After some time has passed, he finished exploring the entire first floor. The things that he found were only those Fijouri fruit cans and nothing else. The entire first floor seemed to have some bedrooms or whatever were left of them but nothing of interest was there, aside from torn rags and all kinds of debris, so Soren's next destination was the second floor. After reaching the second floor, he was greeted with a broken second floor, full of debris and holes with nothing of interest on the hallways but there were definitely fewer available rooms than the first floor. The first couple of rooms were pretty useless, nothing of interest but the next room seemed to be some sort of meeting room with a big round table chained to the ground from its legs and a few broken chairs and a few sheets of white paper. After checking the room a bit, he decided to the check the sheets of paper. 'The paper should have been completely destroyed or at least so easily torn that it would be in pieces, but the fact that it was still intact is pretty interesting', those were Soren's thoghts on this room. He decided to check the paper but nothing came up.
"I wonder why the fruit can be checked but not the paper."
After leaving the paper he checked ither rooms. These rooms were definitely fancier with a few more decorations but there still wasn't much of interest, although he did find an old white shirt that could cover his torso at least, so he decided to check it.
[Old shirt: (DEF+1) Only the gods know how much this shirt had to suffer through the years.]
"Why did i expect anything from this? At least it's better than nothing."
After putting on the old shirt, he moved on to other areas but the only new areas were another staircase and a spacious room. The spacious room only had a big bed that seemed to be pretty intact, despite the fact this castle is litterally ready to fall on his head. The bed didn't have anything else so he moved on to the third floor.
After reaching the third floor, Soren was met wuth an even worse sight than before, the third floor had so much debris that it made traversing the halls pretty difficult and certain areas couldn't even be accesed. The areas that could be accessed, consisted of only 2 bedrooms and another big meeting room. The bedrooms only had broken beds but one of the had a can of Fijouri fruit hidden under the broken bed.
"Someone seemed to be quite addicted to these." Soren said jokingly.
After taking the can for himself, Soren moved towards the meeting room and the inside of the meeting room consisted of another round table being chained down to the ground, but a couple of its legs were sticking out with broken chains being at the end of them and a thin book that was floating near the ground.
'Finally, something that can provide some information.' Was Soren's first thought the moment he saw that thin book. The moment he picked up and opened the book, he saw the inside of it full of unknown letters and characters, but somehow those started to transform bit by bit into english letters. 'Universal Translation is such a great skill.', Soren thought to himself happily.
After the contents of the book were translated by his passive ability, he started reading its contents, only to find out that a decent amount of pages couldn't be read due to the fact that the letters have faded so it made things pretty hard for Soren who was trying to get some information. The pages that could be read, seemed to be some kind of journal with the only entries being:
-5th day of t-- 9th Sun-
-Today's meeting consisted mostly of trivial topics, such as the meals in the cafeteria and which woman was the prettiest in the capital. Why do they make me write down the trivial crap that they talked about, if the content of it was mostly pointless? I swear one of these days i wi-
The rest of the page couldn't be read due to the faded ink, so Soren moved to another part that was readable.
-29t- d-y of the 9th Su--
-Th- Archpr-stess visited our g-rr-sson today all of a sudden, i wonder why --- would c-me to such a- area, but my bo-s said to k-ep my mouth shut, lest - wanted to be -aten alive by her. T-e only thi-g i can s-- about -er is that she s-emed p--tty pale, even for her. Ma-be she i- si-k bu- -
The writing stops here suddently, making Soren feel pretty annoyed, but he didn't dwel on it for long. After checking some more pages, there was one final readable page.
-17th day of the 11th Sun-
-This is pretty bad. The garrisson is suddently being attacked by sea monsters all of a sudden, a decent amount of them have appeared. We made sure the Arch-Priestess has escaped safely through the underground halls, while we distract the monsters, but the problem is, WHY ARE WE, THE NON-COMBAT UNITS, USED AS BAIT!? Either way, i don't have much time so I'll be quick, if someone somehow recieves this message, please go west and once you reach the Crystalia city, tell the city guards that the Border East garrison has fallen. As for my family, wait, i don't-
At that sentence, every letter was covered with ink marks and some blood on the corners of the pages. 'He probably died while writing this last entry.' was Soren's thought on this last entry. From this journal, the important pieces of information were the fact that this castle was actually a fort with a defence unit, the number of soldiers was unknown, but it was probably around 400-500 soldiers including the ones taking care of the paperwork, Crystalia City's general direction which meant for Soren that he could find place to stay and the underground halls, which were the arch-priestess's way of escape.
After closing the thin book, Soren was in a bit of a dilemma. Should he play safe and go straight towards the city or should he play risky and check out the underground halls with the potential danger of the halls collapsing and burying him under tons of debris.
"No pain, no gain. At least let's check what was left of the underground halls before we go to the city."
That was Soren's choice, to check the halls, but the problem was that there weren't any stairs down leading to a basement area of sirts, so he thought to comb through the first floor again, hoping to find a hidden door of sorts. After thoroughly checking every room in the first floor again, he found himself again in the back area of the dining hall, where some of the debris were covering some sort of cellar door. 'This is probably the way towards the underground halls, but why was so much debris on top of it, despite the fact the area around it had almost cracks on the walls or the ceiling.'
Entering through the underground halls without some sort of light was akin to suicide so of course Soren didn't go deep, only as far as light could reach and hidden at a corner, there was some sort of broken lantern with a rock in it and a small switch on the side. The moment the switch was turned on, the rock started to glow and a bright red light was coming out of it, so it could be used as a torch in these halls.
The halls seemed pretty clean, compared to the rest of the castle. This was due to the fact that the battle probably happened on the surface and anything under the surface was pretty safe from any battles. After swimming for a while, Soren finally reaches the end of the hall, where a big door is in front of him. He tries pushing the door, but he fails to open it. He tries to pull it, same result. He tries ramming to the door, but ends up hurting himself. After trying for a bit to find a way to open the door, he decides to rest by standing by the wall when suddently.
*grrrrrrruuunnn*
One of the bricks went into the wall and it couldn't be moved any further, so Soren thought maybe there are other bricks as well. After some time, Soren pushes in the 4th brick and suddently the door started to open slowly.
"Finally. I hate doors that have to be opened with pushing brick into the wall."
After the door was fully open, Soren started swimming through the open door and towards the end of the halls.