Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2026 - Chapter 550
Chapter 550: Secret Room (3)
The stone gates opened wide.
It was different from when we usually summoned the monsters. Then, only darkness greeted us from beyond the stone gate. We couldn’t see anything even if we approached the entryway, and some mysterious force blocked us from stepping inside.
Shine!
This time, white light shone through through the open gate, though we still weren’t able to see what was inside beyond its blinding rays.
“(Alright, follow me!)”
Judging by how Hamsick stepped ahead of us, however, it seemed we could now enter the place.
“For some reason… I’m getting a bit nervous.”
“Can we really trust a terrifying monster like that…?”
“You’re all worried for nothing. We have the baron with us.”
Even while looking unsure and nervous, everyone followed after me with expectant eyes as I followed behind Hamsick.
“(I’ll go in first. See you there!)”
Hamsick walked into the light first, and I took a short moment to steel myself before quickly following it in.
Flash!
My body was embraced by the light as if I had stepped into a portal.
[You have entered the First Records Archives.]
When I opened my eyes, I was in an unfamiliar place. The circular space was lined with bookshelves filled with books of all colors.
“(B-be careful! The ceiling will get damaged!)”
The first thing to note, the space was very small. Even though I wasn’t in my Giantization state, I needed to squat and bend my neck at an uncomfortable angle just to walk. It felt like I was inside a mini-library, at least from my perspective. However, when I looked around, there was only one other person who looked to be as uncomfortable as me.
“Uwah! What’s this?! I feel like I’m going to die from how cramped it is! And it’s filled with books too!” Ainar cried in discomfort.
Once again, I couldn’t help but wonder why society showed such little care for barbarians. The world would be a beautiful place if the height of every ceiling could just be raised by a foot.
Although the complaint weighed heavy on my heart, I carefully observed my surroundings.
“(This is where I usually stay… You’re my first guest, so how is it?)” Hamsick asked me.
“(It’s cool.)”
“(R-really…?)”
“(Probably.)” I gave a half-hearted reply as I took a round, but there was only one thing I could be sure of with my naked eyes.
The only things here are books.
Books in bookshelves, books stacked on the ground like towers—the only distinguishing factor was their placement, but all I could see were books in this space.
However, it was too early for me to be disappointed.
“(Hamsick.)”
“(…E-eh?)”
I ignored how nervous Hamsick sounded when I called out to it and instead moved in a direction where I pulled a book out from underneath a pile of other books. “(What’s this book? It looks like you quickly hid it before I came in here.)”
“(Can’t-Can’t you tell? It’s just an ordinary book…!)”
Wow, it was still acting like this even though we were friends.
The book’s gilded cover immediately signaled to me that it was no ordinary book. “(Oh good, so it’s just an ordinary book. I’ll take this as a housewarming gift, then.)”
“(H-housewarming gift? Do you think I’m stupid? The guests are supposed to give the housewarming gift!)”
Tsk, it knew that? That made things a bit more difficult, but it wasn’t a big issue in the end.
“(Hamsick, that’s the old way,)” I admonished. What could it do if I told it otherwise?
“(…Eh?)”
“(These days, the guests are the ones who receive the gifts… Maybe you didn’t know because you were stuck in here for so long?)”
“(O-oh! Right! Yep! I just got confused with something else!)”
“(Huh…)”
“(Really! Don’t misunderstand! It was just a mistake!)”
No, not that. I didn’t expect that to work so well, so I ended up surprising myself.
“(Ahem! R-really!)”
Hamsick’s obvious lie made me feel a little off-kilter. “(Got it, I’ll trust you,)” I said. “(Because we’re friends.)”
“(Yeah! Because we’re friends! Trust is important in a relationship between friends!)”
…Why was this hamster so cute all of a sudden? It was only a monster I needed to rob for all it had.
I choked down the good impression I had of it and instead said, “(Then are you giving me this?
The book?)”
“(N-not that one! I-I’ll give you something else!)”
“(Why? Didn’t you say it’s an ordinary book?)”
Hamsick went silent, caught in the trap of its own words. Was it the type to avoid conflict? It stopped talking whenever it got stumped.
“Lord Baron, there’s an ancient language written here. Would you translate it for us?”
Just as I was contemplating what I could do to sneak this golden book out of this place, one of the wizard trio from the Armin Adventurer Group approached me with a book in hand. I could tell based on its appearance that it was one of the books on the shelves.
“(You uncivil brutes! How dare you touch someone else’s property without their permission?!)”
Only then did Hamsick look around and realize the situation it was in. To be honest, its anger was justified. Even I could tell that this was too much.
“Check every single thing here!”
“Yes! Sorry! I ripped the book while pulling it out.”
“Don’t worry about minor things like that. We should push the bookshelves over! There might be something hidden behind them!”
The adventurers turned hyper-focused as soon as they entered and were turning the place upside down. I was reminded as always that adventurers as a species were practically incarnations of destruction and greed.
“(You little—!)” Hamsick exploded in anger again, but no one in the group cared about it.
“Um… I think that monster’s angry again.”
“What a frightening cry…”
“Are we alright?”
“Eh, we’ll be fine! Why are you all worried? Didn’t you see it before? When the baron suppressed it and held it down, it couldn’t overcome his grandeur, so it opened the door right away for us!”
“Haha! No one will believe us if we tell this story when we go outside-a presence grand enough to make a monster like that obey him? People make fun of things like this in the old stories!”
“Truly, the baron is no ordinary person…”
Ah, I supposed our present situation could look like that to these guys. But in truth, I was only scamming an innocent hamster who didn’t know anything about the world.
It…will be better if they don’t know.
There was a reason stories of Jumong and Bak Hyeokgeose and other such myths about the old lords were created. It was because they were helpful when ruling over the people.
“(Hamsick, calm down.)”
“(What? Are you really saying that after you’re seeing all this?!)”
“(Isn’t cleaning things up what you’re supposed to do anyway? Or do you hate cleaning things up?)”
“(Um… That’s not it…)”
“(Then it’s fine. Everyone’s doing their best to help you to do the work you like doing, so why are you angry about it?)”
“(Uh, is that… Is that how that works…?)”
Alright, that was enough to convince it.
“(Could I open this?)” I asked.
“(Huh? Ah… Yeah… If you’re just opening it…)”
I also received Hamsick’s permission while it was dazed, so I quickly opened the golden book. Honestly, I had high expectations. This golden book looked to be one of the summoning books.
What monster is inside? Maybe a super-rare monster like a mimic? Or a Guardian of the Rift on par with Milayel?
Hmm, maybe it was a system where after I killed a specific monster, a reward would appear—
Huh?
I read the first passage before stopping.
“(A long long time ago, there was a brother and sister who lived lively and happily in a countryside village.)”
…What is this?
The story was written in the ancient language and seemed to have been written like a child’s diary due to the shaky handwriting. It didn’t take long for me to read everything. Although the book was thick, the story ended on the first page.
“Lord Baron, could we perhaps hear what the contents are?”
Not just the wizard trio, but everyone else also seemed to be interested in what I read, so I gave a quick summary of the story.
“In the past, a brother and sister lived happily in a countryside village. However, when the older brother said he would become a wizard and left the village, the younger sister was very sad.”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
“…Pardon?”
Well, that was all that was written here, so there wasn’t much I could say. It was why I didn’t even consider withholding the knowledge and simply told everyone outright. The story wasn’t long enough to make any sort of judgment about it, let alone enough to decide if it was worth hiding.
I turned to the back pages, but there wasn’t anything else written in the book.
The story probably isn’t nothing.
The importance of the story climbed even higher.
Basement Floor 1 contained all sorts of mysteries and unknown quantities, and this mysterious monster that I met, Hamsick, cared deeply for this book in its hideout. There was no way the contents of the book were mere nonsense.
I called everyone for a brainstorm. “Does anyone know who the siblings in the story are?”
“Hmm… A brother and a sister… The first thing that comes to mind is the Kailaje siblings.”
The Kailaje siblings were a famous adventurer sibling party that had only been active a few hundred years ago, so pass.
“Isn’t this connected to mythology? Some time ago when I was studying theology, I read a theologian’s thesis arguing that Lord Reatlas and Lord Heindel were born from the same parents.”
But this didn’t seem like the story of a god.
“Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Immortal. Before he rose to the throne, he had many younger siblings.”
Well, since he had a large family, he would’ve had a younger sister, but the fact that the tale mentioned a countryside village contradicted that theory. Even if Rafdonia was positioned at the edge of the continent, it was said to have raked in a lot of money through trade back in the day.
“Emily, what about you? Can you think of anything?”
She was slow to respond. “Rather than the siblings part, I’m more focused on the part where the brother went off to learn magic.”
“Ah, that.”
“Is there a possibility that this is maybe a story about the Last Great Sage, Gabrielius?”
Hmm, that was also a possibility.
The problem was that even if these guesses were right, there was nothing we could deduce from this alone.
Hmm… I guess “nothing” isn’t technically right.
“(Hamsick, do you know who this story is about?)”
“(…No?)”
I asked just in case, but Hamsick didn’t seem to know anything either.
“(You’re saying you guarded this story so carefully when you don’t even know whose story it is?)” I accused, clearly warning the hamster not to lie.
Hamsick waved its hands in a show of innocence. “(I really don’t know! I just… felt like I needed to…so that’s why I’ve been keeping it safe.)”
“(Hmm, really? Then I can take it, right?)”
“(But you— No! It’s a book I need to give someone in the future!)”
“(Give to someone…? Who?)”
“(Someone qualified for it.)”
“(What’s the qualification?)”
“(…don’t know that…but I’ll know when I see it. No, I feel like I’ll know.)”
The longer we spoke, the more I became curious about Hamsick. What was this thing? Who created it, and why did it have to spend so long by itself here in a place no one could come to?
“(A-anyway! You aren’t qualified, so don’t even dream of it! I need to hold onto it until that time arrives…!)”
“(Hamsick, friends share everything with—)”
“(Squeak! You can’t, even if you say that!)”
Tsk, so that wasn’t going to work?
I put aside my interest in the golden book for now. Although I hadn’t completely given up, its ranking on my list of priorities fell after seeing that it only had one page worth of story inside.
“Versyl! Did you get anything?”
“Anything? Come here! There are so many things I need to show you!”
Besides, the golden book wasn’t the only thing in the secret room.
***
The investigation process for this secret area was quite simple. We pulled all the books on the shelves, pushed the empty bookshelf over to the side, and then we either physically hit or used magic to destroy the walls. It could seem a bit barbaric, but this was the official method used by adventurers when they were in unknown areas.
Something was bound to appear if they did this.
Honestly, I also had a habit of going around breaking everything I could when I was playing the game, and that habit helped me find a lot of hidden secrets.
“(You… You oafs…!)”
Well, the homeowner was bound to get mad in the process.
In any case, thanks to the investigation of the adventurers, I was able to confirm something.
“(There isn’t anything hidden here,)” I mumbled. There wasn’t anything hidden behind the walls, below the floor, in the ceiling—nothing.
“(That’s what I said! There isn’t anything here!)”
Ah, but I didn’t know that for sure. “(I would’ve trusted if you didn’t lie so you much.)”
“(…When did I lie to you?!)”
“You said this room didn’t exist at first.”
Hamsick went quiet.
In any case, just because there was nothing hidden here didn’t mean we didn’t gain anything.
“Your Lordship! Look at this book! I think it’s the map for Basement Floor 1!”
“I think this is a summoning book. There are more than ten mimics in this book.”
“This is a fountain pen that was on the table, and we’ve detected an unexplainable movement of mana inside it. I think we should look more deeply into it…”
“This is an ordinary photo frame. It looked pretty special, so I did some physical damage to it, but it didn’t return to its original state—”
Hearing the results of the investigation done by the group, I nodded with a satisfied smile.
Yeah, this was what adventuring was all about.
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