Dark Lord in Chains 56

Patience, I decided after some consideration. The best thing I could do facing a completely unfamiliar tradition of magic, with all the traps and dangers it implied, was to show patience. 

As much as I hated sticking around the base of an unknown enemy protected by an unfamiliar set of warding, I hated leaving that enemy’s status as unknown even more. 

There was an art to stake out an unknown location, especially when the place was guarded by an unknown number of guards with equally unknown skill sets. 

Luckily, the Blade of Shadows removed the biggest challenge, namely, finding a safe location, and a role that would not raise suspicion due to extended presence. Of course, the mysterious enemy wasn’t just relying on their eyes to catch an unwelcome guest — if they were relying on that at all. I could feel the occasional sweeps of magic spreading out to observe the surrounding. 

Luckily, there was no consciousness driving those magical feelers, suggesting it was an automatic aspect of the protective wards that surrounded the building. The ward itself was ingenious, and due to the mysterious tradition that created its basis, impossible to decipher. 

Breaking it directly was not something I could achieve, not when it was constructed for such a difficult reason.  

Luckily, the same didn’t apply to managing its external detection. Ultimately, it was a static response, making those detection feelers possible to trick, at least to a mage at my level of competence. 

Arrogance, I realized. The arrogance of their architecture. 

Combined with their display back in the palace, it suggested the enemy was arrogant. Extremely so. 

I just wasn’t sure whether to be happy or afraid of that fact. 

Normally, my response would have been pure happiness. An arrogant enemy was a fragile enemy, easy to carefully wrap in my ploys before taking them down. The conquest of Sapphire was an excellent example. The Queen of the Empire, so confident in the power of her magical equipment that she preferred to keep me imprisoned in the depths of her palace, only to lose everything. 

However, the current situation with the newest mysterious enemy was different. I knew the reason for Sapphire’s arrogance. After all, they had managed to take me down in my own base, and assumed that I would be helpless without my castle, my henchmen, and my treasury. 

She just miscalculated how much her advantages were truly advantages, and how much the loss of my base would hinder me.

The new enemy was different. They were showing that arrogance in the middle of the base of their enemy, and they were displaying that arrogance to a shocking degree. The problem, I had no idea where their arrogance was coming from, and that made me scared. 

There was nothing worse than preparing for a fistfight, only to realize the opponent was carrying a magical sword. 

I needed to understand, so, no matter how tempting was to return to my bed to get a good night’s sleep before starting to draw a new strategy, I stayed outside, carefully sending out weak strings of mana to the ward that surrounded the building, light enough to be mistaken into an environmental flicker, trying to understand its nature. 

Also, I wanted to drag Emma away the moment she left the building. Unfortunately, she was still imprisoned. 

As minutes turned into hours, I was starting to get a rudimentary feel of the wards. They were somewhat familiar, but in a way I could pin immediately. But one thing I was sure, it wasn’t the scraps I had learned in the library that was giving that help. 

It was an older impression.  

However, before I could make a deduction, a hooded figure approached the building, carrying some kind of glowing symbol etched on a card in his right hand, while holding a suspiciously struggling sack on his back with his other hand. 

“Arrogance,” I murmured even as I expanded my feelers before he could enter the building, delving deep into the little magical card to memorize the ward on it. It was not an easy task, certainly not something I could achieve without the Tether. 

Unfortunately for my enemies, hypothetical didn’t help against the facts. I did have the Tether, and when the man finally stepped into the area that was under the control of the ward, I had already completed copying it, and etching the same symbol to a rock in my hand. I watched carefully as the wards reacted to the symbol the man was carrying, trying to understand if there was any secondary control, informing someone inside about the entrance. 

But the way the ward reacted instantly, and its relative stability, suggested that it was completely automatic. 

I hadn’t been able to use the same trick earlier, because Emma’s escort hadn’t used a disposable item, casting the spell directly instead. With her obvious magical competence, I was afraid of testing her too much. 

I hoped my conclusion was correct, because I was betting a lot there. Not my life, of course. The ward was completely unfamiliar, preventing me from sneaking in the usual way, but escaping from inside, with both the Shield of Ether and Tether of the Underworld in my possession, a brute force solution was always an option. 

I was curious about the identity of the enemy, but not enough to commit myself to a suicide mission. 

I would have loved to wait for a few minutes for the ward to settle just in case before I walked forward, but I was afraid of the existence of the other security measures. The best idea was to follow that hooded figure, using him as a guide.

Luckily, the impromptu key I had fashioned worked excellently, allowing me to pass through the wards without the slightest issue. Amateurs, I thought, unable to hide the feeling of derision. Despite all the power they had put behind the wards, they failed because of a simple design principle. 

The first thing I noticed as I entered was two marble statues of hooded, armored men, crafted to perfection, though the amount of magic radiating from them suggested that they might not be just decoration. As we moved forward, I noticed other statues, with equal magical potency, which hardly helped me to feel confident against the source of the enemy.

Those kinds of magical items were neither cheap nor efficient. 

It wasn’t the first time I was using an enemy that was relying on that kind of magical construct as a part of their defenses, but that didn’t mean I was surprised by their presence. Because all magical constructs, be it golems, enchanted armors, moving statues, all shared two deadly faults. 

Limited flexibility was their first problem. Like an uncontrolled ward, their reactions were limited to the number of scenarios someone had embedded into its structure. However, there were many guard locations that their limited flexibility was not a problem. Still, they were very rare. 

The reason lied in their second problem. The cost. 

Not all constructs were expensive, of course. Not prohibitively so, at least. Many merchants had a few of them for showing off, as a status symbol. They might even take down a few bandits. But making one strong enough to make a difference against a competent mage, or a decent warrior was a different challenge. Those not only took a small fortune to make, required an even bigger fortune to maintain. 

It was much cheaper to hire a top-tier knight for the job. 

And the fact that I could see twenty of those constructs littering through just the entrance of the corridor was weird. The money that was spent on those was enough to raise an actual army, unless they were built by a completely innovative method of construction. 

However, combined with the weirdly competent yet smug attitude of the mysterious person escorting Emma, I felt that it wasn’t the case. 

Perfect, I thought. Another fucking mystery. Like the issues I had in hand weren’t enough. 

When the hooded figure took a turn, I abandoned that line of thought for a moment. I maintained my focus while following the hooded figure. He took the stairs to the basement, ending up in a prison area. There were eight cells, though currently, all of those cells were empty, just like the corridors that we passed. 

The enemy wasn’t a crowded army, at least not in their current base. Which was always something convenient. 

He used a different magical rune to unlock a magically-reinforced cell door, before placing the sack that was carrying his prisoner. When he removed the sack, I was surprised to see the identity of the prisoner. 

Isolde. 

Though, that surprise was nothing compared to when the one that was carrying the prisoner removed his hood. 

“You won’t get away with this, Lancelot,” Isolde growled in anger.

What a surprise, I thought even as I tightened the shadows around me, hiding in the corner. Here he was, mister hero, the good guy that was supposed to save the Empire from the darkness, imprisoning one of his companions. 

“You need to calm down. I’m doing this for your own good,” Lancelot said, his tone calm, almost tender. I gritted my teeth despite the fact that I wasn’t the target. I hated that tone since I was a child, after it had been used by priests, teachers, and many other authority figures. 

You’re just a child, the tone said. You need to accept the word your betters, that you’re destined to be a disposable part of the world, destined for mediocracy as a laborer, or, if lucky, apprentice of a craftsman, toil endlessly on the hopes of becoming a master cobbler one day. 

I had no words to explain just how much I hated that tone. 

Like I actually needed more reason to dislike that smug entitled asshole, I thought with a dark smirk, tightening my grip around the hilt of my sword, only its coldness reminding me that killing that guy at this moment was a bad idea. 

While Isolde growled, my mind was going through options. With Isolde imprisoned and Lancelot as a traitor, things were getting even more complicated. 

I needed to decide what to do next.