Chapter 16

[Outskirts of Eben]

Alric, Meredith, Catherine and Shadow are currently in an abandoned building.

Taking off her pack Meredith said, “We rode all night to get here but we have no time to rest, today is our last day before the deadline so we have to rescue Christy today.”

“Okay, you said you have a spell to find her?” Alric questioned.

“Yes, here it is.” Meredith said as she took out a light blue translucent plate out of her bag.

It was circular in shape and a centimeter in thickness with runic markings and four needles sticking up from the edges.

“What does that do?” Catherine inquired.

“This magic tool is used alongside a magic pulse spell to find someone holding a special receiver. First you pin a map to the surface of the tool in the correct orientation with your current position as the center. Next you use a magic pulse spell that sends out a wave of magic that can pass through anything except for the receiver. When the magic hits the receiver it bounces back and is absorbed by the magic tool. A glowing dot will appear on the tool where the receiver is and using the map above the tool you can tell where exactly it is.” Meredith explained.

“Ah! So it’s like magic RADAR!” Alric exclaimed.

“What’s RADAR??” Meredith and Catherine spoke in unison.

“Um, it’s just like that except it uses these things called radio waves.” Alric explained.

Alric quickly added, “I’ll explain later, for now let’s find Christy.”

“Ok” Meredith replied and began to chant and infuse mana into the magic tool.

Once Meredith finished the chant a light lit up on the tool right away.

The light appeared north of Eben in a small fort.

“That’s Fort Serendar! That means we’re up against Lord Renthar!” Catherine exclaimed.

“Who’s Lord Renthar?” Alric asked.

“He’s a noble from Eben with the most military power, due to the fact he is in control of an actual fort. He is known for being vicious and unscrupulous with a nasty temper to boot, however he is a man of simple mind.” Catherine explained.

“Actually I wouldn’t doubt it if the idea of us trying to sneak in and rescue Christy hadn’t even occurred to him.” Catherine continued.

“Ok, now that I know where she is it’s time I got going, there’s no time to waste.” Alric said.

“I know you can do it.” Meredith said.

“Christy is as good as saved with you around.” Catherine said confidently.

“I’ll be off. Next we meet I will be back with Christy safe and sound!” Alric stated then turned to shadow and said, “Stealth. Follow.” First Shadow’s figure faded away and then Alric’s.

The door swung open and a second later swung back closed.

Alric exited the city and turned north.

Using his body strengthening he ran as fast as he could toward Fort Serendar, Shadow keeping pace alongside him.

[Serendar Fort]

“Really, these soldiers are quite lax.” I thought to myself.

“They just leave the front gate wide open and what’s more they are sitting off to the side gambling.”

“If it’s like that why do I even need to be in stealth?” I thought and laughed to myself.

I began searching through the buildings one by one but found no trace of any prisoners.

Then I noticed that in one of the buildings there seemed to be an entrance to a basement of some sort that was locked and had a guard sitting outside it.

The key to the door was hanging from his belt.

“It looks like I’ll have to knock the guard out to get the key.”

Thankfully, I had prepared for a situation like this.

I pulled out from my pack a rag and a bottle of highly concentrated alcohol.

After soaking the rag in the alcohol I snuck up behind the guard and clamped the rag over his nose and mouth.

I held him down as he struggled and eventually he passed out as the potent alcohol vapors worked their way into his system.

Under the influence of the alcohol the guard would be out for at least eight hours and if anyone else found him they would assume he had drunk himself to the point of unconsciousness.

I grabbed the key from his belt, unlocked the door and replaced the key.

I entered the basement and began to descend, keeping my eyes out for any prisoners.

Seeing how this area was locked from the outside I’m going to assume that there aren’t any human guards in these passageways.

However, that doesn’t mean it will be unguarded.

Most likely there will be traps and possibly even monster guardians.

After continuing a ways I notice a fine crack in the wall that is too unnaturally straight.

Picking up a discarded stone I roll it down the hall.

When it reached the crack it seemed to hit a spot on the floor that sunk in and suddenly darts that were likely covered in poison were shot from the wall.

A nearly imperceptible click alerted me to the trap resetting and reloading.

Although I was able to see the area the darts fired from I am unable to tell where the switch to activate the trap is until it is activated.

Clearly this is the work of a fairly skilled trap maker.

I know the location of one of the activation switches thanks to the stone but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more.

I’ll just have to leap past the trap without touching the floor.

I could just use magic to disable the trap but due to the unknown number of enemies I may have to face I need to save every drop of mana I’ve got.

I took a few steps back and broke into a run.

Just before the trap I activated body strengthening for a fraction of a second as I jumped, soaring past the slot filled with the deadly poison tipped darts.

I rolled on the ground and sprung to my feet quickly scanning for any other traps or monsters.

From this point on I’ll use body strengthening just on my nervous system to enhance my reaction rate as I won’t be able to avoid every trap and I don’t have enough time to painstakingly search.

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As I continued onwards the traps became more numerous and the intervals in torch spacing became further and further apart.

Clearly the trap master who designed the place knew what he was doing.

The increasing danger and dimness created an atmosphere that would have a psychological effect on any ordinary intruder.

In the beginning there were mainly simple traps that were easy enough to avoid like bear traps and simple mechanical traps but as one further went in the traps began to have magical aspects to them.

Walking down the hall suddenly I noticed a faint light coming from the walls, quickly I dropped to the floor and immediately tongues of flame erupted from tiny holes in the walls above me.

If not for my reaction speed being enhanced I would have become instantly charred.

Oddly enough I had yet to run into a single monster.

On the fifth floor down the hall opened up into a wider room with doors on all sides of the room.

In the center was a table with a piece of paper on it with the floor plan of the room on it.

Walking up to the table I noticed that each of the doors had words next to them.

One said to F4, another said to F6, but the others all said “Monsters, Haha!”

The moment when I stepped to the table and read the paper I heard the doors around the room swing open and suddenly a horde of monsters began rushing in.

The monsters appeared to be human corpses in the late stages of decay.

Their bodies were heavily decomposed with their putrid, rotten flesh hanging off their exposed bones.

As they exited the doorways they slowly shambled into the room leaving trails of mysterious fluid and bits of their decaying flesh.

Their heads and small portions of their bodies seemed to be covered in white hair.

However, on closer inspection it seemed to be some type of fungus.

From these observations I guessed that it is some type of parasitic fungus that controls the bodies of the dead.

Somehow sensing me the monsters began to quickly converge on my position.

Infusing mana into my foot I used a thin Mantle Tsunami in the shape of an arc incasing the closest fungus creatures in rapidly hardening magma.

This created a wall of stone that prevented any of the creatures from sneaking up on me.

Generating a furnace blade around my right hand I rushed forward and began to decapitate the Fungus creatures that approached me.

Soon the air was filled with the smell of burning corpses.

The creatures put up no resistance to my strikes and were easy enough to kill but for every one I killed it seemed there were two more in its place.

Furthermore the more appeared the worse my accuracy became, occasionally lopping off the creatures limbs instead of their heads which didn’t faze them in the slightest.

“Damn” I cursed “There’s no end to them, I’ll have to close the doors while fighting them off.”

Using an Erosion Vortex to clear the path to the door I ran over and attempted to shut it.

However the door wouldn’t latch!

Quickly I decide to cover the door in a layer of hardened lava and casted Mantle Tsunami.

After cooling It with a gust of air magic I rushed to the next door and repeated the process.

After sealing up the final, eighteenth, door it was just a matter of taking care of the rest in the room.

Quickly running through I relieved the remaining creatures of their craniums.

After the final one was taken care of I sat down on a spot without any corpses to catch my breath.

“I’m glad I trained my body as well as a child, otherwise this battle would have drained a lot of my mana reserve.”

“As it is there is a noticeable dip but all in all I think it went well. Furnace blades are low in mana consumption except for when attempting to cut through something hard and I limited my Mantle Tsunamis to small volumes of lava in order to conserve. I still have plenty of mana left for whatever is to come.”

I got up, having caught my breath and headed toward the door to the sixth floor.

[Serendar fort, BF6 Cell]

It had sixteen hours since Christy and Lyria had escaped from their confinement only to have their escape attempt halted by the ominous presence of a lesser earth dragon.

The difference in strength between a lesser earth dragon and a true dragon is greater than that of a lowly flea and a majestic blue whale.

In reality there was hardly any reason to call it a dragon at all, it would be more appropriate to simply call it a giant rocky lizard.

However to Christy and Lyria who were next to powerless this lesser earth dragon was an insurmountable existence.

So the two moved on to plan b.

They spent all their efforts in concealing themselves so that when Lord Renthar next came they could ambush him and force him to let them out.

After hiding they took turns keeping watch on the door at the other end of the lesser earth dragon’s cave.

Christy was the one on watch when the door cracked open and Alric stepped through.

She quickly shook Lyria awake and whispered frantically, “Is that Lord Renthar? Is he really that young?”

Lyria shook her head, “No, but be on guard. There is the possibility that he works for him.”

At that moment Alric noticed the lesser earth dragon.

His eyes opened wide and he froze in place, staring slack jawed at the sleeping behemoth.

“I don’t think he’s with Lord Renthar.” Christy commented.

Christy watched as the expression of shock melted away from Alric’s face and he adopted an aggressive stance, preparing to attack the lesser earth dragon.

With a sudden movement Alric shot forward, flying toward the giant beast.