Chapter 1470: Chapter 906: Library Tower? Pagoda of Suffering!

"Krrrack—"

Fingerley casually stuck the key that burst out of the Snake-man’s body into the keyhole and gave it a random twist; the Crystalized Prison Door that had looked utterly indestructible a moment ago slid open with ridiculous smoothness.

"..."

Staring at this scene, he couldn’t help wondering why he had wasted two whole hours inside the cell.

"It’s definitely because Sain Dungeon has some vicious debuff that affects thinking. Mm-hmm, that’s gotta be it... Later, when I talk about this, I’ll just say I was resting in the cell and accidentally overslept."

Muttering to himself, he walked out of the prison gate; leaving the cell that symbolized imprisonment to embrace freedom didn’t feel particularly exciting, because he didn’t even have a halfway decent weapon on him. Barehanded like this, it might actually be safer to stay in the cell.

If he ran into a Crystal Giant Puppet right now, that’d be a straight-up life-or-death fight. No way he was going to pit his tender flesh against a giant puppet covered head to toe in hard crystal clusters; thinking about it that way, it felt like he might not even be able to handle a Crystal Living Corpse.

So, referencing his past adventurer experience in the Northern Undead Asylum, there definitely had to be some place up ahead where his gear was being stored, just waiting for him to dig it up.

The only problem was: where exactly was that place?

Fingerley glanced around and didn’t spot any Monsters; only after confirming things were temporarily safe did he finally take in his current surroundings.

Judging from the key’s name, the place he was in right now should be called the [Library Tower].

The sight before his eyes was indeed a very tall tower.

A tower whose style matched the Duke’s Library perfectly; even the walls of the tower’s body were packed tightly with books of various colors that, just from their covers, looked extremely valuable. He even tried prying one out, but each book showed signs of crystallization, fusing tightly with the surrounding volumes so that none of them could be removed.

The entire tower used tens of thousands of books as decorative wall panels. Not bad, very "library-like"—basically a literal, physical manifestation of the phrase "ocean of knowledge."

If Vienma and those other knowledge-loving Magician scholars came here and saw this, they’d probably clutch their heads and let out a piercing detonation of a scream.

Aside from the books, the most common thing on the tower walls was cells.

These cells were linked together by staircases spiraling around the tower. There didn’t seem to be that many of them, but each one was big enough, so they could definitely hold a large number of prisoners.

Other than that, Fingerley also spotted something out of the ordinary.

At both the top and the bottom of the tower there was the same kind of object—a gigantic Brass Horn.

What was that?

"Is that what White Dragon Heiss uses to play music for his prisoners so they don’t get bored?"

From the looks of it, he was currently on a floor right in the middle of the Library Tower; the distance to the top and bottom was almost the same. From where he stood, he could see that a lot of the cells had interiors that seemed to hide unexpected features worth exploring, but the problem was that just eyeballing them from a distance wasn’t enough to tell which one was most likely to be hiding his gear.

"Now this is a real headache."

Fingerley scratched his messy hair. Just then, his Fighting Qi sensed the enemy’s presence a moment before the approaching footsteps reached his ears. Looking down, he saw two fully armed Snake-men running up toward him along the staircase.

Their stance made it obvious they were coming straight for him; did that even need to be questioned?

In Sain Dungeon, any Monster that spots an adventurer goes all-out trying to beat them to death. Anyone who didn’t know better would think there was some massive blood feud involved.

Fingerley stared at the Curved Blade Greatswords in the Snake-men’s hands, and a gleam flashed in his eyes.

As everyone knows, if a Monster’s equipment doesn’t drop in the form of a light point, it will disappear together with its corpse. But while a Monster is still alive, an adventurer can try to snatch its weapon and borrow it for a bit—though forcibly grabbed weapons can’t be used to perform Combat Skills.

"Come on then, you mutts. I can take you down barehanded!"

He settled into a boxing stance, then suddenly leapt to the side just as the Snake-men rushed up to him.

His brain began automatically sketching out the next scene: the Snake-men would definitely turn to attack him, but in the time it took them to turn around, his fist would already be slamming into their kidneys!

"Hraaah!"

Fingerley threw a punch!

And hit nothing but air!

"Eh?"

His punch whiffed completely, and he quickly steadied his stance, his eyes widening slightly.

The reason he hit nothing wasn’t because the Snake-men were so fast they could dodge his high-speed punch.

It was because the Snake-men didn’t stop for him at all; the two Monsters completely ignored him and just kept barreling straight up the staircase.

In the span of a blink, they’d run right out of his attack range.

"Where are they going?"

Fingerley glanced at the staircase below; there were no other enemies coming up, and for now these were the only living things he could see.

Whatever the case, he should follow them and see—when something behaves this oddly, there’s definitely something fishy going on!

Just as Fingerley decided to give chase, the staircase suddenly shook violently. A moment later, he watched as the section of stairs between him and the Snake-men abruptly shattered and collapsed. If he’d run any faster, he would probably be tumbling down right now together with the falling rubble.

So now he and the Snake-men were separated?