Overlord: Start from the Goblin Lair.

The door in front of him still looked like it was still working, so it was not something Sera could solve with just one punch. The entire door was seamless, and it didn't look like there was a keyhole to insert into.

Ron tried to use knocking magic to open the door, but a weak but still firm force came from the door, negating his magic.

"The protection above is still effective," Ron shook his head. "Maybe when I come back in five or ten years, I can reopen this place."

"We may not be able to survive for another five or ten years under the hands of that dragon lich," Sera shrugged. "Looking at the condition of the guy who just went in, I don't think he can survive for another five or ten years."

Everyone's eyes fell on the door frame where Sylvia had just knocked. That was also the part that the man had knocked on. Maybe the way to open the door was there?
"But I didn't see the keyhole, and it didn't respond to me at all," Sylvia said with some embarrassment. "If this is a door that relies on magic, it should at least respond to 'attempts to break in', right?"

"What do you want it to do in response?" Ivy chopped at the door with the flaming sword transformed from her gauntlet. As expected, no marks were left. "Emit red light? Make a beeping sound? Or send two or three thousand 'spiritual servants' to pile us up here and kill us."

"Maybe I just want it to tell me how to get in?"

Ron did not join in the quarrel between them. He looked at the whole door again, and paid special attention to the texture and flatness near the door frame. It was not a coincidence that the man could start it by tapping it. The other party's reaction was very skilled, and it was obvious that he had entered and exited more than once.

The so-called "percussion repair technique" might not be very effective on this thing. Ron was more inclined to believe that the man had passed the verification using his fingerprints or palm prints.

Like...like this?
Ron patted Sylvia's cold hand, and after she moved away, he put his palm on it. Soon, a series of "beep, beep, beep" sounds came from above the door, and when everyone looked up, they could still see some broken red light.

"Verification failed, illegal visitor, duplicate, verification failed..."

Sylvia looked at Ivy in amazement: "Have you ever considered studying the knowledge of the prophecy school part-time?"

“No!” The half-elf raised his voice unhappily. “I was just saying it casually… Isn’t this the normal reaction of something like this? We should at least be thankful that it didn’t—uh uh uh!”

Sera quickly and firmly reached out and covered Ivy's mouth to stop her from continuing to speak - it had just happened once!

"It's temperature-sensitive," Ron explained, noticing the curiosity on his companions' faces, "Sylvia's hands were too cold, so she couldn't trigger it just by putting them there."

"I even suspect that the guy who just went in has the same problem - the distance between us and him doesn't require him to act so intensely. If it were a normal situation, just touching him would be enough."

"It's also possible that he isn't a normal person." Victoria's supplement was agreed by others - after staying in this kind of environment for a long time, it's hard to say whether he is mentally normal.

"But if that's the case, then we can't get in and can only wait for the other party to open the door?" Sylvia asked with some disappointment, "You, my benefactor, can't open it, and we should be the same - illegal visitors."

"That's the theory," Ron nodded, his eyes still lingering there, "but for a place like this, I don't think it would only have one verification system." He took out the piece of metal from his pocket. Like before, it was still emitting a slight heat.

Ron put it on, and just like before, the gate responded quickly, but it was not the previous "Verification Failed" but a sound very similar to the one they heard above the rift:

"Authentication passed, Wanderer, welcome home."

As expected. Ron did not show much surprise. It was better to say that this situation was completely within his expectations. Both the scroll and the metal piece were gifts from hell. If he insisted that this was a coincidence, it would be a bit too much.

But...what exactly did the Grand Duke mean?
The stone door rose up again, but just like before, it only left a symbolic gap and stopped moving. Ron guessed that it might be rusted somewhere.

"I'll go in first." Ivy stopped Ron who was about to go in. She first pushed the tower shield in her hand in, waited for a while, and found that there was nothing unusual before she turned over and went in. Soon, the voice of the half-elf was heard from inside: after a slight exclamation, she signaled others to come in.

Ron kept the metal sheet on the sensor until everyone else had passed. The door finally closed as he was the last one to enter. Ron stood up, but saw his companions all looking ahead at the same place without saying a word.

"What do you see..." Ron paused. There, a figure curled up in a ball was trembling, squatting on a high stool with his back to them.

There were such benches lined up in a row, but most of them were empty. Only less than one-third of them had a skeleton sitting or lying on them, and only one chair had that skinny human sitting on it.

He seemed to be completely immersed in his own world, without any reaction to the outside world. Even when Ivy walked over and waved her hand in front of his eyes, she failed to attract his attention.

"This guy was reacting to us just now," Ivy frowned, "but I burned him with fire and he didn't even blink. If he was pretending, it would be too much like he had never walked out of here."

"Few people can act like this, let alone someone who doesn't know if he will die in the next second." Sylvia shook her head. "He used some kind of mental retardation spell to restrict his thinking ability, reason and even personality, turning himself into this."

"What is this? Is he deceiving himself?" Sera thought this was totally unreasonable. "Or is he trying to deceive us with this trick?"

"Without help from others, he only has a chance to break free once every thirty days? He might never break free of his own restraints, and live in a daze until he dies," Sylvia pointed at the man, "just to deceive us. The price is too high."

"It's more like a ..."

"It's a fixed process," Ron continued Sylvia's words, "either he breaks free naturally or is 'awakened' by the outside world. Every time he breaks free, he goes out to patrol his 'territory', then comes back here and controls himself again, to ensure that he can stay alive without suffering mental torture."

"I think maybe the noise we made was too loud and woke him up." (End of this chapter)