Round 28: Secrets

It’s true that O’Sullivan once received magical training from Loom, and his mastery of magic surpasses that of ordinary mage-warriors. The reason he never showed off his magical skills was, aside from his family’s tradition of valuing martial strength over magic, that such skills could come in handy at critical moments—like tonight. Moreover, compared to true mages, O’Sullivan’s spells were far from impressive; whether it was lightning or freezing spells, he could only manage a semblance of them. As for the spell that altered the landscape to create stone thorns, he couldn’t even produce that at all. O’Sullivan was simply deceiving Quentin.

He was well aware of each archmage’s personality traits. If Yatu’s failure stemmed from his arrogance and sudden ambushes, then Quentin’s death could only be attributed to his overemphasis on his enemies. This usually tough-minded young mage was actually cruel and suspicious, as his time as an archmage was too short, and the obvious gap in strength compared to other archmages made him overly sensitive, leading to a lack of confidence and excessive hesitation in many unnecessary matters. In fact, if Quentin had thrown aside distractions and attacked decisively from the start instead of hesitating, it would have been O’Sullivan who died.

O’Sullivan struggled to stand up. Though the wounds to his chest and abdomen weren’t fatal, he had lost a lot of blood. Apart from the crackling sounds of the burning buildings, there was no movement around him. From here, even the city of Vatan, slightly above the horizon, was indistinct. The direction of the Sleeping Forest was pitch black, with nothing visible. It seemed as though, apart from the corpses scattered everywhere, there was only O’Sullivan left in the world.

O’Sullivan glanced at his father’s body, bent down to pick up two bottles of strong liquor, and went to the pile of corpses. He poured the liquor over his father’s body, then threw a torch onto it. A burst of flames immediately rose, gradually consuming the body of Count O’Sullivan—formerly Et O’Sullivan.

O’Sullivan turned his gaze to the pile of corpses of the red-robed mages. To die accompanying his father, you useless red-robed mages have died a worthy death.

It seemed his mission had failed. Having lost control of Vilker Town, the mage forces of the Sleeping Forest could enter Vatan City unimpeded. All he could do now was rush back to Vatan to fight against the Council. His only hope was to quickly take control of the Council. If a stalemate ensued, the outcome would be uncertain.

O’Sullivan gave one last look at the pile of corpses, which now resembled a large bonfire, then turned and walked toward the mecha flying craft he had come in.

Archmage Tanolanti stood in the center of the rectangular hall, his face ashen. The three senior mages who accompanied him were no ordinary people; reaching the rank of high-ranking archmages in the Council wasn’t entirely a joke. Yet now, these three capable assistants he had carefully trained were dead right before his eyes, causing Tanolanti immense shock.

Especially since the one who struck was none other than that Kiskein, who was always drowsy, spoke incoherently, and seemed to be just drifting through life waiting for death. Yet this was no illusion—the old man stood there as usual, swaying as if a breeze could blow him away. But it was indeed Kiskein who struck. Aside from Kiskein standing in front of the huge stone door at one end of the hall, there could be no other possible enemy. Moreover, Tanolanti had seen clearly Kiskein’s spellcasting process. Still, the fact that that old man could single-handedly kill three high-level mages he considered extremely skilled filled Tanolanti with dread.

“This place… um, access is forbidden, um, absolutely forbidden. Those not allowed in… um, are prohibited from entering…” He remained in his dazed state. What was the point of pretending at such a moment? “You, Mage Tanolanti, surely, um, understand that very well.”

“Get out of the way!” Hot breath hissed between Tanolanti’s teeth, his entire body radiating intense heat. He clearly understood that this half-dead old man actually possessed powers beyond his imagination. “I have no time for your nonsense. Get out!”

“You can come, um, and submit a report, um, that’s fine too.” Kiskein continued to mumble, seemingly unaware of Tanolanti’s anger. But at the end, his eyes suddenly widened, emitting lightning-like light: “But killing other mages is unforgivable!”

Seeing Kiskein angry, Tanolanti seemed to calm down instead.

“You people prioritize your own interests and utterly disregard Emperor Agus. I merely serve the royal family. You’d better cooperate. Even if you and Singh possess immense magical power, you can’t defy the entire Agus Empire!” Usually not good with words, Mage Tanolanti now spoke in a grandiose manner.

“What fools…” Kiskein shook his head, the sharpness in his eyes dimming, though he spoke much more clearly now: “Agus wasn’t built for you. Now you use its name to rebel against its true masters. And aren’t you also acting for your own gain?”

“That’s right! Those so-called seven great mages of the Supreme Council are nothing but puppets in your and Singh’s hands. To put it bluntly, they’re just puppets of those five seats in ‘Between the Stars’!” Suddenly, Tanolanti grew agitated. “I am the highest-ranking mage in Agus, yet I’m constantly restricted by you in my magical research—no this, no that. My talent is no less than anyone else’s. I must prove it!”

Kiskein continued to shake his head, either dismissing Tanolanti’s words or feeling pity.

“A mage who loses curiosity will fade away. But it seems that a mage with excessive curiosity will also die soon…” Kiskein raised his head. “Leave now. This is your last chance.”

Tanolanti moved. At least four different instant spells with varying levels of power converged at the tips of his fingers, ready to be cast. Even though Kiskain had effortlessly killed three mages just now, nothing he did escaped Tanolanti’s notice. He believed that if he gave it his all, this dying old man would surely not be a match for him.

But he seemed to have forgotten a basic truth: the older a mage, the more troublesome they tend to be.

Spiral stairs wound downward along the inner walls of the cylindrical, dark cavern, seemingly without end. Agus’s actual ruler, the chairman of the Supreme Council, Archmage Singer, was slowly descending the stairs, using no magic to speed up his movement. As a result, the forty-seven inside the cubic cage could only follow him slowly. Looking up, there was a dome made of steel and rock; looking down, an endless, dark abyss. Forty-seven stared at Singer, his head turning slowly as if trying to understand how such overwhelming power could reside within that aged body.

Singer, however, continued walking on, not even glancing at Forty-seven, who kept making strange faces at him.

Old bastard. Forty-seven retracted his protruding fangs and moved his wrists, unwilling to believe he would be trapped in this magical prison for life.

In the blink of an eye, they suddenly reached the bottom. Forty-seven looked up— the dome was gone, replaced by a misty darkness. Even Forty-seven could tell they had just passed through a magical barrier, one of great power.

The bottom of the cylindrical cave was a circular floor made of some unknown metal, covered in dense patterns and runes. Singer stepped onto a smooth, mirror-like disc in the center, while Forty-seven floated above his head.

Singer spread his arms. The patterns on the floor twisted and moved with his spells and movements—layer after layer of iron shells peeled away. Except where the old mage stood, the metal floor collapsed and sank back into the surrounding stone walls, while Singer and Forty-seven slowly descended through a misty glow rising from below.

Finally, an incredible sight unfolded before Forty-seven’s eyes.

At that moment, Forty-seven thought he might have returned to the space factory where mechanical assault warriors were produced. The feeling left him momentarily stunned, but he quickly regained his composure, avoiding Singer’s notice.

Steel pipes covered every corner of the huge spherical hall, with arcs of light flashing from time to time. All sorts of constructs, most of which resembled deformed insects due to radiation, flew or crawled around, moving up and down.

Yet they were all connected to and serving one purpose.

“The archmages of the Council discovered it by sheer chance…” Singer seemed to be talking to himself, yet also to Forty-seven above him. “It was also buried in the rocks, motionless.”

Singh’s aged voice echoed through the hall, yet those constructs paid no attention at all. They either built a pipeline or dismantled one, for reasons unknown.
“The Archmages have never seen such a creation… It’s simply a masterpiece of the gods. From the first moment they saw it, the Archmages decided to ally with the Agus royal family, then merely a minor regional power, in order to conquer the entire South. Their goal was to fully control and conceal this thing, for it possessed immense power and too many unsolved mysteries. The Archmages couldn’t hide it in their own demi-plane, and even if they could, deciding who should be in charge of preserving it wasn’t an easy task…”
“In the end, the Archmages decided to build the Tower of the Seven Sins atop it and use the cover of the Agus Empire and the Kingdom of Vatan to conduct secret research… It’s been hundreds of years since then.”
Was it all for such a thing? Siqi looked at it, around forty-seven years old. That was indeed interesting.
“Unfortunately… it’s too complex. All the Archmages’ efforts were in vain; they couldn’t even replicate a part of it, let alone awaken and utilize it…”
At this point, Singh resembled an old man introducing the crops grown on the slopes outside his hut to guests: “Even an Archmage skilled in prophecy spells, after years of relentless forecasting, eventually concluded that the Council would be utterly destroyed by it… and thus advised abandoning further research on it…”
“Absurd!” Singh’s tone suddenly rose several degrees. “Were centuries of exploration and the efforts of thousands of people all for such a vague prophecy?”
“I… Kiskein… and Lum…” he continued, as if the dam of reason had suddenly broken, allowing a flood of emotions to pour out unchecked in this space where no one else truly lived besides him. “The three of us devoted ourselves to researching it from the day we became mages of the Council, working day and night, thrilled by every minor discovery, yet devastated when we had to discard previous conclusions and start over in dead ends…”
“Fortunately, we didn’t fade away in such tedious labor like those mages of the same era, exhausting ourselves until we withered away. Instead, we stood out and took over the Council after those Archmages. But unfortunately, the three of us also went down different paths…”
“Lum was the most talented of the three of us, even stronger than me and Kiskein combined… A genius, one could say.” Singh’s voice slowed down and became lower, as he dredged up fragmented pieces from the long-dormant river of memories. “By then, Kiskein and I had almost given up and shifted our focus to controlling power within the Council… We thought it was pointless to waste more time. The work we had done could be handed over to the younger mages of the Council, who were destined to achieve nothing anyway. And due to the Council’s abnormal training system, newcomers could never reach the achievements and heights we had attained…”

“Only Loom remained undeterred. He took over our work and continued the research we thought had little hope of success… Indeed, he couldn’t understand its structure or principles, as it was created using ancient magic and techniques that have since been lost. The magic we know pales in comparison—just as a lizard can never understand what lightning in the sky is…”
“But he adopted a different approach, one none of us had thought of before.” Singer paused briefly, staring at his gray-haired head, wondering whether the pause meant admiration, envy, or simply that he was tired from speaking.
“Loom used all his magic to unleash an unprecedented spell—he utilized the magic network to reverse-engineer the source of power that controlled this massive creation, and finally shaped it, separating it from Agus.”
“Of course, this is something I and Kiskain deduced after retrieving the core he took away. I’ll never know why Loom did this, why he didn’t go further, or why he left clues for the O’Sullivan family, who have always had reservations about the Council… But then again, if it weren’t for the reckless actions of that O’Sullivan brat, I might never have discovered what Loom had done…”
“But that doesn’t matter anymore.” Singer glanced at the flashes of lightning along the pipes around them. “Loom’s method gave us a completely different perspective—that we don’t need to figure out what kind of magic was used to create this ancient creation. We just need to use that magic…”
As if he had just remembered that 47 was still hanging above his head, he waved his hand, setting both him and the prison holding him down on the pipe-filled ground. This action immediately alarmed the busily working insectoid constructs, which put down their tasks and swarmed around 47 from all sides, rubbing their limbs together, opening and closing their mandibles, their emotionless eyes fixed on the half-skull-like figure in the transparent prison, as if awaiting a feast.
“If it had been a hundred or fifty years ago, I would never have chosen to destroy you…” Singer sighed, looking at 47 with his youthful, clear eyes. “But now, I’m no longer interested in uncovering the secrets within you. I only need the residual power in you… And this place will be your final resting place.”
No wonder you kept talking so much. Do you think I’m some tree hole? Idiot.
47 stood up and performed a few gymnastic-like movements that looked incredibly strange. “Old man, I’ll tear off your head the moment you remove this damn thing—don’t think I’ll mess up like last time.”
A look appeared on Singer’s aged face—was it mockery?
“Construct, I don’t think you messed up last time… But I’ll be more careful.”

The transparent magical prison fluctuated, as if it suddenly disappeared and then reappeared, causing the surrounding steel insects to become agitated. “The prison will soon lose its effect… but that’s enough. Even an old man like me can retreat to a safe place.”
The disc lifted Singh upward. “I have some small matters to attend to now… So… you can struggle here for now.”
Damn bastard. But it suits me just fine.
Si Shi Qi watched as Singh left, and the circular steel cover closed again. The prison fluctuated once more, with the intervals getting shorter and shorter.
He turned his gaze away and faced a certain direction. There, among the dense swarm of steel insects, one could see a giant statue made of various strange metals, half-buried among rocks and countless pipelines—flawless, exuding divine dignity even in slumber.