A sense of complete warmth enveloped him, as if the universe was happy with his actions. He almost stumbled, but then remembered where he was, and he circled around, running back towards the edge of the cavern. Jonathan moved like the devil was on his tail, and he reached the edge of the cavern in record time, blitzing past the defenders of the book. He was left with barely three seconds on the clock as he reached the wall, and he desperately started to haul himself up it by one hand, thrusting his fist into the solid rock to create handholds. He could have put the book into his storage device, but he sensed that something would happen if he did so, something bad. As a result, he kept it under his arm.
By the time that he was halfway up, he was out of time, and he heard the monsters behind him preparing to fire. There was no way that he would be able to dodge a full on attack from this range, and his only hope was in his Touch of Decay skill. As he heard the beams fire, time seemed to slow around him, and he sent an expanding dome of energy out from him, seeking out the attacks coming his way. He instantly knew that it was too weak to matter, and it would peter out long before reaching the beams. However, he had a trick up his sleeve.
Burning Divinity at a drastic rate, Jonathan sent his awareness up and into his skill, searching for a specific rune. Finding the Rune of Beckoning glistening the center of his skill matrix, Jonathan pumped power into it, sending new life into his skill. The dome expanded outwards much faster than before, and it seemed to be drawn to the attacks coming its way. The fabric of the skill bunched up in the air, and shielded Jonathan from harm, causing the black beams to ricochet up into the ceiling. Jonathan almost fell off the wall, his heart racing and his mind aflame, but he kept going, clambering over the edge of the cavern wall a moment later.
He rolled forwards, and then raced up the hallways, back towards the safety of the area with the coffins. He had achieved his goal, but he had almost died in the process. The book was still under his arm, and it was releasing a siren song of desire to him, telling him to open it and read the pages within. Jonathan acquiesced, and opened the first page of the book. A tendril of red light shot out of the book, and into his face, connecting him with the tome for a moment. Then it retracted, and the book fully opened, letting him see what was written on the page.
If you are reading this book, that must mean that you passed its karmic background, and are karmically aligned with our path. I do not know what year, or eon, that this book has been discovered in, but you are possibly the last person who follows our creed. We were once a large and proud sect, fighting for justice within the Infinite Hells. Back when Granath was not the monumental threat that he is now, and there was still hope within this circle, we fought for our freedom, to turn our circle of Hell into a small slice of heaven instead. However, over the years, we dwindled in number, and Granath and his legions grew in power. I do not know of the fate of our brethren in the higher planes, but I assume that they too have faded to insignificance. You are the last hope of our people.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Jonathan turned the page, and began to read the book in earnest.
I am Arch Deacon Patrulanus of the Church of the Redeeming Light, and I consecrate this book in the name of justice and peace within these lands. The contained words are a story of the exploits, the rise and the fall, of my faction over the years.
After this was the first chunk of text, which Jonathan immediately realized was written for the purpose of powerful beings, as it was in incredibly small font. The words were like grains of dust, and only because of his enhanced senses could he read them. The penmanship that must have gone into this book was astounding, and Jonathan looked closer at the words, marveling at how perfect they were, even at such a small scale. There must be millions of words within this book, if not more, and Jonathan knew that he could not read it now. However, he wanted to find out why he had felt a sense of doom when he had tried to place it into the storage device.
He flipped through the pages, and on the 345th page, he found a strange glyph engraved into the paper, one that glowed with a faint light. He tapped on it, and a pendant fell out of thin air in front of the book, and into his hand. It looked like a ten pointed star, with a rising sun in the center of the design. Words appeared on the page a moment later.
This pendant will mark you as a member of the Church to any remaining members. Use it well. If you are ever in need, this pendant will prove useful, but only once. In addition, you may now store this book within any storage device, as the dimensional recursion used to store this pendant is now gone.
Jonathan put the pendant on, and then stored the book away in his bag. He would have ample time to peruse the pages later on, and he suspected that it would take quite a while to do so. He was looking forward to the wealth of knowledge that it would provide. Before coming to his world, Jonathan had always been a clever individual, but he had never been interested in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. However, now that the things that he was learning actually had some sort of meaning to his life, unlike the endless legions of equations that he had been forced to solve for his math class, he was hooked. Before he left, there were still two other tunnels to check out however, and Jonathan jogged back to the front of the hallway, and took a turn towards the right.
The first tunnel was smaller than the one he had just come out of, and it had a strange musty odor to it, as if something had died in here long ago, and had not been properly disposed of. It was the same smell that he had gotten off the undead back in the cathedral. This tunnel was arranged the same as the other one, with rows of coffins lining the walls, but these coffins had been breached by some unseen force, and the bottoms had broken open, revealing an emptiness inside. Whoever had been inside these vessels were long gone now, and Jonathan suspected that they were now undead, unless they had since expired.