Chapter 13
Drip, drip, drip.
Rain began falling outside.
Ariella looked up at the ceiling, baffled.
Water was dripping straight through the roof.
Phily, the fairy librarian, reacted like it was nothing new.
“Oh no, it’s starting again. Just a moment—I’ll get the buckets.”
“I’ll help too!”
Phily tried to stop her, saying she didn’t need help, but Ariella wasn’t listening.
“Sit still? While the treasures of the human world and demon realm are turning into soggy piles of moldy paper? No way!”
She rolled up her sleeves and joined Phily, placing buckets all around the library.
Plink. Plop. The rainwater dripped into them.
Ariella sighed.
“Does this happen every time it rains?”
Phily’s delicate wings drooped like wet leaves.
“Yes. The wooden parts are old and rotting, and there’s no budget to fix them.”
Her voice turned gloomy.
“Important places like bridges get repairs, even if they collapse over and over. But libraries? No one cares.”
“Bridges? What kind of bridges collapse all the time? They’re not made of skeleton thighs.”
Actually, considering how broken-down the whole territory was, it made sense.
“So even if these rare books turn into moldy trash, the officials don’t care?”
“I try my best to take care of them… but honestly, it’s overwhelming.”
Phily’s lips quivered like she might cry.
Then she took a deep breath and told Ariella she wanted to show her something.
Ariella followed—and her jaw dropped.
“No… these poor books!”
Before her were stacks of ruined books. The pages were soaked, smudged, torn, or covered in mold.
‘I’m going to lose my mind!’
Some were clearly valuable, just by looking.
Demon realm books, and even rarer ones from the human world.
But the worst part…
“These are official documents!”
The rain hadn’t just ruined storybooks. Even government records were damaged—including the ledgers Ariella came to review.
If this continued, more books and documents would be destroyed.
And worse—
‘If the roof collapses, I’ll be buried alive before I even finish my investigation.’
Some of the wooden pillars wobbled just from being touched.
The original stone building was still okay, but the added wooden structure? A disaster.
Ariella made a decision.
‘I have to fix this place. Before the rats chew everything apart.’
* * *
“You want to repair the library?”
Ariella went straight to the steward, Gruev.
The kobold’s ears perked up at her unexpected request.
“But the budget…”
“I figured. If there’s no estate budget, use this.”
She placed a few gold coins on the table—the ones she brought when escaping the empire.
“This should be worth about 5,000 cell, right?”
Gruev weighed the coins and nodded.
“Yes, that seems correct.”
“Full renovations would be ideal, but let’s be realistic. For now, we’ll just patch the most urgent parts so the records don’t get destroyed before we can even read them.”
“Understood. That much should be more than enough.”
Hiring workers, buying materials, and starting construction would take time.
But Ariella didn’t plan to sit around waiting.
The sky already looked like more rain was on the way.
When she returned to the library, Phily looked like she might burst into tears again.
She’d clearly heard the news.
“Lady Ariella! I can’t even express how grateful I am. You spent so much—for this library!”
“It’s not over yet.”
“Huh?”
Ariella looked up at the ceiling.
Dark clouds were gathering above the leaky roof.
She organized her thoughts, then said something that stunned Phily:
“Phily, want to go hunting with me real quick?”
“…Hunting?”
“Yeah. I saw some slimes roaming around when I came here.”
“Well… yes, there are slimes everywhere.”
Phily still looked completely confused.
Slimes weren’t dangerous. They weren’t useful either. No one hunted them unless their numbers got out of hand.
“But… why slimes?”
Gruev, the steward, had the same reaction.
“You’re going outside the inner territory—for slimes?”
He didn’t seem worried about slimes. He was more worried about Ariella leaving at all.
“It’s still within the estate, but I can’t allow you to go out unprotected.”
He insisted that Ariella needed guards to accompany her.
If something happened to her, it could even cost Ludwig, the Demon King, his life.
Ariella remembered the lazy, disorganized demon soldiers at the gate.
‘Useless. Not bringing those guys.’
Thankfully, Gruev didn’t intend to use them either.
He led her and Phily to a specific place:
“Richmond’s lab?”
They hadn’t even opened the door yet, but dark mana was already radiating from behind it.
‘Wow… this feels intense.’
What kind of experiments did Richmond run in there?
Rumor said he could control zombies with ease—so what kind of high-level magic was he after?
Resurrecting bodies from bone fragments?
Merging corpses to make new life?
As Ariella’s imagination ran wild, Gruev calmly knocked.
“It’s Gruev.”
“Come in.”
From a skeleton’s mouth, the voice was unexpectedly low and elegant.
The door opened, revealing the inside.
“Wah!”
Phily peeked in—and immediately turned pale.
“L-Lady Ariella! I-I’ll just wait out here!”
“Huh? Sure.”
Ariella understood her reaction.
The lab was full of preserved monster corpses, pickled organs in jars, and other strange materials.
Most people would have run away screaming.
But not Ariella.
Her eyes sparkled with curiosity.
‘Wow. What kind of monster is that? And that one?’
As she wandered around, Gruev explained the situation.
Richmond nodded in understanding.
“So, you need guards. Fine. This is a special case, so I’ll lend you some of my soldiers.”
“Your soldiers?”
Richmond reached into his robe and pulled out some crushed bone fragments.
Then, with a flick of his hand and a quiet chant—
Whoooom—!
A dark mana gathered in a perfect swirl.
It seeped into the bones, which expanded like seeds absorbing water and light.
In the blink of an eye, the bones grew limbs and armor.
A moment later, four armed skeleton warriors stood before them.
Judging by their size and teeth—they were made from orc remains.
“Skeleton summoning?”
Ariella was so impressed she spoke out loud without realizing.
She’d never seen magic like this before.
Her grimoires had nothing on this level.
‘How does it work? That mana cycle was so unusual… Is there another bone I can see? I want to watch again.’
Her eyes gleamed like starlight.
She was also rethinking her opinion of Richmond.
At their first meeting, he’d seemed sly and untrustworthy.
But now?
Seeing her reaction, Richmond gave a soft chuckle. His voice was like velvet.
“Heh. So the contractee finds this spell… fascinating?”
“Yes!”
“Any questions you want to ask?”
Ariella didn’t miss her chance.
Of course, she was curious about the magic itself—
But more than that…
“If you can summon skeleton soldiers like this… why aren’t we using them in the army?”
Richmond blinked in surprise.
Even Gruev stared at her strangely.
“I mean, we’re desperate enough to borrow zombie hands—why not bones?”
Breaking the silence, Richmond spoke again.
“…Interesting.”
