Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2026 - Chapter 548
Chapter 548: Secret Room (1)
On the eighty-seventh day since we entered the labyrinth, I was going through my morning routine when Amelia handed me an interesting piece of news.
A ghost…
She said that she wasn’t able to find anything when she checked, but since there were quite a few witnesses, we couldn’t ignore the reports either.
I heard from Amelia that excluding her, every other member of the security team had seen a ghost at least once during their watch, so I called them all together to have a short meeting.
“When I felt a chill and turned to look in that direction, something with white hair was looking back at me.”
Starting with Mihail Lectus, the one who had been part of the palace’s investigation department, I heard everyone’s ghost testimonies, but surprisingly, everyone saw a different one.
“What I saw was a beast-type monster that had protruding fangs…”
“Mine’s a little different… It was a man who looked to be wearing rags. His eyes were dyed completely black and he was crying tears of blood while looking at me with resentment.”
“What I saw was just like a slime. It was stuck tightly to the ground like it had melted onto it, and it was approaching me in the dark. But when I rubbed my eyes, it disappeared. That’s why I thought I hallucinated it from how tired I was.”
Each of them had seen vastly different things.
However, there was one thing that was similar between all of them: When they turned their attention away for a moment, the ghosts disappeared without a trace.
“Did they all see it yesterday?”
“No, the timing is different for each one. I heard it from Lectus while he was on watch last night, so I asked around and it seemed they all saw it at different times except for me.”
I see, if that was the case…
As I rubbed my chin and began thinking, I heard a grinding sound from next to me.
Creak, crack, clatter!
As I turned to look, I noticed that the sounds were coming from Ainar’s jaw. Barbarians tended to grind their teeth when they were afraid.
“A g-ghost… I-isn’t this dangerous…?!”
Now that I thought about it, Ainar was really scared of things like this before. No, most barbarians were like this in truth. They felt an instinctive aversion to spirit-type monsters, and a few of them even felt fear like her.
At one point, I was fascinated by this characteristic and asked Raven, and she gave me this answer: the blood of the barbarians.
To put it another way, their genes possibly had encoded information about an enemy that physical attacks didn’t work against. Because barbarians relied so heavily on their instincts, she said it could be a characteristic that was seen in many different people for that reason.
Well, that wasn’t very important right now.
“This is fishy,” I mumbled to myself.
“Hmm? Fishy?” Ainar began looking around while sniffing. “Fishy like meat…!”
Was her desire for meat stronger than her fear of ghosts?
I couldn’t understand her, but I stopped caring about it. That wasn’t what I meant by fishy, anyway.
Meat is nice as well…but there are things in the world that are tastier than meat.
And what I was smelling was one of those things.
A hidden secret.
Any user who had played Dungeon and Stone would explode if they found one. When I heard about these ghosts, that was what I smelled.
Gulp.
The smell of a hidden secret, filled with milk and honey.
A deep smell at that.
Hidden secrets were called Achievements of Gabrielius in this world.
Having found quite a few hidden secrets while playing Dungeon and Stone, I immediately began formulating an operation. What I needed right now was information—a lot of information that I could consolidate into a tangible statistic.
“…Time?”
“It was around one in the morning.”
“I was the first watch…so it was around eleven in the night.”
After asking everyone who had seen the ghost, it seemed the ghost appeared from eleven in the afternoon to three in the morning.
Was this a coincidence?
Not a chance.
Then the ghost of the library appeared between eleven and three in the morning.
“There! Over there. It was looking at me from there.”
“I saw mine above the bookshelf…”
“I saw one on the stairs leading outside.”
And the location seemed random.
Hmm, I guess in that sense, it’s not so much random as it is that its range is the entirety of the library.
“Mister, are you perhaps thinking that that ghost is an Achievement of Gabrielius?” Erwen looked at me with eyes filled with curiosity as I began my thorough investigation. She wasn’t the only one either.
“Yeah, for now.”
The eyes of all the adventurers around us began to shine.
“An Achievement of Gabrielius!”
“It’s true!”
The members of the Armin Adventurer Group, who were professionals in looking for hidden secrets, and the members of the Hektz Clan both lit up with desire.
I mean, what adventurers could restrain themselves in moments like these?
“So…if we find that ghost, we’ll be able to get the treasure? I heard that everyone who found an achievement ended up rich.” Even Ainar, who was afraid of ghosts, let a bit of her true thoughts known.
Not to say everyone was overtaken by greed.
One person. Only one person approached me and displayed worry.
“Yandel, I think assuming that this will be purely good for us is dangerous.”
It was Amelia Rainwales, my ally connected to me from beyond time.
“Dangerous?”
“It’s as it sounds. I think you’re being uncharacteristically positive about all this.”
Ah, I could understand what she meant. In truth, it did occur to me when I first heard about this ghost that maybe it was a surveillance unit sent here by someone and that we had ended up discovering it by chance.
The village chief, for example.
The first day when we came to Library Island again, we had that captain of the Silver Lion Clan use Emergency Escape on us as well.
Treating the existence of the ghost as only a positive thing wasn’t in any way smart. Even if it wasn’t connected to the chief, there was no guarantee that it was “good” for us.
“Emily, I understand what you’re trying to say. I’m being pretty cautious, so don’t let it worry you.”
“…If you say so. Got it.”
“Yeah. Thanks for telling me.”
My gut feeling still said that the ghost was connected to a hidden secret but I decided to adhere to Amelia’s warning and be a little bit more cautious. Being wary of the worst-case scenario in all situations was helpful.
And by nightfall… I’ll know what scenario we’re dealing with.
After coming to that conclusion, I returned to our main objective and spent the day summoning and killing monsters. We rested only as much as we needed to, but unfortunately, we didn’t get much today.
Just one rank four essence that we can’t even eat…
Usually, this much would’ve been good enough for us to put into a magic vial, but we were now at the point where we couldn’t be satisfied with this alone.
Tsk.
The biggest shame was that we luckily found another Bellarios and killed two more monsters but no essences were dropped.
Still, at our current pace, I would be able to get one before I left this underground floor.
As we reached the higher bookshelves, the number of books we could get also increased.
In any case, what do I do with the last remaining essence slot?
I had two empty essence slots. One of them was reserved for the Bellarios essence, and since a Hipramajent essence would replace the Orc Hero essence later, that one didn’t count.
I took my time pondering over what the last essence would be.
The last slot wouldn’t stay filled for long. I just felt that having the last one filled as well would help in my fight against the village chief, but it wasn’t like I could get any of the graduation essences in my current situation. Unless another Guardian of the Rift from the eighth floor like Milayel appeared again, no matter what I took, it would get erased after a few months.
…I’ll keep it in mind while looking at the essences that drop. It’s not like I need to make a decision right now.
It would’ve been a different problem if I hadn’t obtained Wall of Aegis but since I now had the graduation shield, facing the village chief wasn’t that big of a problem.
I paused my chain of thought with that.
Tick, tock.
The day was over, and we began to set up to go to sleep in the library.
[23:00]
Night had come to us.
Usually by eleven in the night, it was the time when everyone except the select security members of our expedition group would go to sleep to recharge for the night, but a lot more people were awake tonight.
“The Achievement of the Great Sage…”
“Is it true?”
“Even if it isn’t, I’m curious. It could be a clue to help us get out of this place.”
The adventurers were awake and talking like school children excited before the outing the next day.
Hey, just go to sleep.
“Stop talking and close your eyes! It might not appear if too many people are awake!”
I then went around to tell off the ones who were still awake, and the library quickly quieted. Ah, of course, this only meant that they stopped talking. They were far from silent.
Snore!
Honk, shoo, honk.
Dozens of adventurers snored across the volume spectrum.
“Everyone seems to be asleep.”
“So, what will you do now?”
“There’s only one thing to do. Look around and check.”
After checking that everyone was asleep, I took Amelia and Versyl to patrol the area.
“So…we need to keep doing this until three in the morning?” Versyl asked after an hour of us walking around without finding anything. The sense that I got wasn’t that she asked because she had a problem with being part of the patrol.
“How have you been these days, Mr. Yandel?”
Instead, she was getting bored just walking around and staying quiet.
Well, since I was of the same thought as her, I naturally accepted her signal for small talk.
“What do you mean by these days?” I obliged.
“Just in general. Everyone’s curious as well.”
“What are they curious about?”
Versyl glanced at Amelia who was patrolling a little further from us before quietly whispering to me, “So, who is it?”
“No, please just tell me outright what you’re trying to say.”
“Goodness…you already know what I’m talking about.”
Well, that was true. I wasn’t completely clueless.
I smirked as I answered, “No one.”
“What? Really? The others were a mystery, but I thought you would be dating Ms. Raines.”
“No way. We’re just allies.”
“Heh…is that so?” Versyl said, her tone clearly hinting that she didn’t believe me before putting another name up to bat. “Then what about Ms. Karlstein? I noticed that the amount of time you two spend together has increased a lot recently.”
“Not at all.” It was just that we were getting less awkward. That was why recently, the amount of time we spent talking with each other increased. They were mostly trivial conversations, like how the food tasted and that we needed to eat more vegetables and such.
“Everyone is being mindful. She’s the only ex to the famous Lord Baron.”
Well, well. After being in the labyrinth for so long, it seemed everyone was getting interested in things like this.
I welcomed the small talk during our patrol, but I didn’t expect it to bring this type of stress, so I ended it there. “Let’s stay quiet now. Everyone is still sleeping.” We had to work hard tomorrow as well so we needed to let our precious fighting force rest as much as they could.
A heavy silence ensued.
What the? Why didn’t she respond? Did she get upset?
“…Mr. Yandel.”
I was turning back to face Versyl when she suddenly stopped, having followed behind me the whole time, and quietly spoke without moving his lips, as if practicing ventriloquy. “There, there.”
She faced me straight on, only twitching her eyes to tell me the direction. I also only turned my eyes to look in that direction.
“R-right?” she stammered. “Th-that’s the ghost the people were talking about.”
“Hmm, I don’t really know, but I guess it’s worth checking out.”
“…It’s pretty scary. I never heard anyone say that it would look this frightening.”
I couldn’t help but tilt my head at those words.
Looks frightening…?
It seemed that Versyl and I were looking at two completely different things.
That’s interesting.
I could only see a little mouse.
The unknown creature that lived in the library appeared between eleven in the afternoon and three in the morning, and everyone who saw it saw something different.
While it was mysterious in a lot of ways, capturing it wasn’t particularly difficult.
[You have cast Eye of the Storm. With the authority of Transcendence, the innate ability of the skill is unleashed.]
It flew straight to me with one grab attack.
“Squeak? S-squeak!”
It was so small that I could grab it in one hand without using Giantization.
“Squick! Squee! Squeak!”
As the mouse squirmed while squeaking, it started to turn transparent.
I nearly let go because I was caught off guard.
[Versyl Gowland has cast the rank eight curse magic Materialization.]
However, with Versyl’s timely response, the mouse’s body returned to normal.
“What was that sound…?” Amelia approached us after hearing the sound before frowning when she saw me. “Yandel, what are you holding in your hand?”
“Well, what does it look like to you?”
“…It’s something that looks very soft and disgusting.”
“Really? What about you, Versyl?”
“It’s a man that’s covered in filth… He looks suspiciously like someone I know.”
“Someone you know…?”
“It’s someone you don’t know.”
Hmm, I see…
“S-squeak! Squeak! Squeak!”
I looked back down at the thing in my hand. No matter how I looked at it, it was just an ordinary mouse. If I were to describe it, I’d say it was like a hamster standing on two legs. The only difference it had to a hamster from Earth was that its body was quite large. Honestly, at that size, you could argue they were about as tall as dwarves.
“Squeak! Squeak! Squeeeeeak!”
Watching how hard it was struggling made me realize it looked a little cute as well, but that was that. We had things to do.
“For now we should wake… Oh, everyone.”
It seemed most of the members had woken up from the commotion and were looking in my direction.
“Is that the ghost?”
“It’s as terrifying as I heard.”
“If I saw it in the night by myself, I would’ve had a heart attack…”
Even with their diverse reactions, I just held the mouse and stepped into the center of the library.
Tap.
I put the mouse on top of the altar we had been putting our summoning books on.
“…I guess this isn’t it?”
Unfortunately, the altar didn’t show any reaction.
“Squ-Squeak! Squeak! Squeeeeak!”
That meant I had two choices left.
One: just kill it.
Two: cast distortion magic on it and kill it.
Which one should I test? Since we only had one ghost here, this was an important decision to make.
“Squeak! Squeak! Squeeeeak!”
I let my thoughts wander as I tied the mouse to the altar like a lab rat.
“(Y-you wicked creature! Let me go already! Let me go!)”
But then, the mouse began to talk like a person.
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