18 - Jackal's Lab

I landed on a hard, solid ground.

Looking around, it was a small room, and to the left was a table with a piece of paper. Besides that, there was the formation behind me for the portal on this side, and nothing else.

In front of me was a door, and on either side of the door was floor to ceiling glass letting me see the other side.

It was a large indoor complex.

There were 3 stories to the complex, and in the center was a large open space with a red crystal.

Suddenly, Ixtra shifted in my shadow and said hurriedly,

"Sir, that's a mana crystal from hell."

Ixtra had previously told me, although most demons naturally used demonic energy, some could use something called red mana. Moreover, anyone could use it if they had the right technique, and some non-demon races also used it in place of "normal", blue mana.

It was stronger, but also more berserk and difficult to control. It only formed in certain conditions, and were primarily found in hell.

"If there's a red mana crystal here, Sir, we might be in hell. Please be careful. Hell is a lot scarier than the world we were just in."

Recalling Ixtra's tall tales of the demon realm, I shivered and put up my mental guard, focusing and not daring to relax now.

Walking over to the table, the paper had something written on it.

It was arranged like a letter.

Reading it, it said:

[Dear reader,

I don't know if someone outside has found this place and come in, or if someone from another realm used the array formation I invented to make their way here, but welcome.

This is my laboratory, and I am the great runesmith Jackal Wilneth. Well, 'great' might be too much now. If you are reading this in place of meeting me, I am probably no longer alive. I managed to merely barely become a 5-Star runesmith. I'm ashamed to have the gall to call myself great, yet I still do.

I studied runecraft in this place, alongside the golems I created with a mix of runecraft and soulistry. I tried studying soulistry too, but "it" made it so I couldn't. That accursed Law.

If I'm not around, it's yours now, traveler. The whole place, or whatever is left of it at least. I would have liked to have met the person who would discover this place, but alas.

My mortality beckons.

Do as you wish. The walls are made of reinforced mythril-silver alloy, it cost me a fortune, so the place won't collapse so long as you don't hit it too hard anywhere.

I should've gotten rid of any hazards before my death, but in case I haven't, be careful of the formations at the entrance and exits, and of the demons that might still be around in the basement floor.

Kind regards, Jackal

P.S. The master key is located on the tray connected to the primary console in front of the big red mana crystal in the main lobby.]

Finishing reading, I walked up to the door to find it unlocked. Opening it, I got a better look of the facility as I went out into the lobby.

There was a railing to stop people from falling over the edge into the large space in the center.

There was a railing on the first floor too, which was weird.

The ceiling was slightly curved into an oval shape, and the railing was also an oval. The large red mana crystal only took up maybe 30% of the mid air space, so the rest of it was truly empty space.

I suppose it was designed that way to allow for ease of vision around the compound.

The whole place was a stark white, with hints of grey in places.

Walking over to the front of the red mana crystal, there was indeed a tray on a stand, connected to a "box" of some sort, which I assumed was the "console" Jackal had mentioned.

On the tray was a black section which acted as a mirror when I looked at it, something I would soon come to call a "touch-screen", and beside it was a key, as promised.

The key looked strange. It wasn't shaped to open locks like a normal key. Instead, it was a card, like a playing card, except it wouldn't bend, and at the left edge was a cylindrical portion attached.

Walking around, I found a door and saw that there was an area to insert the card, and the cylinder stopped the card from going all the way in. Although, the depth of the insertion cavity was also not deep, so the card wouldn't have been able to go in all the way regardless.

The door opened, showcasing a white room with various equipment I didn't recognize.

Stepping out and looking around some more, all the rooms on the 2nd floor were like this, except the one I came into the place from that had the portal array.

At the end of the lobby on either end were sets of stairs leading up and down.

Heading down to the first floor using the stairs nearest the red mana crystal, there was a long table to the right where food was supposedly served, which was weird since golems didn't need to eat and Jackal wouldn't have needed such a long table for himself.

It was literally the length of the floor, some 100 meters or so.

There were also small, white, stool-like chairs lining it.

On the left were one large room and a series of doors leading to various corridors.

The large room seemed like a play room, with a pool table and so on inside. There was colorful furniture inside, unlike the lobby and 2nd floor rooms.

The corridors had red carpet and white and red ceilings, and were lined with doors. Opening one, it lead to a room that looked to be a living quarters, once again for the golems who didn't seem to need such things.

Interestingly, as I opened the rooms, I noticed that each had its own unique feel to it, like the golems had their own personalities. I knew what a golem was through the [Advanced Runecraft] book, so I was surprised.

Reaching the end of one corridor, there was nothing else to see. I spent some time making sure, but indeed, every room and every corridor were like this.

Heading back to the lobby, I went up to the third floor. Here, it was a large library. Ghe walls were lined with bookshelves in the oval space, and there were chairs and desks for reading and studying, some overlooking the balcony onto the rest of the compound.

It was a cozy place. And more importantly, it was a golden place.

Golden as in on the compass map, the whole place was lit up as golden. The entire compound was a treasure.

It was the first time I had seen such a large scale treasure since getting the treasury.

Presumably, it was because the whole thing was made of mythril (well, mythril-silver alloy), but who really knew.

I thought about taking the whole place into the treasury right there, but I shook my head. I thought it would fit, but I wasn't sure, and besides.

There was still on more place to check out.

Heading down to the first floor, I headed further down to the basement floor.

In there was a large space. It was all one room.

Unlike the mythril-steel above, which imposed an almost blinding white, this place was a dark cellar like place, made of a black material that had unusual red marks all over, spreading and interconnecting like cracks or veins.

There was a formation at the end of the room, made with glowing bright red runes, and there was nothing else here.

I'm guessing this is where the demons were supposed to be, but he got rid of them like he said before dying.

Heading back up, I went all the way to the third floor and took some of the books there.

There mustve been tens of thousands of books up there, but only about 600 of them were considered treasures. Still, that brought me much closer to fulfilling the 1000 quota. It was over 800 now.

Going down, I looked at the rooms with strange equipment on the 2nd floor, but the only treasures amongst them were the various mythril bricks with runes inscribed into them.

In one room in particular, it seemed like a storage room, and there were thousands of mythril bricks in there.

'Jackpot.'

Collecting them, there was nothing else in the lab that the compass deemed worth taking except the lab itself.

Opening the compass and applying the upgrade, the following showed in the change log:

[Compass upgrade 4 (1000 treasures):

-Can store map data from other maps within a 50 meter radius of the host. Host does not need to manually see or input the map data.

-Can now zoom out to realms tab to switch view to map of different realms that map data is available for.

-Effective range increased from 100KM--> 200KM]

It also said something new at the top in red.

[To unlock next compass upgrade, upgrade treasury.]

Confused, I looked around in the treasury and noticed a screen appear on top of the front desk.

Reading it, it simply said:

[First treasury upgrade available. Upgrade condition: Reach level 60. Current level: 39.]

'Level???'

What did that mean?

Confused, I asked Tom and Ixtra, but both were clueless.

Putting the matter to the side, I zoomed out on the compass map to the new realms tab.

There were two options, [Outer Realm A673-F] and [Outer Realm A245-R].

Currently, I was in A245-R.

There was an option to rename them, so I renamed them [Birth Realm] and [Jackal Wilneth's Realm]. Yes, not very original, whatever.

It was at least better than the default names.

'I wonder if the numbers and letters in the default name mean anything?'

Shaking my head, I walked to the front of the first floor of the complex, where there was a pair of double doors.

Opening them, there was a cliff overlooking an ocean outside.

There were no windows inside so I hadn't known what to expect.

Turns out, Jackal had built his lab next to the sea.

Circling around, I looked at the land, and there was a barren landscape as far as the eye could see.

'Oh boy.'

Sighing, I went back inside and looked at the kitchen behind the long food counter to see if there was still anything.

Probably not.

Indeed, there was nothing.

Shaking my head, I realized I'd have to fish to survive for a while.

Moreover, I'd need two people's worth. Tom didn't need to eat, but Ixtra did.

Getting cozy, I decided I'd stay here a while and read up on the 600 some treasured books, and perhaps some others. I'd just skim through the ones I didn't need to understand all of immediately.

Knowledge was power.