1100: Hidden One
「A-Ahh…」
「My mansion…」
Baron Noare and his maid collapsed to the ground aghast.
Their vision was blocked by the wall, so they couldn’t see the insides in detail. However, they could easily imagine what would happen if it was blasted with thunder magic, then struck by a giant bolt of lightning.
The top was open, so all those flashes were very visible.
Fran, however, looked unhappy. The mysterious presence still refused to come out. We sensed someone hiding, yet we had no means of driving them out.
『You still want to keep going?』
「I’ll find them!」
Fran got stubborn and invoked even more magic. Since thunder magic had no effect, she tried flame magic this time.
Countless spears of fire poured down on the house again and again. The half-collapsed house turned into a full wreckage, the remnants of which were burning up.
That’s not the only spell Fran tried. She also threw in the new spell we obtained from learning purification magic: Area Purify.
Fran was thinking that the hidden enemy might be undead.
And her idea ended up working out perfectly.
「GYAAAAAAHHHH!」
「Something popped out!」
『Yeah, the presence suddenly cleaned up. They really were undead!』
A powerful undead had cloaked himself within the walled enclosure. Getting hit with purification magic must have rendered him unable to hide.
Though it was in tatters, the robe he wore appeared to be a magic tool. An appraisal revealed that it had an enchantment granting a powerful stealth effect. However, this effect was mostly gone after getting half burned by Fran’s flame magic.
So her flame magic worked pretty well too.
『Seems weaker than I expected combat-wise. His name is Hideman.』
Because he’s good at hide-and-seek or something? I understand now why we couldn’t find him. In addition to the Convert, Presence Concealment, Inconspicuous, and Invisibility skills, he also had Shadow Diving and Shadow s.h.i.+ft. Also an unique skill called Conceal Existence.
His incredible stealth must be from combining his own skills with the robe to support him.
He probably dodged Fran’s magic by diving into the shadows, but it seems that didn’t allow him to escape Area Purify. Then he took a direct hit from her flames when he was forced out of the shadows.
「Grr… You b.i.t.c.h! You’ve really gone and done it now!」
「Are you the Raydoss spy?」
「…Hmph.」
Hideman turned his head away, refusing to answer Fran’s question. Or rather, this was an act to buy time as he searched for a way out.
「Urus.h.i.+.」
「Woof!」
He seems to have attempted to escape via Shadow s.h.i.+ft, but Urus.h.i.+ immediately prevented this. Urus.h.i.+ had popped out of the same shadow Hideman was attempting to enter.
It’s impossible to use any shadows controlled by others. One first needs to overpower the other caster’s mana and overcome their interference. As a result, Hideman’s attempt at teleportation failed. Even this powerful undead was no match for Urus.h.i.+.
Urus.h.i.+’s headb.u.t.t slammed into Hideman from right underneath, knocking him high into the sky.
Fran immediately rushed over, cut off all his limbs, and grabbed him by the neck. Undead are normally immune to pain and suffocation, but she had a different idea in mind.
「Purify.」
「GYAAH!」
「Purify.」
「GYAAAAAAH!」
Hideman screamed each time he was. .h.i.t by his weakness, purification. It seems getting purified actually hurts undead despite them not having a sense of pain.
We may have unintentionally found a suitable subst.i.tute for torture. Hideman looked completely exhausted after the debilitation from getting purified, as well as being inflicted with never before seen levels of pain.
Though he had the appearance of a dried-up mummy, his face seemed to move slightly. This allowed us to read his emotions.
Well, he still refused to talk, but I managed to extract a bit of info using Principle of Falsehoods.
It seems he’s a high-level member of Raydoss’s Black Skeleton Corps, and he came all the way here looking for Derrick. However, he probably had a rough time finding a way into the castle, so he hid in Baron Noare’s mansion while checking things out.
We cut it pretty close, huh? If Derrick’s transport had been just a little later, Hideman might have reclaimed him.
How did he manage to catch up with us after we rode Urus.h.i.+ to the capital though? My guess was some sort of long-range teleportation tool, but apparently not.
It seems he simply cloaked his presence and ran all the way here. This is a feat only possible for undead, since they aren’t limited by fatigue and don’t have much of a presence to begin with.
But that’s as far as we were able to get with the interrogation. Hideman realized that he was leaking information, and groaned in frustration.
「To think anyone would be able to get the better of me, Hideman, sixth seat of the Black Skeleton Corps… How deeply regrettable…」
「!」
『Fran, take him down!』
「Haaah!」
A tremendous amount of mana flared up inside Hideman’s head, on the level of supreme-tier spells. No clue what he was trying to do exactly, but it’s clearly something we shouldn’t wait for.
And so, Fran diced Hideman’s head in a cross pattern, as I invoked flame magic to turn the pieces to ash.
『Seems like we managed to stop it…』
「Nn…」
He must have had a magical bomb embedded in his head. A self-destruct feature to avoid blabbing, as well as taking out any nearby enemies.
In the end, we failed to capture Hideman… Fran’s eyebrows furrowed in frustration as she watched Hideman’s corpse cras.h.i.+ng down to the ruins of the mansion.
However, it’s not like we came out of this empty-handed.
『It seems the South Conquest Duke has some sort of plan about to be executed. We should report this.』
「Nn.」
Well, Esmeralda probably heard everything through her sand either way.