Treasure?

"How did you manage this?" Lorne asked, staring at the mess in the washroom.

"Don't tell me you wanted a bath, turned on the tap, and then realized you couldn't turn it off."

"Awoo..."

Lucky raised her paw indignantly, as if complaining about how useless it was.

"Ugh, what rotten luck."

Left with no choice, Lorne bent down and began clearing away the water on the floor.

What he didn't know, however, was that a tremendous occult upheaval was taking place in his room.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a single spectator in the room.

"Why won't this tap turn off?!

And is the drain blocked?"

Looking at the water that refused to drain, Lorne grew irritated.

It took nearly an hour of struggling before Lorne finally cleaned up the washroom. He was about to return to his room when he noticed his clothes were already wet.

"Might as well take a bath."

And so, after the Notebook's power had spilled out into the room for most of the day, it finally-fizzled out on its own, having utterly failed to find a host.

"That's much better." After his bath, Lorne put on a bathrobe and returned to his room.

"Wait, what happened here?"

Having just cleaned up the wrecked washroom, Lorne was dumbfounded to find his room in the same state.

The books and reference materials he had bought were scattered all over the floor, and even the bedsheet had been lifted off the bed.

"W-was there a burglar?"

Instead of cleaning up right away, Lorne hurriedly opened his suitcase to check his wallet and the small antiques he intended to sell.

"Nothing's missing..."

"Could it have been the wind?"

The window directly in front of the desk was open. It wasn't impossible that a sudden gust had blown everything off the desk.

Did I miss the noise because I was taking a bath...? Lorne wondered.

Faced once again with stark proof of his terrible luck, Lorne could only accept reality and reluctantly start tidying his room.

"Hm? What's this?" Lorne picked up a piece of parchment.

"This is that freebie from before, but wasn't it blank?"

Lorne stared, dumbfounded, at the parchment now covered in markings.

What shocked him most was that those markings formed a map.

Did getting wet make it appear, like in those tomb-raiding novels...? Lorne examined the map before him.

"This looks familiar!" Lorne dug the map of Tingen City he had bought out of a pile of reference materials and began comparing them.

"Yes, the outlines match, and so do the positions of these two rivers." To his delight, Lorne discovered that the parchment depicted a map of Tingen.

"Then this spot marked with a star, could it be..." Lorne pointed at a prominently marked location on the map.

"Could this be a treasure map?"

Like the Notebook, this parchment was an antique from the Fourth Epoch. It might well be hundreds or even thousands of years old.

Even if there were no gold or jewels inside, any cup or chair from the Fourth Epoch would be a priceless antique.

Had my transmigrator perks finally arrived?

Was my luck finally turning around?

A string of thoughts flashed through Lorne's mind, and he couldn't help imagining the possibilities.

"No, I can't celebrate too soon. This parchment has survived since the Fourth Epoch. Someone might have discovered this supposed treasure long ago."

After mulling it over, Lorne decided to visit the Tingen Library and research the location on the map.

A day later.

Lorne emerged from the library feeling excited.

The marked location was a patch of wasteland. There were no news reports about it, not even any urban legends.

"An unexplored treasure... could this really be my chance?"

Overwhelmed with excitement, Lorne reined in his emotions and waited where he stood for several minutes. Once he was sure he sensed nothing wrong, he smiled again.

"Good. No warning from fate. Looks like there really is treasure."

"Opportunity waits for no one. I need to get ready."

After gathering various supplies and performing his own divination to confirm there was no danger, Lorne headed to the location on the map.

It was on a deserted mountain outside Tingen.

"This really is remote. Nothing but wilderness. Where exactly is it?"

Lorne's boot sank into a slippery heap of rotting leaves, dragging up a splash of foul-smelling mud when he pulled it free.

This was his sixth hour in the mountains, and the edges of the parchment treasure map were already fraying.

Yet aside from a few pinecones, there wasn't so much as a penny at the marked spot.

Lorne had spent ages searching with the map, but still hadn't found the supposed treasure.

"Awoo-" Lucky suddenly cried out and dashed away.

"Lucky, did you find something?" Lorne hurried after her, only to find the orange cat holding a small field mouse in her mouth.

You glutton... Lorne pressed a hand to his forehead, at a loss for words.

"You're a cat. When are you going to learn a little elegance?"

"Where on earth is it?" After several more fruitless hours, Lorne began growing impatient.

He kicked a tree trunk, shaking loose a few dead leaves.

Returning to the same tree for the third time, Lorne froze. For some reason, he vaguely sensed that something was wrong.

The damp smell of humus filled his nostrils. He tried to back away, only to step on a hollow dead branch.

The sudden sensation of falling caught him completely off guard. His back slammed into a jutting rock, and he tumbled down the steep slope like a torn sack.

Rotting leaves and gravel poured down his collar. His right leg struck something hard, sending a searing pain through it.

"Oh my God..." Lorne spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva and reached into the darkness, searching for something solid to help him stand.

With difficulty, he hauled himself up against a nearby rock. Once he had steadied himself, he took a torch from his satchel and illuminated his surroundings.

"Who's there?!" Lorne heard movement behind him.

"Meow."

"Lucky, it's you." Seeing the orange cat behind him, Lorne breathed a sigh of relief.

"But where exactly am I...?"

He had barely taken

a few steps when he felt himself bump into something hard. He crouched and edged forward, his shoe striking a hard protrusion. His right hand found a cold, slick surface, and he hastily raised the torch-revealing a ferocious beast's face as large as a washbasin.

His heart nearly leaped out of his throat, and the torch clattered to the ground.

Its moss-covered fangs were less than two inches from his nose, and half a rusted arrow was still lodged in the stone carving's eye socket. Cold sweat ran down his spine and into his trouser legs.

The stone eyes, as large as bronze bells, were veiled in moss, and a round ball rested inside its open stone mouth.

Was this a... stone lion?

"Holy crap, a stone lion."

Such a distinctly Chinese feature caught Lorne completely off guard.

After studying it carefully, Lorne confirmed that it really was a stone lion, not a griffin or some other creature he associated more with Western imagery.

"A ball in its mouth. Definitely Chinese."

Picking up the torch again to inspect his surroundings, Lorne discovered that he was in a strange underground hollow.

The edges of the hollow appeared to be walls built from stone.

Lorne approached the stone wall and tapped it gently, discovering that it was hollow behind it.

Then he turned and spotted a huge gap in the wall. To his surprise, the stone wall was actually a stone door.

"A stone door and a stone lion guarding it." Intimately familiar with both features, Lorne gave a couple of quiet chuckles.

This had to be the handiwork of some transmigrator.

In the faint torchlight, Lorne noticed several strange protrusions on the stone door.

"Could these be..." His trembling fingertips hovered above the protrusions.

They were buttons!

The rough buttons bore tiny scratches. Four were arranged in a trapezoid, corresponding to up, down, left, and right, while two beside them still bore the faint letters "A" and "B."

This was nothing less than a Nintendo Entertainment System controller!

"Have I turned into Kazuma? There isn't some cross-dressing monster inside, is there?!"