Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 42

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

I had never been near Noctra’s manor, and my first impression was that it was far bigger than necessary. It was still rustic by my standards, but compared to the rest of the village, the manor was beyond luxurious. In terms of sheer size alone, it dwarfed every other building. The manor was easily five times bigger than the Collectors’ headquarters, and that had eight people living in it in addition to the administrative rooms. As far as I knew, Noctra shared the manor with Iskara and no one else. A few conference rooms and meeting halls did not account for the massive amount of space it took up.

That wasn’t even looking at the materials. A lot of lumber had gone into the place, though it still featured the same mud-fired bricks used in the village proper to fill that wooden framework out. The roof was made of clay tiles, something that would be impossible to replicate in my home without adding a wooden framework to mount them to. I even spotted glass windows through a few of the open shutters. I hadn’t seen glass anywhere else in the village. Noctra had probably made them with magic.

All things considered, the manor felt like a monument to vanity and waste. The space itself wasn’t the problem; mages needed plenty of room for workshops, after all. No, it was everything taken as a whole and then compared to the village struggling to survive barely a mile away.

I wondered what secrets were hidden inside those walls, how much of the mana that had been stolen away had been used to enrich one man. I supposed I’d find out soon enough, given that I was planning on murdering said man and going through his house to check it for traps and research notes. I wanted to know everything Noctra had been getting up to recently, especially since it seemed obvious that he had a partnership of sorts with at least one other person in another city. The more I could find out about that person, the better.

I approached carefully, wary of both wards and guards. It didn’t seem likely to me that Noctra would have people patrolling the grounds around his home normally, but I had to assume he was expecting some sort of trouble if he bothered to send Iskara out to find us when we were still camping in the wastes. It was entirely possible he’d enlisted extra Garrison members to temporarily guard him on the assumption that someone, probably Father, would show back up.

Really, it would all depend on how exactly Noctra had discovered his plans had been derailed. My best guess was that he’d scried the route and discovered we weren’t on it. Possibly he’d scried the cart directly, which was the big reason I’d insisted on leaving it behind. The donkey that had pulled it was long gone anyway, left untethered and hopefully living free in the wastes, but probably dead and inside some monster’s belly.

There weren’t too many other possibilities. Wards on the road were technically possible, but a ward stretching over that kind of distance, even if it was nothing but a trip wire to let someone know that a certain part of the path had been crossed, was prohibitively mana-intensive. It was possible that Noctra had a secret familiar that was spying on us, but that was advanced magic and I just couldn’t credit him having the knowledge or skills to form a familiar bond.

I wasn’t planning on taking any foolish risks, but in my estimation, Noctra didn’t know about me. I’d been on the lookout for any scrying around my general location, and once again, I didn’t think he had the magical chops to pull it off without me noticing. Most likely, he’d scried the road itself and Iskara had narrowed down the location by feeling Father’s ignition ritual. The worst-case scenario should be that Noctra’s magical gaze was firmly pointed at Father, leaving me free to sneak in and ambush him.

I gave it ten minutes to sweep the grounds around the manor, even going so far as to spend a bit of mana to heighten my senses while I looked for any guards. If there were any, they were stationed inside and probably near the entrances. I wasn’t planning on entering the manor through any doors or windows. This was important enough to spend a bit of mana on a phantasmal step spell to keep my strategic advantage. With luck, I wouldn’t need anything more than that before I found Noctra.

While I was studying the outside of the house with my physical eyes for guard patrols, I used my own scrying magic to sweep the interior. Scrying wasn’t great for finding magical traps, at least not at the level I was currently using it, but it would let me figure out the layout of the house and look for any guards stationed on the inside.

My mystical exploration answered some of my questions about the size at least. It seemed like at one point, the manor had actually been used as a sort of town hall, though not in my lifetime. The huge room was empty now save for rows of dust-covered chairs and tables. Anyone entering would quickly find themselves choking and coughing without some sort of mask to protect themselves.

The manor had a large dining hall as well, nowhere near the size of the town hall, but still with a table big enough to seat twenty, just judging by the number of chairs placed around it. It was kept clean at least, but it was obvious which side of the table had seen regular use just from the difference in wear. A separate kitchen had two hearths to cook in, alongside a large sink and ample counter space.

We had nothing but an old cauldron my mother had inherited from her grandmother that was hung over a fire pit and an old, rickety table that didn’t have enough chairs surrounding it for a family of four. From my understanding, that was a common set up in the village. Certainly nobody had a set up like this. It wasn’t exactly extravagant so much as it was serviceable, but compared to the people Noctra ruled over, it was a significant upgrade. Considering literally nobody lived in the manor except Noctra and Iskara, it was also complete overkill.

Perhaps the village had been different under the governance of Emeto. I could see plenty of signs that the manor had been designed to house not only the governor, but his staff as well. There were offices and meeting spaces to suggest that the village’s business had been taken care of at the manor, too. None of them were in use now, for some reason.

Lord Noctra was a mage who valued his privacy, it seemed.

I restrained myself from giving the manor a thorough exploration with my magic. As much as I would have liked to, it was possible that Noctra had woven wards into his labs and experimentation rooms that might detect my magic and alert him to my presence. Until I knew for sure, or more realistically, until the man was dead, I limited myself to what I would consider public rooms. Those often had too much foot traffic to effectively ward, at least not if the mage powering them was on a budget, and there was very little chance I’d trigger anything there. Nobody wanted a ward that alerted them a dozen times a day every time the maid came through the kitchen.

That did limit the odds that I’d successfully scry out Noctra’s location, but I’d at least be able to eliminate the majority of the manor before I set foot inside, and once I was there, I could start manually searching the rooms likely to be warded to find Alkerist’s governor. Considering how dark everything was inside and that I still hadn’t seen a single sign of any guards, I felt that I had good odds of entering and exploring undetected.

I might not even need to waste the mana on phantasmal step if all it took was an application of an unlocking spell to get in. I’d counted four different doors leading into the manor already, though I’d be avoiding the ones leading into what I’d mentally dubbed the meeting hall. The kitchen entrance was probably the best one since it led into a public room and wasn’t likely to be warded or trapped. It was also on the south side of the manor, which was convenient for me since that was the direction I’d approached from.

My preliminary mapping complete and my mana core all but empty, I decided I’d done enough investigation from afar. Either Noctra was a mage so far beyond my current abilities that I had no chance of winning or he’d actually taken no steps beyond locking the doors and windows to keep people from entering his house in the middle of the night.

That wasn’t quite true, as I discovered when I approached the kitchen door. Noctra, or more likely Iskara, had made some effort to arm the door with the same paralysis trap that had guarded the draw stone storage room. Having already seen it once, it was much easier to spot this time around, and I swiftly claimed the artificial mana core that powered the spell.

Even with the paralysis trap removed, I took my time examining that door. I absolutely could not afford to make any mistakes at this point. It was hard to take Noctra seriously as a mage, but I was keenly aware that arrogance could be my downfall. I’d nearly been caught by this exact same trap a few days ago because it was too advanced for what I’d judged Noctra capable of casting. He had connections with other mages though, and if there was any place he’d use that resource to protect himself, it was here in his home.

I spent a full minute crouched in the shadows near that door with the mingled lights of three moons casting purple, green, and blue light down on me. It was only after I was positive that there were no more wards or traps on the door itself or the room it led into that I dared to cast unlock and turn the handle.

There was a point when caution turned to timidness though, and I’d run out of ways to ensure my own safety. I needed to either advance or retreat, and if I chose to retreat, I might as well abandon the village and start working on setting up a sanctuary out in the wastes so I could hide and take the time I needed to regain my lost power.

I’d be damned if I let some two-bit mage whose every spell cost four times as much mana as it should and who couldn’t manage anything in the intermediate tier of magic chase me off. That wasn’t even considering what he’d done to the village, stealing immense—by my current standards at least—quantities of mana and trying to sell my father into slavery to pay off some sort of debt.

No, I wasn’t going to run. If anything, I was eager to finish my business with Noctra and begin pillaging his labs and equipment to see just what he’d been up to over the years. If there was one thing I needed just as desperately as I needed time, it was knowledge. There was no better place to get it than inside this building.

I reached up and twisted the handle, then pushed to let the door swing open on silent hinges and stepped into Noctra’s manor.

Share