I was tempted to hold him prisoner in my dungeon, but it was too dangerous. I don't know how to 'declaw' a golemancer, so the quick and dirty way it is.

Mission completed.

I'm disappointed I couldn't use my newly found dungeon, but torturing him for information would be a pain in the ass since I don't want to hear him talk.

Huh, I didn't get any experience from that. Is the gentlemancer actually dead? Vital signs indicate yes, and my identification skill shows me he died.

My perception barely picks up the tell-tale sign that a magic item is being activated.

Rob was already gathering bones. After I shoo him away, I rip open the gentlemancer's bloody suit and see all the talismans and scrolls pasted to his chest. [Scientific Insight+]

[Scroll of the Last Words A]

[Scroll of the Swan Song C]

[Talismen of Endurance C]

[Talismen of Regeneration C]

[Talismen of Confidence E]

I kick him out of the mansion, literally. I'm right next to the front gates, which work as a door in this instance. It would be strange that the traditional way to enter or leave a manor ground wouldn't work. Since my skill has a 'door' stipulation. I had the idea of bringing a model door around with me, but that would be a model instead of a door, right?

The dead body of the gentlemancer is now in the limousine. [Swan Song] and [Last Words] made me nervous. The other two must have been for his condition.

[Level Up!]

There it is.

I'm not too knowledgeable on magical items, and that'll hurt me in the long run. I need to feed my [Lexicon] with general knowledge before I leave for the capital.

The gentlemancer left behind two things. The enchanted gun and the scroll the gentlemancer couldn't use. I don't think I can use the magiarm since it looks custom-made. I'll keep it in the armory until I come up with something.

[Scroll of Cinderstorm E]

Holy shit. I'm pretty sure Cinderstorm is a contraband spell. It is basically a napalm strike in the palm of your hand! Pity that it's such a low rank...

If it was B or A rank, I could decimate large populations with a flick of my hand. I won't complain.

I'm not a mage, but spells are difficult to qualify as a specific rank. One of the main ways they differ from skills. A fire mage with their magic graded as A would obviously have a stronger fireball than a mage with a magic grade of F. But the spell itself is the same to learn and cast.

The magic grade includes spell efficiency and learning speed, so an F-rank mage could spend a century learning a "high" class spell. Whereas someone who started their magic journey at the same time would acquire it before him because they actually ranked up their magic.

I would love to meet the man who would dedicate his life to learning the mythical spell found only in legends. The F ranked Wish.

I take Flash Gordon with me as I poke my head out to see the surroundings outside the mansion. The first thing I smell is vaporized meat and char.

The limousine is in complete wreckage. Whatever those talismans did, made the gentlemancer fucking explode. The ground is cratered, and there are metal fragments everywhere. The smoke hasn't settled, so I pop my head back inside and put on my mask.

I step out and walk towards the mansion. Not mine, the now deceased gentlemancer's.

I casually walk inside and look around. The hallways are filled with random items that seem out of place. It appears that when the golemancer dies, the golems deanimate. If the golem had its own power source, it would be fine, just ownerless, but it doesn't seem that the golemancer invested in any.

His central core should be destroyed or heavily damaged with the owner's death, so any golems banking on that would also deanimate.

I spot some of the gentlemancer's goons, but they don't seem apprehensive at my presence. The guy only became hostile when he went to pick me up, so the gentlemancer must not have informed anyone.

Additionally, they're unfazed by the explosion, and no one went to check it out. This must be a regular occurrence, or the workers have express orders to ignore them.

They are baffled at the sudden deanimation, and I decide to take this time to set up a smokescreen. I don't know what [Last Words] does, but if it sends the last words of the gentlemancer to anyone, or even if someone had a long-ranged golem, the gentlemancer's death would inform somebody I don't know.

This guy seemed like the type of guy who would throw his family name at any chance he could get, so either he doesn't come from an affluent family, or he can't speak about them. Either way, his military-grade equipment and the source of these goons make me not want to meet his connections.

I find an empty room and scout out until I find a worker on his lonesome. I drag that guy kicking and screaming into the closet. I covered his mouth, but kudos for trying.

The guy seems younger than me, so either he's still a minor, or his frame is deceptive.

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I use my [Prey on the Weak] title to help "placate" this man into calming down.

"Hey there. I need some answers, and that's all. Don't worry. You won't be in danger if I get all I need."

I can see the struggle in his eyes and the tangible fear rippling through his body.

"Now, I'm stronger than you, so It'll be wise to stay quiet. Yelling for help will only make your death as fast as someone could check it out. Meaning slow."

I expected acceptance, but only hopelessness filled his eyes. He struggles to nod in my biomechanical grasp. I slowly uncover his mouth.

"Tell me about the man you work for, the golemancer with a persona."

The dude just shakes his head no. So I smack the side of his head.

"What do you mean no?"

"I can't I- I just can't."

It's not loyalty that keeps him from talking. Either there is another threat on his life other than me or something worst.

"Are you being blackmailed, held hostage, threatened?"

"I-I-I."

"Contracted?"

He just hangs his head down.

Shit, if it's a magical contract, then there's nothing I can do. These types of enchantments can basically lock someone into slavery if the recipient gets screwed over hard enough. The only stipulation is that they need the signer's extensive consent.

Companies, guilds, and even armed forces sign types of these contracts for various reasons. Usually, they are just alarms that tell the boss when they break any of the rules and what rules were broken, but I heard that in rare cases, these parchments could physically make the signers into puppets, forcing them to do whatever their owners wanted.

"Alright, now don't get too excited, but that man I mentioned died horribly outside. Now I want a few answers, and that's all I need. Can you physically speak, or is something looming over your head?"

He nods, meaning that he can't even speak about the contract and that both conditions are active.

How does that work? Can he not make the conscious decision to verbally speak about specific topics, and if he does it accidentally, does he fucking die? I wonder if it transfers to writing as well.

"Alright, these next few questions have nothing to do with any employer or confidential secrets."

There is relief on this guy's face. Let's game the system by asking generic questions that bypass any specific clause.

"Were you scammed?"

"Oh yeah. Really badly. It keeps up at night when I think-"

"That's enough. What's your system class."

"I can only go as far as to say a type of alchemist. More on the chemistry side rather than the magic type of alchemy."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty. I haven't been unemployed for three years."

He can see what I'm playing at. This guy is giving more information by being cryptic and generic.

"Do you work a lot?"

"..."

"Do your colleagues work a lot?"

"..."

"Are you happ-"

"NO."

"Go tell your 'colleagues' that the 'gentlemancer' is dead in a few minutes."

I leave the closet. If this guy is contracted to not give away information, I shouldn't poke the bear that supplied the contract by asking for too much information.

The gentlemancer couldn't be the contract holder, or at least not the contract holder that silences the workers.

I used my own mansion as a reference to find where the main bedroom would be, and I found a blast door creaked open.

No one is inside, so I assume this door was a golem that deanimated. I don't spot any wards, so I step my way inside.

The bedroom is absolutely massive. The ceiling isn't tall enough if you consider the floor space this room takes up. It almost takes the entire second floor of the building, and the top is only ten feet tall.

The gentlemancer must have been a hoarder since there is so much garbage here. Everything is hygienic, but this loot is trash. Mops, random sunglasses, broken watches.

I found the bathtub, and it has a large crack in it. That could mean two different things; the gentlemancer was negligent, or the core was made into a bathtub and broke when the gentlemancer died.

I'll believe the funnier option.

The final two things that were of note were an enchanted safe and the personal study I found squirreled away.

The only things in the study that looked recently managed were a personal journal and some encrypted notes.

I empty every single piece of text into my [Lexicon] and basically turn the entire study into dust. It gave me a headache even though the information wasn't streaming into my head.

The safe is enchanted, but the surrounding walls aren't. Most of the enchantments look defensive, so I guess I'll just...

I struggle and rip the safe out of the wall. I can't hold the safe with my 100 stat points in might. As gently as one struggling man could, I set the safe on the ground before going to the nearest door and making Rob push the safe in.

I made Rob do it because it's convenient. He won't get injured, and he's eager to help. He's the best worker I can ask for. I just pay him in bones and head pats.

No bombs or materials, so either this safe is a ticking time bomb, or there's a workshop somewhere.

The mansion starts to shake, so I jump out the window and make my escape. Not risking another explosion.

~

I skimmed through my [Lexicon] after making it to safety. The enforcer's raided shortly after many reports of explosions at the manor. It turns out that more than one "employee" was disgruntled by their time with the gentlemancer. They wanted proper compensation before they went back to whatever hell they signed up for.

They were the ones that made the bombs, apparently.

The enforcers busted an entire bomb factory under the mansion. The only people arrested are the employees. The people don't want to be there and can't divulge sensitive information even if they wanted to.

With all the pictures of this guy in his house, the ones that survived, it won't be hard for the enforcers to pinpoint that the terrorist might be the guy with the bomb factory in his basement.

But that brings the question. What the fuck.

Why does he have an entire operation of bomb makers in his fucking house? Holy shit. Did my pettiness stop a splinter cell of terrorists or something?

I didn't read the personal diary because reading words in his tone of voice needed ample mental preparation. If my trait "progresses" because of this, I'll kill the guy again. I open the [Lexicon] and start reading.