Chapter 171

The staircase formed from the golem’s arm led to the third-floor gallery of the lord’s castle.

As soon as I stepped into the main keep, I felt my magic field shrink drastically.

The immense magical pressure I had sensed during the fight with the golem wasn’t coming from a person. It was emanating from the golem itself.

Because of that, I had to expend additional mana just to withstand the oppressive feeling, as though I’d entered the innards of some monstrous creature.

It had seemed almost too easy to subdue the golem and infiltrate the castle. Perhaps that ease was part of his trap.

– Impressive. Binding a golem’s movements with an unknown spell… If I had the time, I’d love to steal that magic as well.

The golem echoed his voice once again.

As if the entire fortress were his vocal cords, the booming sound rang through the halls, hurting my ears.

“You’re still coveting others’ magic, even after being reduced to a slave for stealing Venizelos’s secret spells? What, do you have a compulsion or something?”

– Knowledge is nothing more than a small fruit. A fruit that grows on the tree of truth, which itself grows in the commons called the world. It cannot and should not be monopolized.

“Spoken like a true thief. You sound just like one of those Knowledge Liberation Front radicals.”

– …Are you interested, by any chance?

Wait, seriously?

The Knowledge Liberation Front is classified as a hostile organization in Karaf.

They reject the legitimacy of the intellectual property rights guaranteed by the state and work in secret to publicly distribute all magical spells in existence.

Most of its members are marginalized mages who never got the chance to join prestigious schools and learn mainstream magic.

Their ideology might be somewhat sympathetic… but their methods are so extreme and destructive that they’re practically a terrorist group.

There’s a reason they remain in hiding.

– Winter Winslet, if you come to our side, we’re willing to release the hostages and end this fight.

The flow of ether that still binds the golem is truly beautiful. If you’d be willing to teach us this spell, we can promise to protect you from Venizelos.

The secret magic I use is already the legacy of those who either founded magic schools or stood shoulder to shoulder with them as lone prodigies in the past.

So it’s no wonder he’s drooling over it.

Especially for someone from the Knowledge Liberation Front. It must be driving him mad.

But there’s no negotiating with a hostage-taker.

“Who’s protecting who here? Say that again after you’ve beaten me.”

– Hmm… Then how about this? I hear you’ve been stripped of your position as heir to the Winslet County. If you join us, I can make you the sole successor of the County right now.

“The sole successor?”

– I’m saying I’ll take care of the things you’ve hesitated to do because of your noble status. Eliminate your rivals in the succession dispute under the guise of an attack by an unidentified mage.

– And tell me, doesn’t this castle look beautiful? I may have turned it into a golem, but still…don’t you desire the position of master of such a fine place?”

“Spoken like a true hound of Venizelos. Your mouth just keeps spewing garbage.”

– Hmm… I’ll give you some time to think it over. I’d like to observe your magic a little longer anyway. Let’s see how long you can struggle.

As soon as his voice ended, something unusual began to happen.

Clank, clank.

Count Winslet was a great noble with vast, fertile lands in Lorentia, and he poured his overflowing wealth into hobbies.

And apparently, one of those hobbies was collecting full suits of plate armor crafted by renowned artisans of Libron.

Now, those luxury armors had begun to move.

Fully equipped with longswords, morning stars, glaives, and other weapons, the suits of armor came to life.

“Living armors, huh…”

I made a mental note to myself not to buy anything like that even if I became rich in the future and snapped my fingers.

Clang! Clang! Clatter!

The hollow armors were flung away by telekinetic magic, crashing loudly to the ground.

But they were like steel zombies.

They didn’t scream in pain, and they didn’t collapse just because a joint had bent.

In that case, the only option was to completely obliterate them.

[Casting Fairbairn’s Secret Spell — Gravitational Pull Net.]

[Casting Syke’s Demolition Hammer.]

Using a spell that generated attraction between objects, I clumped the armors together…then dropped something big on top of them.

Zzzzzzip!

With a high-frequency sound, bright rings began to form around the living armors.

The moment the rings closed—

Boooooom!

With an ear-shattering crash, an invisible hammer dropped at supersonic speed.

After the shockwave swept over my body, I casually kicked at the floor.

Fragments of shattered armor, now reduced to metallic dust, rained down onto my shoes.

– Ooooh! Yes, that’s it! What principle causes that attraction? Is it spatial distortion? Show me more. More!

[Casting Rock Explosion Spell.]

Annoyed by his perverse-sounding voice, I blew up one side of the gallery wall.

However, the fragments shattered by my spell soon began returning to their original positions, gradually restoring the castle.

Worse still, a new threat emerged through the briefly destroyed gap.

Looks like the area beyond the broken wall was the dining hall.

Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

A silver wave buzzed in like a swarm of bees.

It was the sharp cutlery attack Joseph had warned me about.

[Casting Hellfire Flood Spell.]

To suppress the blade-like insects swarming through the corridor, I simply flooded one side of the hallway with searing flames.

The forks and knives made of low-melting-point silver melted away like popsicles on a midsummer day.

– Mmm… That was a bit lacking in stimulation…

He muttered as if pondering what method to try next.

But his attacks didn’t pose any real threat to me.

They were just stalling tactics.

Which, ironically, made me feel even more uneasy.

If buying time was his true goal, there was no reason for me to play along.

I had now completed my analysis of the fortress golem.

The Millennium Prison spell that bound it was still steadily draining my mana.

So I decided it was time to change the rules of the game.

Not by his methods….by mine.

The next round would be a game of tag.

I suppressed my mana field.

Contracting it tightly inward, I sealed it within my own body.

It was a stealth technique used to erase one’s magical presence from enemy mages.

Shannon had once used it on me during a duel.

Just as I expected, he was visibly shaken.

– Hmm? Where did you go? Don’t tell me… you died to those blind knives? No! That can’t be… Ha! Almost fell for it. Trying a cheap trick like that.

He quickly saw through my tactic. But even if he figured it out, he still couldn’t stop it.

That’s exactly why I chose this method.

Because I had already figured out what kind of trick he was using.

The foundation of the Venizelos school of magic lies in the concept of transcending humanity.

Their goal is to rise to a higher state by surpassing the three elements that define humans: body, mind, and soul.

They failed to achieve much in body modification or soul separation, but in the area of mental expansion, they made major breakthroughs.

That’s what became their so-called secret spells. Or at least, according to the lore of Candela of Judgment.

So, the secret technique that the hound stole from the Venizelos school was a spell that forcefully expands one’s mind into inanimate objects.

Since a magic field is essentially an external projection of one’s mind, increasing the total capacity of the mind allows one to control a much larger mana field than a normal mage could.

That enormous mana field I felt when I first encountered the fortress golem? That was exactly it.

And the one who uses that secret spell can manipulate objects mentally, just as if moving arms and legs. So long as they are linked to their mind.

The fortress golem, the living armors inside it, and the flying cutlery were all part of that.

Thanks to this, the hound managed to establish a highly advanced defense system, something that would normally take over a decade to build, in a very short time.

But it seemed he couldn’t control that system and use regular magic at the same time.

Either the secret spell wasn’t complete, or his mastery of it was lacking.

Because of that, he lacked proper means to attack me once I entered the golem.

All he could do was use his mana field like sensory organs to detect my presence and animate the objects inside the keep to try and eliminate me.

It was like trying to kill a small bug that had crawled into one’s veins.

But the moment I suppressed my magic field and erased my presence, he could no longer tell where that bug had gone.

That’s why he panicked.

– I won’t let you escape. Don’t even think about running. You should’ve just kept smashing the castle instead.”

He was getting nervous and started talking more than before.

I wanted to throw in a sarcastic remark, even just one…but I held my tongue, worried he might pinpoint my location from the sound.

I had to use the moment he lost track of me to escape this place and head for the heart of the fortress golem.

Sensing my intent, Venizelos’s hound desperately blocked my path.

Thud. Creak. Slam!

And I don’t mean that figuratively. He literally blocked the way.

The walls of the corridor had begun to move, alive.

At this point, the fortress itself had become an extension of his body.

He moved the walls of the White Fortress the same way he animated armors and sent cutlery flying.

The narrowing corridor eventually turned into a dead end.

The isolated section began to close in. At this rate, I’d be crushed by the encroaching walls.

I tried to find an escape route without using magic.

Just then, my hand found a doorknob to the right.

I had no idea where it led, but I had to get inside first and figure it out later.

With that thought, I turned the handle…

Click, clack.

Tch, locked.

I clicked my tongue and was about to turn back when—

A voice came from the other side of the door.

“Who’s there?”