Yarra's Adventure Notes-Chapter 85 - 10 Lazy Vivian_1

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"I’m so hungry..." Pannis and Catherine stepped into the sunset of early autumn, returning to the mansion under gradually darkening skies. As soon as they opened the front door of the mansion, they heard a tragically mournful sound, full of drawn-out sighs, coming from a dark corner of the mansion.

As soon as she entered the mansion, Catherine was startled by this voice but quickly scoffed, "Who let this ghoul in? Go back to the realm of the Undead."

"I’m not going back." The mournful voice kept the same eerie tone, "I was starved to death. I can’t accept that."

Catherine reached into her bag, pulled out some snacks she had just bought, and tossed them towards the area where this voice was coming from, "This is what happens when you only get up after sundown, you’re hungry because you asked for it."

Soon, the sound of Vivian munching on snacks echoed in the darkness.

"Why don’t you turn the lights on?" Catherine sighed, lightly tapping the wall to turn on the living room light, but the light didn’t come on, "What happened to the light?"

"Should be that the mini Leyline Absorption Array in the basement malfunctioned." Vivian’s mouth, full of snacks, mumbled, "After all, that thing should be re-adjusted once a month. I noticed it earlier."

"If you noticed it, why didn’t you check it out?" Catherine asked.

"Because I’m hungry," Vivian replied straightforwardly. "I’m too hungry to work."

"Don’t give excuses. You still have snacks at home, don’t you?" Catherine poked Vivian’s head, chiding, "Next time, just grab some."

"No, no, Catherine, I was having a psychological debate earlier." Vivian shook her head, breaking free from Catherine’s scolding finger, "I was really hungry and wanted to find something to eat, but suddenly came across a problem. So I faced a tough choice." Vivian made a very serious gesture and said: "One voice in my head told me to find food because otherwise, I would starve to death. But another voice said that searching for food would be too exhausting, better to just lie down for a while. These two voices kept battling for dominance. Before I know it, you guys are back. Yep, that’s what happened."

"You done?" Catherine looked at Vivian with a troubled face and then suddenly yelled, "If you’re done, go adjust the Array now. Go!"

"Yes." Vivian bounced up from where she was sitting and rushed to her room, "I’m going to get the tools."

"Pannis, why don’t you follow her?" Catherine gave a wry smile at Vivian’s retreating figure, "Keep an eye on her."

"Huh? What do you mean?" Pannis asked, puzzled.

"Unless she’s in her room, we don’t normally leave her alone." Catherine explained, "Given her tendency to be absent-minded, we risk losing her to starvation in the basement."

"Alright." With a resigned nod, Pannis agreed: "So where’s the basement?"

"I’ll take you there." As the sound of Vivian’s footsteps echoed down the stairs, Pannis guessed Catherine’s arrangement without needing to hear it. Grabbing Pannis’s hand, Vivian made a run for the basement, "Quick, quick, quick."

"Why are you in such a hurry all of a sudden?" As Vivian yanked him along, Pannis had no choice but to keep up."

As she kept running, Vivian explained, "If I finish adjusting the Array quickly, I can go back to lying down. Standing up is so exhausting. Lying down is much more comfortable."

The whole situation made Pannis burst into laughter: "Be careful Catherine hears you, she’s going to nag at you again."

"Humph, I’m not afraid of her." Vivian’s tone was dismissive, though she lowered her voice slightly, "Catherine is like a nagging old lady. Oops, we’re here."

The underground chamber of the mansion was different from what Pannis had imagined. It was neither disorderly nor dusty. Perhaps because the cleaning staff were hired to clean every three days, the entire basement was even cleaner than the rooms on the ground floor. The basement was spacious, with various clutter meticulously categorized and neatly arranged. However, upon left and right inspection, Pannis didn’t see the Array anywhere in the basement. free𝑤ebnovel.com

"Stop looking, it’s not here." Vivian walked to the wall and opened a door: "This mansion’s basement is quite large and divided into four floors. The cleaning staff can only access the first two floors, and they are only aware of the existence of these two. The third floor is occupied by Lina, but half of it is still vacant. I occupy the fourth floor, it entirely consists of my lab."

As Vivian spoke, she lifted her lantern and descended the stone spiral staircase. Once they reached the second underground floor, there was no more to descend. However, Pannis was staring intensely at a wall: "It’s here, isn’t it?"

"Such sharp observations." Vivian exclaimed, grabbing Pannis’s hand: "Remember this frequency and energy property to open the secret door properly. If opened incorrectly twice or in an unusual manner, the protection Array located beyond activates. I have arranged for eight protection Arrays. While the first two only guard the entrance, breaking through these two by force will trigger the remaining six. Five are offensive Arrays, each more powerful than the preceding one. As for the final Array..."

At that moment, Vivian was grinning like a fox who got a chicken, beaming triumphantly: "The last Array is a scrambled Teleportation Array. It’s a random teleporter, even I don’t know where you’ll be teleported to, most likely an Alternate Space. Anyway, try opening the door now."

Pannis placed his hand onto the door, and following the magical vibration frequency that Vivian had just demonstrated, knocked on the wall. The secret door silently lowered, revealing a room not larger than ten square meters.

"Here we are." Vivian led the way into the small room: "This place serves as both, a command centre and an elevator. It can only be controlled by mana, hence only Lina and I can use it. Catherine couldn’t get in here even if she wanted to. But we modified it after seeking her opinion."

Pannis looked around and nodded: "The defense is impeccable, even the Sand People thieves wouldn’t be able to break in."

"Haha, of course! I am a genius after all." Vivian placed her hand on the wall, silently controlling the Array. The secret door rose silently, reinstating itself while the narrow room began its descent. "The third floor belongs to Lina. She has turned it into a library. The books she collects are stored here, sparing only novels in her own room. However, she seldom visits as she didn’t have much interest in those books, so it’s mainly me who uses them, haha. Let’s go straight down to my floor. I have converted it into several labs."

The elevator door slowly descended once again. On exiting, Pannis observed that the elevator was embedded in a rather large cylinder. The entire fourth underground floor was segmented into seven or eight rooms, built around the cylinder to form a circular structure.

"We don’t have a lot of time today, so I will not give you a tour of my lab. There will be plenty of opportunities for that." Vivian opened a door, leading Pannis inside. The room behind the door was filled with unknown machines. But there was still no sight of an Array.

"Where is the Array?" Pannis, looking around the room, asked.

"The Array... is on the fifth floor, hehe." Vivian chuckled mischievously, opening another secret door in the lab wall, "It works the same as the previous one. Come in, we might take longer this time. It’s quite deep."

"The fifth floor?" Pannis asked as he stepped into the second elevator: "Is it something you dug up?"

"Yes, Lina and I teamed up, we used Earth-based Magic and Earth Goddess magic and worked for about ten days to dig this up." While the elevator descended at a steady pace, Vivian took the opportunity to explain to Pannis: "Originally, this was a regular mansion. After the three of us discussed, we agreed that I should reorganize it into a half-Mage Tower structure. It took me half a year, I almost had to dismantle and reconstruct all the walls in the building just to get it right. Each wall now has a Mithril Core Magic Steel Shell’s mana channel installed inside. Every room now has a magic energy light, the kitchen even has a frost partition to store food, and in critical times, it can draw energy from the energy storage tank to launch large-scale offensive magic. Unfortunately, the Leyline Absorption Array I installed is a smaller one and can only absorb some free-floating magical energy. There’s no way to compare it to these Mage Towers occupying Leyline Energy convergence points. It can only launch limited attacks and maintain the energy needs of the lab. Apart from illumination, it can’t support other functions. Still, even so, it cost nearly 300,000 gold coins."

"Zss." Pannis took a sharp breath, "Didn’t Catherine flip out?"

"Haha, she was just about to," answered Vivian laughing heartily. "But we had previously agreed that I’d invest 200,000 while each of them would chip in 50,000. With our earnings from the adventures over the last few years and my laboratory accomplishments, I’ve nearly repaid Catherine. Lina should also have repaid her debt by now."

"So it’s not Catherine’s money, in that case, it’s okay." Understanding dawned on Pannis, and he joked: "No wonder she only nearly went crazy."

"Of course we couldn’t let Catherine foot the bill alone. She had painstakingly saved that money for several years just to pay off part of her debt. We can’t let it be used recklessly."

"Even so, it only repays part of her debt?" Pannis was taken aback: "How much is her debt..."

"I don’t know, but it’s a lot, a lot." Vivian said: "We’re here, time for me to get to work."

After a long and steady descent, the elevator finally stopped. Judging by their speed, the location was at least 500 meters underground. On exiting the elevator, Pannis saw the room, enclosed in a space of fifty square meters. Every single wall, left, right, up, down, including the column with the embedded elevator, was coated with Mithril plating. On the plating, a complex 3D Array was intricately etched. At times, a glimmer of mana energy traveled along the lines of the Array.

"The next step, once I get money and time, is modifying this place again." Vivian said between her intense work with various tools on the ground: "Turn this into a self-adjusting composite Array, just like a real Magic Tower so I won’t have all the trouble."

"Just so you don’t have to come down here for adjustments every few months?" Pannis was amused looking at Vivian.

"Of course." Vivian boldly acknowledged, with no trace of embarrassment for her laziness: "Don’t you think it’s troublesome to come down every now and then for adjustments? It wastes a lot of my relaxation time. I need to be steadfast in preventing such occurrences."