Anna.
I think I’m starting to understand a few things…
Anna, huh.
Maybe this isn’t an admin’s house after all. But something close to it. If the owner was still around, thus not an admin, that would explain why the place is still in such pristine condition. Not to mention the other thing I shouldn’t be wording out.
Or it’s still an admin, and the place was preserved from time, somehow. Could also be one of the high scribes, maybe? What is a scribe in the first place?
Should I worry about the house owner coming back?
Would they even mind that I took some things? Whether an admin or a high scribe they should be able to totally know I’m here, right? And they let me in.
Sofia stored the books back and started snooping around again. A lot of the things around the room were mechanical, and supposedly electrical doodads, which Sofia had a hard time making any sense of. She found a lot of the usual things one expected in a kitchen, like pots, bowls, plates, mugs, spoons and forks. After some more fiddling in the kitchen, tuning dials and pushing buttons, one thing there she understood to be a fireless oven, which she thought was pretty neat.
“It’s clean, mostly silent, and doesn’t use mana… I could see why you would want to make something like that. But how do you get the electricity? I’m guessing it’s stored somewhere in some kind of catalyser.”
Wouldn’t you need a lightning mage to produce it, though? Then you’re back to needing mana, might as well just use good old ritual circles to do the thing.
I’m pretty sure the ovens in the academy used ritual magic to cook things up.
Now that I think about it, I’m surprised magical appliances like this aren’t more common on the human continent. Well… Not that I really know what happens in the homes of the nobility.
I should check the other rooms.
Sofia first checked the door in the corner.
Toilets? There’s even an extra sink here, with pipes instead of a water stone, just like the kitchen.
The tradeoff for using electricity is pretty harsh, not being able to use water and lightstones.
Next Sofia went to the other door, opposite the entrance, and it led to another corridor, with two doors on each side and another one on the opposite end again. These doors, like the toilet’s door, were all more traditional wooden doors with an actual handle. Sofia opened the first door on her right.
She only gave the room a single glance. An empty bedroom…
She closed the door and turned around. But before she could open the other door, she stopped.
Wait a second.
She turned back around.
“It was just an empty square room. So why am I so certain about it being a bedroom?”
She opened the door again, it was still an empty square room with white-painted walls and no window. Unlike the living room and kitchen, the floor in this part of the house was made of varnished dark wood planks.
Maybe it’s the different flooring that gave me that impression?
Closing the door without entering the empty room for the second time, she turned around again and checked the opposite room.
Bathroom. Everything is so white and shiny. This must be the cleanest bathroom I’ve ever seen.
“A standing shower, hadn’t seen one in a while.”
They’re not exactly commonplace. I like that better than actual baths though.
Actually…
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It had taken Sofia a bit of trial and error to understand how to control the water temperature, but she enjoyed the long shower, she had to step out after about half an hour because there was no more hot water for some reason. She could totally use cold water, especially with the cold protection from VPPV, but if the room wasn’t steamy it just wasn’t the same.
That was niiiiiice.
Sofia wiped the steam off of the bathroom’s mirror to look at herself.
Looking good.
I should have a shower like that installed in zangdar. I’ll be able to go back there after the trial, my regeneration then will be more than enough. Assuming the shield protecting it from the margin hasn’t run out of energy by then…
It should be alright. Probably… Maybe I shouldn’t spend the whole year here… I guess that’s a good argument to try to clear this trial faster.
I’ll have to send a skeleton in zangdar first to check, though. It’s fine since we have two rings.
Sofia smiled at herself in the mirror.
Didn’t my teeth used to be a bit crooked? They look almost too perfect now. Charisma doing its thing, huh. I think my hairline is a bit different than it used to be as well… Subtle changes but it does help. There aren’t really any ugly high-level people. Even Hugo was quite charismatic despite being… Is that asshole scripture handsome too?
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I’ll fix that.
The room was starting to get a bit colder, so Sofia dried herself up. She used one of her own towels, even if there were some in the room under the sink. She felt like using someone else’s towel was a bit too far. Even if I took their shoes… Maybe I should return the shoes…
She wrapped her blonde hair in a bundle with another of her towels and got dressed with a fresh change of clothes, namely the practical black pants and white chemise combo she had gotten multiple sets of from Brighthall's dwarven tailor throughout the year.
This is probably the most relaxed anyone has ever been in this trial, isn’t it? I wonder how Asty’s doing right now.
Lastly, she put her rings back on, then Aphenoreth’s glove and the Dragon-scale arm over that, and she left the bathroom.
This place is pretty safe. I don’t really need the bone armor.
Actually I should have probably checked out the entire house before taking a shower. But also, I really needed that.
“Alright, next up, three more doors!”
The door next to the bathroom was another bedroom, furnished, this time. There was a cleanly done single bed, a closet, and a lengthy desk running across the entirety of one of the walls, covered in neatly ordered mechanical parts and tools.
“I think we found the room of whoever made all these electrical contraptions. There’s more stuff I can’t make any sense of here…”
Whoever stayed here must have had the Engineer class too like my skeleton.
Speaking of which, would they mind if I take all this? I’m pretty sure my Engineer elf could make great use of all this stuff.
With one sweeping look over the long desk, Sofia stored everything in her eye implant.
This is why the eye is useful. This part works great.
Besides the stuff Sofia stole, the bed, and the electrical doodads, there was not much else of interest in the room. Sofia checked the closet before leaving.
Male clothing.
I won’t jump to conclusions, especially considering what I’m wearing right now, but it’s worth taking note of. This certainly doesn’t feel like a woman’s room. I’m guessing multiple people lived here.
Like three admins, perhaps?
Sofia left the room and went for the opposite one, which was another ambiance altogether.
The room was slightly messy. The bed wasn’t done, and there were things on the floor. A typing machine sat on a small desk surrounded by a mountain of books, there were a few paintings on the walls and the closet was open.
This is more like it.
Anna’s room? Could still just be an avid fan, too.
Sofia walked up to the bed, there were quite a few stands of long wavy dark blue hairs on the pillows. Definitely the same woman who used the brush and the makeup.
Now the questions are: Is this Anna? And who is Anna? And if this is not Anna, then who is this?
The first question was quickly answered by picking up a bundle of pages sewn together from the top of the desk. This was basically a full book already just without a cover. Without much surprise, the preface harbored the usual ritual circle hidden in plain sight. Giving the contents of the unfinished book a quick read, Sofia could confirm that it was indeed from the same author, without a single doubt.
Is that an unpublished book, then? It’s quite good… I don’t know if I should leave it here to potentially be buried forever, or take it and essentially steal it from someone who may or may not still come here on a regular basis…
The polite thing is to leave it, I guess… What a waste, though.
The books in the piles were similarly all from Anna, some being the same as the ones she had taken from the living room, and some other being new ones. These are probably the originals.
Sofia really felt like taking them all, but she held off for now, and turned her attention to the open closet.
These are actually all magically enhanced clothes… All out of mana but I can feel the inlaid ritual circles trying to absorb my mana when I touch the fabric. Cute and colorful clothes… Lots of shockingly short skirts in there… And a bunch of long tunics. Hmm. It’s all too short for me and Saria. Anna must not have been very busty either. These would probably fit Asty in a year or two if she keeps growing at the same rate.
I’ll just take a couple. I can’t not take any, who knows what the enchantments could be? I have to at least check.
Seeing the room like this really makes it feel like I’m somewhere I shouldn’t, though. But it’s a bit late to start thinking like that.
Spending more time in the room, Sofia observed the things littering the room, there was a lot of random decoration, the paintings on the walls were just regular landscapes, nothing exceptional, and nothing really piqued Sofia’s interest until she found a rectangular golden thing under the bed.
At first sight, she thought it was another handheld mirror, but fishing it out from under the bed in between some panties and a pair of pink socks, Sofia discovered that it was a small framed painting.
Not a painting actually, it’s one of those picture things like the clothier gave me!
The image was quite banal in essence, it was just a rendition of three smiling persons on the living room’s couch.
This must be Anna.
From the left to right, there was a cleanly shaved brown-haired human man with lightly tanned skin who looked to be in his forties, he was wearing one of the male outfits she had seen in the Engineer bedroom. His left hand was on the right shoulder of the person next to him in a friendly manner, while he gave a thumbs up for the picture with a charming smile.
On his right was the woman who was definitely Anna, she also looked human, besides the unnatural long and wavy dark blue hair tied in a ponytail behind her, and looked to be around twenty. She was wearing a light blue summer dress, which Sofia hadn’t seen in her room’s closet, which contrasted with her somewhat delicate pale skin. She was happily holding her hands in front of her, each with two fingers raised in a V shape. Her bright smile was right in the center of the picture, and it was hard to look away from it.
Objectively, she was without a doubt the most beautiful person Sofia had ever seen.
The third person was…
The third person…
He…
Sofia’s brain instinctively screamed ‘human man’ as she looked at the third ‘person’ in the pîcture, but the more she looked, the less she understood what she was looking at.
It was as if the more she tried to look at it, the more her mind was becoming a blank slate, incapable of even thinking.
What in the Lor–
The…
The Lords?
The Lords!!!
Sofia stood up from the floor and ran out of the room, picture in hand, she burst into the ‘empty bedroom’ from before.
It’s the same!
With great difficulty, she tore her eyes away from the ‘empty’ room and the picture both.
“I get it now! I understand everything!”
Having a sudden revelation, there was one last thing she HAD to check to completely confirm her theory. She ran to the kitchen and started frantically opening all the drawers.
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