**Chapter 35**
—
The fear and dread people felt toward the Ducal House of Saxen were by no means exaggerated.
Even if the Black Tower of the Black Duke’s faction had recently adopted a more conciliatory stance, the darkness that their lineage had accumulated over the centuries was far too deep to vanish overnight.
The *Book of the Black Goat*—that was the very embodiment of the evil and shadow that symbolized their house.
*“Only you, Young Lord, are permitted to enter the Library of Hell.”*
In the underground corridor of the Apostolic Palace, Dale recalled the promise he had made to Cardinal Nicolai as he descended step after step into the thickening darkness. The staircase seemed endless.
*“Furthermore, the Church bears no responsibility for whatever transpires in Hell…”*
He could take with him only a single grimoire. And in exchange, both Dale and the House of Saxen swore an eternal silence regarding the Church’s darkest secrets.
Such were the terms of their pact, bound through the White Tower’s proudest creation—the contract magic known as **Geas**.
A divine oath, sealed by the hearts of both parties—Dale and Nicolai—binding them with an unbreakable curse.
As long as the Geas remained active, confidentiality and trust were absolute. Should either attempt to betray the terms, the curse would immediately trigger and burst the violator’s heart.
*“It’s not as if it’s some great secret worth gossiping about anyway.”*
Even if he were to spread truths known only to the Hero and bring ruin to a few high-ranking cardinals, it would change nothing. But through this Geas, their fates were now entwined—and that meant the Church could be nothing less than an ally of House Saxen.
To win the favor of the Church was to win the favor of the Goddess herself.
What Dale had secured from the Holy Site of Sistina was nothing short of a triumph beyond words—*a double victory*, and then some.
That was, of course, if he managed to make it out alive.
At the dimly flickering end of the corridor illuminated by crimson lamps—the entrance to Hell itself—stood a great stone gate engraved with a foreboding inscription.
> **“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”**
And the instant Dale read those words—
“*Kiiiiiiik!*”
The artifact cloaking itself as a black surcoat—the *Shadow Cloak*—began to thrash wildly, though not even the faintest breeze stirred the air. Suppressing the shadows that trembled along the floor, Dale lifted his gaze.
A resonance of darkness.
He raised his head, and without a moment’s hesitation, took a step forward—
Beyond the Gate of Hell.
—
—
It was not called “Hell” without reason.
It was a vast dungeon, veiled under the guise of a library.
And the books sealed within were no mere works banned for heresy or blasphemy.
These were *forbidden grimoires*—each one a vessel of terrible power, manifesting that power in purely malignant forms. Books that drove their owners insane, that summoned calamities, that could not be controlled.
Yet just as a famed knight is never without his sword, for a mage, a grimoire is the same.
Who could blame a knight for coveting a magnificent blade, even if that sword were forged from the blood of the damned?
Mages were no different—no, their yearning for grimoires was far greater, an obsession beyond mortal measure.
*“A mage’s sword…”*
Dale thought of his father, the Black Duke, who possessed *The Scales of the Heart*, and of the Crimson Duke, famed for his *Book of Blood*.
In the suffocating darkness, Dale stretched out his hand—
to find the one grimoire that would become *his true blade*.
“……!”
Then it happened.
From beneath his feet, blades of blackness rose and began to orbit him in spirals—sensing a sinister presence approaching from beyond the dark.
“Grrrraaaa…….”
Its identity was obvious.
A guardian of the Library of Hell. A puppet who, even in death, had sworn to defend the Church with his own will.
A **Mummy Knight**.
Clad in holy armor and wielding a sacred sword forged by white magi, its body had been perfectly preserved through postmortem embalming—its corpse-like grotesquery replaced by an eerie sanctity.
A white undead, resurrected by the blessings and holy power of the Church’s priests.
But in the end, an animated corpse is still a puppet moved by magic. How different, truly, was it from the “Death Knights” the Black Tower so proudly created?
*“Truly…”*
In ancient times, there had existed two great towers—Black and White—both seeking to unravel the mysteries of life and death.
Their opposing philosophies led to war, later known as *The Great Battle of Black and White*.
The Black Faction, *The Blacks*, was defeated and exiled to the northern frontiers with their leader, Frederick the Undying.
As part of their penance, the Church and the White Tower confiscated his *Book of the Black Goat*. In return, Frederick and his descendants swore to defend the Empire and the continent against the northern Demon Lords for generations to come.
Thus he became known as **Frederick of Saxen**, the First Master of the Black Tower—
the progenitor of the House of Saxen, and the source of the darkness that flowed through Dale’s veins to this day.
To turn away from the White Tower’s pursuit of light, and to seek truth in the heart of darkness—
that was the creed of the Black Tower.
*“Nothing has changed.”*
Indeed, it hadn’t.
The battle with the Mummy Knight did not last long.
*Thud!*
The Mummy Knight charged, driving its sacred sword downward.
A white undead, powered not by dark mana but by the radiant energy of holy mages—
and it had identified Dale’s water and dark mana as hostile, as something to be purged.
*“The Church bears no responsibility for what happens in Hell.”*
If Dale were to die here, that responsibility was entirely his own.
The White Tower’s *Geas* was, in truth, little more than a 21st-century insurance contract—with plenty of loopholes to wriggle through.
*“No. I won’t let them have their way.”*
*Clang!*
A blade of shadow burst upward beneath Dale’s feet, intercepting the Mummy Knight’s swing. Using the rebound, he leapt back, widening the distance.
Most would have cowered in this pitch-black abyss, unable to see a few inches ahead. But Dale neither flinched nor faltered.
In fact, he felt liberated—free of all burdens.
No need to be a mere Third-Circle Mage, no need to uphold the façade of a prodigy or noble genius.
Here, he could be himself—utterly and completely.
The *Shadow Cloak* flared wildly behind him as he spoke.
“*Shadow Bullet.*”
Not the frozen crystal he had once displayed, but bullets forged from the malevolent darkness that seethed beneath his feet.
And not merely one.
From the flapping folds of his cloak, he refined the shadow blades into countless bullets, then snapped his fingers—
like pulling the trigger of a machine gun.
A storm of black bullets rained down.
The sacred armor, once blessed by priests, crumpled under the assault—torn apart into a shredded husk. The embalmed flesh beneath was no exception; the bullets burrowed in, gnawing through its body like living parasites.
They were, quite literally, *bullets of living darkness*.
A spell brimming with malice unlike anything else he had ever cast.
Leaving the fallen Mummy Knight behind, Dale advanced further—
deeper into the labyrinthine Hell, toward the treasure he sought.
—
—
Books with “dangerous ideas” do not harm people on their own.
But a *grimoire* is different.
Magic turns thought into reality—and as books carry the essence of their authors’ minds, a grimoire carries the very soul of its mage.
“Forbidden Grimoires” were those that contained the most malevolent and dangerous thoughts of all.
That was why this place was called *the Library of Hell*—a twisted otherworld tainted by malignant will and corrupted philosophies.
*“Finding the right path here… it’s nearly impossible.”*
And yet, what he needed to do was clear.
He gathered his ice mana, forming a crystalline blade, and drew it across his palm.
*Drip.*
Blood fell.
“I, Dale of Saxen,”
he intoned.
The bloodline inheriting the darkness of House Saxen—
“I, rightful heir to the blood of the Undying Duke, hereby call upon you.”
*Drip. Drip.*
“…O Black Goat of the Forest, mother of a thousand young.”
*Drip. Drip. Drip.*
“I command you to honor the ancient covenant made with our blood—and show yourself before me.”
As the pool of blood spread beneath his feet—
“*Blood! The blood of great power!*”
“*Fresh mage’s blood!*”
“*He seeks a pact with us!*”
“*Child, come closer! I will grant you power!*”
Whispers echoed from every direction—
not real voices, but the seductive murmurs of grimoires drawn to his call, like piranhas scenting blood in the water.
Then—
“*Back off! That child is mine!*”
The whispering ceased.
And an overwhelming wave of malice swept through the air.
“*I can feel it—the hatred, the killing intent! The scent of slaughter!*”
The world shifted.
The *world within a book*—
the mental realm of a grimoire—unfolded before him.
Bodies lay strewn across the ground. Severed limbs, entrails scattered. A vast landscape of massacre stretching endlessly beyond the horizon.
And from the mountain of corpses, its avatar emerged—
a bloodstained executioner, wielding a crimson axe.
—*I will butcher all your enemies.*
—*We shall celebrate with rivers of blood and mountains of corpses.*
From that scene alone, the grimoire’s identity was unmistakable.
The *Book of Massacre*—
a blood grimoire steeped in the vile ideology of Duchamp, the infamous Blood Magus.
The epitome of mass slaughter, the essence of forbidden blood sorcery. Its power and value were beyond measure.
*“I can only take one grimoire.”*
Even so, Dale quietly shook his head.
“You are not the one I seek.”
And he spoke clearly to the *Book of Massacre*.
“Stand down.”
—*You dare reject me?*
Dale nodded once more, and the avatar of the grimoire brandished its bloody axe threateningly. His refusal could mean only one thing.
—*You think you can leave here alive after that?!*
The executioner’s axe gleamed with a cold, murderous light.
“I don’t see why not.”
Unperturbed, Dale nodded again.
Behind him, the landscape of slaughter stretched endlessly, yet it stirred nothing in his heart.
He fused the chill of ice with the purity of darkness—
The blood-soaked world of the *Book of Massacre* was, to him, a hollow thing.
For before the memory of that pale, dark winter night—
this was nothing.
