Chương 101: B2 Chapter 43: Loose String

High Lord Recindril Tostral slowly read through the instructions from the mystery package for the 8th time, reassuring himself once again that they did indeed say what he had already memorized. This implies some disturbing and alarming things. Even the Enchanters Guild themselves should not be capable of creating something like this – assuming that it works as claimed, but they have already proven highly capable, and I cannot think of any motive for them to lie about that.

Any goal that might be served by such a lie could be accomplished more easily by other means. He breathed out heavily and ran his right hand through his hair. If this is the work of the Enchanters Guild after all, then they are playing politics at a level I can only guess at. If this was truly made by someone separate from the guild, as they claim they are, then they are a truly unknown party; possibly another noble house, but even that is uncertain.

All I am sure of is that they can craft powerful and complex enchanted items, they oppose the Crown, and they are not strong enough to do it openly. He pursed his lips and gazed at nothing while he continued thinking. Perhaps they are a noble house in my rebel faction that want to avoid the attention that revealing possession of such a capability would bring? That would partially explain how they found my location for delivering the shipments. On the other hand…

I could believe a noble house figuring out the core secret of making enchanted items, but this shipment goes beyond that. Whoever made this has mastered their craft, including several additional secrets. He tapped two fingers on his chin. It could be an agent of a foreign power, maybe? But a foreign nation powerful enough to execute such an intervention would be powerful enough to openly contest with the Enchanters Guild, and I have never heard of that happening. He shook his head and sighed.

I suppose it doesn't matter in the end. Ultimately, I must make use of this tool regardless. Even with its help, pulling this off will be tricky. Recindril picked up a roster of nobles who had joined his faction and skimmed over its notes about their capabilities and resolve, muttering under his breath.

"I'm going to have to make some difficult calls." Meanwhile, Carlos and Amber gathered up all their adventurers for a conference. The four of them shuffled awkwardly, with Sconter occasionally glancing out toward the surrounding wilderness, until Carlos cleared his throat.

"I've called you all together to explain an opportunity that being here, in an area with aether above your levels, represents for you. An opportunity that goes far beyond simply advancing your levels higher." The awkward shuffling stopped, and all four adventurers focused their full attention on him.

"I believe that all of you have reached what adventurers refer to as the plateau, or the prodigal plateau." The adventurers exchanged looks among themselves, then Haftel slowly nodded.

"Yes, we have. Our advancement slowed greatly because of it, many years ago." His eyes widened.

"You have a way around it?" Carlos grinned widely.

"I have much more than that. All nobles do. It is part of the secret of how nobles are so powerful." He tilted his head toward Lorvan, who was standing guard beside him.

"Colonel Lorvan tells me that it is generally accepted to teach this secret to a small number of trusted elite members of the house's staff, as long as we do not raise you to full nobility. You will, of course, be required to keep it secret yourselves as well." The adventurers returned his searching gaze with solemn nods, one by one. Carlos nodded, satisfied with their commitment.

"Good. Now, we are more than willing to advise you on specifics, if you choose to share the details of your soul plans with us, but the core point is this: When the synergies between your soul structures grow strong enough, from enough synergy pairs at high enough level, they make the synergizing soul structures merge into a single superstructure.

This frees up room to make more soul structures, but doing so without special measures requires a supply of aether high-level enough for your existing soul structures to absorb it to fuel the process. Incidentally, this unification can happen multiple times with new batches of soul structures if they all have synergy." He looked across their faces, all frozen in shock as they absorbed the implications of this revelation.

"Now, does anyone want to discuss details?" Two days later, Prince Hinren Kalor, fourth scion of the Crown, yawned in response to the bothersome chime ringing for its third time in as many minutes. The guard commander looked at him, and he waved dismissively.

"Yes, yes, send the reinforcement squad they called for. This is what my father assigned the reserves here for, no need to bother me about it." Hinren set his head back down on his fist, supported by his elbow leaning on the arm of his chair, and tried not to roll his eyes. Why can't Lornera handle this without me? Teaching those idiot nobles a lesson is her project, not mine. Okay, hers and father's, but anyway.

Yes, sister, I know you have your own shift on watch duty, but you're the one who wants it done, so why isn't all of it your job? The chime rang again, but the guard commander had apparently taken Hinren's comment to heart, because no one disturbed his idle relaxation. Eight royal guards formed up in two lines, he felt a Teleport spell wrap around them, and they vanished, all without him so much as lifting a finger. That's better.

Now if only this tiresome business would wrap up so I can go back to not even being here, that would be great. A minute passed in silence, and he was starting to hope it would reach two, when the chime dashed his hopes by ringing again. Hinren steadfastly ignored the sound, but then the guard commander came to stand right in front of him, saluted, and cleared his throat. Hinren didn't even get to sigh before the commander finished interrupting his attempted nap.

"Your Highness, I'm afraid this one will require your personal intervention." Hinren lifted his head off of his fist and straightened himself.

"Really? What for?"

"The signal indicates a house treasure is in danger, and the royal guards already present are not merely outmatched, but outclassed. If the Crown does not prevent the treasure's theft forthwith, the Crown's promise will then require retrieving it." Prince Hinren sighed and shook himself. And Dad absolutely would assign that task to me as punishment for not preventing it. Damn it. He stood up and stretched.

"Alright, what's the treasure, and what am I getting into for this?" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The commander bowed half-way.

"The colonel who signaled is assigned to High House Pimmic, so it is presumably their heirloom, the Amulet of Pimmic, which they keep in their most secure vault. The house head is either away or prevented from protecting it personally. Any further details, you will have to discover on site." Hinren flew over to the mage and nodded while still hovering.

"I'm ready. Send me there." The mage wasted no time with words, simply casting the spell immediately. Hinren allowed the spell's net of mana to wrap around him and move him to somewhere far away, and suddenly he was hovering above a castle that was adorned with another house's banners. He unleashed his presence and his senses. At the same time, he engaged the most bothersome of his augmentations for daily life, and the battle seemed to almost freeze around him. Prince Hinren surveyed the battlefield.

The two remaining royal guards stood out immediately, of course, as they were among the few moving fast enough to not seem almost like statues to him right now. Another cluster of non-glacial motion drew his eye over on the wall by one of the towers, and he nodded in recognition of the noble quality of the one man's soul, with a somewhat weaker version of the same fighting alongside him.

The two of them were locked in furious combat with a half-dozen elites, but he moved on after quickly assessing that their fight was nowhere near done. He was here to save their treasure, not to save them. He focused his mana sense downward into the depths of the castle, seeking the vault where the treasure was kept. A trail of broken wards led him directly there, ending at the comparatively heavy vault doors, which had been broken from the walls and cast on the floor.

He flew into the vault, hovering in a standing position with his arms folded across his chest, and leveled a disapproving glare at the two intruders he found there. He made sure to slow down enough to speak normally.

"Really? Don't you know better than to stoop this low?" Much to Hinren's amusement, one of the intruders actually raised his sword as if to fight. The other remained bent over, eyes glued to a heavy rod he was holding that had an impressively powerful enchantment on it. Hinren sensed the heirloom treasure he'd come for directly where that rod was pointing.

As Hinren watched, the intruder with the heavily-enchanted rod did something with it, and the wide mana net of a Mass Teleport spell — an incoming one — sprang out. He chuckled.

"Wait, are you seriously trying to ambush me? A Crown Scion?" He transformed his right hand into a blade and casually swept it into one section of the spell just as it finished forming, just barely slow enough to let the spell finish first so that it wouldn't readjust to avoid his strike. A person materialized only to have his blade-hand carve through their armor and into their chest. Prince Hinren paused in surprise. Huh? It didn't go all the way through and out the other side?

Then the strength of the half-dozen new souls facing him registered to his senses. Wait, these are nobles? Aw man, am I going to have to actually exert myself for this? He shook himself and sped up his mind again, then took stock of the situation a bit more attentively. His right blade-hand was embedded in a noble's chest at the moment. He could still push the rest of the way through, but just pulling his hand back out would be easier, so he did that.

Three swords were approaching him from different directions, each one filled with a tremendous amount of high-level mana and moving at significant speed despite how fast his perceptions were running. Fast enough, in fact, that he couldn't spare any attention for the other two nobles before having to deal with those swords. Hinren twisted his hips to dodge the first incoming sword. For the second, he reinforced his right abdomen with extra mana to harden it even more than usual.

As the second sword slid ineffectually across his abdomen, failing to cut his reinforced skin, he swiped his left blade-hand downward to chop off the top foot or so of the third sword. The severed shard of enchanted metal spun in the air as he turned his attention at last to the two nobles who weren't wielding swords. He was just in time to notice the three blazing balls of white-hot fire before the first one hit him in the face, followed barely an instant later by the other two hitting each side of his chest. Hey!

That actually hurt! Only slightly, and I doubt anyone will be able to tell, but still. The only people who are allowed to hurt me are my siblings when we spar! He snarled and lunged toward the mage, who was already starting some other spell, but the final noble slammed an enormous shield across his path, shoving him off course just enough to make his blade-hands miss the mage and punch into the vault's wall behind her instead.

Hinren scowled as he pulled back from the wall, then glanced aside as something new drew his attention. Only a bare few moments had passed, and the noble he had struck on arrival was still just starting to react to having been deeply cut, but a series of several individual Teleport spells was snapping into existence. Another noble appeared, then a pair of them, then two more in rapid succession.

One of the new arrivals fired an arrow the instant they arrived, and Hinren had to move quickly even by his standards to catch it out of the air. He scanned the newcomers in an instant. Another mage, the archer — who is already nocking another arrow — those two have spears, and is that a mystic? Yep, he's preparing some kind of mana attack that's too unstructured to be a spell. He flooded his entire body with extra mana reinforcement, ready to tank all of their attacks together.

Aaand there's another Teleport incoming. Screw this, it's crater time! Whatever house this is, they'll just have to get over it. Hinren wasted no more time fighting hand-to-hand with his soon-to-be-dead opponents. He just snapped his hands up to above his head, reinforced his arms even more strongly, closed his eyes, pulled deeply on the power of his royal soul, and flew.

Stone shattered in his path as he ascended straight up through floor after floor of the castle, leaving the teleporting nobles behind in the vault. He smirked to himself as he flew. Will they have the wits — and reaction speed — to teleport back out before they die? He emerged from the final ceiling and continued to ascend toward the clouds above. A proper crater requires a bit of lead-up acceleration, after all. He relaxed a bit with no more stone in the way above him.

Wait, is someth— His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by piercing agony as his own flight power drove him head-first into something extremely sharp and strong that was held directly in his path, point-down. Before he could react to reinforce anything, the needle-sharp and heavily-reinforced tip of a blade parted first his skin and then his skull. High Lord Recindril Tostral looked down at the royal corpse his best longsword was embedded in and slowly released the tension from his arms and chest.

Phew, that was close. I almost didn't get in position in time, and he almost noticed too soon. This would have gotten a lot messier if he'd avoided that strike. He grimaced. About as messy as if we'd had to show our hand finding and breaking into the correct Pimmic vault with simple searching in force. I'd really like to know how my anonymous supporter got their hands on the Amulet's mana signature, even aside from how they made that rod.

He commanded his enchanted boots to start flying downward and took hold of Prince Hinren's neck so the body wouldn't fall, then pulled his sword back out. He scanned the castle ramparts below as he went. Good, my children finished off the royal guards already. Best to keep the Crown guessing about as many details as possible. A call sounded from the castle, and the fighting ceased as both sides disengaged. Recindril drew even with the head of House Pimmic and held out the dead body in his left hand.

"Hello, High Lord Punnet Pimmic. You said you wanted proof that the Crown itself can be beaten. Here it is."