Laboratory

After the encounter, the party continued, wary of any other possible creature and towards any sound. As they moved forward, the moldy stone corridor gradually opened up to a room with two rotten doors at their side and one termite-infested door ahead, Tenpao halted and looked at the first door to his left, walked towards it, and gently pushed it open.

A step inside revealed a long enchanting table with cobweb-dusty filled cups, knives, armor, amulets, silverware, and more miscellaneous items - all gave a faint sensation of magila, weak due to time wearing the runes down. The party followed after Tenpao and began searching the room, taking anything that might be valuable such as tools used by the old enchanters, or the few bags of coins they found around, eventually, Dwelm found an old tome and waved everyone to come and see, the language written was seven hundred years behind but with enough effort of Lulu with her knowledge of ancient ruins and Tenpao better education of his country they managed to piece it together, "A mana training method, very primitive one at that." Tenpao said.

Lulu nodded, "Yeah, but look at this cool stuff they have!" The gnoll claw moved through the page and pinpointed the part about exercising the true self, "Even if it teaches nothin' bout control but ooh~ look at those neat ideas for a healthier connection for the brain and heart!"

Bushy tiptoed to get a good look at the book, a smile widening on her face as she read through the part Lulu pointed out, she managed to pick some of the words. "Y-yeah. If we combine Ariel House with a few steps with this method... It could be revolutionary!"

"So it's worth lots of coins?" Dwelm said, immediately drawing the glare of everyone else. The dwarf smiled as Lulu huffed and Tenpao shook his head.

The elf exploded. "OF COURSE IT IS WORTH A LOT! YOU COULD EVEN BUY A CASTLE WITH THE AMOUN-" The gnoll paw was quickly shoved into Bushy's mouth, for a moment the lingering of her words echoed through the halls, lingering in the old stone like sorely. Bushy's expression slowly grew dark.

After a few minutes of silence, Lulu spoke, "It is worth loz of cash money." then began moving outside, Tenpao and Dwelm followed just as quickly but Bushy stayed a second longer looking at the rundown enchanting room.

Lulu opened the other door carefully to not push it off its hinges, inside there were cauldrons, different types of leaves, potion bottles, a Pasteur pipette, a transmutation circle in the middle of the room, and many other alchemical things. Different from enchanting which is an art of trial and error, alchemy is for those who have patience and as such is regarded as a 'higher' job than enchanting even if both play great roles in great cities. 

The party didn't daddle around and went immediately into the investigation, picking up some old expensive tool that might sell for the right buyer, old recipes, and another tome. Lulu and Tenpao were faster with this one, it was an encyclopedia of potion recipes - even having some Tenpao hadn't heard of. Bushy was also excited by this time and promptly threw it on the backpack, the growing weight only making the poor gnoll whine but determined to be the best backpack carrier that ever was. After everything was looted they moved to the next room, Bushy beginning to just wish they found the acorn staff already.

Sadly, the next room wasn't where it was as it opened to an even wider circular space with four more rooms with one hidden behind the dead tree in the middle. Tenpao stopped to hear any movement, then looked at Lulu, "Do you hear anything?" The gnoll shook her head, this was a risky move but the smell of this place was starting to make him feel nauseous, so he figured that speeding up the process was necessary, "We'll split up and search each of the rooms."

Bushy stared incredulously at Tenpao but the rest nodded, Lulu gave one lantern to each deciding to stay in the dark herself since she got a better night vision. All of them went to pick a door, some happy, some terrified, but all wanting to get this done with and get as far away from this place as possible.

Lulu picked the first door to the right, it was another alchemical wing with its material, with a good search she managed to rack up some goods that could be sold later.

Dwelm picked the second door to the right, which was some sort of place that recorded archives, tons of books but barely any was readable - not due to not understanding the language but that the holes in them were too many, although he did manage to pick two books that were good enough for restoration.

Tenpao picked the first to the left, it was another enchanting wing but the materials seemed way better at this one with even a preserved full bottle of magic ink - a resource for the enhanceters that hadn't good enough of an ability to write runes on their own. Besides that, an enchanting pen was also found, its use being similar to the ink to be used by beginner enchanters who didn't have the ability to imbue a quill with magic yet.

Bushy was the second to the left there was another large room, however, different from the one before there was a nauseating amount of magila in this room, it seemed to be filled with runes, each chair, ground, wall, and equipment. Ahead of all of this, there was a broken cage and a vial with... blue liquid. It began moving trying to get away at one of the stone's crevices, Bushy quickly readied his staff and cast kinetic impact as fast as she could, reducing the damage but promptly hitting the liquid. It wobbled for a while before sizzling into steam. The elf sighed in relief before taking another look around the room, everything was enchanted but she feared that if anything was touched a trap would trigger, so she left with empty hands.

Once the party met up in the middle, Bushy didn't say anything about what the last room truly was, hoping that not telling would speed up this whole adventure. They opened the last door and the divinities seemed to answer Bushy prayer, at the very center of the room a small staff floated on top of a pedestal, a giant acorn on the top of the staff.