Chapter 714: Act 73 – The Mage Tower
As the magical spirits retreated from the outer perimeter of the Mage Tower, the progression of the battle outside slowed considerably. The confrontation soon rotated to Nemeses and Laurena’s group, but Brendel anticipated that it would take at least three or four more cycles of rotation to completely clear out these magical spirits.
This duration seemed somewhat lengthy, but fortunately, he was not idle. The first level inside the Mage Tower was as spacious as a small square. Adjacent to the exterior wall of the square, a spiral staircase led upwards to the second floor platform. This platform, in fact, was suspended between the square and the third level above, featuring a circular structure encircled by breastworks and crenels. Brendel couldn’t help but recognize it as a defensive fortification, clearly intended to attack enemies on the first level square should anyone breach the tower’s entrance.
He imagined that during the functioning days of this Mage Tower, it would have been teeming with protectors and young apprentices of the wizards. However, now it stood eerily vacant, a lifeless fortification alone remaining.
Nevertheless, the Wizard’s Tower remained fraught with peril. ‘You should not touch anything belonging to a wizard,’ was a colloquial saying among the Karasu people. And the Mage Tower, being the most precious property of wizards, indeed constituted a forbidden zone for commoners.
Especially in such derelict mage towers, wandering magical energy, still operational magical traps, uncontrolled magic puppets and dangerous creatures, plants, and even books on the shelves contained an abundance of mystery and the unknown. For a normal person, the safest way to enter the Mage Tower would be to stay below and not move.
But this constraint applied only to commoners.
Brendel knew another secret hidden within the tower. He ordered everyone to rest in place. However, he, along with Xi, Prince Younger, and Phillas, ascended alone to the third floor of the Mage Tower.
There was no physical connection between the third and second levels of the Mage Tower, but instead, there were twelve portals used to convey manpower and supplies. Marked with different colors, Brendel didn’t hesitate, choosing the red portal without a second thought.
Setting traps in the portal was the most sinister and also one of the most common ways for wizards to defend against enemies.
Red was a warning color for most people, but Brendel knew that the colors of these twelve portals went beyond simply indicating a warning. The black tower wizards linked them with the twelve months of Erluin and the twelve phases of the magical moons. Depending on the month and the moon’s phases, only one portal would function truly as a transport portal.
The rest of the portals mostly transported you to the icy Stormrest Mountains, the lava lands, or the shallow seas of Malorcha, or some corner of a world you couldn’t even name.
Though these portals were generally not fatal, their effects were far more hazardous and especially dangerous for players. It was rumored that in the old days of the game “Amber Sword,” a player carelessly entered a portal and was transported to a kingdom called Hilma. It took him a full year in real time, and countless help request posts on forums, to return to Vaunte.
This rescue operation was so significant that it became a celebrated epic among the players, and their inventive solutions were as varied as they were quirky. For a while after, a trend swept the player community where many became obsessed with visiting these ‘other worlds.’
Due to the War in Erluin, Brendel did not personally experience the grandeur of that event, but he knew that the players never definitively mapped out how many ‘other worlds’ existed beyond Vaunte.
These worlds, however, likely existed from the beginning. Chunximan came from one of them. Players theorized that these worlds were fragments of Martha’s order scattered across the vast darkness, with Vaunte merely being one of the larger fragments.
Brendan started the rune formation with some effort because he had discovered that the mana pool within the Mage Tower’s facilities was separate from the external pool powering a high-level exorcism array. Given that the internal mana pool had long dried up, he had to resort to a portable magic crystal he carried to activate the portal.
A flicker of light bathed the group, and in the next moment, they found themselves in an entirely different environment. What was once a commendably defensive structure had now transformed into a narrow and dark passage. The mana pool in the Mage Tower had dried up long ago, so the magical lighting it once powered was now gone. If not for the luminous plants scattered along the corridor, they would have been surrounded by complete darkness.
But Brendan was prepared. He took out a magic crystal, and the bright light immediately illuminated the entire corridor. It seemed like the first time in a century that light had revisited this place. Brendan then heard a rustling sound as they observed an army of vines retreating from the corridor as if embarrassed, vanishing out of sight in an instant.
Xi was able to maintain her calm, but Phillas and the young prince became a little unnerved by this sight—they’d seen a great many things, but never plants that could sprout legs and move around.
Moreover, the appearance of this corridor was less than inviting. It should have been a walkway paved with marble or obsidian-like materials, with brick walls on either side adorned with torch holders placed at intervals. Such walkways were common in many castles or temples.
Before their eyes, there were broken bricks overrun with many thick vines. The stone slabs of the ground were disheveled, and the corners were overtaken by tropical jungle-like vegetation. Most were fern species or some luminescent fungi. If not for seeing it firsthand, it would be hard to imagine such a place transforming into a paradise for plants.
But this was the domain of wizards, what the general populace called ‘the magic’s miracles.’ However, these miracles weren’t always benevolent, as folklore wasn’t short of stories of those who tampered with things and were permanently turned into frogs.
“Where is this place?” Phillas asked in astonishment, his mouth slightly agape.
“This should be the uppermost layer of the Mage Tower, where the wizards lived,” Brendel replied. The red portal, during the month of Flowery Fire, on the day when the magic of the harp was in full bloom, was the only passage leading to the upper part of the Mage Tower.
“Ah…” Haruz suddenly cried softly — though the wound on his shoulder had been dressed, this movement still caused him to wrinkle his brow in pain. Then the young prince asked curiously, “So those were the twelve moon portals down below?”
“Twelve moons?”
Haruz seemed to just realized how impolite his outburst was and blushed a little as he quietly explained, “… My sister and I once heard some tales about the wizards from our father. The black tower wizards had some unique defensive means, the twelve moon portals being the most famous one among them. Using the seasons and phases of the moon across the Vaunte continent, wizards created this elaborate formation system. It’s said that after the blueprints were destroyed in an accident, no one has been able to decipher it again?”
“Even the wizards of Bud expressed regret about it. Although the People of Silver look down on this rough formation technology, they acknowledged that it contains sophisticated astronomical and calendar calculations.”
Haruz’s tone grew excited, “Even to receive praise from the People of Silver, it’s undoubtedly the pride of Erluin.”
Phillas rolled his eyes, “Isn’t Mister Brendel already the one who solved it?”
The prince seemed to only then remember this point, and couldn’t help but look at Brendel with admiration: “That’s because Master is well-versed in learning, even my sister admires Lord Earl. My sister is normally a proud person, but Master Livwz himself said her knowledge is on par with his?”
As he said this, he couldn’t help but glance cautiously at Brendel.
It made Brendel feel a bit uncomfortable—he clearly heard the prince’s ingratiating tone. Moreover, the intricate calculations for these portal ‘passwords’ were not something he figured out. Players were not particularly ingenious, in fact, the way players cracked this ‘password’ could be a perfect example of brute force hacking. He remembered that a guild did it through loss of lives. The name of the guild he could not recall, but later, they were handsomely rewarded—the secrets and the formation itself were sold to the black tower wizards for the price of a whole city.
The wizards were always among the richest individuals on the Vaunte continent, but rarely were they seen to be extravagant spenders.
“But speaking of which, this is where the wizards lived, wouldn’t there be items of incalculable value here?” Phillas seemed to suddenly recall this legend: “I’ve heard that everything belonging to wizards is a once-in-a-lifetime treasure.”
As he was about to rush inside, Brendel quickly grabbed him and reminded him somewhat sternly, “Not quite. Wizards merely have more magical items at their disposal. Believe me, you have quite a few yourself, Mister Phillas. Not all magical items are priceless, and even if they are, that’s only for ordinary people, not for you—”
Phillas was taken aback for a moment before realizing the implication: “That’s true. Why are we here then?”
“You’ll find out soon,” Brendel sighed in relief but reminded them: “Be cautious. It’s a massive maze in here. It’s not like the one in your garden, some people enter the wizard’s maze and never find their way out. Moreover, there are minotaurs inside. You’ve probably never seen the monsters the wizards bred—they’ll eat you so thoroughly there’ll be no bones left.”
Phillas was already about to move forward when hearing this, startling and immediately retreating, “This tower must have been here for centuries. Wouldn’t they starve to death?”
“Have you ever seen a magical creature starve to death?”
Phillas blinked his eyes, seemingly having never seen one starve.
With the lighting crystal in hand, Brendel proceeded forward. The surrounding plants were all bizarre in shape, but he scanned them, finding they were mostly harmless. The highly offensive magical carnivorous pitcher plants and snake vines rarely found among the plants wizards liked to cultivate were not in sight here. Perhaps due to the lack of feeding, these two meat-eating plants might not have survived for long in the absence of food.
Following the guide from his memory, he moved forward past five tightly closed doors and turned left, walking forward for about a hundred steps. As he had warned earlier, Phillas, Xi, and the young prince tried their best not to look at those doors. Even if Brendel had not mentioned it, they had all heard similar tales: doors were mysterious to wizards. Their doors often led to mysterious dimensions, and once ordinary people entered, they could never return. Whether the stories were true or false, it was best not to treat it as a joke.
After walking roughly a hundred steps, Brendel stopped, indeed spotting a skeleton among the bushes ahead.
That was not a wizard’s skeleton, as it was dressed in conspicuous armor. The first player in the game to discover it found it in the exact same spot. That player believed the skeleton might have been an adventurer who ventured here later, and how they discovered this mage’s tower remains a mystery. But based on his analysis, the skeleton’s owner was likely a warrior-type role from this adventuring party.
As for the cause of death?
Brendel turned back and took a closer look at the bushes. It was then that he noticed Haruz’s peculiar expression and stopped to ask, “Did you notice something?”
“Who is he?” the young prince asked curiously.
“A warrior, or a knight, certainly not a wizard.”
“Was he one of the wizard’s guards, how did he die here?” Phillas asked.
“Because of this—” Finally, in the bushes, Brendel located the thing he was looking for, the Earth Sword already in his hand. With a single thrust, he pinned the thing down solidly.
A sharp screech. A dark mass struggled underneath Brendel’s sword and then perished. The others took a closer look and realized it was a weasel-like creature.
“What is this?” Phillas was somewhat startled.
“This is a weasel.”
“Are you saying a weasel killed this guy?” The young knight from Cruz exaggeratedly widened his eyes, “Does that mean I might die from my hunting dogs some day?”
Brendel found this analogy somewhat exasperating, moreover, with this guy’s intelligence level, if not ridiculously lucky, he might indeed get bitten to death by a dog. Not to mention, it wasn’t uncommon in Vaunte to die from dog bites, even the Twilight Hounds they would soon face belonged to the dog family.
“This is a magical pet,” he replied now.
“Magical pet?” Phillas finally realized: “Are you saying a wizard killed this person? Are there still wizards in this tower?” He felt a chill down his spine.
The young prince immediately looked around.
Xi remained silent, silently gripping the Azure Spear. (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, consider supporting it with recommendation and monthly tickets on QiDian. Your support is the greatest motivation for me.)
