HP: Sacred Gear Chat Group (2) - Chapter 35 (Patreon)

Chapter 35 - Elder Scrolls and Knowledge

[ — Private Chat — ]

[ Alistair Davis: <Screenshot: Runed Lexicons> <Screenshot: Oculory 1> <Screenshot: Oculory 2> <Screenshot: Oculory 3> <Screenshot: Oculory 4> <Screenshot: Oculory 5> <Screenshot: Oculory Controls 1> <Screenshot: Oculory Controls 2> <Screenshot: Oculory Controls 3>]

[ Irene Belserion: That is the device? Did it work? ]

[ Alistair Davis: I don’t know yet. They have been inscribed with the knowledge, but I haven’t figured out how to read them yet. First, I’ll have to watch Septimus Signus do it. ]

[ Irene Belserion: I expect a copy of all the knowledge you acquired! ]

[ Alistair Davis: Yes, yes. Like we agreed. That’s what you get in exchange for your help! ]

[ Irene Belserion: Good. Don’t you dare forget it. Now hurry up. I’ll busy myself with studying this Oculory of yours. ]

[ Alistair Davis: You really don’t have to! ]

[ Irene Belserion: That’s obviously what you wanted… You sent all those screenshots to me instead of keeping them for yourself. ]

[ Alistair Davis: I don’t know what you mean. ]

“That was the last one, aye?” Agnar said eagerly, staring at the pile as the final blank Lexicon was taken from it. “By the gods, tell me we’re done with this place.”

“Oh, that was just the first pile. I’ve got a few more in my bag,” I said nonchalantly while storing away the inscribed Lexicons.

“That can’t be true! How long are you planning to stay down here? It’s dark, it’s wet, and it reeks of old stone! I’ve had my fill of Dwemer ruins. I want to see the sun over Skyrim again!”

I let out a chuckle as I pressed the last few buttons on the controls, moving the Oculory into its release position.

“Just joking. That was all of them.”

The cyan-colored, egg-shaped container made of Aetherium moved toward the center of the sphere and opened, releasing its contents.

“Is that...?”

“Yes, that’s the Elder Scroll.” I nodded as I moved down the control platform toward the center of the Oculory’s sphere. You could feel it in the air. This was not an ordinary object.

Inside a socket was an intricate golden casing adorned with gems and mysterious runic carvings. It housed the Elder Scroll itself, a fragment from before Creation.

And the first desire I had upon seeing it was to open it and see what it was all about.

Something I had done during every playthrough of Skyrim.

But this was reality, and it was no place to act stupid with a divine artifact that could turn me blind and insane.

“Want to take a peek?” Agnar asked from beside me, acting exactly like my Skyrim character would have.

“No, thank you... I’m rather fond of my eyes and my sanity.” Although, admittedly, I wasn’t sure how it would affect me. As a Devil, I wasn’t exactly a mortal.

My nature was closer to that of the Daedric Princes and other Daedra.

Though Daedra are unable to read Elder Scrolls directly, so who knows if they could endure the aftereffects? And I had no interest in risking it just out of curiosity.

At the very least, I should have gotten something valuable out of this today. I just needed to figure out how to read the contents of the Lexicons.

Grabbing the Elder Scroll, I ignored the temptation to pull it open for a peek and stored it away inside my bag.

“Aye, let’s head back. We’ve still got the whole cursed ruin between us and the surface.” Agnar sighed, resting a hand upon his axe as he prepared himself for yet more Falmer and Dwemer machines. He turned toward the winding ramp and began the long trek back the way we had come.

“Where are you going?”

“To the exit? Why?”

“It’s this way.” I said, pointing toward the other corridor leading out of the chamber.

“There’s another exit? You don’t just want to grab more loot?” he asked suspiciously.

“Nah, there should be an elevator straight to the surface. Remember the locked tower we saw before we headed down into the first ruin called Alftand?”

“Aye. You said we’d take a look later.” The Dragonborn nodded.

“That’s the exit. It’s directly connected to the elevator,” I said smugly, while Agnar’s expression became increasingly strained.

An awkward silence settled between us and lasted several seconds.

“Then answer me this: why in Oblivion did we fight our way through an entire Dwemer ruin, crawl through Blackreach, and nearly get ourselves killed a dozen times over… just to get around a locked tower?” Agnar growled. “I saw you cast a spell that could open a locked door. And your Transfiguration can reshape solid matter! You could’ve made a hole through the damned wall!”

The way he said that somehow made me feel very stupid.

Am I losing my logic like all those other wizards from the Wizarding World?

“...I forgot.”

———

Icy-cold winds hit our faces as we flew over the misty waters riddled with glaciers and icebergs. If it weren’t for the warming Charms I had placed around us, the freezing temperatures would have frozen our breath in midair.

We already couldn’t fly too high, thanks to the temperature and the fact that we were looking for a hard-to-miss landmark.

“No wonder you led us on another damned detour before we got here! Those bloody mists are enough to test the patience of a Nord.” Agnar called out over the wind.

“Yeah, the mist is the only problem. Definitely not the freezing temperatures,” I muttered under my breath while envying the natural resistance the people of the North seemed to have against the cold.

How did they ever have to leave Atmora if they were this resilient to the cold? A frozen continent shouldn’t be much of a challenge for them!

Maybe they developed that Gift afterward?

That could be it. The Imperials, Redguards, and Bretons had to come from somewhere, too. Maybe they developed from one of the earlier human migrant groups from Atmora, while the Nords came from the last few groups to flee the continent?

Although, that was just my theory based on the in-game lore. Who could tell me the truth?

“There! By the gods, that has to be it!” Agnar shouted as he spotted something on a small, icy island in the freezing ocean.

Following right behind him, I spotted the small trapdoor on the south side of the island as well.

Inside was a tunnel dug into the ice by someone, leading into the main chamber. A ramp circled the chamber counterclockwise, leading down toward the ground floor.

At the bottom, we came face-to-face with a very old Imperial scholar pacing in front of a Dwemer lockbox. He immediately noticed us, especially since I was holding his Lexicon in my hand so I wouldn’t accidentally mix it up with the others.

“Who are you? Not the ones before. No, not those who came and went beneath this stone. What is it that brings your knowing here? What seeks you in the dark of this cave?”

Oh, yeah. The guy was completely barmy.

He was only coherent enough to make some vague sense. That happened when you dealt with a Daedric Prince and Skooma.

“The ones you met before were my Mother and Friends. Blackreach was a bit too dangerous for them, so they sent me. I completed the task you gave them,” I explained while handing the Lexicon over.

The mad scholar immediately began deciphering the information inscribed within the Lexicon while I kept a close eye on every step he took, learning from him how to access the information stored inside.

“Extraordinary. I see it now. The sealing structure interlocks in the tiniest fractals. Dwemer blood can loose the hooks, but none alive remains to bear it. A panoply of their brethren could gather to form a facsimile. A trick. Something they didn’t anticipate. No, not even them. The blood of Altmer, Bosmer, Dunmer, Falmer, and Orsimer. The elves still living provide the key. Bear you hence this extractor. It will drink the fresh blood of elves. Come when its set is complete.”

With a few precise pushes and twists, he opened the Lexicon and gained access to a detailed combination of a script written in Dwemer runes, accompanied by audio and visual feedback.

And I memorized every step.

He already had the next task for us as well, handing us a strange-looking tool.

Meanwhile, Agnar was staring at me.

With a smile, I replied, “No need for your extractor. I’ve got my own, and I already completed the next step. Here is the Elven blood you wanted.”

After chatting with Rias, I already knew what the next step in the quest was and had completed it on our way here. We had even headed back into Blackreach for a moment to hunt some more Falmer.

Besides that, we had to find some bandits to kill.

I was getting quite used to killing, which wasn’t something I was particularly proud of. But the worlds I visited had very different moral compasses from mine, and it was starting to rub off on me.

It was something I had to remain conscious of. If I simply killed someone who attacked me in the Wizarding World, it would cause me more trouble than it was worth.

Of course, that only applied if there were witnesses around.

“Ah, that’s the life energy I felt... I can almost hear them. Come, I will make the mixture.”

Septimus took the blood from me and prepared a small concoction designed to emulate the nature of Dwemer blood before approaching the Dwemer lockbox in the chamber.

Using the blood mixture, he activated the locking mechanism, which began to spin and retract, causing a long tunnel to appear.

Septimus immediately rushed inside.

We followed behind him.

But Septimus froze on the spot when he failed to find the answer he was looking for.

“What is this... it’s... it’s just a book?!”

On a pedestal sat nothing more than a book. Well, not an ordinary book, but also not the Heart of Lorkhan he had been searching for.

That would have been a bit much. The Heart of Lorkhan was literally the Heart, or Divine Spark, of a god that could turn others into gods as well. Finding that here would have been a little too convenient.

As if Septimus had finally fulfilled his purpose in life, he began turning to ash right in front of our eyes.

“I can see. The world beyond burns in my mind. It’s marvelous...”

And then he was gone.

“That was something,” Agnar muttered thoughtfully before looking at the book on the pedestal. “All that for a book? And it wasn’t even what he was looking for… Gods, he must’ve been so disappointed he turned to dust on the spot.”

“Well, he was in the service of Hermaeus Mora and had been manipulated into coming here,” I admitted easily. “I honestly half expected him to appear in front of us. But it seems getting his Daedric Artifact back into circulation was enough for him.”

“A Daedric Prince? Aye, no thanks. I’ve no wish to involve myself with such cursed beings.” Agnar grumbled.

“Me neither,” I admitted.

Honestly, the moment I realized I was in Skyrim, I had decided to stay far away from any Daedric Artifacts. The Daedric Princes were simply far too dangerous to deal with.

Well, all except two.

This one and another one.

“If it’s alright with you, I’ll take it,” I asked Agnar, unsure whether he was interested in it.

The Dragonborn simply shrugged. “Keep it. It’s only a book, and there’s little in it that interests me. Now, if it were a weapon, that’d be a different matter. Besides, you did most of the work anyway.”

“You have my thanks,” I said as I grabbed the book.

The cover of the book was stitched together from different types of book covers, as if it were the Frankenstein’s Monster of books. Like an Elder Scroll, it gave off a strange presence and power, although to a lesser degree.

I could already feel its power calling out to me.

Steeling my mental shields, I opened the Oghma Infinium and was instantly flooded by a powerful presence that tried to control me while simultaneously guiding the energy of the book into me.

But my Occlumency held.

Instead of allowing myself to be loosely guided by the book, I flipped through the pages with controlled intent, focusing on the Path of Spirit—the section of the book dedicated to magic.

With every page I read, my understanding of Tamriel’s magic system deepened. Dense amounts of information, filtered through my Occlumency, began flooding into my mind.

Without my mental shields, the sheer amount of knowledge I could absorb would have been far smaller. From my rudimentary, novice-level understanding of the magic system, which I hadn’t delved into too deeply yet, I quickly jumped to a level of understanding belonging to an Expert, if not a Master, in each School of Magic.

I had just saved myself months, if not years, of studying in a matter of minutes.

The Oghma Infinium was truly an Artifact dedicated to knowledge. Unfortunately, you could only read it once before it disappeared. And you could only read it for as long as your mind was able to endure the experience, with even that coming with grave risks.

With my enhanced Devil Mind and mental shields, I managed to gain far more from it than an ordinary reader could.

Even then, I had my limits.

The book began branching into far more advanced Schools of Magic: the basics of Mysticism, Soul Magic, Shadow Magic, Necromancy, Flesh Magic, Auramancy, Nature Magic, Mind Magic, the Thu’um, Blood Magic, Time Magic, Space Magic, and so much more that this world had to offer.

The different Schools of Magic available in the game thanks to gameplay purposes were merely the beginning.

A Master of those Schools was only at the starting point of true magic.

The basics of each advanced branch of magic contained as much knowledge as mastering all the basic Schools combined.

Soon, the sheer amount of information flooding my brain became far too much for me to handle. I had just gained the basics of Cheesemancy when I forced myself to close the book.

A second later, it vanished in front of our eyes.

“Are you okay?” Agnar asked me. “You’ve been a bit… out of it while reading that book. You’ve been staring at those pages like they’ve put a spell on you.”

“I’m fine. The experience was intense,” I admitted.

At the same time, I was also a bit disappointed.

I had just gained and used a Daedric Artifact, and my System didn’t say anything!

I didn’t even get a Feat.

Nothing I had done in this world had given me a Feat so far, which meant no more new Gacha Rolls!

Slaying a Dragon didn’t count. Neither did learning Dragonborn Magic, absorbing a Dragon Soul, or gaining and using a Daedric Artifact.

At least one of those things should have been worthy of a Feat.

Yet nothing!

What do I have to do to gain more Gacha Rolls? Kill a god or something?

[ Note: The Host has deactivated his Notifications. ]

Come again? I did what?

When did I do that?

[ Note: Your words were: “Ugh, not now, System.” Following the Admin’s commands, the System deactivated all notifications until further notice. ]

Are you serious right now?

[ Do you wish to activate Notifications? ]

...

Yes.

[-- End of Chapter --]