A burst of intense light suddenly flared before Li Wen. In that instant, she felt as though a flashbang had exploded beside her ear, leaving her head ringing.
Yet even under such a sudden attack, Li Wen cast Prayer Incantation on herself amid the spinning darkness.
It felt as though dozens of seconds had passed before Li Wen's dizziness and blindness began to fade. She forced her eyes open, but bright halos still lingered in her vision, and everything she saw was layered with heavy afterimages.
Li Wen noticed that the others were not doing much better. The two Wild Mages, Halik and Nasha, clutched their eyes and groaned in pain. As for Zotes, who had opened the door and taken the brunt of it, he had already collapsed to the ground. Only the occasional twitch of his body showed that he was still alive.
Moria had been affected as well, but he had sensed something amiss before opening the door. The moment he was attacked, he cast Blessing Spell, and now he was in the midst of a lengthy prayer.
Specks of Radiance gathered in his hands. With a solemn expression, Moria pressed his palms together and held up the candle-flame-like glow. When the prayer's progress was complete, the Radiance spread outward in rippling waves of light. Beneath that light, all ailments would be dispelled.
Li Wen felt her mind become utterly clear. Every negative condition was swept away at once, and even her health had recovered to 100%.
She was not the only one who benefited. Everyone within the Divine Art's range did.
What a powerful ability. A large-scale dispel and recovery method—if not for its excessively long casting time, even Li Wen would have wanted to learn a Divine Art like that.
The recovered Halik and Nasha looked utterly bewildered, having no idea what had happened.
The gnome still lay sprawled on the ground, unwilling to get up, screaming hysterically, "I didn't know! I didn't know this would happen..."
Moria walked over, pulled him up, and comforted the gnome.
"No one will blame you. This was merely an accident."
Was it really just an accident? Li Wen had a different opinion, but she certainly was not about to tell Moria.
That gnome had been far too eager to open the door. It had seemed overly deliberate.
"I'm sorry, it was all my fault! I'm sorry..."
Zotes kept confessing to the Firstborn of the Temple, tears and snot streaming everywhere.
Moria's expression remained calm. "To err is human. Besides, you may not have done anything wrong. Tell me everything you know, Zotes."
"I don't know... Nothing happened when I came here the last time or the time before that..."
"In other words, this may have been a randomly triggered trap." Moria turned to Li Wen.
"Aha, I know this!"
Halik unexpectedly raised his hand eagerly. Still pale with lingering fear, he said in a trembling voice, "I read about this kind of magic trap in a book. It's a trigger trap that only reacts to magic power. As long as magic power above a certain limit approaches it, it activates... Perhaps, maybe, it seems... this really was an accident."
Hearing that, Moria nodded, accepting the explanation.
Li Wen alone was left speechless. Leaving aside how that did nothing to explain why Zotes had not triggered the trap before, magic-triggered traps were generally designed to go off together with the intruder. They would not normally be placed at an entrance where they could be activated at any time. More importantly, such traps were not meant to cast a Glimmering Spell. They usually employed far more powerful spells, such as Chain Fireball.
After all, Glimmering Spell was merely crowd control and lacked much lethality. It would be difficult for it to cause any casualties among intruders.
"Th-the place where I found the treasure is behind this door."
The gnome Zotes scratched anxiously at his neck, looking exceptionally uneasy. His nails were untrimmed, and he scratched with such force that he had already left bloody marks, as though he could not bear it and wanted to tear his own skin apart.
Beyond the door was darkness. Nothing could be seen within, like the gaping maw of an abyss waiting to swallow them all.
Moria once again used that Divine Art with an illuminating effect. He sent a glowing golden sphere forward, lighting up everything beyond the door.
The style inside was completely at odds with the dungeon outside. It looked like a combination bedroom and study, generally neat and tidy. There was not much in the room: only a plain bed, a desk, and a bookshelf crammed full of books.
It was easy to tell from the dust covering the bed and desk that no one had visited this place for a very long time.
Yet Li Wen saw no trace of potions. Or rather, she saw nothing related to alchemy at all.
"Are you sure this is the place?"
Li Wen questioned the gnome.
"I-I don't know..." The gnome continued scratching himself uneasily, his voice full of panic. "It wasn't like this when I came. There should have been huge instruments everywhere, scattered books and papers, and shelves filled with bottles of potions..."
"Could it be an illusion?"
Moria offered a guess. Since they had already triggered the trap, adding an illusion-type spell on top of the Glimmering Spell would clearly not have been difficult.
Li Wen neither agreed nor disagreed. Other than the damp, rotten stench of the dungeon, there was no other smell in the air. If there truly had been an alchemy laboratory filled with potions here, it could not possibly be this place.
"I think that since we're already here, we might as well go inside and take a look. Perhaps we can find some clues. What do you all think?" Moria believed that an open-minded team should pool its wisdom and understand everyone's wishes. Yet aside from Li Wen, probably no one here would dare step forward to oppose him.
As for Li Wen, she said nothing. She had already started walking, taking the lead.
To keep her from encountering danger or accidentally triggering a trap, Moria quickly followed behind her.
There was very little in the room worth investigating. Li Wen first turned her attention to the desk. Generally speaking, people kept important things somewhere visible and within reach, trying not to let them leave their sight.
Apart from dried-up ink and an oxidized quill, there was only a thin notebook on the desk.
The diary lay open and covered in dust. The writing on it had long since become illegible.
Perhaps this was the important thing. Li Wen had that feeling.
She picked up the notebook and shook off the dust. Its cover was black, with nothing on it. Only the lower-right corner of the title page bore a strange design: a nonhuman claw gripping an eyeball.
Li Wen thought for a moment. Perhaps it was an eyeball with a monster's claw growing out of it.
She opened to the first page of the notebook. The very first sentence made her heart skip a beat.
"I found it," Moria said at that moment. Li Wen looked over. The bookshelf was gone, replaced by a secret passage. "Zotes accidentally knocked some books down, and then this hidden door appeared."
Li Wen did not care. "Then let's go in and take a look."
An Alchemy Master, a laboratory, a dungeon, a Ghost Fairy, a gnome, and adventurers gathered from all over...
She grew ever more curious about what kind of secret lay buried beneath this forest.
Before you continue