time was running out, so he remained vigilant about what was behind the door, mopping the floor while closely watching the crack in the door.

Finally, the door had closed again. Damian's tense shoulders relaxed slightly, and the cart table, pushed by his arms, descended to the tenth floor. As someone who is twenty years older than an eleven-year-old child, Damian is much more sensitive to things around him.

Even if you are originally very rough or careless, when you arrive in a strange world where wizards and demons exist, you will choose to be more careful. It is said that the last servant in charge of cleaning died on the tenth floor.

Damian also cleaned this place two days ago and found nothing unusual, but this floor in particular still made him feel uncomfortable. That kind of fear that, even though nothing happened, still made his hair stand on end and his fingers couldn't help but tremble slightly.

Damian lowered his head and dragged the cart table with force, using physical work to dispel the unease in his heart. However, what he feared most happened.

As he passed the third door, Damian's front right door suddenly saw a bright red puddle of blood seeping out from underneath. The blood was bright red, thick, and had a strong rotten smell. At first glance, it didn't seem good.

The blood flowed to the center of the floor and finally stopped spreading. According to the butler's request, Damian must clean up any obvious mess. He tightened the mop in his hand, clenched his teeth, and prepared to take a step forward.

At that moment, the hardcover book on his left shoulder suddenly flew towards his chest and opened with a bang. Damian froze; it was the first time this book had interacted with him in this way. He was amazed. Did this book sense that he was in a life-threatening crisis and take the initiative to help him?

Damian looked at the blood on the floor with his peripheral vision, focusing most of his attention on the book. The black book froze on a blank page, and a few lines of words quickly appeared.

"[... Era Calendar of The Great Mage Flamme, unknown year of the silver moon. When you were cleaning the tenth floor of the wizard tower, you saw a puddle of blood coming out through the closed door. Although you are afraid of dying and being turned into fertilizer, you erase that fear from your heart and move forward to clean the blood.

But the floor is very difficult to clean, and you wonder why it's so hard to clean the blood off the floor. You looked down and realized that the blood was continuously coming out. You tried to keep cleaning the blood, but without realizing that the blood was toxic, you lost consciousness.

The next day, you are found dead in the wizard tower's trash room."

Damian's legs softened, and he almost fell to his knees on the blood. He leaned on a mop and looked at the puddle of blood with persistent fear.

"It turns out that this book is like my guardian angel warning me of a death crisis. In this terrifying and gloomy place, before I find a practical way out of here, it's really a very practical tool." Damian never thought that this book floating next to him would have such practical methods.

What value would this object have in the hands of wizards? Damian carefully pushed the cart, trying to avoid the blood; at that moment, the hardcover book in front of him changed again.

"[... As you were afraid of blood and the unknown, you decided not to clean the floor. In the morning, the housekeeper called you because the floor was dirty. That same day, new fertilizer was added for the greenhouse flowers, and you will complain about your bad luck.]"

Damian, who was about to leave this floor, froze, looked at the blood-covered floor, then at the book beside him, and realized that no matter what he did, he would die in terrible suffering.

So, what the hell does this useless book need?