Rosacer remembered the scroll he had stolen when he first arrived in Mist City. It was a diary related to a sculptor.
"Sculptor and the Sculptress."
The name of the book was something similar to the contents of the diary. He was not sure whether they were the related to each other. He decided to read the scroll and, if possible, sneak in and steal the book to take a peek.
A window shimmered in and out of existence as a scroll dropped onto the table in front of him.
He walked up to the table and opened the scroll. Its contents read:
[System: Translating Royal Ernest Language...]
[The sculptor and sculptress have arrived and are starting their preparations. No one is allowed to disturb them. I noticed some people trying to sneak a peek at the unveiled statues, but one of them was punished by the soldiers. Honestly, I don't understand what's so special about a stone slab.]
[The following day, I went to attend the unveiling of the statue. For a long time, the people had believed it would never be completed. Yet they proved everyone wrong. Today was the day it would finally be revealed. As a royal bastard, I had also been granted permission to attend the ceremony. I disliked being in the presence of my brothers and sisters, and for a time I considered not going at all. Still, I found myself unable to refuse. I did not know why, but the sculptress held a strange charm over me.]
[At last, the unveiling was confirmed. The date had already been postponed three times, which made the entire affair suspicious. Why delay so often? A sculptor should know when their work is finished. It almost seemed as though they were deliberately inviting execution by provoking the king's anger.]
[The statue itself did not surprise me. It was masterfully made, but it stirred nothing within my heart. The nobles, however, and my siblings most of all, were enraptured. They wept openly before it. I watched them cry, astonished. I had never seen tears fall from their eyes, not even when my mother died.]
[Today, my brothers went missing. They had ridden out to hunt wild boars in the northern plains and never returned. The queen was furious. She demanded that the king dispatch an army to the north at once.]
[Now, my sisters vanished as well. I heard they had gone to the Cathedral of the Goddess of Liberty, yet the cathedral denied their arrival. The king could not act against the Church directly. The Goddess of Liberty held too much influence. Still, he despised that faith more than any other.]
[Burning the church was a bad choice. The king will face repercussions now. I should flee at once, before the mob gets to me too. But I cannot help going to the sculptress's room first. I want to flee with her.]
[Do not trust the statues...]
The diary ended with a grave and confusing note.
"What does it mean, do not trust the statues…" Rosacer muttered to himself as he read the translation of the diary provided by the system.
After reading the diary, he could see that the sculptor and the sculptress were not normal, and that the statue might be a horror they had created. But why was the warning directed against the statues? Perhaps the charm or hypnosis the sculptress had placed on the prince had worked, causing him to refrain from writing anything ill about them.
Moreover, an empire could not be overrun by a single church. The Ernest Empire had possessed the strongest mages of that era. He had learned this from Elizabeth, and it was the very reason mages were obsessed with artifacts from the Ernest Empire. All these questions troubled him.
He put the thought aside, for he had now decided to steal the book. If he wanted to know more, he would learn it himself. He did not want to pay an extra vial for information that might prove useless to him. His intuition did tell him that it was not a good idea. There was something about the clerk that gave off the aura of a wise man who had been through a great deal.
But he did not stop.
After a few moments had passed, he slowly crept out of the hallway toward the stairs. They were bound to creak, so he transformed back into a rat to move silently. It was a little troublesome to transform after wearing the Mask of Pharaoh. He had to stop channeling his power into it and shove it back into the inventory. Each time he did so, the Statue of the Dark Messiah was expelled from the mask, forcing him to shove it into the inventory as well, costing him even more time.
He looked toward the desk. There was no one there, and both the chest and the book were left unguarded. It seemed far too reckless. Even if the book did not require security, the chest certainly did. It contained vials, the sole currency in the mist city, the very reason the clerk worked there, yet there was no one to protect it if some goon decided to steal it.
'Weird...' He said inwardly.
Rosacer moved closer. Slowly, his senses stretched outward, but no one seemed to be nearby.
He sighed inwardly.
Then made his way to the table and touched the book. A shimmering window appeared as he shoved it into his inventory, and he slowly made his way back. He turned around many times to check, but there was no one.
He did not encounter any other lodger like himself the entire time. It was suspicious, but what was not in Mist City? And if anything did go wrong, he could always teleport out.
He reached room 33 and shifted back into his human form to open the door. Naked in the hallway, but with no one around, he decided to transform quickly and slip inside. Once in, he shut the door securely and pulled out the Mask and the statue, restoring his clothes.
Downstairs, on the first floor, a figure watched from the corner and slowly smiled.