226, 2/2

At first glance, the house at the end of Seafoam Road was an unassuming place, all shuttered and locked down with spellwork to make sure no one broke in and stole anything. Sure, some of those spells looked impressively dangerous, but that was rather normal for a lot of these houses out in the middle of nowhere.

The road probably got its name from the house, since before the Teleport Exodus, Erick suspected that this place didn’t even have a road.

Seafoam Road split away from the main road back closer to town, in the real noble district, to then wind its way into the mountains, curling around the southern side of the island. In another life, Erick could easily imagine driving a car down a road like that, taking in the wonderful view of the sea, south of the Archipelago. Far beyond that watery southern horizon lay the northern coast of Nergal, where everything was made of poison and death, and everything tried to kill everyone else all the time. But here, on Storm’s Edge, the land was tame, Seafoam Road likely hadn’t had traffic in months, overgrown as it was, and though the beaches down below were rather filled with salt spray air, the wind up by the manor smelled of the forest.

Here, at this end of the road, a large iron gate had laid directly across the road, serving as a final dividing line between the road and private property. A shadow had ‘opened’ the gate prior to Erick’s arrival, though, which was more like breaking several enchantments laid upon that gate and dealing with the explosion afterward, but that was fine with Erick. He was pretty sure whoever opened it was fine, though the gate was very much not. Blackened iron lay in a small heap to the side, where someone had gathered it up just because they could.

Normally, a place like this, disused as it looked, wouldn’t have had such robust defenses, for all magic used to degrade rather fast once it wasn’t actively tended to.

Erick had changed that, though.

Or more specifically, the Lighter’s Guild had brought the node network all the way out here, which meant that this place was still inhabited all the time, even though it was a good 220-ish kilometers outside of town. That sort of distance in a node network wasn’t all that abnormal, but most people who lived out in the sticks had decided eleven years ago to abandon their houses and move into town.

It looked like no one lived here, either, which was part of the obfuscation of the whole place.

Other than that, this place looked like a rather normal noble’s house. Several stories. Stone. Large windows everywhere, offering great views of the southern sea. Balconies and whatnot. Of course it was all boarded up with solid wood, and all the stone was solidly enchanted to prevent [Stoneshape].

Erick muttered, “Kinda weird for him to say it was ‘inside the noble district’, but I suppose ‘the noble district’ could also be a state of mind—” He asked, “What have you found?”

Shade Goldie stepped out of the shadows. She was decked out in her normal solid-black armor which showed almost no golden scales at all, while her black sword hung at her back like a plank of wood. She was looking particularly excited today, beyond that solid black mask, which was a little odd, but it was also ‘whatever’. The Shade still had her bouts of absolute-devotion to Erick’s authority, especially when he hadn’t called upon her for any specific task in a while, but she usually grew out of that rather fast these days. Maybe she had picked up on Melemizargo’s excitement? Whatever the case, Erick would find out later, no doubt.

For now, Goldie happily said, “The place is shut tighter than most banks. An over-eager shadow tried the gate but she more managed to break it, rather than unlock it, and that put her in a temporary coma. She’s fine now, but she’s taking it easy for a while.”

Erick was glad the shadow was okay. For security purposes, they never spoke names out in the field, but Erick was pretty sure that Goldie was talking about Durri. ‘Durri’ was just a code name, anyway, for ‘durable’; it was the name she picked for herself because of her usual temperament when it came to how she survived solving the problems of House Benevolence. It made sense that Durri would be the one to try the gate.

Goldie continued, “One side effect of that breaking was that the manasphere cleared beyond the gate. We’re not sure if it cleared all the way into the house, but it’s very possible. The place is also on a 24-hour cleaning cycle as well, which they seem to have cribbed from bank protocol, which is basically what they copied here but with a few variations.”

“A governmental building, then.”

“Highly likely.”

“I probably won’t find anything at all.”

“All the defenses seem automated, yes, but we haven’t gotten any Regency people snooping around yet, so perhaps there might actually be someone inside there, and they don’t need the Regency people to come to the rescue.”

Erick considered his next moves.

Warning plaques held to the gate’s adjoining stone walls. They read out warnings of [Force Trap]s and [Alarm] spells upon the property, and said that Seafoam Manor was not responsible for death incurred by those foolish enough to test its defenses.

Erick tuned his mana senses forward, delving into the property.

There was about 230 meters of space between the gate and the manor itself, with a somewhat-wild forest growing up from the land to the left and right of the roads. That road itself was overgrown, but some sort of semi-autonomous spellwork kept the house looking halfway-decent; The weeds only got so high, and the road wasn’t too overgrown.

He picked up on a good dozen types of spells holding in the air, and in the ground, within the node network that was the surrounding walls, and inside the various dry fountains, and ivy-covered statues here and there. [Force Trap] seemed to be the usual spell of choice; perhaps a few nonviolent variants to dissuade people from trying shit in the first place, before the really lethal traps started closer to the house. That spell was illegal in most of the world, except for governmental use in protecting property. In a few places nobles were allowed to use that spell, too. Whichever this particular case was, Erick would find out after he cracked the place open like a bag of potato chips…

Hmm. Potato chips.

Maybe he should have eaten something as a dragon before he came here. It had been about a week since he last ate and was getting damned hungry… And he wanted some potato chips from Earth, now that he was thinking about all that. Oh well. Maybe Ezekiel could invent those; Erick had tried a few times in the last decade, but he couldn’t get those thin, crispy ones that he truly loved, nor the ruffled ones—

Enough about food.

Erick’s mana senses stopped at the door to the manor. His range was around 500 meters on a good, clear day, and this was a good, clear day, so he got a great deal of the front of the house in his sense, but he couldn’t peer inside.

“Good [Ward]s,” Erick said, “High class.”

“Hence the bank-connection.”

“Highly likely. I assume you haven’t been able to get inside yet?”

“Nope. I can already foresee that the place will violently reject me.” Goldie said, “It’s easy to make a place impregnable, but people can’t usually exist inside those, and that is what they’ve done here. They might have someone inside, but such a life would be a sad sort of existence.”

Erick nodded, then he regarded the manor once again.

He had seen a few places like this before. A dozen places existed like this in Oceanside, each of them hiding works of disassembled magic too great to be let out into the open, or too ancient to be used here on Veird, in this New Cosmology. The manor was kind of like the noble district of Enduring Forge, actually, where they used their old noble houses to store stuff securely, like with the Tear of Aloeth. House Benevolence even had a few caches like this, and Quilatalap had a great many caches like this.

Erick had a little bit of skill breaking into places like this, but he was no expert, by far.

He could just ask the Regency to be let inside, but that would be asking for permission, and they’d scuttle the place if there was anything truly reprehensible here. It was better to do the deed and then ask for forgiveness later, if forgiveness was necessary.

Erick could just use his Class Ability, Mana Siphon. That Ability, which Erick had created based off of [Renew] and the Undertow Effect, was a way for him to touch a spellwork and Drain it of all power. It was a bit more nuanced of a Drain than just putting an [Undertow Star] into the sky, and wiping the magic away from a building, but in the end, the effect was the same; all the mana powering a working was forcibly removed.

Of course, if he did that, Erick was almost 100% positive that he would break whatever incriminating spellwork existed inside the place, and there were likely failsafes to prevent investigation of an unprotected manor, if the node network should fail. That could be either good, or bad, depending on the nature of those failsafes.

Over the years, with Erick’s invention of permanent spellwork for the masses, he had seen many different places use a node network to set up spellwork that would trigger under certain conditions, and then go away if the spellwork itself was disturbed in a way it wasn’t meant to be disturbed. One particular terrible instance of that was a Trap Master who had installed a [Force Shear Trap] into the node network of Killtree, over in the Sovereign Cities. That particular trap was primed to be hidden in almost all cases, but then to activate if a certain demographic of people should come near; shadelings, primarily, but also orcols, strangely enough. That spell would remain dormant until properly triggered, and if it was disturbed, it would violently lash out at everyone, causing a great deal more destruction than the usual triggering, regardless of who triggered it.

Over a decade ago, there were those words painted onto the side of Odaali, back when it was occupied by the Halls of the Dead, and the Daydropper Queen. Those words were actually [Force Trap]s, and they would have remained for a very long time, decades really, if Odaali would have left them alone, but the second Erick tried to [Dispel] them, they triggered violently.

Another instance of needing to leave traps intact, was once again in the Sovereign Cities. A cult of blood had tried to undermine Erick’s authority, and in order to have meetings, they had enchanted a specialized [Force Trap] into a part of the node network, that if you approached it in a certain way then you would be directed to the meeting location, and if you approached it any other way, it would break. Those types of ‘traps’ weren’t very useful for permanently securing a location, though, for a box that could be opened was always more vulnerable than a box that was welded shut.

There was really no way to know what he was dealing with here, at Seafoam Manor, until he poked at it.

Erick decided to secure himself with his [Perfected Benevolence] Elemental Body and his [Lodestar] Domain. With his sunform active, Erick would avoid all the largest of the traps, and all the various Ethereal ones that were strung across the property like a web of power, cast by a terrible spider of some sort.

He stepped onto the property, his skin flickering with pale white light, and then distorting as he moved through the space like an ooze; his body coming apart before it met any lines in the air, and then flowing back together on the other side. It was movement born of a great deal of personal skill, but to anyone looking they would have assumed that it was easy to do what Erick was doing now.

Ophiel twittered from the air behind him, back beyond the gate, saying, “I look out here!”

Erick spoke through the air, without using his actual body at all. “Thank you, Ophiel. Be careful not to trigger anything.”

Undoubtedly, small animals triggered these things all the time, but whatever sort of spellwork this was seemed to be either immune to the vagaries of small animals, or it was controlled by some force inside the house.

Ophiel flitted away to go check out all of that, but really he just wanted to look at the mice and the big bugs that roamed the land.

Erick continued onward, stepping around and through a good hundred layers of spellwork. Finally he came to some [Alarm Ward] effects. Those ones were easy to spot as a bunch of anti-animal magics. They seemed much more nuanced and were more of a ‘do not approach’ sort of effect, as opposed to a [Solid Ward] effect, though.

Animals on Veird had somewhat different hearing ranges than people, but not really. Everything on Veird was invented by other people, after all, and generally, people heard, saw, tasted, felt, and experienced the world in a certain, shared sort of way.

Eventually Erick came to a Wall-like effect, about 50 meters away from the actual house, with no way around. The important thing here was that the Wall hadn’t appeared to his senses until he was five meters away from it, which meant that Erick might be triggering something unknowingly, or maybe someone was watching, but he didn’t think anyone was watching… So how was this Wall spell appearing before him, like some sort of ethereal surface? There was also some other sort of spell underground that was much more solid than whatever this Ethereal-thing was, and that certainly hadn’t been there before now, either. How was it appearing…

Erick considered what he was seeing.

Other people were better at certain magics than him; this was no surprise. Still, though, it always surprised him a little bit when he came upon such a thing. Finding new magic usually made him smile, followed by him trying to figure it all out, for magic was fascinating. But in this place, in this situation, Erick did not smile.

As a test, Erick floated left, and the Wall-spell, whatever it was, only appeared to his senses when he was within a good ten meters of it. Had the perception-range of it changed? Perhaps. It was 5 meters before, and now it was 10.

… All the rest of the Wall simply did not exist until he was there, observing it.

It was as though Erick was a lightbulb, shining on a wall that was not there, until he shone upon the—

Oh. It was responding to the presence of a soul.

Duh.

This was Soul Magic.

… Could also be something like a [Magic Sensing Wall], for Erick was layered with active magic at the moment.

… This was taking too long.

He could always [Return] if he fucked up, so Erick stuck his Domain-protected hand into the static spell effect.

This would have been a phenomenally stupid thing to do for most people, but Erick was able to weather any casual trap these days, and most anything that anyone could throw at him.

With his hand in the Wall, Erick felt a ‘testing’ sort of magic try to read his soul, and then it returned a ‘negative’ result, or something like that. That was only an educated guess, but it was probably the correct one.

Magical turrets opened up on the roof of the house and began blasting Erick with [Force Beams]. The beams struck his Domain and splashed away like curving laminar flows. Some Beams hit the ground, hitting [Force Trap]s in the ground that promptly exploded underfoot. Others hit the [Alarm Ward] spells in the air, triggering them, causing a large wailing sound to pulse away from the house like a shrieking demon. It was probably a Thunder-based damage effect, but Erick couldn’t feel anything under his protections.

“Ahh… Fuck it.”

Erick dove into the house, shaping his Benevolence into a great dragon-clawed hand to rip the wooden shutters away from the door—

The interior of the house detonated.

It was not a large explosion, all things considered. The house remained, but the carpets, the drapes, the chairs, the windows, all turned to shrapnel, all throughout the house. Bare stone remained, heavily scorched. And then a massive [Cleanse] spilled throughout the entire manor, wiping away everything that had been destroyed. Anything that Erick might have wanted to find was gone, and what’s worse, is that the final burst of cleaning spellwork had erased the manasphere; there were no bits of shrapnel to [Mending Aura] back into furniture, and whatnot. The house was now empty of all normal clues.

Erick sighed a little.

And then he [Return]ed.

Once again, the house was as it had been, and Erick stood before the Wall of soul-checking magic.

He opened a [Gate] just past the wall, and stepped through onto a land that was devoid of any spellwork at all. Glancing backward, Erick saw that he had successfully circumvented the Wall spell. That magic hung in the air behind him like an ethereal curtain—

A wave of another ethereal Wall expanded from the interior of the house, touching upon Erick, and then the Thunder-based alarms and Beam turrets began again.

Erick [Return]ed to several seconds ago, back beyond the ethereal Wall spell.

These simple 10 second jaunts at the base cost of [Return] of 10,000 mana only cost Erick 500 mana each time. He could do this as much as he needed to do this. But…

Well…

Erick opened a [Gate] back to the front of the house, beyond all the defensive Alarm spellwork, and then he sent a telepathic question to Poi, who was still beside Archmage Wiloza, discussing the events happening right now.

‘I need to know about Seafoam Manor. How do you get in?’

Poi asked Wiloza the question, and after Wiloza furrowed her brow, and then answered, Poi responded, ‘She says Aroido just walks in, without anything special happening at all. The place is layered with defensive spellwork, but none of it activates on him. Blood Magic or Soul Magic keys, she suspects.’

As Erick watched Wiloza and Poi through Ophiel, as all that information came through, and it all looked truthful according to what he was seeing of Wiloza, he was still watching his own area, where he actually was.

More specifically, he watched the Manor explode.

[Return].

Once again standing beside Goldie at the gate, Erick said, “This place is tied up tighter than a high-class bank.”

Goldie smiled a little. “Yes it is.”

Erick had learned a few things.

Firstly, that the house was actively being monitored. This would explain why it activated when it did, and why no Regency people had come out here to stop Erick. That raised another question, though, of why hadn’t the Regency asked him to stop this, if they knew he was here?

Also why had the monitoring person inside allowed Erick to even get this close without exploding the place already? Erick wasn’t sure. But since it was being actively monitored, that meant that the monitoring force wanted to see how far Erick could get… Maybe.

Erick was almost 100% sure that if an Aroido walked down this road, that they would be allowed inside, but Erick was not going to do that to any Aroido. The ‘Face’ that Erick had spoken to had seemed rather honestly horrified by this place…

Erick almost decided that he didn’t need to know what was in Seafoam Manor, but he knew this place was at the center of a lot of the horribleness of the dungeons, and whatever else might be going on around here. So he did need to figure this out.

So Erick opened a [Gate] to the secondary Pit, where the Aroidos had moved the dungeon entrances while dungeon 6 was compromised, and then he stepped through. Six black holes in the world held in the air, above a solid stone foundation, here on the other side of the mountain of the Pit.

Erick had kicked out the Regency overseers with Ophiel not ten minutes ago, and now Ophiel stood where those Regency overseers had been. A few Aroido had come out of the dungeons to all talk with each other, too, there in that not-private-at-all space. The Aroidos looked rather like triplets that each decided to style themselves differently, in order to be picked out from their clothes. One wore roughspun clothes, the other wore a thick leather belt, and the last one wore noble hand-me-downs. The three of them easily conversed with each other under the watchful eyes of Ophiel, but they all turned Erick’s way when he showed up.

Erick changed his mind about asking them to visit Seafoam Manor with him; he would ask, and see how they responded. “Any of you want to visit a foamy manor by the ocean with me?”

All three Aroidos went pale and started to protest—

“That’s fine,” Erick said, cutting them off. “I just need some blood, then.”

The three of them looked to each other.

Belt-wearing Aroido stepped up, asking, “How do you want to do this?”

Erick plucked the air, painlessly drawing out a baby-fist-sized ball of blood from Aroido’s exposed skin. It was just some Blood Magic he had made a while ago to collect samples for various reasons, and it worked well for stuff like this, too. As he floated that blood upon his hand, Erick watched as Belt-Aroido’s eyes went wide, and then fluttered. This was not enough blood to make anyone lightheaded, but Erick hit him with some [Greater Treat Wounds] anyway. It wasn’t a perfect blood-restoration magic, but he didn’t actually need a blood restoration spell.

As Belt-Aroido stood stronger and gathered his wits, Erick gave his thanks as he stepped back through a [Gate], his prize hovering to his left side.

He closed the [Gate] behind him and used a bunch of rapidly-cast illusion magic to do a few quick things. First, he used the blood to adopt Aroido’s Familiar Form, with his own [Perfected Polymorph]. Second, he made sure no one saw that, and what they saw, instead, was Erick stepping through another [Gate], going off to elsewhere, and leaving Aroido behind with instructions to walk forward, while he watched from afar so he didn’t disturb what might happen. A silent instruction from Erick had Goldie vanishing herself from sight.

Erick was rather sure that whoever was inside that Manor, watching, probably had [True Sight], but Erick’s illusions were good enough to fool that sort of spell about half the time, and he wasn’t faking his ‘new’ body at all; that was all real.

And so, Erick, as Aroido in body, but not in soul, walked forward, into the Alarm Wards of Seafoam Manor. Erick wasn’t willing to make an illusion of his soul, for that was practically impossible, anyway, and he probably didn’t need to.

The alarms did not trigger.

Erick smiled inwardly, but outwardly, he pretended to be Aroido; a worried mess, walking forward, stepping through [Force Trap]s and otherwise that did not trigger, even though they looked like they should. Erick knew at that moment that a very skilled Blood Mage had to be involved here, in some capacity.

Probably not a Blood Mage that Erick needed to worry about, though. Years ago, the knowledge of DNA had slipped to a few higher-ups in the world. The public knowledge of DNA hadn’t gotten out into the greater world at all, but some people were making big strides in figuring out how he could [Cascade Imaging] for [Cleanse]d blood. Both Kirginatharp and Quilatalap knew what DNA was, thanks to Erick. But then again, so did Kiri and some other high-ranking members of the Office of Enforcement, and…

Eh.

The knowledge of DNA was out there, but it wasn’t a problem yet.

The Blood Magic / DNA problem wasn’t even visible upon the Benevolent Sky, so Erick wasn’t too worried about DNA Magic. This wasn’t the first time he had encountered a set of spells coded to DNA permissions, either; that sort of magic was old hat, actually. Blood Magic was being used to do this exact sort of thing a thousand years ago.

And yet, the fact that he had gotten to the ethereal Wall again, without trouble at all, meant a few different things.

One, was that this place had blown up when Erick had involved Wiloza, but not when he had involved the Aroidos. Someone was looking at Wiloza, but not at the Aroidos. Or perhaps the magic here was actively checking up on Wiloza, and the Aroidos didn’t matter. Or maybe Wiloza was involved in this place more than Erick had suspected, and she had purposefully blown the location. But then again, no one had done anything between the time that Erick had first learned about this place, back there in the Pit when he was talking to Vanya and Aroido at the same time, and other people were undoubtedly [Long Range Scry]ing him then…

Eh.

Too many variables to suss out anything truly worthwhile right now, and it had only been maybe 15 minutes since he left the meeting with Vanya at the entrance to Dungeon 6. When you moved fast enough, a lot of the time other people just couldn’t keep up.

Anyway. Erick was at the ethereal Wall, and this time he pulled his Domain to just around his core and his head, leaving all the rest of his body completely unprotected.

He stuck his hand into the ethereal Wall—

“Tut tut, fake-Aroido,” came an indistinct voice from the air, “No Domains here, or else you’ll never know the truth about yourself.”

… Okay.

Lotta implications there.

Someone was watching.

That someone was able to pluck at many different separate threads of information out in the rest of the world, but did not know that the Aroido in front of him was Erick, or could not intuit that much. Erick had done that illusionary display back there to nominally fake out whoever might be watching, but he hadn’t given it his absolute best shot. Someone currently watching Wiloza at the Pit (and thus ready to explode this place) should have seen what Erick did with the Aroidos at the smaller Pit.

Though there were lots of smaller implications, too, but Erick considered the main series of ones, now raised by the words that had come from the air.

Every Aroido knew of this place, but didn’t want to come here, for to come here was to know the truth about themselves. Which usually ended up with them never being seen again.

Also, the system was loose enough to check on every ‘fake-Aroido’ coming through, and then accept them.

A purely soul-based checking system could do that, but Aroido had spoken of soul-drift, which was a common fault in repros when they got copied from each other, instead of from the original. Soul-drifting would have invalidated any sort of ‘Aroido-specific’ soul check in this case where there were many copies of copies.

Now, if there were only Aroido and the first generation of repros, then a soul check would have worked.

Blood Magic was easier to work with when it came to repros, though, for repros acted like a family line, and Blood Magic did family lineage checking very well. So it was possible this was all Blood Magic, and there was no controlling mind behind this spellwork at all, or at least a Blood Mage had left enchantments here, and those enchantments were supposed to take hold of Aroido when he crossed a threshold.

Erick hadn’t allowed that control magic to happen to him, but then again, whoever had placed this stuff was obviously familiar with Aroido’s spellwork, and he knew Aroido had a Domain, and so this Blood Magic enchantment was able to talk about what Aroido should not be doing in order to get his answers—

Ahh… Paranoia was causing Erick to think everything through, perhaps too much. This prognostication of a ‘storm not of Sininindi’s make’ and this [Onward]-fiasco were certainly freaking him out.

… So should he let the Blood Magic take hold?

Not a second had passed since the voice had spoken.

Erick answered, “I’m not like the rest of my brothers. I’m not insane yet and you’re not touching me.”

“A wily one, then! Well come on in anyway. Once you see the truth of yourself you’ll want me to take control of you anyway. All of you disappointments always do.”

Another eye-opening statement.

Erick didn’t go down the rabbit hole with that one, though. For now, he would play this event out until he reached the end.

The ethereal Wall opened up, pulling back like a curtain, and Erick stepped through.

The manor was exactly as it had been, but now there were no spells standing between him and the house. Erick had half expected to shift into a [Fairy House], or something, after walking past that Wall spell; to see everything from another perspective. But no. Seafoam Manor remained an enigma, all boarded up and growing weeds here and there.

“What’s supposed to happen now?” Erick asked, sneering in the way that Aroido had sneered at Soltic and Vanya, down there in the dungeon.

“Oh my,” said the voice. “You must be far gone if you don’t remember anything at all. Or maybe the one before you plucked those memories out, unknowingly.”

The wooden covering across the door began to shift, as under the spell [Woodshape], pulling aside, revealing a much nicer set of wooden double doors beyond. They were gilt with gold and silver, and those doors opened inward, revealing a hallway filled with opulence. Blue carpets, blue drapes, paintings on every wall. Seascapes with ships plying waves and storms, and coral vistas under sunny waves.

But as Erick walked forward, it was the portraiture that got his attention the most.

Pretending to be in a slight daze, Erick walked into the house, onto the blue carpet, to stare at the largest of the paintings, set above a grand staircase. It was a family portrait, with everyone wearing expensive clothes. Aroido was left-of-center while a woman sat in a chair beside him, two of their hands clasped together, while five kids from age 1 to 15 sat and stood around their parents. Three boys, two girls, with the youngest girl sitting on the woman’s lap, in her arms.

“If you accept my power, then you will know who they are,” said the voice.

“Tell me, instead,” Erick replied, making sure his voice was a bit shaky.

With too much hateful mirth, the voice said, “They’re you!”

“All of them?”

“Not the children, of course; those were just your first victims.” The voice took on a subtle, terrible wrath. “From eldest to youngest: Seyto, Matt, Aryi, Maya, and the baby, Silkie. You took [Force Beam]s to all except for baby Silkie. For the littlest one you just grabbed her and threw her down the stairs, thinking she was a demon. The only demon in the house was you.”

Erick breathed out, “I’m not responsible for who came before me.”

“… Huh.” A sudden [Scry] eye appeared before ‘Aroido’, glaring at him. “You’re not my creation at all, are—”

[Return].

“No,” Erick gasped, instead of saying what he really thought. He needed to drag out this interrogation a bit more, to get some actionable intelligence. “But I don’t remember…”

“A part of you remembers! A part of you knows your broken Truth.” The voice demanded, “Tell me your guilt, ‘Aroido’. Tell me, and I will wash it all away.”

Erick said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You don’t even know her name, do you? You poor, broken thing. You come here out of some unknown duty, engraved within your soul as a final act to keep you from harming others, and you don’t know anything at all!” The voice taunted Erick the entire time it spoke. “Born of the union of Aroido and Frydrika and myself, you are our greatest achievement, and greatest failure. Your entire line was conceived in a confluence of Blood Magic and the idea of utter subservience to the Regency. Fake. Unreal. Liar and death-to-all. You were to be the greatest dungeon master the world had ever seen, and yet all you can do is live for a while and break horribly after five years, growing more and more erratic the whole time, until finally, you come here. TO ME.” With a condescending whisper, the voice said, “Ready to break yet again, and yet still following those final instructions anyway, trying not to break where anyone else can see.” With imperiousness, “Let me in and I will make it painless. It’s more than you deserve for what you did to our creators.”

“I— I could go to the Wizard, and he can [Reincarnation] me!”

Quiet laughter began to seep into the grand entrance, spilling out of every hallway and out of every air vent, before erupting from the very air in front of ‘Aroido’.

“HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU!”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

The level of sound would have qualified as an attack if Erick had been less secured in his own protective magics. He still pretended to hold his ears in pain, though. He pretended to struggle to turn away from the painting, to look toward the open doors behind him—

The laughter cut. The doors slammed shut.

The voice declared, “Die now, parent-killer, child-slayer, abomination-of-the-dark.”

The attack came from all sides. Blood spikes, mainly.

But Erick simply cast a [Time Stop], for he had done enough direct investigation with the construct, or whatever it was that inhabited the place. A [Familiar]-esque magic, perhaps? Maybe even an actual intelligence, locked away downstairs, or something.

Erick would have cast some of the various spells he had in order to find out better answers, since he was here, at the center of it all, but there was only one thing Erick couldn’t really do inside a [Time Stop], and that was to use any Script-granted magic at all. That magic was locked behind the Script Second and he was currently experiencing exactly zero of those.

He didn’t really need those Script-granted spells, though, and he didn’t really need to manually cast them, either.

His version of [Timestop] was really quite good, for it was fitted with such niceties as a [Cleanse] to keep his blood oxygenated and an [Alter Friction] to not burn himself (or the world) up as he walked through the air in the room. It also wasn’t a perfect [Time Stop], for he could still see. If time was perfectly stopped then no light could have reached his eyes at all. Erick’s version of [Time Stop] was more, as the text described, a ‘moment’.

And all he really needed was an undisturbed moment to suss out whatever was going on in this manor.

Quilatalap’s version of the spell cost a lot more and did almost exactly the same things, but Quilatalap’s version eventually turned the world dark all around him and anyone else he dragged into his [Time Stop] with him. He attributed Erick’s flavor of [Time Stop] to him being a Paradox Wizard.

Erick almost let his mind wander back to those moments when he was talking Time Magic with Quilatalap, and the few times he had done so with Phagar. But, no. He would do all that later; they’d have lots to talk about. Maybe not so much with Quilatalap, for he would be busy, but Phagar was literally always right there in the mana, waiting for his time to guide all people to their final destinations. Or to talk magic, in Erick’s case.

Later.

Erick walked into the house, following the frozen magic here and there, the layered Privacy spellworks inside the few mana-sense-opaque walls (mostly the outer walls), until he got to the kitchen. To his mana senses, the room looked normal; no large holes in the ground anywhere. But the large kitchen table was set oddly in the middle of the room, and that small bit of weirdness caused Erick to look closer at the table, and then, eventually, at the floor underneath the table.

The stonework under the table was composed of bricks and some Privacy spellwork layered through those bricks, just like it was all through the rest of this place. But there were scratches in the stone where the large table had been moved back and forth, and a conspicuous hole, about 1 centimeter across, lay in the very center of the stone. That hole was filled with some sort of Force Magic.

Erick shoved his sunform down the hole, breaking the Force spell, and then into several holes around the main hole. And then he lifted. Three bricks, all joined to each other, lifted out of the hole, revealing a depth beyond that was layered with even more Privacy spellwork.

For that, though, Erick just poked his sunform through, extending his soul past the well-made Privacy.

There was a cavern about the size of a bedroom down there. Mostly plain, open stone.

And it was occupied.

Force Magic hung all around the entire room. Most of the spells were [Scry] spells, looking out into the rest of the world; mostly to different parts of the property itself. A few [Scry]s looked over at Archmage Wiloza and also at Regency Castle, along with a few other high-profile places. Everbless. The Blue Temple. The harbor. And then there were the Alarm spells of the property, each lined up to a switchboard made of lights. Those spells filled up a quarter of the space. And then there were the killing spells, set to triggers here and there, alongside [Scry] spells on those triggering locations.