Chapter 53
Gravity
The young princess of Midgard stepped up to what would to the uninitiated appear to be a completely plain wall; for a moment, part of the princess lacked confidence in her destination. The last time she had come to this section of the palaces' hidden passageways, it was for the most rudimentary mapping.
Mary had neglected to check whether the wall she was facing actually concealed the secret she suspected it held.
Her confidence in her mapping skills was quickly renewed, however, as she judgementally stared at the light runes shining on either side of what she would consider a conspicuously blank wall. As she stared at the wall for a moment longer, Mary became fully certain that she was correct in how the ancestor of Midgard had arranged the passageways.
There was definitely a hidden ladder behind the wall that she had approached.
Mary allowed herself a moment to reflect on her current progress. By now it had been over half a year since she had discovered and begun exploring the secret halls of the palace, and in that time, she had gained some degree of understanding regarding how the founder had chosen to design its various entrances.
Figuring the pattern out was not, as she had first assumed, difficult. There had been a time when she had assumed that the founder had done everything by memory. The secrets of the palace needed teaching or discovery but could not be intuited.
Thankfully, for the sake of her sanity, if nothing else, this had turned out to not be the case. There was without a doubt a pattern that would reveal where hidden entrances existed.
Because of this, Mary now knew for certain that while not all conspicuously blank walls were a secret doorway of some kind, many were. And the primary means to differentiate between the two lay in the runes that surrounded them.
The mechanism behind those unique runes was an incredibly subtle thing, and in truth the princess could only applaud her ancestor for their cunning.
As it had turned out, the effect was something that could only be detected if you knew to look for it, and perhaps even worse for those attempting to figure out the palace's secrets, unless an individual knew exactly how their internal biology and emotions were working at all times, they wouldn’t be able to detect the difference.
The truth that Mary had discovered due to her exploration of biomancy was that all of the runic lights in the palace had a soothing aura around them. Something that would calm a person while they bathed in its light.
This was something that Mary could genuinely appreciate about magical lights. Indeed, it was a tremendously useful function that Mary sincerely hoped was used more often than it likely was.
Some of the lights, however, went a step further and actively healed people, both mentally and physically, within their range. However, this enchantment's effect was so minor that you would only notice it if you were actively looking for it, especially when fully healthy.
Even then, if you did happen upon such a divergent enchantment, most people would assume that it was simply a different, more ancient variant of the existing light rune, rather than a sign that there was a secret entrance hidden nearby.
Mary mentally congratulated the founder again for their genius and then cursed them for hiding so many useful magical discoveries. From what the princess knew, healing was heavily controlled by the church, and having a means of healing without them would no doubt have been very useful in restricting that organisation's influence.
Considering the apparent hostility of the church, especially against noble women such as Mary, restraining them would have been extremely useful.
The princess exhaled deeply while shaking her head dismissively, thinking about such things didn’t help her at the moment. Instead, she opened the hidden ladder well, and as had become her habit in the months since her discovery of these hidden vertical shafts, she stared intently at what had quickly become one of the most frustrating runes that she had so far discovered.
Amongst the various enchantments that she had learnt of in the palace, be it in the public parts that the maid corps frequently charged or those that were powered by the apparently secret and supposedly difficult-to-install power network. The existence of this enchantment was the one that annoyed her the most.
In truth, Mary heavily suspected that she knew precisely what this enchantment was; she had, after all, used the ladder system many times before, and as such, she had felt the runes' effect upon her person. It was because of this, and the apparent benefits of the rune, that she simply could not understand why its nature was so much more thoroughly concealed compared to the other enchantments spread around the palace.
The princess could appreciate that if used incorrectly, a rune like this, assuming it was what she suspected it was, could be extremely dangerous, especially if used carelessly.
But she couldn’t grasp why something so deeply concealed needed further hiding. Surely, anyone who could gain access to these shafts would automatically have been friendly to the founder.
It was something that frustrated the princess intensely; she even understood the enchantments surrounding the type-one puzzle rooms that concealed entrances to the palace bathhouses more than she did the ladder enchantments.
Mary restrained a sigh as she remembered the bathhouses; privately, she smirked as she imagined the utter chaos that would probably have followed should the palace staff have found out that they could be peeked on at any moment.
A large part of the princess, one that sadly could often talk back to her and had the unfortunate tendency to suggest ideas of their own, was at least partially ashamed of the fact that Mary had frequently made use of that particular palace secret. It could even be said that she had eavesdropped on the maids almost daily, for information-gathering purposes only, of course.
‘Not for peeking.’
Mary thinks to herself defensively as she feels the relevant second minds pay attention to her current train of thought.
{If you really think about it, eavesdropping is hardly any better.}
{And it’s a bathhouse; everyone in that room is naked by default.}
The second minds that had taken a stance against her eavesdropping added.
Mary ignored the dissenting voices in her head with a frustrated sigh; the information that the maids had gossiped about was occasionally important. If nothing else, it had allowed her to have additional sources of information apart from Sylvia.
Her personal maid was someone that Mary had come to trust, at least to a degree. At this point, the princess was relatively certain that Sylvia would die to protect her, if necessary, but she could be frustrating to deal with occasionally. Especially when information and training were the focus of the day.
Mary was at the ladder because she had gained information while eavesdropping, which made her want to see something for herself.
With that thought in mind, Mary stepped forward into the ladder well.
The princess could not help but let out a minute flinch as she stepped onto nothing but air, first with one foot and then the other. For a moment, she stared forward, her arms slowly manoeuvring to keep herself stable.
The princess also could not help but marvel at the fact that she was technically floating, although it was technically not unassisted. Internally she reaffirms that she would eventually create some sort of personal flying magic, assuming such a thing didn’t already exist.
If flying magic did exist and was something that could be accessed, then Mary swore that she would learn it.
The princess allowed her arms to reach out and attempted to brace herself against the wall. With her arms now somewhat in place, the princess pushed downward in an awkward motion that she suspected only worked due to some sort of built-in guidance system.
Such awkwardness was expected.
After all, Alexander had never experienced any sort of zero-gravity environment, at least outside of virtual reality, and so the technique to do this without a degree of flailing constantly was lost to her; this meant that she was going far slower than she otherwise might, for control's sake, if nothing else.
Like many things, she had to learn to navigate this environment herself.
Sylvia has already informed her that shafts like this do appear with some frequency in dungeons; that revelation made Mary suspect that these shafts are in part for training purposes. Perhaps the runes built into these shafts were even torn directly from such a dungeon; if so, that could have explained why their function was so heavily obscured.
She watched the wall pass her in almost slow motion; in truth, with her current level of skill in this weightless environment, it would almost certainly be faster to simply climb using the ladder.
But Mary flinched at the memory of attempting exactly that; her attempt had not gone well for her.
Part of her suspected that there was some sort of trick to traversing these shafts that she didn’t know, and Sylvia wouldn’t tell; another part of her thought that the Midgard founder didn’t bother with such triviality and created a zero-gravity transport network for coolness’ sake alone.
Once again, the princess caught sight of what she heavily suspected was some sort of gravity rune. Mary didn’t bother attempting to magically observe it; she knew that all she would get back would be gibberish if she tried.
That was something that the princess had learnt from experience, to her annoyance.
‘But [Gravity] as an enchantment concept would explain everything about this, even the effort to hide the enchantment.’
Mary noted internally, for a moment, the dangers that a variable gravity zone could represent. And the opportunities.
{It could also be a variation of telekinesis.}
{She doesn’t feel any sort of physical grabbing.}
{Levitation could work.}
{Would it be easier to put together a gravity system or a levitation system like this?}
The voices within her continued the conversation, as was usually the case with them.
The internal voices continued to attempt to distract themselves with their constant theory crafting, and as a result of their nattering, it fell to Mary to count out the floors as best she could.
This was another problem that the princess had encountered with this transportation method.
While the ladder well did indeed have an enchantment that allowed for extreme mobility, this was only true once a person became accustomed to an entirely different way of moving. The problem that Mary had discovered was that there didn’t seem to be any sort of way to tell which floor a person was currently on.
For Mary, that seemed like it was a significant design oversight, especially when it was part of the builders’ own home.
Of course, she was not remotely certain whether the oversight was hers, because despite looking, she still has not yet found any sort of control system. Or with the founder who had apparently assumed that anyone using the ladders would have a perfect understanding of where they currently were.
Or something else entirely.
‘There.’
Mary thinks to herself, grabbing the ladder to arrest her descent.
As she grasped the walls to turn around and face the exit, Mary glanced down in the well-lit depths of the shaft.
After she had discovered the ladders, Sylvia had seen fit to inform her that the palace had two public basement levels. According to the maid, those basement levels were far less extensive than the aboveground palace.
This was even something that Mary had confirmed by eavesdropping on the maids, the strangeness of the basement levels being a fairly common topic in the bathhouses.
As such, it quickly became clear that there were far more secret rooms in the depths of the palace than there were in the aboveground levels.
And that was completely ignoring the secret third floor, which Mary had estimated was at least the same size as a full above-ground palace floor, or perhaps even larger, and yet it was only accessible through hidden means.
{And the majority of the third basement level is hidden behind that type four puzzle.}
{The power supply must be hidden there; nothing else makes sense.}
{There’s enough hidden space down there that it might not just be a generator.}
{A control room or personal study.}
Mary sighed at the voices and instead reached out to the wall before her, confidently activating the rune that would open the hidden door.
As was usual with these hidden doors, the wall folded away in a manner reminiscent of what Alexander had seen during his last moments on Earth. Mary had long since gotten used to it and no longer flinched at the reminder of what had happened that day.
The princess stepped out of the shaft and turned to her right; she was close to her destination now, having chosen this path due to the proximity to the exit.
After a minute of walking, Mary reached what appeared to be a dead end, which Mary knew was once one of the palaces' hidden exits; this one in particular went directly to a very public space.
Mary reached out her hand to the hidden door, but before activating it, she paused, instead checking for the last time that her stealth spells were properly active.
{The stealth suite is active.}
{Invisibility is working as usual.}
{Our one-way barrier holding back smell and sound is currently in place.}
{Mana bleed is as restricted as we can manage.}
{Snowshoes with sound suppression are a go.}
{Operation is a go.}
Mary tried to ignore the voices as usual, instead confirming the spell's stability for herself.
‘Sylvia did say that even she would have difficulty finding me as long as she wasn’t really looking.’
Mary, confident that she would remain undiscovered, activates the door and watches it vanish like a type one puzzle room.
The first thing that she notices, again just like in the bathhouse, is the voices. But this is not the relatively quiet giggling of maids; instead, Mary hears shouting and the heavy clash of steel.
The princess peers through the now-opened door out into the occupied, snow-covered yard, which Mary knows is the primary training yard of the Midgard royal palace.