Chapter 386: The Deal Pt.22

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Chapter 386: The Deal Pt.22

Being let into the Master Lab by Doul Lake saw that there weren't that many people here currently because it was still kind of early and most of the Masters were probably still resting. He wouldn't be surprised if they arrived while Doul was showing them what they were going to be working on later though if it took a while for the experiment to be explained to him.

After walking around a few other work areas that belonged to some of the other masters Doul pointed at a station that had curtains surrounding it and said. "What I've been working on is in there." Lake had never been to this corner of the lab though it wasn't too far from where he had helped master Nancom. "Why is it blocked off like that?"

"Oh I've been struggling recently and didn't want the others to think I'd lost my skills and tell Lucas my funding should be given to them instead." Lake had kind of known the Alchemist guild had a cut-throat culture going but it was kind of crazy that the Masters had to worry about something like that while they were working in the shared space called the Master Lab.

"If it wasn't for the fact I needed the increased mana environment to help with stability in my work I would have moved to somewhere else months ago for more privacy." Lake was invested enough now that he didn't really want to hear anything else until he was actually looking at whatever Doul was working on so he pointed at the curtain and asked. "Can I just go in or is there something blocking the way?"

If Doul was worried about the other masters he probably had something like a barrier up to block people from going in while he was gone. "Oh, Give me a second I'll let us in so you can see what we're talking about."

After a few seconds that consisted of Doul touching the curtain with his eyes closed, Lake was let inside and saw a station that had hundreds of pipes running in between four cylinders. This meant there were multiple pipes joining each cylinder which Lake didn't understand at a glance but he was sure Doul would explain it to him.

"I'm sure you're wondering what this mess of pipes could possibly accomplish so I'll explain it to you before you start thinking that I'm crazy like the others. Do you know how it seems that once you use an ingredient derived from plants in something, adding more of its powder doesn't really do anything to improve the final product? My goal is to change that but I haven't been able to produce enough control over the ingredients inside to have this happen."

...

Donny didn't know how much time had passed since he had started trying to figure out how to use the looking stone but in this time he had made pretty good progress. In the past three tries he had actually found two things he recognized as enchantments that were used to block off viewing from the other side.

It didn't take a lot to figure out that these enchantments were most likely on whatever it was that he was inside so no one would know they were smuggling a kidnapped person out of the Metal Domain. It didn't really help him get out though so he just kept trying to find something on the bindings that were keeping him from using magic or any of his skills.

Keeping prisoners like this was extremely difficult so he knew whatever it was that was keeping him in such a useless condition was going to be obvious once he found it. He also knew there was a good chance the effect was coming from the shackles themselves so he was keeping his eyes out for anything the looked like metal whenever he looked through the looking stone even though he wasn't able to really see what the shackles were made from because of how dark it was in this room.

The reason he thought this was that if they were using something like a poison or curse to keep him weak the shackles wouldn't be necessary at all because he would be unable to do anything even without being chained up. Of course they might be being overly cautious with him for some unknown reason and he had been cursed already while he was sleeping but there was no point in thinking like that with no way to know if it was true.

...

Lake had had enough of trying to find a book that met his requirements and finally found a way to use Detector to look for a book that he felt could answer his question and that was just to set Detector to look for a book that had the right answer to his question. It was a ridiculous way to find what he was looking for but Detector had passed every hurdle he had ever thrown at it so he didn't think there would be a problem.

After he set Detector to Look for a book that could answer how Akal and the Demon Lord were involved to one another Lake looked around the library expecting a book to start glowing. When it didn't happen, Lake realized what he wanted to know must only have been known to the Insider and the Demon Lord and he would never find all the information here no matter what books he read.

It was still probably a good idea for him to go and have a look around the other libraries in the spire on the off chance this place was just a bad source of information when one wanted to learn history. There were at least three other rooms filled with books that he knew of so giving up before looking around would be stupid.