Chapter 739: Low Altitude Flight (7)

The Clown seemed to notice Lennok’s reaction, grinning as he rummaged through his pockets.

“It’s a very fresh and valuable item, too – someone who died right as they were attempting a Mind Imprint.”

“……”

“I happened to win it in a gamble as stakes, but I didn’t have a good way to store it, so I entrusted it to Agneta.”

The Clown pulled out two thick wires from his pocket, stuffing one into the corpse’s mouth and connecting the other to its chest.

Just as the Clown finished his preparations, like connecting wires to the positive and negative terminals of a battery, he tossed the ends of both wires onto the surface of the lake.

Crackle! Pop! Zzzzzzzzzt!!!

The entire lake filling the fortress courtyard was covered in dazzling electric current, flashing brightly.

“Aghhhhhhh!”

“Ugh-g-g-g-g-g-gh-!!”

Corpses, unable to react, were electrocuted, their eyes rolling back as they sank everywhere.

The Clown burst into mad laughter at the sight.

“Heh heh, hahahaha! Look at them, don’t they look like bugs?”

“……”

“Phew heh heh, hahahahaha— ugh-geh-geh-geh-geh-geck.”

After laughing for a while, he suddenly began to shiver violently, letting out strange shrieks.

Lennok watched him from behind, a bewildered expression on his face.

One of the wires the Clown had dropped had, at some point, wrapped around his own leg.

“Has he gone mad…?”

“…Is he seriously electrocuting himself right now?”

Ignoring Agneta’s bewildered message, Lennok struck the Clown’s back with shock magic.

Thwack!!

“Huh?”

The Clown’s expression turned blank as he was kicked by Lennok and tumbled into the lake.

Falling into the lake with a splash, the Clown let out an indescribable scream, only his legs sticking out.

“A-d-d-d-d-g-g-g-g-r-r-r-a-ck.”

“……”

As Agneta was left speechless by this absurd reaction and handling, Lennok crossed his arms and looked down at the scene.

After a short while, the Clown finally managed to crawl back onto the fortress wall, muttering.

“I-I thought I was going to die…”

“I saved you. You should be grateful, not complaining.”

The electric current that shocked the Clown wasn’t mere electricity, but the Thorben Wizard’s will-thought.

Rather than trying to manually dispel the shock right there, it was better to throw him into the lake and forcibly disperse the lingering will-thought.

The Clown seemed to understand this, as he only grumbled and didn’t offer any real rebuttal.

Lennok turned away from the Clown and walked on immediately.

“Find the Archduke on your own. I’m going ahead.”

Based on information obtained by interrogating the Sixth Prince, Lennok knew roughly where the ruins were hidden within the fortress.

To be precise, the ruins weren’t hidden inside the fortress itself, but in a secret passage deep within the mountain range connected to the Giant’s Fortress.

Using mana sensing, he reconstructed the mountain’s interior into a 3D blueprint, filling in the spaces beyond what his senses could penetrate.

Closing his eyes, Lennok clasped his hands together and muttered.

“Five… no, six times, perhaps.”

“Six times?”

Pressing one hand against the hard outer wall of the fortress, he slowly adjusted his wrist to set the direction.

Lennok, concentrating carefully with his eyes closed, drew up his mana, and the moment his Mystic Eye activated behind his mask.

[Blink]

Whoosh!!

Lennok’s body inverted itself on the spot, then instantly dropped into a dark room where not a speck of light entered.

It was an illusion, as if he had been sucked beneath the floor and appeared in a completely new space.

Thud!!

Lennok’s body, momentarily losing its balance, stumbled, then collapsed onto the ground.

“Ugh…”

As he held his spinning head, barely suppressing the urge to vomit, Agneta’s surprised voice rang in his ears.

“Specialized System spatial transfer spellcraft… and to forcibly extend the distance by stacking the same spellcraft, I’ve never seen anything like it. Specialized System spellcasters are truly strange individuals.”

“Noisy.”

But inwardly, Lennok was slightly surprised that Agneta had immediately recognized what he had done.

What Lennok had done wasn’t simply using Blink multiple times to move.

Blink is a powerful transfer spellcraft that changes the user’s location without any interference to their body.

However, if matter already exists at the transfer point, there’s a low chance the user’s body will collide with the spatial cross-section.

The path to the ruins was blocked by multiple layers, making it highly probable for an accident to occur with simple repeated use of Blink.

Therefore, Lennok had pre-cast Blink multiple times, then stitched the incanted spellcrafts together to forcibly extend the distance.

While significantly less efficient in both distance and mana than honestly using Blink multiple times, it was the only way to extend the range of a single Blink.

Agneta had immediately understood the principle the moment Lennok arrived at the ruins using that method.

“Even watching directly, I have no idea how that’s possible. What does it even feel like to directly manipulate space?”

“A messenger traveling through imaginary dimensions asks strange questions. You should be superior when it comes to crossing space, shouldn’t you?”

The reason Agneta could exist as Pandemonium’s messenger was precisely because she could cross imaginary dimensions to deliver messages across the continent.

“Crossing space via the imaginary dimension and directly manipulating space are completely different categories.”

Agneta replied.

“What I do, if you had to categorize it, is use a medium to utilize the ‘result’ of space moving. It’s different from directly transferring space like you do.”

“……”

“Of course, at a shallow level, my method might be more efficient. But delving deeper, your spellcraft is much closer to the essence, much more real.”

“You know nothing about the essence of spellcraft. Where is there real and fake in the way one handles the laws of the world?”

Lennok scoffed.

“The moment you have such a standard, you’re not a spellcaster. You seem closer to an innate ability user relying on natural talent.”

“You’re right. Maybe so. I’m not really interested in such definitions.”

But Agneta surprisingly acquiesced to Lennok’s mockery.

Her reaction showed no hesitation or interest in how she was defined.

“But isn’t it precisely because I’m not a spellcaster that I can know?”

“What?”

“Which method is closer to the essence when dealing with something. Perhaps it’s because I’m looking from outside the realm of spellcraft that I feel that way.”

“……”

“Hmm, still don’t quite get it. Is the fundamental limit in the way I construct my thoughts elsewhere…?”

Given that Agneta manipulates spellcraft purely through innate sensation, it was understandable that she didn’t consider herself a spellcaster.

However, how she, born differently from ordinary humans, defined herself and contemplated such things was an area Lennok didn’t need to concern himself with.

There wasn’t much time, nor any interest, to discuss the worldview of a spider here.

“Cough, cough…!!”

Though he had used a somewhat aggressive method, he had, at any rate, skipped several complex procedures and reached the ruins in one go.

Lennok, who had collapsed on the ground, looked around and gasped slightly at the countless busts embedded in the cave wall.

“This is…”

The Giant’s Fortress. One of the few remaining ruins of the Colossus Brigade on this continent.

True to its name, dozens of corpses of giants, long dead and rotten, were displayed like taxidermied specimens on the ruins’ walls.

Rotted, matted flesh. Emaciated bodies reduced to bone. Yet, their enormous size was still many times that of a human.

The fallen members of the Colossus Brigade, who couldn’t even let go of their weapons in death, looked down upon any human entering the ruins in an oppressive tableau.

“……”

Only then did Lennok understand where the giant’s forearm, hidden in the fortress’s basement, had been brought from.

And why the Knights of Kabahim had tried to hide and protect something other than the fortress’s audience chamber.

On the floor of the ruins, beneath the gaze of the giant corpses, ancient polearms and artifacts were piled up like mountains.

Most were rusty, old weapons and armor, rather than valuable items.

They were all items with some kind of story. But Lennok immediately stepped into the mountain of polearms piled in the ruins.

“Find the key and get out immediately.”

The ruins themselves were quite vast, but fortunately, not so vast that Lennok’s mana sensing couldn’t fully explore them.

However, to find a small item like a key among the indiscriminately piled weapons, he would have to narrow the range and perform a sensitive scan.

The moment Lennok, prepared to spend some time, took a step.

“Victor. I found the key.”

Agneta held something out to Lennok from above his head.

It wasn’t so much a key as a long, screwdriver-like piece of metal. Its tip was densely engraved with unknown symbols.

“I saw something similar when I was fetching资料 for Sabrina and I to find it back then.”

“Get the Coffer out. We’ll compare them immediately.”

Instead of replying, Lennok gestured to Agneta to immediately retrieve Gyro’s Coffer.

He had brought Agneta here specifically to compare the key with the Coffer.

But the moment the key was brought close to the Coffer, a strange resonance hummed, and an invisible force began to push the key away.

Clang!!

“…Huh?”

“……”

Ignoring Agneta’s bewildered voice, Lennok intently observed the key’s form.

“The key doesn’t fit? That’s troublesome.”

“No, the key itself matches the Coffer. There was a reaction from the Coffer upon contact.”

“Then what?”

“There’s an impurity mixed with the key. Something in the ruins is obstructing access.”

The moment the key was inserted into the Coffer’s opening, the Coffer recognized the key’s form but an invisible force blocked access.

Regardless of the key’s authenticity, a reaction occurred because a specific spell or curse was placed on the key itself.

The Coffer recognized this and refused entry to the key, which was imbued with an unknown power.

“I suspect it’s related to why the Colossus Brigade’s ruins are preserved in this manner…”

He wanted to smash the Coffer and take the Idol of the Guide’s Bones, but many such coffers destroy their contents upon damage.

Moreover, the 48-dimensional function composing the Coffer was an area Lennok himself couldn’t easily tamper with.

At this point, it was as if the designer himself had made it impossible to access without the key.

“Escape the fortress and find a cursebreaker. Once the power on the key is removed, it should function normally.”

“That’s a relief. I thought the key we finally found was worthless.”

Lennok ignored Agneta’s words and turned towards a distant passage the moment he took a step.

“It is not a worthless item.”

Someone answered the spider’s words with a listless voice.

“What is piled in these ruins is a treasure more precious than anything in this fortress.”

“…!!”

A low male voice, which had no presence moments ago, echoed from a place where no presence had existed.

Lennok instantly drew up his mana and turned his gaze towards it.

At the peak of the mountain of old weaponry, someone lay sprawled.

A man with disheveled hair lay on the grave of weapons, his back to Lennok.

Despite wearing a loose shirt and trousers, his considerable bulk was immediately apparent.

“These are the mementos of comrades who fought and fell together on the battlefield. It’s only natural to allocate this much space to store them.”

The man slowly tilted his head and spoke.

“Though a thief like you wouldn’t understand.”

“Who are you?”

“Are you asking because you don’t know?”

As he threw his head back all the way, his unkempt hair flung back, revealing his face.

The man, lying sprawled and looking at Lennok upside down, had a face full of unreadable languor.

Raising the sturdy restraints fastened to his wrists and ankles, he let out a murky chuckle.

“I am the master of the fortress you snuck into like a rat.”