"Ugh… cough, cough!"

A boy, soaked from head to toe, was coughing nonstop, desperately trying to get the water out of his lungs.

"Guh…"

He was shivering nonstop, having been in the freezing water for a long time.

'Where am I?'

He took a look around him, only to notice that his lower half was still in the water. So, he summoned whatever strength he had left to drag his fatigued and aching body out of the water.

One of his shoes was ripped, and the stitches on his pants had opened up once more. The only thing that was still fine was his greyish hood, though there were still some rips here and there.

He felt as if he had been knocked over by a carriage, such that his body was hardly listening to his orders at all. It took him some time before he was finally able to pull himself out of the water, and he lay on the ground, gasping for air.

'Where am I? What happened? How did I get in here?' He tried to gather his thoughts as he took deep breaths.

As his body had been soaked in the chillingly cold river for far too long, his body simply wouldn’t stop shivering. It took him a great deal of concentration before he remembered that he had fallen into the raging tides of the river while he was being chased by the guards under the heavy rain. He had no idea how much time had passed since then.

He turned his attention to his surroundings. It was rather dark, so it was hard for him to make out anything. All he could really see was a faint glow in the distance. It would seem that he was currently in a cave or an underground water passage. There was a narrow passage ahead of him, and fortunately, there seemed to be some sort of natural ventilation, given that he had no problems breathing here.

He tried his best to rise to his feet, but his wobbly legs caved in right away. So, he pulled himself toward a nearby boulder and grabbed onto it to support him upward. As soon as he got onto his feet, he leaned his body against the tunnel wall to share the burden of his weight.

Like a thunder struck him, all the pain was gone for a moment. He searched his robe in panic, and then he found what he was looking for. “Ah! Lucky…!” exclaimed him as he took a look inside the pouch. “The money is still here… But I still sort on some… I need to use my savings…”

The pain was washing him all over again after he found that the pouch was still in his robe. When he was gritting his teeth to supress the pain, he saw something at the distance.

'Ugh, what is that light?'

The boy pulled his arms close to his freezing body as he rubbed his palms together in an attempt to warm himself up a little.

'It's too cold here. Will it be warmer if I head to where the light is? Maybe that’s where the exit is…'

The boy began staggering toward the light. Even in his exhausted state, he tried his best to remain sharp, scanning his surroundings keenly to keep an eye out for any lurking threats.

Fortunately, nothing happened along the way. It took some time, but he was finally reaching the source of the light. The light was coming from a lantern hanging in front of a rock gate. The lantern was rectangular in shape, consisting of glass frames welded together with iron. Through the transparent glass frames, he could see a glowing magic crystal sitting inside.

To be exact, there were two lanterns hanging by the sides of the rock gates, but only the left one was lit.

The rock gate was towering, standing at three times of his height, and there were some engravings that appeared to be some sort of mysterious language, though he couldn’t make out their meanings.

"Wh-what is this gate?”

As this was the first time he was seeing anything like this, the boy took a closer look at the gate out of curiosity, and he noticed that there were vines coming from somewhere far away extending all the way to the gate. The vines extending to the left side of the gate were still intact, but those extending toward the right side were ripped apart.

"Are those vines somehow related to the lanterns? The lantern on the left, where the vines are connected, is glowing, but the right one isn’t… Forget it, I’ll think about it later.”

With his body still freezing from coldness, the boy wasn’t in a good state to be mulling over how the gate worked. He walked toward the gate and attempted to open the left door, but it simply wouldn’t budge no matter how he pushed. The right door, however, creaked a little when he gave it a try, and after quite a bit of effort, it finally opened.

'The left door doesn’t budge at all but the right door opens… Is it because the mechanism on the right side is broken?'

The boy walked inside, and he found a flight of stairs awaiting him. Lanterns were fixed along the left side of the stairs, providing him some illumination while he made his way up. There was a door at the top of the stairs. He carefully opened the door and entered the room.

"Whoa…" the boy exclaimed in wonderment at the sight before him.

It was a large, spacious room, made with the same stone material as the massive gate he passed through earlier. The mysterious engravings he had seen previously on the rock gate filled up the walls all around him. There was a big stone tablet by the side, containing a mural depicting two children with two books floating by their sides. Other than that, there was nothing else around except for a stone table in the middle of the room, but there was something unusual right on top of it.

'What is that? A flying white book?'

There was a white book floating quietly on top of the round stone table. It had a white cover with two black lines flowing down from the top, forming an oval shape in the middle before extending down to the bottom. There were also some engravings by the right side of the cover.

'Whoa, is that a grimoire? I have seen a grimoire on an adventurer before, but that grimoire wasn’t able to move without its user. How is this grimoire floating on its own?'

The boy was awed by the new sights around him, but at the same time, he felt a little afraid, as if he was approaching the unknown. He hesitated for a brief moment, but eventually, he caved in to his curiosity and began approaching the book. His footsteps were slow and controlled, and he was ready to bolt away as soon as he sensed any danger.

Step by step, he came closer and closer to the book. Soon, it was within an arm reach away. He wondered if he should reach out to touch the book, but before he could make up his mind, the book suddenly released a burst of blinding light.

"WHOA!"

The boy immediately turned his head backward as he covered his eyes with his hands, attempting to fend off the light.

"WUSH!"

The light gradually faded, and the boy slowly opened his eyes once more. Puzzled by the earlier phenomenon, he turned his face back frontward to examine the book, only to freeze up in astonishment at the next moment.

"What?! Where did the grimoire go?!"

Alarmed, he hurriedly searched all around him, but the book was nowhere to be seen. It was in his moment of fluster that he suddenly felt something touching his head from above.

"WHOA!"

Taken aback by the abrupt touch, the boy jolted in fright and staggered several steps backward before finally stumbling onto the stone floor on his bottom.

He hurriedly looked upward, only to be faced with the white grimoire from before!