I was sort of thankful for Mercutio’s need to gloat. He had clearly meant to intimidate me, and while it worked, his little speech also gave me a heads-up. It would have been much worse to get dropped into the middle of a city invasion, with no warning and no preparation, alongside an entire army of demons and who knows what kind of traps, and be told to just survive.

This way, I had three full days to boost my chances of that survival.

The first step, of course, was to optimize my use of the Mage Shield spell. Once I was past the hurdle that had held me back for so long, I rapidly got better at pulling up and maintaining the barrier. Some cautious tests also confirmed that I was, indeed, much safer with the shield up.

Over the three days, I even managed to push myself all the way to the eighth layer of mana accumulation. My core thrummed with power, and I felt more capable than ever of finely manipulating my mana.

I even tried out the Mana Bolt spell in what was supposed to be my downtime. I didn’t see that as work though. Most of my former awe over magic was gone, but whatever small spark I had managed to preserve took great delight in my ability to play around with mana. Besides, while my personal barrier spell was important, getting to shoot mana arrows at stuff was so much more… well, more.

I only barely managed to kludge the spell together, even with Clarinette’s memories. In most battle scenarios, it would be so much more practical for me to just grab my sword and slice something up. But it was good to have a ranged attack for the first time. Before, my only ranged option was throwing my sword, which didn’t really count.

My final act of preparation was visiting the Absorption Station within the main camp of the legion army. I didn’t think they could set those up without claiming the city first, but apparently, the legion had claimed a large patch of land just in front of the capital in order to secure their position. Someone also mentioned that the presence of claimed land assisted the mages somehow, but I wasn’t too sure of the details.

I didn’t visit the station for safety, or the tranquility it could bring once you got past the chair’s horrific torture. I went because I had a bad feeling about what was coming, and I’d be damned if I didn’t do everything I could do to prepare. Plus, with the 183 souls I had stolen from fallen recruits at Glarind’s Spine, I could finally afford to absorb that one greater soul’s skill I had been saving. Apprentice Enchantment Theory (Basic) sounded like it could be useful, even if only to dodge traps and recognize blatant danger.

I was right.

While the memories I absorbed didn’t outright impart on me the ability to make enchanted items, they did come with a whole dictionary of runes, along with knowledge about the runes’ effects and their potential use in enchantments. I had to live through the training of a grouchy male mage who really didn’t like to socialize, but that was a small price to pay, even if I did notice I was a touch more reluctant to interact with Mia afterwards.

Of course, I didn’t get to see much of her anyway. She was busy with her own preparations for the task ahead of us, which included working hard to consume the mana crystals I gave her.

When I saw her on the morning of the third day, I had to admit I was impressed.

Mana thrummed inside her, and unless I was off by a mile, she had advanced to the level of a Basic Mage herself. I knew from experience that the advancement pace slowed down quite a bit after each major milestone, but at least she would have a lot more mana at her disposal when we entered the city.

Part of me wished she had advanced sooner, so I could have shared my spells with her. Another part of me wasn’t sure if I would have done that. It was the same paranoid, lonely corner of my brain that continued to distrust everyone fiercely, even someone who had given me no reason for that distrust.

Not that I was particularly ashamed of that paranoid voice. After all, you couldn’t afford to be too buddy-buddy in a demonic legion.

The fourth day dawned without regard for our feelings, readiness, or willingness. Mercutio wasted no time in herding us closer to the barrier, where we could watch the final steps of whatever it was the mages were doing.

Most of their efforts were now unified into a massive, reddish-black web of runes, sigils, and arcane symbols that danced all over the barrier. I had no doubt the web also extended deep into the ground, covering the bottom half of the barrier’s perfect protective sphere.

Somehow, the demonic mana could discover the faults of each shield layer and unerringly pass through them to the next, like water or small particles trickling through a sieve. The massive show of magic had darkened the first three barrier layers completely and was already infecting the last one at a truly impressive rate.

What confused me was the complete lack of reaction from the capital’s denizens. Apparently, even before we showed up, none of the locals had climbed the wall to face down the demonic army. No one had even shown their face. The capital city looked like a perfectly preserved piece of art: cold, lifeless, and forgotten by the people who once inhabited it.

The impression made a shiver of unease roll down my back.

I cast a nervous glance around me, evaluating my team. Mercutio had divided his remaining three hundred recruits into three groups of about a hundred each. I was thankful that none of the boisterous personalities and would-be leaders were among my hundred. In fact, the only notable figures in my group were me, Mia, and the mutated recruit.

The trepidation I felt at the sight of him was something I struggled to suppress. Logically speaking, the man was already oath-bound not to hurt me. I really didn’t need to check on him every five minutes, gauging whether he had moved closer.

I did it anyway.

The recruit had vanished shortly after our arrival at the capital, and while I couldn’t prove it, I strongly suspected he had spent all three days with Mercutio. Why would the demon tolerate the company of a mortal, when he looked ready to have us all executed most of the time? I didn’t know, and I didn’t like it.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As usual, however, the world didn’t stop spinning on my account.

There was a sudden tearing noise, and then all four of the capital’s barrier layers cracked as one. This time, the demons didn’t weaponize the shield against the city and its residents. Instead, the same combined ritual that broke the barrier consumed it entirely. One moment, the cracking barrier was threatening to collapse on top of us, and then it was simply gone.

The tide of impatient demons rolled forth.

The drummers picked up the pace of their music. Mages shot into the air or ran forward at unnatural speeds. I watched the general himself march into the city, surrounded by sergeants. They all wore grim expressions.

It was at this moment that Mercutio decided to make a nuisance of himself again.

“Go!” he screamed, gesturing wildly at the city. “Claim what I sent you to find, so that our legion may prosper!”

It was a very nice way to cushion an order that would let him hang back and just reap the benefits later, but I wasn’t about to challenge him publicly on it. Instead, I joined my fellow recruits in a roar for courage and charged.

Somehow, Mercutio had procured a detailed route for us. All three groups knew exactly which streets to travel down, what turns to take, and even the specific building each was looking for. It was almost too convenient. I would have suspected a trap, if it weren’t for the established ability of demons to extract memories from souls.

Of course, I would probably encounter a trap of a different kind, but that was a personal issue.

But as we stalked through the streets, moving as quickly as we could without throwing all caution to the wind, something else started bothering me far more than our suspiciously clear route. It began as an eerie feeling, then evolved into outright fear.

The city seemed… empty.

Past the clamor of the demonic army fading ahead of us, there was no sign of war. No grunts of pain echoed. No screams rent the air. There were no corpses, or civilians begging for their lives. Hell, I didn’t even spot a single splash of red on the fancy cobbled streets. The army had busted down the gate and charged into the city with us in tow, and the defenders hadn’t even reacted.

Where is everyone? They wouldn’t all feed themselves willingly to the barrier just to spite us, right?

I discarded that idea quickly. It would be a massive waste of life to overfeed the barrier protecting the capital, not to mention it would render such protection pointless. Since I also didn’t see any lethal kaleidoscopic lines slashing through the buildings and ground, I guessed the locals had elected not to go for another murder-suicide attempt.

So where were they?

I didn’t have much time to puzzle it out. Between the lack of opposition and our enhanced bodies, we made extremely fast progress. Not even five minutes after entering, we were deep enough inside the city to catch sight of our destination.

It was a palatial building, one that towered over everything else on the block. Though built out of the same bluish stone as the rest of the capital, this was clearly an important institution. Its distinctive domed roof and multitude of windows only drove the point home.

This was a major distribution point for all magical goods and consumables in the city, one of the three responsible for catering to the many mage guilds based in the capital. Presumably, this was also where most of the kingdom’s wealth was still accrued.

I expected some sort of resistance here. Active wards and locked doors, at the very least. But when one of the more brash recruits busted open the main entrance, the double doors simply swung open, slamming into the walls on either side with a loud CRACK.

We all froze for a moment. A comical look stole over the recruit’s face, revealing that he, too, had expected this to be more difficult.

Then, silently, we surged into the building.

The inside was even more impressive. Swirling patterns were inlaid on the ceiling, walls, and floor, depicting stars and wild geometrical shapes beyond my comprehension. The patterns pulsed vaguely with mana, like their mere depiction was enough to charge them partially in preparation for some grand ritual.

Still, no trap triggered. No spell lashed out against us.

At that point, frustration overcame my fear. I felt like someone was taunting us, waiting until we were deep enough inside their trap to snap it shut. And we were just pushing further in, dancing to their tune.

But what choice did we have? What could we do but obey our orders?

“Everyone, secure the building! Since they let us waltz in here, they can’t blame us for making the most of it!”

My voice was the first to break the eerie silence, jerking everyone into obedience. Maybe they would have put up more of a struggle, if not for the fact that my oath had bound everyone into some semblance of peace and order. As it was, they followed my lead without hesitation, scattering to cover the many side entrances.

I, meanwhile, dove deeper into the building. Mia was hot on my heels, but I wasn’t about to tell her not to follow.

Just as Mercutio had instructed, we went down a series of increasingly more convoluted corridors, finally arriving at the heart of the building. There, we found a massive hatch in the ground, protected by a runic matrix engraved directly onto it and the surrounding floor.

Some ‘bright’ mind might have felt tempted to try and scratch out parts of the matrix, especially since Mercutio had smugly declared that it was up to us to find a way inside the vault. But thanks to my most recent absorption of memories related to Apprentice Enchantment Theory, I knew exactly how bad of an idea that was. One wrong move, and I would trigger the power imbued into the enchantment, causing it to discharge. Violently.

Instead, for the first time in a while, I fell back on one of the few things demons actually had me trained in: mana manipulation.

Maybe they didn’t give us lessons on external mana expression. Maybe I couldn’t instinctively etch runes into the air. But as I began sending mana into what my enchantment knowledge suggested was the matrix’s intake slot, I found it easy to control the flow of the mystical substance.

I also found I knew how to get inside the hatch.

A protection matrix like this typically worked by presenting a variety of mana pathways in a complex configuration. Anyone with the authorization to unseal the vault would simply run their mana through all or some of these pathways in a predetermined pattern. That pattern was the key. Follow the right pattern, and the seal would come undone with no problem.

My solution required more brute force.

With a mana crystal in hand, I had more than enough power to just flood the entire thing. If I faltered before getting through all the pathways, then I could just replenish my reserves, again and again. It was the equivalent of using a skeleton key to push all the pins inside a lock at once.

In a mana poor world like this one, it worked.

If the matrix was more complex, or designed at an Archmage level, I obviously would have failed. But here on Berlis, Grand Mages were the peak of power. And while a Basic Mage like me couldn’t match even a Grand Mage’s reserves, I knew Berlis didn’t have access to mana crystals.

After only a few minutes, with the soft hiss of mana slipping from the overstressed matrix, the seal broke. The vault hatch lifted by an inch.

I almost fell when I staggered upright again, being entirely unused to running so much mana through my system so wildly. Mia glanced over briefly to check if I was okay, but at a nod from me, she moved forward and gripped the hatch door instead.

When she wrenched it upwards, I couldn’t hold back a startled hiss.

Piles of potion ingredients, magical ores, crystals of every kind, and more lay scattered around the floor of the vault. Items of power were placed carefully on desks or special pedestals. Sturdy-looking shelves took up an entire wall, packed with enchanted weapons and grimoires.

The dimensional bag Mercutio had given us for the mission felt heavy in my hands as I pulled it out of my pack.

This was the sort of wealth that could ransom a kingdom.

And we were there to steal it.