Intrigued, Angor quickly asked who Lochet was talking about.
According to Lochet, the arrival of the strange man was mostly unknown because the Shannon Clan only orally passed the rumor around without leaving any written records behind. However, he was sure it was at least a thousand years ago.
Now, nobody could tell for sure whether it was a supernatural individual. However, this was very likely because the visitor left a treasure in the palace that had been kept in safety until today—the particular weapon that always cost someone’s life.
When the Heart Gorger attacked the palace several months ago, people of the Shannon Clan used this treasure to chase it away.
“Can I look at it?” asked Angor.
Lochet nodded without a second thought. For one, Angor was already invited to look at the deepest secrets of the palace, so showing him more didn’t matter. Besides, the treasure could only be activated by someone who possessed the bloodline of Shannon.
Lochet turned away and asked one of his guards to fetch something from another vault chamber.
Angor was rather confused to see the said guard carrying a pipe-like object back, until Lochet showed him that it contained a scroll inside.
Using the keen eye of an alchemist, he quickly discerned that the scroll was made of the hide of a special monster, which was a popular material for its superior element tolerance and conductivity.
He widened his eyes slightly when Lochet spread the scroll open.
It showed several elemental forms that appeared similar to the creatures drawn on the small piece of paper he saw earlier. He even found an identical one—a tiny dragon that could spit fire at him. This meant the paper hidden in the small tunnel was also left by this strange figure.
As the content of the scroll was fully exposed, Angor noticed that the picture wasn’t about creatures or doors, but a map.
More importantly, he recognized it. He saw something similar back at White Clam City, which was an old map used as a decoration in the forward office of Brute Cavern. Starting from the southeast coast of Fey Continent, that map demonstrated a series of well-known places such as Ferran Land, Land of Revelation, Magus Corridor, and Valhalla Isle.
However, both that old map and the current one had something Angor didn’t recognize drawn at where the Old Earth was supposed to be.
He read many other maps or geographical books before, either at home or at Fey Continent. He was sure the continent called “Old Earth” wasn’t this flower-shaped thing.
When he discovered the strange map at White Clam City, a manager working for Brute Cavern—Boro—told him that the chart had the wrong details probably because it was too ancient. Angor accepted the explanation and didn’t give it much thought.
Now he believed this second map with the same “mistakes” might be drafted by the same man.
He looked at Lochet’s map more closely and saw it divided into several sections by dotted lines, and each section had a different creature in it, such as a winged fairy, a sleeping turtle... It was as if the mapmaker granted these creatures their own territories.
He suddenly had a wild guess that the map might be showing him a parallel world or something similar, while that door he couldn’t reach could take him there.
“Sir, we must offer all of a man’s blood each time we trigger this scroll. If we do so, we can summon forth a powerful beast that will help us defeat our enemies.”
Last time, it was Lochet’s third son who sacrificed himself and summoned a small rat that could unleash deadly lightning bolts to burn the Heart Gorger.
Both Lochet and Tavier looked down in sadness when the tragedy was brought up.
Angor checked the map again, using a pair of glowing eyes this time.
Surprisingly, Narda’s Vision showed him an answer in no time. As the “server” in his mind finished the calculations it needed, he saw symbols and digits rising from the map, most of which were accompanied by question marks.
The accuracy of Narda’s Vision depended on how much knowledge the user had. In Angor’s case, identifying something not related to alchemy would not work so well. The question marks represented something he didn’t know yet, and too many of them would make the result unreliable.
Now that almost 80% of the data were question marks, he probably wouldn’t get anything at all.
But as the cantrip came to an end, a giant flow of valid data suddenly rose from the map and dived into his mind while eliminating the unsolved puzzles.
He didn’t know what was going on at all. The instruction of Narda’s Vision never mentioned such a case.
He didn’t worry about it too much because a perceptible result was already in his view.
[Item name: Map of Torrent Plane (simplified)
[Creator: Mirafall Van
[Showing the general distribution of typical lifeforms in Torrent Plane
[Additional effect: Consuming a set amount of energy to simulate the biological structures of a creature. Triggered via the bloodline of royal members of the Shannon Clan
[Note: If you see this, know that I’m not good at drawing maps. Don’t rely too much on it!]
Angor was left speechless because he just found so many surprises from the information, and the biggest one being the name—Mirafall Van.
Almost everyone in the southern wizarding region knew this name, along with an acclaimed title, the “Magic Painter”. “Magic Painter” Mirafall was a wizard who could connect the real world with paintings. He created several venerated creations, such as the painting “Calamity of All”, which was still used in so many magazines and educational books.
Rumors had it that Mirafall left the southern region several thousand years ago and never came back. Nowadays, every single painting left by Mirafall was regarded as a priceless collection even if it was only an ordinary picture without any special effect.
Thinking about this, Angor suddenly felt an urge to take this map with him.
Although the greed slowly died down when he looked at the “activated by the Shannon Clan only” part. Apparently, Mirafall gave this item to the Shannons. Angor didn’t know why, but he did know that he wasn’t supposed to go against the decision of such a great wizard.
Besides, he could always go back to White Clam City and retrieve the other one, which didn’t seem to hold any special intentions.
The “Torrent Plane” didn’t ring any bell to him at all. It was probably another plane inhabited by elemental creatures, which wasn’t important right now.
He then looked at the last line again.
“If you see this, know that I’m not good at drawing maps.”
Narda’s Vision didn’t usually reveal the comment of an item’s crafter. Angor had a hunch that Mirafall intentionally did something on the map to allow people to identify it easier. Perhaps he knew someone like Angor would see this map one day and try to find its secret, so he even left a friendly reminder.
“Ugh. I guess famous wizards all have their weird fancies?” Angor complained in his mind.