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At first I thought that the critters that lived here looked normal, but the farther I went into the valley, the more strangenesses I noticed about them. They weren\'t afraid of me, but it was natural for creatures that lived in isolation and doubtfully ever saw a human hunter. I gave them a reason to be afraid when I ate a rabbit that was too curious for its own good, and it was just any other rabbit.

But a doe with a set of leather wings, too small to let it fly, was not like any other doe. Or a sparrow whose stomach glowed like that of a firefly. Or a snake with three heads that was lazing around on a sun-warmed rock.

I gave every strange animal a wide berth, and they weren\'t aggressive—they reacted to me like any other animal out there—but it was still alarming. What was more alarming is that I\'ve never seen monsters like these before, though most of the animals here looked like they were just taken from a forest at the foot of the mountain.

There was also no sign of whoever created this place, for good or bad. But I was sure that there would exist some traces. Something, anything to help me get out.

The valley wasn\'t so big. In a couple of hours I scouted it all, and the only suspicious place I found was a mouth of a cave in one of the cliffs that surrounded the area. It attracted my attention immediately. The mouth of the cave itself looked too even to be natural. There was also a curtain of vines right behind the barrier that prevented me from seeing what was inside. Besides that, I could scent a smell that didn\'t belong to any animal—something entirely unfamiliar, but old.

A master of this place, I was sure. He must\'ve left this place at least a week ago, but a week wasn\'t that much. And before that, he was there relatively often.

The problem was… the cave\'s entrance, to my frustration, was also protected by a spell. The same one that pushed me out of the valley. It made me fly away from the cave at first, but after not finding anything of use at the rest of the valley, I had no better options than to return.

\'You know, Master, the spell here looks a little thinner than on the outer walls. It didn\'t work when you tried to push through with your orichalcum armour there, but maybe here it will? It won\'t hurt to try!\'

I narrowed my eyes. That was some decent advice. I morphed out my orichalcum carapace and lowered to four clawed legs—best for finding purchase on the ground. From my previous experiences with the barrier, I could push in best not with a single powerful impulse, but with a solid, unbending force. The hardest part was to not let the barrier push me back.

I bended my head and walked into the mouth of the cave.

The barrier pushed me back, but I grasped for the rocky ground under my feet and made another step. It took all my strength to just move my leg under the pressure the barrier created, but Pest was right—this one was weaker than the ones outside. These would\'ve pushed me back by now, but that one bended first.

I made another forceful step… and slipped in through the rest of the barrier and the curtain behind it, like a piece of soap. The sudden loss of the opposing force made me roll over the ground, but I quickly got to my feet—two, this time—and looked around.

There was no light, but the place was small enough that I could see most of it at once with my blind sight. It looked like a laboratory of a mad alchemist. A spacious room was carved in the rock, coupled with stone shelves and stone tables. On them stood some books, bottles, jars, and flasks, some empty, some full of substances (all labelled), and some containing preserved body parts of monsters. A heart with too many valves for anyone—I counted thirty; a paw with a set of wickedly sharp claws… No whole monsters, though, sadly.

The biggest part of the room was taken by a metal cage, big enough to fit a stag, and with bars put tight enough to hold inside a rabbit. It was currently empty, but I scented that at some point before, many different animals were held inside. A boar was the most recent smell, and about a week old.

Finally, another vine curtain covered a second exit, one that must\'ve led outside of the valley—but that one didn\'t bend to me like the one before. It was just as strong as the ones at the outer edges of the valley, and I was forced to retreat to the lab.

I read a few labels on the substances, but the words could\'ve as well been just a random mishmash of familiar letters. "Dihydrogen monoxide"? What did that even mean? I asked Pest, and he knew just as much as I did.

There was nothing made for living here, though. No beds, no places to store clothes, food, or other things people needed for comfortable living. There was a single wooden chair that looked as if it was grown out of a single piece of wood, but this was the extent of the comforts.

The scent of the master of the place was stronger here. I could smell that he must\'ve spent many hours in that chair, holding in his hand a quill I found lying on a table. There was no ink in sight, though, and no obvious answer on how to get out.

But there was something I didn\'t check yet—the books on the shelves. There were no labels on them, only numbers. Each book had a number, from one to six. I took the first one and began to read the words written in the neat handwriting.