Chapter 412: Erased

Chapter 412: Erased

Anna.

I think Im starting to understand a few things

Anna, huh.

Maybe this isnt an admins 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 shouldnt be wording out.

Or its 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 Im 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.

Its clean, mostly silent, and doesnt use mana I could see why you would want to make something like that. But how do you get the electricity? Im guessing its stored somewhere in some kind of catalyser.

Wouldnt you need a lightning mage to produce it, though? Then youre back to needing mana, might as well just use good old ritual circles to do the thing.

Im pretty sure the ovens in the academy used ritual magic to cook things up.

Now that I think about it, Im surprised magical appliances like this arent 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? Theres 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 toilets 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 its 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 Ive ever seen.

A standing shower, hadnt seen one in a while.

Theyre not exactly commonplace. I like that better than actual baths though.

Actually

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 wasnt steamy it just wasnt the same.

That was niiiiiice.

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? Its quite good I dont 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. Its 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.

Ill just take a couple. I cant 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 Im somewhere I shouldnt, though. But its 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 Sofias 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, its 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 rooms 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 hadnt seen in her rooms 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

Sofias brain instinctively screamed human man as she looked at the third person in the pcture, 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.

Its 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.