Chapter 212: “Hero Arises”
“I’m sad. I felt hated for fighting for the townspeople. It was unbearably heartbreaking…”
Hideo muttered to himself as he entered a rundown shack on the outskirts.
In this shack lived Hideo’s collaborator, the dwarf researcher Stanislav.
The shack itself looked shabby and seemed like it could collapse at any moment, but despite its appearance, it was sturdy and wouldn’t easily crumble even in a minor storm.
Additionally, a staircase leading to an extensive underground laboratory was hidden in the shack’s floor, providing access to the basement.
The creator of this underground research facility wasn’t Hideo or Stanislav. Stanislav seemed unaware of how long it had existed, but it was here from the beginning—an ancient ruin.
Originally, Stanislav was an archaeologist who studied the Unified Empire that once existed in this region. Information about the Unified Empire in this world was akin to fairy tales, with the surviving documents being a mix of fact and fiction. Even if there were genuine documents in terms of age, visiting the locations mentioned often revealed no trace of ruins or, in some cases, they were swallowed by the territory of monsters, making investigation nearly impossible.
Rumors circulated among some nobles about inheriting something, but the credibility of such claims remained uncertain.
Nevertheless, Stanislav tirelessly searched through these documents, explored places that seemed promising, and dedicated his life to uncovering the truth about that era. Well, that used to be the case.