Melvin looked at the black tome in front of him. It was a thick book with an eastern golden dragon symbol embedded into its cover. It was the thing that had attracted greedy hands towards his family.
Just what was this book?
Melvin looked at a clock on the wall. He only had twenty more minutes before the promised time of calling them. That means he had some time to investigate the book for real.
He had always known the book was valuable. From a certain page onwards, it was written with liquid gold and not any normal ink after all.
Opening to that page, he stared at the words written in gold. Even though the book was old and the material it was made of was impressive, the story itself in the book wasn't anything too unique.
It was a fantasy story and he had already read most of it. It was the story of an ancient merchant in a magical world, about a man who has to carry nine elephants to the top of a mountain in order to gain the blessing of his ancestors.
The ancient merchant lives most of his life incapable of doing that, and in shame, he does business. In his middle ages, the merchant's business failed big time and a wicked man murdered his family. In rage, the man trained to lift elephants and after 5 years of training, carried nine elephants to the top of the mountain.
The merchant gained the blessing of his ancestors.
He became immensely strong!
And with that strength, he took revenge on his kin's murderer, and in guilt of having become a murderer himself—the man slit his own throat and killed himself. By that time, the story had grown too predictable to read, so Melvin dropped it.
He quickly moved to the page he had dropped the book and read the rest of the story in the span of just 10 minutes. He had to skim a bit, but the story went as he expected.
After the man died, he ascended to heaven and his avatar descended to the real world. The avatar then became the king of an eternal kingdom of happiness.
There, the story ended.
The story written in liquid gold was nothing special.
I only have ten minutes more, he thought. Then, he'd have to talk about a good way of hostage exchange where he can ensure everyone's safety.
Yet, it bothered Melvin a bit that he didn't know what the book was truly worth. He felt that if he knew the truth, he would have more leverage to speak with them. He wanted to know what a terrorist organization of sort would want a book for. It seemed to hold secrets.
Time ticked by quicker than usual and soon, only 7 minutes remained. Melvin sighed, he had found nothing new about the book.
He closed it.
Nothing happened. But something did change.
On the cover of the book, new words had appeared.
Melvin's face stiffened.
Magic?
This couldn't be technology of this age.
What tech could detect it when someone read the entire book, and then make new words appear on its cover?
If it was inside a screen, alright. But words embedded on a hardcover?
He read the words with a bit of awe.
"Book Title—The Man Who Carried the Nine Elephants.
C-rank difficulty. Say the words (Endhragon Sanastel, Ful Buglahansen) to enter the book's world."
For a long while, Melvin was silent.
No way.
But if this was that sort of magical book that could let someone enter the world within the book, it would make a lot of sense why terrorists would be after it.
Especially if they could take things from the book and return to the real world with it.
The mere idiocy of that thought made Melvin shiver. But he didn't utter the words in the book. He didn't dare to use the book when his family's life was on the line.
What if the book did work, but only worked for once?
What if he ended up stuck inside the book?
Would he return to see everyone he loved dead?
He was not going to try anything funny with the book. He will give it to them, and they will give his family back to him.
Sighing, he opened the bathroom footage and was suddenly surprised. Something had happened in the bathroom. The hole above the door, through which he had been watching the enemies, had been closed by a cloth.
That made Melvin freeze in fear. Did Cecilia get caught?
He clicked his keyboard and the footage backed up in time.
Cecilia stood up from the corner of her room with a terrified, tear-stricken look. Miguel, the fat gunman, aimed the gun at her head. "Sit down or I shoot," he threatened.
"I–I want to go to the bathroom."
Miguel took a phone and called a number.
A moment later, a bald woman with a dragon tattoo on her bald head pushed open the door of Cecilia's room. She stared at Miguel.
"What did you call me here for?"
"It's your turn, look after them." Miguel threw the gun to the woman, gave a reverend nod to the youth with dragon mark on his forehead, and left.
He acted as if he had never heard Cecilia's request to go to the bathroom.
Cecilia clenched the sides of her light brown cotton apron dress. She said again, "I—I want to go to the bathroom, can I?"
The bald woman sneered at the words and took the gun from the ground. She didn't bend down, but the gun just floated to her.
The sight made Melvin blank out.
Magic?!
"Go and quickly come back," the bald woman said coldly to Cecilia, pushing her towards the bathroom with the gun.
Cecilia yelped in fear and ran into the bathroom. Once inside, she took a cloth from the laundry in the bathroom and closed the hole above the door with it. Melvin could no longer see what was happening outside the bathroom, but it also meant that the people outside couldn't see what was inside either.
Her hiding the hole wasn't anything special either, since it would just look like she was hiding it to use the bathroom.
Melvin sat straight and stared at her. His eyes were growing moist. Cecilia wanted to tell something to him and make sure no one else notices it.
She began writing something on a piece of paper that was clenched inside her palm using the blood from her hand. The sight made Melvin almost curse. Then, he looked at the paper as she showed it towards the camera.
"Melvi, don't deal with these people. Escape!"
"Like damn I could do that," Melvin muttered.
The next words were muttered by her into the camera, making him sigh. He used a mouth-movement analysis software that he himself had created to guess what she was saying.
The camera couldn't easily pick up sound.
He got what she said in a few seconds.
"These people are not normal human beings, Melvi. They have some sort of superpowers. The man with the dragon mark on his forehead just stared at a person and the person was torn apart! Don't deal with these people Melvi, they kill everyone who knows about them. They are just using us to bring you here, they would kill us even if you give them the book! And if they get their hands on you, they will kill you too!"
Melvin frowned.
She showed the paper written with her blood again. "Melvi, don't deal with these people. Escape!"
Then, she took a deep breath, cleaned the tear stains from her face and flushed down the bloody paper into the toilet. She also cleaned her bleeding hand, and then a nod to the camera, she left the bathroom. She didn't take off the cloth that hid what was happening outside from Melvin.
That would be suspicious since her other sisters wouldn't be able to use the bathroom later.
And the cloth would also serve to alert Melvin that something had happened in the bathroom. Otherwise, he wouldn't recap to see what she had told.
Melvin couldn't hold back his tears anymore.
Was she saying she would die, so you escape?
Only a minute remained before he had to call them for the hostage exchange. Melvin hardened his heart and stood up.
"I will save you—even if supervillains are who wants you dead."
He pushed the call.
The snake-like young man's voice spoke from the other side: "Hello Melvin, have you found the book?"
"First, I want to know if everyone I care about is safe."
"Fair enough. I'll call you back in a second."
The simple call transformed from an audio call to a video call. Melvin's camera was off but he could see the other end clearly.
The first thing he saw was not anyone alive, but the corpse of the fat man with an iron mask. They did want to intimidate him, and they were succeeding.
"This guy tried to snake me," the enemy explained. "Now, you'd know how death-deserving a poisonous snake is in a gang, right? If someone is doing something behind our backs, it is just normal that you kill them, right?"
Melvin's heart felt as if it were being squeezed. Did the guy figure out there was a camera hidden inside the bathroom?
Was Cecilia in immediate danger?
The view shifted to focus on the enemy's face. It was the young man with a dragon mark on his forehead, a mark that looked a lot similar to the one embedded on the book. Now that Melvin could see the guy's face up close. He could tell it was the face of someone in their late teens.
"I forgot I never introduced myself. I am Bloodroot. A native, hm, was it called Europe? A native European."
"…"
"Hey, Melvin. Don't be silent. Now, I will show you how safe I've kept your family. We are doing business here, not crime. We can even be friends if this book is out of the business."
If Cecilia hadn't warned him about the gang killing everyone who knew them, he'd have started being less wary of them. But now, he only felt more wary.
He had to assume the worst.
They wanted to get the book and kill him and his family all at once. That must be their goal.
Bloodroot began showing everyone in the orphanage to Melvin.