Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2026 - Chapter 551
Chapter 551: Secret Room (4)
In summary, this was everything we found in the secret room: A golden book containing the story of two unidentified siblings.
Well, that wasn’t much use to me. But the other loot we got was a different story.
Seven summoning books.
They weren’t just ordinary summoning books, either. Each book was one we hadn’t seen on the bookshelves outside. One had ten rare mimics inside it while another had a picture of the monsters but the monster was colored in blue, red, and other colors instead of just black and white. Another still had pages where the monster art was instead replaced with ???.
Seven books each with some peculiarity to them.
And a suspicious fountain pen.
There was also the fountain pen that was on Hamsick’s table.
“(Hamsick, how do you use this fountain pen?)”
“(W-well…)” After hesitating for a long moment, Hamsick seemed to conclude that we were indeed friends and spoke honestly. “(If you use this pen to paint over the picture in the book…you can get that color of essence.)”
“(What?!)”
“(D-don’t shout! You scared me!)”
Then say it in a way that won’t surprise me.
A fountain pen that could be used to get whatever color of essence I wanted? Was an item like that even allowed to exist in this world?
It was truly that much of a cheat item from what I could tell, but unfortunately, it did have its limitations. It could only summon rank 3s and below, and it could only be used twice.
Yeah, there was no way it could be used without limit.
I could feel the disappointment setting in, but since this was Dungeon and Stone, the emotion was tempered. Maybe I was a fool for expecting more. It was this game, after all, so an item of this level was still amazing.
Is this what it’s like to be the first to step foot in an unexplored area…?
I now understood why the adventurers went nuts after hearing Basement Floor 1 had newly opened. The fifth, sixth, and seventh floors—when those had first opened, there must’ve been these cheat-level items hidden there as well.
“(By the way, Hamsick,)” I began, “(how do you know about the fountain pen? Did you use it a few times before I came here?)”
“(No way!)”
“(Hmm, but your explanation was pretty detailed.)”
“(I just know it! I knew it from when I was born!)”
It hadn’t used it a single time, but Hamsick already knew how to use the fountain pen.
“(Why are you putting it in your pocket?!)” Hamsick cried furiously as I tried to casually swipe the fountain pen. “(Th-that fountain pen is also something I need to give someone qualified for it…!)”
Oh, really? “(But can’t you use it twice?)”
“(Yeah…?)”
“(How about I use it once and you give it to that qualified person when they come?)”
“(B-but that’s absurd—?!)”
“(Or was there a rule that said this needs to be given in its full state?)”
“(Uh… Not that I know of…)”
“(Then there’s no problem!)”
Alright, then the fountain pen problem was solved.
After using it once, I could probably think long and hard about what to use it on next and then try to convince Hamsick.
And so, I turned my attention to the last of the loot.
“A map…” I muttered to myself.
We’d found a map that encompassed everything on Basement Floor 1, with the stone island as the starting point in the center and a host of islands drawn around it. Although the fountain pen was pretty good, this map was quite a big deal. It would allow us to save a lot of time creating a map of our own.
“Looks like there are two islands we haven’t been to yet.”
After asking our navigator, Auyen, he told me that one of them would take us about a week to get to from the library island. The other one would take us about a month.
“A month… This floor is bigger than I thought.”
“Yes…” he said, trailing off. “However, there is one thing that’s worrying me about that island…
The location of that island is in the direction we saw the rainbow that one time.”
“Then this could be beyond whatever that rainbow was?”
“Well…I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
That was my thought as well. In that sense, I decided to call this island Rainbow Island from now on.
“(Hamsick, do you know what’s beyond this map?)”
“(I don’t know…!)” Hamsick responded heatedly as it glared dejectedly at the mess of a room. It looked upset, but it didn’t seem to be lying.
Then it probably really doesn’t know…
For now, it would be smarter to assume that not everything was shown on the map.
Even knowing it would do us no good, my curiosity grew. What would happen if we ventured beyond the map’s borders? Or was it even possible to leave this area in the first place? Just like in the days when people believed the Earth was flat, I could understand why they would grow curious about the edge of the world.
Anyway, I’ll guess I’ll know when we get there later…
“Mr. Yandel, look at this part,” Versyl said, pointing to a spot on the map. It was a part of Giant Island, and to be precise, it was a mark on the cave we stayed in there. “Do you see this symbol on the map?”
“It…looks like a symbol for the portal headstone.”
“That’s what I think as well.”
The mark of the headstone was drawn on a part of the cave. However, the symbol below the image showed something very intuitive.
“An arrow pointing downward…”
What could that mean?
Basement Floor 2.
Everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing, but no one said it out loud.
Versyl broke the silence as she moved her finger to a different location on the map. “…Then shall we look at this as well?”
The first person to notice where she was pointing was Auyen. “This…is the chief’s island…”
“That’s right. There are only two headstones drawn on the map, and one of them is here.”
As my eyes fell onto the place Versyl had pointed out, I felt the breath get stuck in my throat.
I couldn’t tell if this was good news or bad news.
“We at least found the exit.”
The image below the symbol was an arrow pointing upward. We had found the exit.
Well, to be precise, we found the place we assumed could be the exit.
This was great news for us since we had been moving around aimlessly without a clue.
It just had to be Chief Island, though.
That little fact was enough to make me catch my breath. It meant that for us to return to the city, we would need to face the village chief, whether we wanted to or not.
“Th-then we can return to the city?”
“We’re free! Yeaaah!”
A few of the members shouted in joy at having a chance to get out of here, but there were unfortunately quite a few obstacles left in our way.
“But…is it really possible to get out? That headstone on the giant island didn’t activate either…”
“That’s true. It seems we must fulfill a condition, just like when we came down to this floor.”
As a few people said, we weren’t completely free just because we found where the exit portal was. We needed to figure out a way to activate the portal headstone first.
Breaking through the chief would be a problem that would come after that.
“The rainbow! The island in the direction of that rainbow! Maybe that island will have a key?”
We had a few things we could try. It wasn’t like we were just sitting around waiting for something to happen.
Rainbow Island has the highest probability of having some clue, but even if it’s not there, we should figure a few more things out as we clear out the other islands.
In that vein of thought, I asked Hamsick one more thing. “(Hamsick, what monsters appear from the highest bookshelves?)” In other words, how much stronger did we need to become to clear the library island? Hamsick’s answer to this question would make things simple.
The hamster didn’t tell us in terms of ranks that the adventurers used, however.
“(Tol-Lapupa, Kashan, Leviathan, Plahel, Ridger…)”
I sighed. So we needed to defeat rank 1 monsters in the end. I figured I should be relieved that it would only be one at a time.
“(What happens after we defeat them?)”
Hamsick’s tone abruptly went serious. “(I don’t know.)”
“(Will I maybe get that ‘qualification’ you were talking about?)”
“(I’ll say it again, but I don’t know. I don’t have any knowledge about what will happen.)”
I see. So that was all I could get from it, and I needed to figure out the rest myself.
“(Hamsick, what do I need to do to get out of here? Can I just walk through that portal thing?)”
We had finished all the investigation we could do, so I concluded that there was nothing else to gain here.
However, when Hamsick heard me, it tilted its head. “(Huh? You can’t leave this place after entering it.)”
“(…What? How can you tell me that only now—?!)”
“(Squeak! I’m joking! You can leave through there!)”
Wow, that really scared me.
As I gave a baffled laugh, Hamsick grinned in apparent amusement.
“(Squeak…! Friends joke with each other!)”
I couldn’t even get angry because of how happy it looked.
I smirked and left the room with my group members. The wide-open stone gate was still emitting light until Hamsick stepped outside last. Then, the light disappeared and the gate closed.
“(But Hamsick,)” I questioned, “(do you need to open the gate every time you enter it?)”
“(Yeah?)”
“(It’s just, that room seems to be the place you live in. Isn’t it annoying, having to open it up like that every time you enter?)”
“(Not really? It wasn’t troublesome at all usually! I was organizing the books, but you ended up coming here so I wasn’t able to return to the room at all!)”
Ah, so that was why it was walking around our camp without being able to enter its room before getting caught. It probably only moved around at night because that was when we were asleep.
“(We’re going to hunt after taking a nap, so what are you going to do then?)”
“(Watch you!)”
“(You’re not going to organize the books?)”
“(When no one is here… Well, I’ll do it after you guys leave.)”
“(Why? Oh, and I’m not saying you should do it now. I’m just curious. You already revealed yourself to us, so can’t you just do it while we’re here?)”
“(…I’ll do it when you’re not here. So don’t keep pressing me about it.)”
Well, if it was going to say that, I wasn’t going to say anything else.
With our exploration of the secret room over, we returned to the library and took some time to rest through the night, then immediately began hunting again when we woke up the next day.
[You have defeated a Mimic.]
[You have defeated a Mimic.]
[You have defeated a Mimic.]
[You have defeated a Mimic.]
[You have…]
The first thing we summoned was the mimics in the summoning book we found in the secret room. Unfortunately, even after defeating a dozen mimics, not a single one of them dropped an essence.
We needed an essence for us to loot an item from the Treasure Vault.
I’m unexpectedly pretty calm.
Maybe it was because I knew that the best mimic drop was only about thirty million stones. I just couldn’t help but feel indifferent to whether or not we got any drops. It wasn’t like this was the only summoning book we got either.
I then opened up the remaining summoning books.
“…Drake?”
From the book marked ???, the rank four flying-type monster Drake was summoned. I was honestly looking forward to what this was, so it was a bit disappointing. Was it really just 100 percent random? Whatever the case, it just dropped one mana stone.
“Then the last one is the colored summoning book.”
The five summoning books had monsters that were colored in. After opening them all up, I noticed a similarity between them all. The monsters dropped essences that matched the color that was used to color them in—red essences from red-colored monsters and blue essences from blue-colored monsters.
The problem is that other than one rank 3, the rest were rank 5 and below monsters.
The rank 5 and below essences were discarded without much thought, and the rank 3 essence was handed to the Armin Adventurer Group because they had a member who wanted it.
We’ve already used all of them.
We ended up using all the summoning books we got from the secret room without much gain.
Well, I still had the fountain pen, which was the main dish, so to speak.
But I should hold onto this until it’s absolutely necessary.
I wanted to use it immediately to get the Bellarios essence, but I decided to make the most logical decision. Today wasn’t the last day for our hunting. I could gain an essence naturally, so it felt like using it now would be too big of a waste.
[You have defeated a Stone Watch.]
[You have defeated a Mecharote. EXP +7]
[You have defeated a Frost Guardian.]
[You have defeated a Vol-Herchan.]
[You have defeated a Mechanical Giant.]
[You have…]
Breakfast, then hunting.
Lunch, then hunting.
Dinner, and hunting until going to sleep.
This repeated for days until we reached the ninety-ninth day after we entered the labyrinth.
Looks like the labyrinth will open to the city again tomorrow.
It was once again time for new blood to enter the area.
***
“Vice-captain, did you hear the news?!”
“Ah, right. That…” The vice-captain of the Third Magic Troops of the palace, Arua Raven gave a bitter smile.
Basement Floor 1, Records Archives.
No matter where she went in the city these days, that place was the only thing on people’s minds, as quite a shocking piece of news had been spreading around the city recently: Bjorn Yandel was still alive and well in there, and that he had obtained two single-numbered items as well. It was an unverifiable piece of news that seemed to have originated from the word of evil spirits.
“Vice-captain…is that rumor really true?”
“It’s not important if the rumor is true or not. We just need to do our job. I’m heading out.”
Raven dismissed her subordinate’s question and finished the meal first before returning to her office.
The truth of the rumor wasn’t something worth contemplating because no matter what, what she wanted was the same.
She wanted the rumor to be true.
It meant that she didn’t need to worry so much every day.
She sighed. “But it being true would be annoying too.”
Basement Floor 1, the unexplored area about which not a single thing was known to the world.
There most definitely had to be some mystery and other unknowns in there. Wouldn’t Bjorn Yandel be having an epic adventure with his allies down there?
She let out another sigh as she lowered her head, her eyes dropping to the badge of the magic troops pinned on her chest. She had gotten too familiar with this uniform. Yet for some reason, the outfit today seemed uncomfortable and choking.
“Whatever, let’s just do what we need to do…”
She repeated the words she had told her subordinate not long ago and began her daily work again.
“Vice-captain! We got a direct order from the palace!”
In the afternoon on the same day, she received a direct order from the palace. It was riddled with all sorts of jargon and cumbersome language, but being used to the work by now, she was able to condense the order to three lines.
One: The palace was trying to explore Basement Floor 1.
Two: They needed someone with experience with adventuring.
Three: She seemed to be perfect for the job.
After reading the entire order, Raven sprang up from her seat.
She then quickly began to pack her bags.
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