After about 22 minutes of nonstop flying, I finally reached the door that I had seen. Upon closer inspection, It was a large medieval-style door with iron rings instead of a doorknob and showed no signs of any wear or damage. The door was directly built into a large mountain or rather it looked like the mountain had bent to accommodate the door.

‘This door is among one of the most peculiar things I have seen since I’ve become a crow. Why does the mountain look like it somehow curved around the door? This makes me think that this door was already here when this mountain formed, but that can’t be possible. Mountains take millions of years to form and this door certainly does not look millions of years old. The only other alternative is that the mountain was cut to fit this door, but that also does not seem to be the case. The rocks that make the foothill of this mountain are all untouched and show no indication that anything was done to any of the rocks.’ I pondered the mystery of the door for a few more minutes before moving on.

‘I’m not going to get an answer by just floating here. If I want to know something, then I have to do something. I’m not entirely sure what could be inside here, but it might be worth the risk of entering.’

Hey Host! You should definitely open this door! I’m sure that something good is behind it!

The voice energetically said.

I rolled my eyes and scoffed at the voice before studying the door more carefully before making a decision. This time relying a bit more on my instincts than just my eyes. I’ve always had a sharp intuition about danger because of how I was raised, so I pride myself on being able to detect whether something is dangerous or not. I warily approached the door and allowed my instincts and senses to scan the door.

There were no signs of danger that emanated from the door allowing me to feel somewhat confident that nothing life-threatening was behind the door. Instead of danger, I felt a sense of familiarity. The door resembled the ruins where I had awoken, at least in terms of aura.

‘Why do these two places have such a similar atmosphere? Were they made by the same person? What was the purpose of making these things in the first place?’ Many questions appeared in my mind, each of them without any semblance of an answer. ‘*Sigh* Well, at least I have ascertained that this place is relatively safe compared to this forest with my acute instincts.’

Feeling confident that my life wouldn’t be put in jeopardy, I flew up to one of the iron rings and tightly gripped it with my talons. I beat my wings backward and the door creaked a few times before heavily clanking open while releasing a deep rumble. Once it was fully opened, a bright light emerged from it, forcing me to close my eyes.

Upon opening them again, I found myself in a completely new area. It was a barren and run-down room filled with the remnants of what appeared to be bookshelves. The room was covered with dust and pieces of wood were scattered all around the room in distinct piles, seemingly the last remains of other furniture like tables and chairs. There were no sources of light either natural or artificial, yet I could somehow see perfectly well despite that.

I scanned the room for enemies, but I saw nothing in my immediate area that could pose a threat to me; rather, it would be more accurate to say that there was nothing alive around me. Dropping my guard a bit, I flew to the bookshelves to see if any of the books were still intact. I scavenged through the pieces of wood, but all I found were piles of dust or torn pieces of paper whose text had faded to the point that it was completely unreadable. Only a few letters or parts of a letter remained legible, and obviously, those were not enough for me to piece together the original content of the page. Luckily though, the language was one that I recognized and could read, so if I managed to find an intact book, I would be able to understand at least the basics of its contents.

I went through all the remains of the bookshelves, but all of them yielded the same results: just a few unreadable pages. With no more bookshelves, I searched the piles of wood that I thought were originally chairs and tables. What I found was even more useless than what I had found searching through the bookshelves. Only scraps of cloth and a few shards of clay were all that I could find within those piles.

Despite finding nothing of use, I was certain that something was hidden in this room, like how the ruins had hidden a seed. I continued searching through the entire room from top to bottom. I flew up to the ceiling to see if anything was hidden in the ceiling; however, nothing of note was up there.

‘Where could this secret be hiding? The only place I haven’t checked is the dust-covered floor. I doubt anything interesting will be down there, but it’s worth looking through at least once.’ With this thought in mind, I stopped flapping my wings and allowed myself to descend toward the ground. Once I was about to land, I unleashed one powerful flap to slow myself and land safely. This caused a bunch of dust from the floor to fly upward, uncovering a small part of the floor.

In that area with less dust, I saw a small thread extending from the floor. I pulled the thread up with my beak, revealing and opening a small trapdoor. Inside that trapdoor was an ancient-looking book that was extremely worn out. The binding was in shambles, to the point where I wondered how the book was still in one piece, the pages were torn and faded, and the cover was entirely missing. There were only a few pages left attached to the binding, the rest looked like they were torn out. I stood over the book and started reading the top page. Entire words were readable, but much of the page was still too faded to read

Those … Seed… powers… Apocalypse … countries… destined… Despair… monsters everywhere… savior… evil… prevail … resurrection … mysteries… reality…

All the rest of the words were too faded.

‘What could this mean? It looks like some kind of prophecy warning of something. What catches my eye about this is the chain of legible words, Seed, power, and Apocalypse. This makes me think that these three have some sort of connection with each other. Maybe something like this seed gives some kind of powers that could cause the Apocalypse?’ A memory flashed in my head. I saw the scene where I was in the ruin swallowing some kind of seed. ‘That reminds me, I did eat a seed some time ago. Could this seed be the same one mentioned by this prophecy?’ I theorized in my head.

‘If that is indeed the case, what power did I gain? Wait, could it be related to the time the hawk suddenly slowed down when charging me? What kind of power was that and how is it related to the Apocalypse?’ I could not think of an answer to any of the questions and simply decided to move on to the next page. Gingerly turning the page with my beak, I scanned over the next page. However, unlike the first one, this one was completely unreadable. There were scratches and dried blotches of a red substance scattered throughout the page. Other than that, there were also many lines of varying colors covering most of the page.

I felt extremely frustrated that I would not be able to get any answers from the page but simply continued forward to the last page attached to the binding. The last page was in nearly perfect shape. All the words were readable and the page itself showed very little signs of damage.

‘Why is this page the only one without any issues? For that matter, how did this page withstand the passage of time so much better than the other pages?’ I wondered before reading the words on the page. There were only a few words written.

Clear this trial successfully and the truth of the pages shall be revealed. Enter the descending staircase into the Ancient Library and defeat the boss at the very end of the dungeon to succeed.

Several of the words stuck out to me, like “trial”, “Ancient Library”, “boss”, and “dungeon”. The one that stuck out the most was “staircase”, for one simple reason.

‘What does it mean by a staircase, there is no staircase in this room!’ All of a sudden, the floor began shaking and making a deep rumbling noise. Soon, a portion of the floor collapsed and revealed a long spiraling staircase downward. ‘Ah, I see. That staircase.’

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I flew toward the staircase but stopped when I was directly above it. From the staircase, I felt my instincts tingling, telling me that something dangerous was down there.

‘The question now is do I go down these stairs or not? I don’t fully trust that last message since it seems very suspicious to me, yet I instinctively feel that it is telling the truth. Moreover, I am very curious about the message on the pages. Let’s consider the pros and cons of going down these stairs. First the pros. Going down will likely allow me to face new enemies, thereby gaining more battle experience. Another pro is that I will get information about the current state of this place. Now the cons. Facing new enemies would require me to come up with a new strategy that always has the possibility of failing and leading me to my death. Another con would be that I can’t be sure if whoever wrote this book is telling the truth or not.’ I debated over which option to go with until I finally made a decision.

‘I think the pros are more impactful than the cons. Even if a strategy fails, I can always employ other strategies to get away and rethink my approach so that I can come up with new tricks to use in future battles. Additionally, even if this person is lying, I will still gain valuable experience in this trial.’ I finalized my decision and followed the staircase down.

At the bottom of the staircase was a large medieval door, exactly like the one I entered to get into the barren room in the first place. I pulled the iron ring with my talons and the door slowly opened, revealing a large open room. The room had a single passageway directly in front of me, but the rest of the room was surrounded by bookshelves that reached the ceiling of the room. These shelves were covered with vines and tree-like branches wrapped all around the outside of the bookshelf. Countless books with various colors lined each row of the shelves, some of them were obscured by the vines of branches, preventing them from being taken out.

‘What kind of information is stored in these books? Could it be that each book contains some kind of clue as to what was missing on those two pages? Or could it be that I have to collect certain books to unlock the way to the boss? If so, this could be a pain.’

To answer my first two questions, I randomly flew to one of the books on the shelves and tried to carefully pull it out; however, no matter how hard I pulled the book, it would not budge at all. I tried again with another book from a different bookshelf. Again, it would not budge from its spot.

‘Looks like all my ideas were completely wrong. These books can’t be taken down from the bookshelves. At least I know that I won’t have to deal with some weird kind of gimmick in this dungeon.’ I flew toward the passageway and entered a long corridor. There were two ways I could go, left or right. Both seemed to lead into different areas and I was stuck between which way to go.

‘Unless there is a secret passageway, I’ve found that the easiest way to navigate mazes or dungeons like this is to simply move right until I find something notable.’ Resolving myself, I turned right and resumed my flight.

At the end of the corridor, I found another wide-open room. I stopped before entering the room to scout out what was inside the room. The room itself was a dead end as it was entirely surrounded by bookshelves. At the entrance to the room were two large statues that looked like an orb on top of a pedestal. I cautiously flew closer to these statues to inspect them; however, when I did, they blared a shrill sound. Hearing this, I immediately embraced a combat stance and prepared myself for what was to come.

Two books wriggled their way off the bookshelf and started falling to the ground. Before they could land, they mysteriously began to float. While floating, they gained a few features that are typically not found on books. A single eye appeared in the center of the book while teeth and a tongue emerged from the area below the eye. I was shocked by this weird transformation for a fraction of a second, but quickly snapped out of my shock and focused on the two new enemies in front of me.

Both books charged toward me trying to land a bite on my small crow body, but I sidestepped with a powerful wing thrust to the left. Now behind me, the books turned around toward me before suddenly turning to each other. I saw the mouth of one of them moving while the other nodded.

‘These things can communicate and even make plans?’ I was extremely shocked by the intelligence of these books. ‘Wait, it’s too early to be surprised, it is still possible, albeit unlikely, that they coincidentally made actions that made it look like they had communicated with each other.’ I shook my head to dispel the thoughts I had. In the next moment, one of the books flew upwards while the other charged directly at me again, attempting another bite. This time, it seemed like the book was aiming slightly toward my right. Seeing this, I sidestepped to the left again, dodging the attack. Suddenly, I heard something falling and looked up. I saw the other book falling directly to where I had dodged and ready to bite me. I quickly moved backward, thereby dodging the falling book.

‘So that is what they were planning. One of them purposefully attacked slightly to one side to make me dodge to the other side where the other one would be waiting to strike. Impressive, but that will not work on me.’ I confidently thought to myself.

The book that I sidestepped, which I will now call book1 had already turned around and was charging toward me again baring its teeth at me. I sidestepped to the right this time, but at the last second, book1 changed its method of attack. It swung its tongue while flying past me. Caught off guard by the faint and unconventional method of attack, the tongue managed to hit the place on my back perfectly in between my wings. Luckily, the attack did not do too much damage or paralyze me.

‘These enemies are more annoying than I had originally thought. Well, I’ve gotten a sense of the capabilities of these types of enemies, so it’s time to end this battle.’ I flew toward book1 which was still in the middle of turning around after finishing its attack.

The book that was under me, who I will call book2, tried to intercept me and flew directly up at me, but I simply increased my speed, causing it to miss. Entirely disregarding book2, I swiftly approached book1. I folded my wings a bit to decrease the amount of air resistance I was experiencing and flew straight into book1 impaling it with my sharp beak. A hole appeared in the middle of the book and the eye gradually closed before it fell motionlessly to the ground.

Book2 did not appear to be affected by book1’s death and attempted another charge at me. I stuck my talons out before moving slightly to my left. As book2 flew past me, it was grazed by my talons. Several shallow scratches appeared on the cover of book2 and it started trembling. I rushed to book2 and raked my talons across the back cover while it was turning around.

The trembling increased before completely stopping as the light in its eyes faded and it fell lifelessly to the ground, never to move again. I had won the battle.

The battle had exhausted me a bit, but I continued onward. With nothing else to do in the room, I returned to the hallway and moved toward the other end. While flying, I heard a small rumbling sound coming from above me. I looked up only to see several books raining down toward me.

‘What caused these books to fall?’ I kept my composure and calmly weaved between the falling books avoiding any damage. I was slightly expecting at least some of them to transform into those unusual book monsters that I had just defeated moments ago, but none of them did. They all just fell onto the ground without anything happening. The books continued to fall, but I dodged all of them as I made my way toward the end of the corridor. When I got there, all the books stopped falling and silence ensued. A moment later, all the books glowed with a bright light before entirely vanishing.

I did not think too much about what had just happened and simply looked into the large room in front of me. There was another set of statues at the entrance of the room and a bunch of bookshelves around the room. At the end was another staircase leading downward.

‘There’s the way down, but it seems I will have to get through a forced encounter before I can reach it.’ With no other choice, I flew straight into the room and a familiar siren echoed from the orbs.

This time, 3 books fell from the shelves before transforming. Exactly like the previous encounter, all of them charged straight at me. I had expected this and dodged sideways while holding out my talons. When they passed me, I was able to deal significant damage to one of the books, causing deep gashes to appear on the front cover of it. The book shook a bit before dropping to the floor, dead.

The other two books turned to each other before moving their mouths and nodding, indicating they had a plan. One of them flew toward me while the other flew downward. As I had already seen this plan before, I figured out a counter to it. After dodging the one charging at me, I rushed it down before it could turn around. I rammed the book with incredible speed causing a large hole to appear and killing the book.

Lastly, for the one that had gone down before moving upward in an attempt to hit me, I simply moved forward before chasing the book down and using my talons to immediately kill it. All three book monsters were now dead and the path downward was cleared.

‘Monsters are indeed much easier to deal with after you know their tendencies and the tactics employed by them. While I could just try to immediately kill any monster I see, I think it would be more beneficial if I studied the monster and learned its strategies before going in for the kill.’ I reasoned while flying down the stairs to the next layer.

At the end of the staircase was another large door with something written above it. “Floor 2,” it said. I pulled the door open and moved into the accompanying room.