Chapter 192 Ascent

"Huh… what!" I yelled, surprised at what Delta had done. My waist was grabbed by Delta's hand and placed under her arm.

I was given no warning nor any sign that I was going to be picked up, it was the whole reason that I had yelled, because I had no idea what was happening.

However I did see where Delta was heading and at that my annoyance at her lessened. She was taking both Aoif and I back to the surface, to the reception hall.

I was going to have to go back up there either way and despite the uncomfortable situation that Delta had me in it was still a win for me. I wasn't going to complain about a free ride back to the surface.

Though I could still complain about the way in which she was carrying me. Aoif was carried on the back of Delta, arms and legs wrapped around her body leaving Delta's hands free.

With my small frame it should have been child's play for her to carry me in a comfortable position but she had to just carry me under her arm. The most uncomfortable situation that I could have been given.

What made it worse was the smug smile I could feel lighting up Delta's face. It wasn't that I could see her, it was just that through the soul sight that I shared with Delta I could feel the smug emotions carry through her into a smug smile.

I just sighed at that thought, not bothering to even complain at the treatment. It was at least better than having to exert myself trying to get back up.

Of course I could have made my way back up but it would have been a hassle. With how much I would have had to exert myself just to get back halfway it wasn't worth it. I would have had to make so many platforms only to jump off of them and make more. It was honestly a little daunting with how far down we were.

The process of climbing back up would have been long and tedious but with Delta it would take no time at all.

Just in the time that I was thinking this, we had already made our way a quarter of the way up. Compared to me Delta was exponentially more powerful. It was just how the tier system worked. With each jump in tier was like the power of all of the previous tiers multiplied. And Delta was above that at the ascended level.

Light appeared in my eyes, the crystals that lit up the reception hall sending rays of light into my eyes that had grown used to the dark of the cavern.

Though I wasn't disoriented for any time, my eyes had adjusted accordingly in mere moments upon the light reaching us.

However, now that we were in the reception hall we needed to figure out where to go. There were no maps that we could follow nor were there any staff that we could question.

"Where-"

I cut myself off mid sentence. I saw Delta start to move, her head rotating around as she spun in a slow circle. Once she was done with that she started her walk towards some place near the doors.

I knew she wasn't headed towards the obvious doors as her gaze was focused on a particular part of the wall.

I focused my vision and finally caught onto what she had seen, the wall that she gazed upon wasn't as thick as the other walls. It even had a slight disconnect that signaled it might have been a door.

I hadn't noticed it on my first look around but now that I had I could notice all of the other secret doors. Whoever had built this had a fetish for secret doors as there were at least as many hidden doors as there were regular doors.

In fact there might have been even more secret doors and passages than there was actual doors.

I broke myself from those thoughts, focusing my attention on Delta who had already walked into the hidden door which had revealed itself by a gentle push to the right place.

I quickly followed after her and Aoif as I watched the door slam shut behind them. I opened the door again by pushing on the same part of the wall that Delta had pushed and found myself in a dark hallway.

The only thing that lit up the hallway and gave even a tiny bit of visibility was the small torches that had been lit up upon the entrance of Aoif and Delta.

I followed them further into the hallway, and eventually I caught up to them. I took Aoif's hand in my own and made my way to Delta's side.

Delta knew where she was going or at least where we were. It was in the way that she didn't hesitate in every twist and turn, in how she led us directly towards each and every way we needed to go with utmost confidence in her directions.

The most likely reason that Delta had known where to go was that she had scanned the whole castle. Thinking back I could pinpoint the time that she had done that. It was when we had first entered.

She had taken a longer glance than normal and her eyed glowed strangely for a second before turning back to normal. At the time I hadn't thought anything of it but now I knew it was most likely Delta scanning the castle and making a mental map of it.

Passage and passage passed us by as we walked further and further into the castle.

The wall seemed to be the same, everywhere was the same drab gray with occasional paintings that seemed to be mild variations of the same painting.

A man holding a sword in his hands, a man with a crown on his head, a man with a staff. It was all these variations that I saw while passing through.

He didn't even look that majestic, though the paintings were well done.

Eventually we abruptly stopped, Delta had found something as her hand reached to a wall and with a twist of the same hand it opened.

A study, filled with what seemed like thousands of books, revealed themselves.

Rows and rows of bookshelves littered the room. It must have been enchanted somehow because there were rooms right next to it that I could enter and when I did I saw no sign of the study.

No doubt about it, the room was enchanted to be larger on the inside. It wasn't a different space I knew that at least though. It was why I immediately went for the assumption that it was enlarged.

It was because a different space couldn't have been connected physically. It needed to be connected metaphysically. Or something along those lines.

It was what I had learned from the tree that was my house.

The inside of it was as sturdy as it could be, with wood covering every crevice. However the house still stood inside it despite having no physical presence.

Back to the study though, I found myself sitting at the seat. My fingers flipped through documents idly as Delta read and cataloged them. The ones of importance handed to me.

It seemed that most of the documents were not very important as it was barely every hundredth one that Delta would find anything remotely useful. Even then they contained barely any information.

The one in my hand right now, an exact example of that. It was a report dating back a whole ten years ago about an exploratory group that had been wiped out under suspicious circumstances.

The whole thing could have been a couple sentences but it was dragged out until it was several papers long.

It wasn't even interesting, it just had a very dry and legal taste to it. It was like trying to read laws and figure out the relevance of them except that I was being forced to do it by Delta. Something about learning to be a leader and how I would need to take care of paperwork in the future.

It was at times like these that I wished I could just fight something, anything to take my mind off of the intensely boring documents in front of me.

Another document was placed in front of me while the old ones were taken away from me by Delta. I looked up and found that Aoif was sleeping on the couch that was near one of the bookshelves and Delta was still browsing through.

Sighing I read through the document but something grabbed my attention. This wasn't a report from the last few decades, it was recent. As in it was from the past few months.

I started to focus more on it and the more details that I read the more I was sure of it.

'Found you'