Glenn forced another smile, trying not to look too shocked.
"...The one with the vines and roses all over. Squashed yesterday, you know?"
The guard remained unresponsive for a few seconds, before turning around and checking a document hanging on the wall. After studying it momentarily, he returned to Glenn while taking out a key from...somewhere in his armor.
"Code name: Dead Rose. Follow me, I've been notified you would come down here," The guard stated, inviting the young man to follow him. Glenn obliged, and couldn't help but stare at the numerous steel doors at each side of the hallways. They all exuded a cold comparable to Redan's magic, with the smell of corpses hanging in the air.
'Smells just like home!' Diamanes happily exclaimed, making his host sigh. When he thought back to the fleshy lair Diamanes called his "home", he instinctively shivered.
The guard suddenly looked over, giving Glenn a stare, before turning toward one of the doors and opening it. He looked back before entering, remaining silent for a few seconds, before finally saying something.
"...Stay here." On those words, the guard closed the door behind him, leaving Glenn alone in the cold hallway. The young man looked at the door, before scratching the back of his neck.
"Uhh, alright? So I just wait, now?" He muttered, his eyes drawn to the other closed doors. Should he try taking a peek? Surely, that wouldn't hurt anyone, would it? Glenn shook his head, before wondering if there was any magic in this place that he could steal or borrow with the help of Diamanes. The latter quickly answered that thought for him.
'Not gonna lie, I'm not seeing much that would be useful to you here. Way too specific spells, like: "Sealing Fire energy that has been infected by a latent Rehegar's corruption". And they're all like that, custom-made spells to especially counter the shit down here,' The entity explained with a disappointed tone, mumbling then about "the lack of meals" or something.
'I take it not everything down there is completely dead, then,' Glenn theorized. He could only see a few reasons to seal something instead of simply destroying or erasing its existence: either to study it alive or because it's unkillable. The slight curiosity he had about opening one of the doors disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The door the guard entered suddenly reopened, and the armored knight came out of it, holding a large black fur coat.
"Here you go," He handed the coat to Glenn, not giving the latter a choice. He wore the thick fur, not feeling the cold anymore under the warm protection. The knight then closed the door behind him and led the way again in the cold corridor.
"...Thanks," The young man said, surprised by how nice this seemingly soulless guard was. The guard didn't answer and kept on walking, Glenn following him. Soon enough, they arrived in front of a steel door, indissociable from the others. The guard opened it and invited Glenn to pass the threshold. The young man entered the room and arrived in front of a glass wall behind which contained the corpse of the Thorns Church's victim. The guard closed the door behind him and walked up to a desk on the side of the room. He took a file, and quickly flipped through it, before handing it to Glenn.
"Here is everything the researchers found out. You can check the corpse for yourself using magic, but at all times, stay out of the containment zone," The guard warned, before taking a chair and sitting in the corner of the room, watching Glenn's every move.
The young man picked up the file and went through it. There was quite a few important information in it: Firstly, the body had been reconstituted using a special magic, so that they could investigate any traces the corpses had before getting squashed down like a bug.
"After piecing the body back together, we were able to find a few interesting things. The most important one was probably the tattoo of a rose on the victim's neck. The ink used to create it seemed to have been imbued with Mana since it still held on after the corpse had been destroyed. Darius also noticed that the part where the tattoo was imprinted was slowly healing itself. Nothing particularly mind-blowing like with case N°57, but still quite impressive. The Mana imbued in the tattoo was probably consumed to fuel a discreet healing spell. We tried to trace back the spell itself, but our authorizations within the Magi Brotherhood were too low for us to find the necessary documents to decrypt the following runes we found in the tattoo: Asor alatep aus repmes rutibeut, sinips sius mudnum eredeal tebed."
"Holy shit, that's a ton of runes... I never saw such a long spell!" Glenn blurted out, awed by the complexity and the craftmanship of that piece of magic. From what he gathered, he could barely understand the meaning of a few words, with protection being the centerpiece of it. He hadn't provided much resources to the Brotherhood, after all, since he was more focused on enhancing himself and killing things these past months. He should probably go there at some point to explore the new possibilities his Third Circle offered him. His eyes went back to reading the file carefully.
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"Thanks to Sir Delora's help, we were able to understand these three precepts in the spell: Protection, Rose, Petals. We also tried to find in the Archives whether this tattoo had appeared previously, but it seems like the content is locked for people not part of the Bourgeoisie, which is pretty much a giveaway. We'll try to pry open a bit from the Watchers of the Bourgeoisie's wall, perhaps they have some information about it. Nonetheless, it seems weird for an inhabitant of the Higher Circles to come down here, and more importantly, for the Thorn's Church to be aware of it. Even we weren't aware that the victim came from there, so were they able to find out?"
Glenn rubbed his chin, trying to make sense of it all. Firstly, how would the Thorn's Church know about this? The researchers raised a more than important question. After all, there is no way something would happen under the nose of the Workshop without them being aware of it. He didn't know about the Higher Circles, but in the Fringe, the Cleaners have the best reputation and are the biggest information traders. Maybe the information was intentionally hidden from the Cleaner's eyes, but that would mean there would be... a mole.
The young man felt the headache from thinking so much and finished reading the paper. The researchers weren't able to find out much more, besides that the Mana in the tattoo never seemed to dwindle, and that the victim was an Aura practitioner at the Knight level. Glenn's eyes widened slightly when he read that since the Knight level was comparable to a True Initiate, or the Third Circle of a Mage. Glenn's level. The Aura power ranking system worked in the following manner: Novice, Squire, and Knight, which were comparable to the First, Second, and Third Circle.
The next levels up were Grand Chevalier, Crusader, and Saint. He didn't know the others, but he did not doubt the power of these Aura practitioners. From what he'd read, a Grand Chevalier was capable of splitting mountains in two and was far easier to produce than a Beginner Magi.
"That guy was also pretty good... Truly unlucky..." Glenn sighed, before placing the paper down on the desk. He then approached the glass wall, his eyes stuck on the corpse behind it. He was completely naked, and his skin was crackled as if he had been blown to smithereens and pieced back together with some reddish glue. Dry, thorny vines were lying down next to the corpse, connected to it through his skin. The roses that previously bloomed with a bright red on the vines were now dead and withered, lacking any color to them.
Glenn controlled the corpse using Mana, summoning the equivalent of a giant Magic Hand to manipulate it. He turned it so that it would face the glass wall, letting him see the tattoo on his neck. He had been barely able to see it previously, but now, he could finally see how well it was done. The rose had been tattooed exquisitely, a work so well done it seemed like it was an actual flower blooming in the victim's neck. It was indeed such a well-drawn pattern that Glenn could only qualify it as "unique". He could hardly imagine anyone replicating it with the same... livingness the original had. Nonetheless, he took out the stack of blank paper from his dimensional pouch and proceeded to copy it as best he could.
'...Well, at least we know you won't have any career being an artist,' Diamanes mockingly commented, as he finished sketching the tattoo. The resemblance was...Alright, let's not talk about the copy. Glenn pushed the drawing into the dimensional pouch, almost ashamed for the guard to see it. He then proceeded to manipulate the corpse the best he could, trying to find any other tattoos or anything else on it, but besides the glassy eyes that seemed to peer into his soul, and the wide smile still cracking open, he couldn't find anything else.
Glenn carefully laid the corpse back on the table, before sighing. He had expected to find more things by coming down here, but all that will have to do. A tattoo and very advanced runes. That's all that would probably be of use later on.
"Alright, that's done–" Glenn muttered before being cut off by a loud thud. The guard stood up on his feet, his dark armor clinking heavily. Glenn slowly turned back, seeing the corpse on its two legs, its smile widening until the flesh of its mouth ripped open. The smile widened so much that the upper part of its head began to get separated from the jaw, and dark blood gushed out of the corpse's throat. The corpse threw his fist at the glass wall, bouncing off it.
The young man took a step back, gulping heavily, before readying himself for a fight. He remembered how none of his spells seemed to work on the thing last night and swore in his mind.
"...Please step back," The guard calmly asked, and Glenn happily obliged. Instinctively, he grabbed his axe and made it flame up with its dark-red flames, ready to split the corpse in two. The guard's dark armor shimmered with a white light, which then seemed to gather in his wrist, forming a runic circle around it. The guard twisted his wrist in a circular motion, and a circle of light appeared around the corpse, forcing whatever had taken control of it out. The corpse shrieked in pain with an otherworldly cry, before falling on its back.
The guard turned back toward Glenn silently.
"...The visit is over. Please follow me," The knight then opened the door, waiting for Glenn to pass it. The latter was so baffled at the show of power that he did it without saying a word, barely stopping his jaw from dropping. The guard quickly brought him back to the Morgue's entry, closing the cold, heavy steel door behind him.
'Phew, even I had a scare! Do you think a ghost possessed him or something? Crazy shit...' Diamanes said while panting as if he just ran a marathon. 'You're in my mind, stop panting,' Glenn sternly said, still awed by the previous events. The corpse standing back on its two legs was, in fact, not that insane. What was, though, was the guard being prepared for such an eventuality and his ability to shut down that corpse. And it's not like the Workshop was containing one corpse. No, there were probably more than a hundred doors. Glenn didn't count, but he couldn't imagine the power required to restrain so many similar creatures in this place.
Glenn pulled down on his face, before slapping his cheeks, putting his thoughts back into place. He had to look into that rose tattoo somehow and make a quick stop by the Magi Brotherhood. He should be able to contribute quite a bit now that he was a True Initiate. Perhaps he would be able to find out the meaning of the other runes. He could always ask around, perhaps someone would be able to illuminate him.