Just then, he vaguely heard voices, very soft, suggesting they were quite far away.
"Could it be the librarian on duty?" Without hesitation, he walked straight towards the source of the sound.
As he drew closer, he saw two figures standing before him.
That familiar head of bright golden hair, that impressively broad back… Ah… wasn't that his father? And who was that in front of him?
Eros glanced at him, then glanced again, then glanced once more… He looked vaguely familiar…
The woman was facing Eros, so she noticed him as soon as he stepped out from behind the bookshelves.
She paused, then nudged the man in front of her.
This was Eros's father, Duke Lenka Orich Nos.
She nudged the Duke, whispering, "Someone's coming! Someone's coming!"
Upon hearing this, the Duke remained unfazed, nonchalantly replying,
"Don't worry! I had all the servants leave this morning. No one's allowed near this library today. There's no one here."
Though he said this, he still glanced back.
Then he saw his genius son, the pride of the family, the rising star of the duchy, standing there with a puzzled expression.
Duke Lenka paused, then gave an awkward yet polite smile and nodded to Eros.
Then he grabbed the woman's hand and slunk away.
No wonder he hadn't seen a single person in the library for so long; his father had chased them all away.
That father of his was so clueless! Was the library a place to play? He had to find the books himself.
Fortunately, the books displayed in this nearby area were exactly what he had come for.
The rows of bookshelves were filled with historical documents, a discovery that made his expression somewhat strange. Were these two planning to desecrate history here? How intriguing!
He shook his head, clearing his mind of the jumbled thoughts, and looked up at the bookshelves, trying to find books recording events from previous eras.
As he searched, he noticed a pattern: the further out the bookshelves were, the more recent the era was. Without hesitation, he headed straight to the innermost part of that area.
Upon reaching his destination, he immediately spotted the book he was looking for, *Chronicles of the Mist Sea*.
Judging from the title, it must be a book related to the Mist Sea.
Without further hesitation, he quickly climbed onto the bookshelf and took down the thick volume of *Chronicles of the Mist Sea*.
As for the bookshelves and other books that he'd dirtied... ugh! Let alone just getting them dirty, even if he climbed onto the bookshelf and defecated upside down, no one would say a word. Who would dare curse him?
The books must have been frequently wiped clean; not a speck of dust covered their antique covers, which made him secretly marvel.
This library must have millions of books.
Each one was spotless; how much manpower and resources must that have required?
He could only think how terrifying feudal society truly was; thankfully, he was the perpetrator now.
He opened the dark gray, antique cover, and saw densely written text on the yellowish-brown pages.
Perhaps due to the book's age, the ink had faded and lost its luster.
But the moment he saw the contents of the book, he knew he had come to the right place.
This book recounted the incident with the elves he had witnessed before, only in greater detail.
After the Elven race left the continent of Kroya, the long-simmering resentment between the two most powerful empires on the continent could no longer be suppressed, and war immediately broke out.
This war dragged the entire continent into the conflict; smoke and fire filled the air, and death was everywhere.
The bodies of the fallen were left unburned, simply thrown into the great river, hoping the current would wash them into the sea to feed the fish.
But the number of dead was too great to count, and the blood flowing from the corpses stained the entire river red.
The red river water flowed downstream into the sea, creating wave after wave of crimson waves.
The war continued, and those crimson waves continued to seep into the depths of the sea.
Three hundred years into this war, a mysterious fog began to rise over the sea.
At first, it went largely unnoticed, but the fog spread rapidly.
In less than a year, the entire sea was shrouded in fog, and all humans who entered its range vanished without a trace, neither alive nor dead. Even more terrifying was the fact that this fog continued to spread inland, and all the coastal towns lost contact overnight.
Everyone was gripped by fear. No one knew how the fog had appeared, or if it would stop spreading.
Doomsday prophecies abounded, and the war was put on hold.
Everyone was terrified, anxious, fearing that they would wake up the next morning to find the fog already upon them.
But just when everyone was gripped by dread, the fog suddenly receded.
Just as inexplicably as it appeared, it inexplicably disappeared.
It finally stopped 500 kilometers off the coastline. From that moment on, humanity's exploration of the world was forced to halt at those 500 kilometers.
The land once shrouded in the fog was now eerily silent; all life had vanished.
This fog came suddenly, and it disappeared just as suddenly, leaving behind the eerie scenes in the coastal towns after the fog had receded.
The remaining kingdoms on the continent had lost the will to fight and each sounded the retreat to begin recuperation.
But the fear brought by that fog...Yet it was deeply etched into the minds of every survivor, hence that era is also known as the Fog Sea Era.
The first day the mist reached the shore marked the end of the Second Era and the beginning of the Third Era—the Fog Sea Era.