Monarch of Solitude: Daily Quest System

Chapter 189 - Dwarven Cipher

Rino wanted to eat his own words. When he thought that finding the secret dwarven treasure trove would be simple, based on logical estimations, he severely underestimated the brilliance of dwarves.

Instead, he was back at the stone plate library trying to understand something from a language he couldn't read. It was the only clue he now had, and Rino did his best to ignore the concerned feelings flooding through his bond with Sheila and Bink. It was already ten days since he last left, but Rino refused to return empty-handed.

Language was a fascinating thing. If Rino ignored the grammar syntax of the foreign language he never saw before, he should be able to learn a few things that were similar in every language - nouns and names.

Rino found it easy to identify similarities in the language's usage for someone as well-read and learned as him. This world's culture and language were not very developed. The dwarves only had a few language rules to follow, and Rino quickly spotted a pattern in the language.

He could now identify a preposition because the dwarves wrote many directions accompanied by complex diagrams for illustrative purposes. Their units of measurement were something Rino learned next. The dwarves weighed their metal using iron ingots born from a standard cast. They measured the size of their builds using the standard length of one standard rail piece. Again, they used the same moulds, and Rino was impressed by how uniform the rails were.

Come to think about it, the library that Rino was in had an odd shape. The stone plates on the 'shelves' were spaced uniformly and had categories of their own. However, some shelves could be moved around. This was the newest discovery, and Rino wondered why the shelves had to be moved. There were grooves on the stone cave floor that the library was built on. If anything, it resembled a puzzle.

A puzzle that Rino did not know the rules of.

No matter how Rino moved them, they still continued to block one particular fixed shelf in the corner. If Rino wanted to retrieve something from the far corner shelf, he rearranged certain mobile shelving. There was no quick way around it, and Rino found it odd that the dwarves would build something so inconvenient.

The more Rino thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was a secret in the library. It had to be a rather large secret too, but the lich couldn't wrap his head around this particular clue. These dwarves did not do anything without reason. They would not put a flashy gold vase in the middle of nowhere or display a chain armour in a deserted corridor if it served no purpose. Sure, they sometimes blended those items in a riff-raff of other symbolic items with lesser significance to make sure it made some sense. However, if one studied them closer, they would realise that something was off.

To hide something extraordinary in a sea of ordinary knick-knacks was the motto of these dwarves. Rino did not know them personally, but their habits told the lich enough about them while they were alive. These dwarves were very down-to-earth, hardworking, loyal, honest and passionate about things they loved. It was a shame Rino did not know them earlier before they were reduced to the state they became.

"They must have left it behind somewhere," Rino insisted, staring at the one bookshelf hidden behind the mobile shelves.

Why was it there? Going by his knowledge of the dwarves, could they have hidden something behind that one obscured bookshelf in an attempt to redirect attention elsewhere?

Rino summoned Mutt two days before and asked if the sabre tooth wolf sensed any unusual airflow in the library, but nothing stood out except for the overwhelming dust accumulation.

The lich sat in a corner and stared at the hidden shelf. He searched that multiple times over the last few hours, but there were no hidden switches. Rino even went through the trouble of recording every single stone plate in this library to his sketchbook. He tried rearranging them according to symbols, topics and even location but nothing made sense.

Was he reading too much into it?

Rino flipped through his pages, trying to make a pattern out. He recorded the position and angle of movements of the moveable shelves, but there wasn't much sense in the grooves on the floor. Why was the floor covered in these grooves for the shelves to move in such a restricted manner? At the same time, Rino had never seen a less organised library than this.

Back in the magician's tower, books were arranged in rows and columns. Even if the library in the tower was enchanted with flying shelves and mobile book assistants, the furniture movement was designed to make the books more accessible, not less. The number of stone plates here did not surpass the tomes Rino owned in the forbidden section of the magician tower's library.

Yet, it was surprisingly difficult to walk around in here when the shelves were not all simply shoved to one side. The dwarves might be shorter and slightly smaller than Rino, but even for them, manoeuvring between these aisles should not be easy.

Even stranger, these stone plates hanging on the carved plate edges of these shelves looked like they would make a fairly decent doorway for the dwarves to walk through if the plates were not in a way. There was one particular formation that Rino discovered by chance while shifting the shelves that allowed every mobile shelf to remain in one straight line, facing the door. However, the terrible arrangement meant that Rino could not get anywhere else if he didn't pull one shelf out of it.

Why would there be such a design? Who could possibly benefit from tightly packed shelves together in one side of the room full of grooves and no space to reach for books?

Feeling that there was something he missed out on, Rino pulled all the stone plates out of those mobile shelves and stacked them to one corner while pulling all the shelves into that single file position. He had no idea why he was doing this, but he had to know if there was a use for the formation.

The rearranging took a while, and Rino looked at the large stone plate stacks. He hoped he still remembered the order they were placed in and did not mess it up when he had to put them all back.

When every mobile shelf was in a single straight line, Rino walked to the narrow gap between the first shelf and the door. He looked right through every shelf in the way and gasped inaudibly.

Initially, Rino thought it was all a huge waste of time. The shelves weren't properly aligned, and the doorway concept did not even work properly. Some of the mobile shelves were facing sideways at an angle, blocking out up to half of the back shelf, and some angel plates were tilted. Nothing was uniform, and the construction was sloppy.

However, right at the end, where the fixed shelf was, Rino finally understood what he had to do.

His inkling never failed him in times like this, and the lich rejoiced at how good the dwarves were at creating puzzles! He finally found his match, and Rino had a feeling any dumb robber looking for riches after an accidental discovery of this mine would only part with the superficial goodies, missing out on the true treasure right beneath their noses.

It took great minds to understand each other, and Rino's persistence finally paid off. He memorised this symbol created by the awkwardly placed shelves and stone plate hooks. It wasn't just a symbol. It was now Rino's only clue to the real answer of this room.

Once Rino copied the symbol into his sketchbook, he carefully chucked the stone plates back onto the shelves. Then, he pushed and pulled at the mobile shelf arrangements once more to follow the pattern seen earlier. He used the library entrance as a marker for the orientation, and after three tries of changing the pattern's direction, Rino finally succeeded.

Click!

The sound of chains unravelling from an unseen place filled the library, and Rino held onto the nearest fixture for support as the floor started to lower itself deeper into the real dwarven mine.

How Rino managed to pull this difficult dwarven cypher code off, he had no idea. However, he was more impressed with how well designed the final trial was. At long last, he was going to get a glimpse of the true dwarven history and what they were capable of.

Reading about mythical weapons and seeing the designs for such things was one type of amazement. When an unobscured view of bling-bling and sharp, shiny objects filled the secret area, Rino couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the level of trust the dwarves showed those they deemed worthy.

Kneeling on one kneecap and offering them a heartfelt prayer of gratitude, Rino promised to use their legacy only for the greater benefit of the future. He wasn't a hero, and neither was he a saviour. However, as the first monarch in this world's history, he promised to make all future generations remember the dwarves for what they were capable of and their contributions to his empire.

Now, it was time to savour the reward.