After Elena went away for some personal work, Tomoe was chosen to be the leader of the group which would be going to the Ancient Alchemist's Workshop. At first Tomoe wanted to reject this idea as even though she was confident in her strength, she was not confident at all when it came to leading a team.

But Elena asked Tomoe to do this as it was going to be a good experience for her. That was the only reason why Tomoe became the leader here. At first she wanted Alisia, Turin, Grace and Anna to not go. But Alisia did not want to miss this chance, so she started to request Tomoe again and again to allow her.

Later on, Tomoe got convinced by Alisia's insistence and the strength she demonstrated. It turned out that since coming back to the vampire continent, Alisia had been working very hard and she was very close to teaching the A rank. So Alisia was more than capable enough to hold her own in this expedition.

So it was decided that only Turin and Anna would not be going on this expedition. She was just way too young and even if everyone was always protecting her, something unforeseen might happen to her. That was the reason why Anna would not be joining them. First Leshia wanted to stay behind to protect her sister but Turin suggested himself for the job. No one had any doubt about Turin's fighting prowess and the Duke's subordinate would also be there to help in taking care of Anna. So there should not be too many problems. So with all these preparations done, Tomoe, Kaya, Grace, Leshia and Alisia decided to go to the Alchemist's Workshop alongside Haliol.

...

The Alchemist Workshop was located in an area between the border of two vampire families' land. For this reason, this particular region did not have an official lord. But that was mostly because, this whole area was a dense forest where nothing valuable could be found. So none of the families were interested in taking claim to this area.

Alchemists had a very high position in the vampire society. But there were a few eccentric ones who did not want to be tied down to any particular family for background. So an area like this which did not have an official owner was perfect for alchemists to set up their workshop.

Haliol escorted all the ladies here. After he got the needed medicines, his conditions had improved quite a bit. Now he was able to again fight a little bit and would not be totally helpless in this dangerous place. The gate to this workshop was located on the body of a large tree and with his map Haliol brought them straight here.

On their way to this place, the ladies noticed that many parts of the forest were disturbed. It was easy to guess that without the map, the other teams who had entered this place first needed to search the whole forest thoroughly to find this gate. That was the reason why the forest was searched completely.

But Tomoe's team did not need to waste their time on this useless thing and directly went to the gate. Haliol had hoped a little that with how complicated finding the gate was, the other teams had not managed to find it even now. But this wishful thinking of his did not come true and upon reaching the area where the gate was, Tomoe's party was able to find signs that indicated the fact the other teams were already here. Haliol was just underestimating them too much.

Haliol then hurriedly started to draw a magic circle by materialising his mana and threw it toward one of the trees that was slightly larger than the rest. As soon as the magic circle touched the tree, a blue light glow on it and a part of the tree's body moved away to make a gate.

Haliol immediately told everyone that it was the entrance to the workshop. As now it was finally time for them to start fighting in earnest, everyone became serious and started concentrating hard.

...

The door was not a simple door but was like a space portal. After going through it, everyone found themselves in the middle of a large hallway. On the both sides of the hallways, there were various rooms. But the doors to the rooms were all opened half hazardly and it was clear that the group who had visited the area before Tomoe's group had already thoroughly searched through the location.

But even then Tomoe asked all the ladies to re-examine the room. It looked like the people who had entered before them were in a hurry. So it was very much possible that in their hurry, they had not looked through everything too thoroughly and had missed something important.

That was the reason why Tomoe asked everyone to quickly go through all the rooms again and to see if anything valuable was here. While she herself clad her body in lightning and quickly went ahead to see where this hallway was ending.

After going forward for just a few seconds in her high speed, Tomoe quickly reached the end of the hallway. There were three gates there which were probably connected to the next area. Tomoe then brought Haliol here and asked him if he knew about the correct door or not.

Haliol immediately puffed out his chest and reassured Tomoe that the map in his hand was very detailed and he knew the correct way. Actually this whole workshop was designed as a massive maze, so without a proper map, it was extremely difficult to navigate it.

So when the other ladies were done searching all the room after an hour or two, they left this area through the second gate. Alisia was lucky and had managed to find a set of five diaries where the alchemist living here was taking daily notes about his experiments. This was a valuable item, so everyone was very happy. But other than that, no other thing of importance was found here.

The next area where Tomoe's group appeared was a large library. This library had a lot of shelves but no books. At first everyone had thought that the team who had entered this workshop first had taken all the books but a closer look at the shelves showed that those shelves were full of dust. So there was no way that the books had been taken from here recently. This grand library was empty to begin with.

In this whole place, there was one single book. This book had a blood red cover and it was kept on the only reading table present in the room. As Tomoe was the most powerful person in the group and also the leader, she was first to approach the book and tried to open it.

But as soon as her hands touched the book cover, it glowed brightly with a crimson light and flew up and started opening on its own. Immediately everyone felt a threat and got ready for a fight.

So what was happening here ?

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