#187 - Endless Darkness (Please subscribe to monthly ticket recommendation ticket)

"Only these forty-odd books are new to me? It seems Yulia didn't transfer high-quality books from elsewhere; I'll have to start with this library." Anduin quickly made up his mind.

After sorting the books on the long table, Anduin began to focus his attention on the surrounding bookshelves, patiently taking each book out and skimming through it.

Before long, he had a discovery.

"'Ancient Alchemy Chronicles'?" Anduin reached to the very top of a bookshelf and took down a palm-sized, thick book. Its size made it hard to miss.

After skimming through the contents, he discovered that it contained a large number of ancient alchemy techniques, including many unoptimized rune formulas and some currently lost rune formulas. It was practically a history book of alchemy.

"Yulia, this only counts as one," Anduin said with a smile.

Then Anduin placed the heavy book on the table, next to the rare books he had sorted out to keep.

"I know, can you hurry up? Are you really planning to stay here all day?" Yulia watched him with a grimace. Although the book was precious, its size made it impossible to hide, so she could only watch as he copied it.

Anduin then acted like some thrifty auntie in a movie, carefully picking and choosing each item. He would touch and examine every book, keeping the ones he liked and putting back the ones he didn't. Of course, if this were a real market, he would probably be kicked out by the owner.

Soon, he found another good item in the bottom corner of a bookshelf.

"'Endless Darkness'?"

Looking at the book's unique name, Anduin couldn't resist wanting to read it, but his keen senses detected faint magical fluctuations within it.

"Finite Incantatem!" Anduin drew his wand and cast a general counter-curse on the book, but to his surprise, the book reacted strangely.

With a 'bang,' the magic book opened automatically the moment it came into contact with the counter-curse. Seeing that something was wrong, Anduin immediately threw the book away, but he was still hit.

In an instant, Anduin was plunged into a void of darkness, unable to see his fingers in front of his face. All light and sound disappeared.

"Lumos!" He reacted quickly, drew his wand, and cast a Lumos charm, but it had no effect. Everything before him remained pitch black.

"The tactile sensation of touching the wand is normal, and the magical feedback is normal, but the Lumos charm didn't work. Magical energy is still being consumed, which means the spell was cast, but I still can't see or hear. That means my five senses are affected." After discovering that the spell was ineffective, Anduin quickly began to self-diagnose, and soon he summarized the problem.

Then Anduin closed his eyes and quickly mobilized his magic, gathering it in his brain and sweeping it towards his eyes. His Occlumency had already reached an instinctive level, making it easy to merge magic with thought.

Soon, under the investigation of his magic, he immediately discovered the problem. There was indeed an unusual magical force entrenched in his mind. This magical force formed a rune he had never seen before, and this rune interfered with the functioning of his five senses.

Then he mobilized his own magic to continuously scour the rune, and soon destroyed it, restoring it to an ordinary magical force, and successfully cleared this magical force out of his brain.

When he opened his eyes again, his sight and hearing finally returned to normal. Then Anduin looked back and found that Yulia had unknowingly approached him, seemingly observing something.

"Disappointed, aren't you? This book didn't cause me much trouble, but I'm very interested in the principles and runes it contains," Anduin said with a sneer as he picked up the book "Endless Darkness", as if he didn't care about Yulia's unusual behavior at all.

Damn it, shouldn't being hit by the dark magic hidden in this book cause immediate blindness? How did this guy recover in just a few seconds? It's a good thing I didn't act rashly just now, or I would have been the one in trouble, Yulia thought with some lingering fear.

She herself didn't know much about this "Endless Darkness", but she had heard Torkil mention that he had accidentally found this book when he was a child, and as a result, he was unfortunately hit, almost causing him to go permanently blind. It was only thanks to old Travers, who was still alive at the time, seeking medical treatment everywhere that he was cured.

This book had been sealed for a long time, but it was taken out for this transaction. She originally wanted to trick Anduin, so she put it in an obvious place, but she never expected that this guy would recover so quickly, even making her somewhat suspicious of the book.

Anduin, who had recovered, also understood the trick of this book. A counter-curse and a reactive spell should have been placed on the book, which would activate automatically whenever there were magic fluctuations.

This time he was much more cautious, activating Occlumency before opening it again. As expected, the magical fluctuation was generated again the moment it was opened, but Anduin, who was prepared, was not affected, and was able to get a glimpse of the contents recorded in the book.

This book actually recorded a type of dark magic, which was 'Endless Darkness'. The book detailed the rune structure and usage of this magic.

This magic was very outrageous in Anduin's eyes. It had a very exaggerated speed of thought intrusion, and the magic fluctuations were very subtle. It could directly and instantly deprive the enemy of hearing and sight, and could cause permanent damage if the method was not known.

"That was close. Such a dangerous magic book is so blatantly placed on the bookshelf. This woman Yulia probably wanted to harm me, but after understanding the rune mechanism, it is not difficult to find a way to defend against it. Moreover, the most valuable thing about this magic is the method of hiding magic fluctuations, as well as the means of thought intrusion. This is really a good thing." The contents of this book gave him a lot of inspiration and techniques.

After the 'Endless Darkness' incident, Anduin became more and more careful, maintaining Occlumency almost all the time to prevent such accidents from happening again.

And after constant searching, Anduin also discovered Yulia's little tricks. She replaced the covers of some high-value books with the covers of ordinary books, trying not to attract his attention.

Fortunately, he had taken such precautions beforehand, and he would look through almost every book.

For example, there was a book that recorded alchemy techniques, which was disguised as an ordinary "Theory of Magic", but after reading it in detail, he discovered that it actually contained the synthesis formula of Agrippa alloy.