Chapter 1338: Rafel’s Naivety (Part 2)
Dumont was displeased by Rafel’s words. However, Rafel looked too naive to hold any hostile intentions even though her words made Dumont feel rather peculiar. Saleen to look after angels? A mage taking care of weapons of war of the G.o.ds? However, when he checked out the metal angels behind Rafel, they were indeed unnervingly powerful. He had thought those to be Saleen’s puppets, but, by the look of things at the moment, those winged creatures were indeed angels after all.
“All right, have it your way.” Saleen looked exasperated as he let Rafel stand guard outside with the 200 metal angels. Rafel flashed a victorious smile and shook her fist in Dumont’s direction.
Nailisi glared at Rafel in a hostile manner. That should have been my job. But then again, there was no way Nailisi would have parted with Saleen, who was about to enter the magic cube. Saleen’s exasperated look was just a facade as well. If the mages of Holy Rock City were indeed up to no good, they would need to beware of Rafel, a level-13 archangel.
“Let’s go, Nailisi,” Saleen called her and took her inside the magic cube along with Dumont. The place looked like many other common buildings, and Saleen was unable to sense any elemental fluctuations inside the magic cube, only regularly designed halls, corridors, and rooms. The place looked like the city buildings of the most downtrodden—dull, featureless, and devoid of decorations of any kind. However, Saleen was able nonetheless to peer into the secrets of the cube with his Elemental Eye, which secrets included special rooms. They were actually closer than they seemed at first. Optical illusions were hard to detect using magic. They were hard to see when searching using mental powers, unless one were to close one’s eyes and shut oneself off from using sight altogether. Humans would have still been able to see things after closing their eyes, and that was something being developed by mages.
“The place looks weird, master.” Nailisi remained holding onto one weapon in her hand, while the Sword of Rules hung at her hips.
“How so?”
“Rules, different kinds of rules…”
Saleen only then came to discover that every single room he pa.s.sed as he walked the corridor represented a region. The rules within the regions differed from one to another. The differences were minute, and Saleen had not been able to catch on due to his incomplete understanding of the peculiarities of rules. Nailisi, on the other hand, was able to catch on due to the effects of the Sword of Rules. The Sword of Rules elaborated the features of every region to Nailisi with every door they pa.s.sed.
Dumont suppressed his awe and surprise. While the cube held ma.s.sively vast numbers of secrets, no mage had been able to immediately discover any of them as soon as they entered before.
Saleen took the chance to take note of the minute differences between the rules. There were countless rules in the world, and they were of different levels. The lightning rules that Saleen had come to master belonged to very high-level ones. Rules of energy balance were on more or less the same level. However, there were some rules that only existed when specific conditions were met. Those rules were called secondary rules.
Most rules found within the magic cube were secondary ones that could only have existed in specific environments. However, the combination of these rules yielded interesting changes, making the cube as if it was another world on its own. If one was able to master the rules within, one would have become the highest being within the cube. Such a being would have been able to bring their highest combat capacity to bear, by making themselves the master of the rules. That was the most formidable part of the magic cube. The mages found in every room possessed not only elemental powers, but rule powers as well. Those rules were easy to master, yet, when they left the rooms, they were no longer able to make those rules their own. Things at the cube worked like the magic net, yet it was more powerful than the magic net.
Saleen got very interested in the place. If it had been possible, he would have wanted to create a magic cube in the Floating City as well. It was very difficult to enhance the magic net’s powers. Saleen, at present, only enabled his enchanters to cast level-ten, sometimes level-11 magic spells. However, regardless of how enhanced the magic net became, it would not have enabled them to cast level-13 magic, and that was because the mental powers of enchanters could not be raised any further. Enchanters’ mental powers could have continued to acc.u.mulate, grow, and advance like mages, if they had been subjected to specialized training. However, the speed of doing so would not have given them any edge at all.
That was to say that the magic net was at its most powerful at the moment. The magic cube, on the other hand, could have enabled the mages to master rules as soon as they walked inside. Even the lowest of rule powers would have enabled the mages’ combat prowess to be raised to their theoretical pinnacle. For instance, Saleen had higher mental powers than Rafel. The combat capacity that he was able to bring to bear within the magic cube would have been no different than that of Rafel.
Amazingly, if both the magic cube and the magic net were combined, a monstrosity that had never been seen in human history could have been born. I need to get my hands on this!
Nailisi immediately caught on to what Saleen was thinking. She asked Dumont in a curious manner, “Master, when was the magic cube built?”
“It was built alongside Holy Rock City, an elementally stable place. Building the magic cube took hundreds of years. There have even been some royal mages who have thought that if it had not been for the need to build the magic cube, the Qin Empire would have long conquered the entire Myers Mainland.”
Dumont never bothered holding anything back. Saleen would become royalty of the empire soon enough, and the magic cube, in a sense, would belong to Saleen as well.
It took over half an hour to walk past the rooms before they arrived at the center of the cube. Here, there was a tower-like building, or, precisely, a thick pillar. Rooms carved in the pillar had stone bridges linking the pa.s.sages to outer areas. Speaking in terms of the structure of the building, it seemed as if they would have been able to reach where they were from any of the entrances. However, Saleen knew that if it had not been for Dumont leading the way, he would have simply been jumping at random between areas of the cube, just like when mages were tested with magic beasts, where they ran in a labyrinth until they ended up dead.
Dumont pointed at the stone bridge ahead and said, “Your highness, Viscount Lex’s room is right after the bridge.”
“Why is there no one standing guard around her room?” Nailisi asked, feeling something was off.
“Saleen is here then. Come in. And, oh, no one could make it across the bridge without my permission.” Lex’s voice could be heard from inside the room.
“Your highness, I can only go this far,” Dumont addressed Saleen as he made his move to depart.
Saleen nodded and walked on the bridge. The bridge was ice-cold. If it had not been for the fact that Saleen was adept in Water Flame Alchemy and had unnervingly high resistance to low temperatures, he would have turned into a block of ice as soon as he walked on the bridge. Nailisi looked worried and was about to attack when Saleen stopped her. “Lex was afraid of someone disguised as you and me, so she was testing us out. Just get past the bridge, and we’ll see a familiar reaction from her.” It was only then that Nailisi lowered her spear and followed Saleen, walking across the bridge.
The bridge looked to be tens of yards long. The sides cast up a heavy mist as soon as Saleen walked on it, enabling him to only see the path ahead. There was a layer of element.i.te laid out on the bridge. While they were only of level 12, they were in substantial numbers. The only magic power imbued within the element.i.te was one that prevented any acceleration magic from being used. Because of this, Saleen had to resort to good, old-fas.h.i.+oned walking with his own legs. If he was in a hurry, he would have needed to run. The walk was more than ten miles long. Saleen’s steps were evenly paced. He did not need to calculate to find out how long he had walked. Saleen was able to traverse the bridge fairly quickly despite not being able to use any acceleration magic, and that was because Nailisi was getting impatient and summoned nightmares, that she had hidden in her 12 Notes of First Purgatory. She and Saleen both rode one respectively and blitzed on the bridge.
After they crossed the bridge, the area before them looked like a veranda in a n.o.ble’s garden. The platform was wide and there were magical plants planted everywhere. Saleen looked through a window and found Lex sitting beside a bed, watching over a young man. The young man looked pale, but his eyes were bloodshot. His face resembled that of Lex. He lacked strength, yet he smiled at Lex nonetheless and looked happy.
“Lex, Saleen’s here, I can finally die,” Ojarvis said softly.
“Don’t say that. Don’t you realize you’re my only family left here?” Lex said to her brother in a chastising tone.
“There are still uncle and our cousins.” Ojarvis panted as he finished the sentence. A servant from the palace quickly pa.s.sed a cup and had Ojarvis drink some magic liquid from it. The young emperor of the Qin Empire was no longer able to eat anything. His life was only sustained using magic liquid produced using level-seven magic.
“Well, uncle doesn’t see me as family.” Lex did not want her brother to be sad and thus didn’t tell him the truth. The conflict between her and her uncle involved more than the problems of the succession to the throne. Lex wanted mages to be de facto leaders, yet Safilos believed only in the sword in his hand.
The army should be the core of a nation. Such was Safilos’s thoughts. Despite agreeing to letting Lex take the throne and become empress, it did not mean that he would not turn against her rule at a later date. If Lex insisted on doing something, he had the right to chastise Lex all the same.
Arbola was not the only force in Golden Plains. The Grukos had been in seats of power for thousands of years, and there were countless powerful ones emerging in every generation. Those people would have naturally formed their own cliques, holding the reins of the empire’s lifeblood. The people of Golden Plains would have not willingly served just anyone.
Saleen brought Nailisi and circled around the window, entering the room through a door at the side. They flipped open the curtain and found the room to be incredibly hot, yet there was still a fire magic array laid out on the floor, generating high amounts of heat continuously.
Ojarvis smiled at Saleen and said, “I’m very sorry, but my body can no longer withstand any cold. If it hadn’t been for the magic array, my blood would have automatically frozen right here, right now.”
“You’ve been poisoned!” Saleen was surprised. While Ojarvis was physically frail, he was still nonetheless an emperor of an empire. The number of mages protecting him would have outnumbered Saleen’s followers. It would have been extremely difficult to poison Ojarvis, and the price for getting caught doing it would have been dire.
“Yeah, I’m poisoned. And it was Lex who did it,” Ojarvis blinked as he said to Saleen.
Saleen shook his head, and Lex smiled at him, explaining in a rather tired manner, “Someone used Ultimate Shapes.h.i.+fting and disguised themselves as me, infiltrating the royal palace and meeting Ojarvis.” Saleen quickly did calculations in his mind as soon as he heard the news.