Chương 104: B2 Chapter 46: Foreboding

Princess Lornera Kalor grimly held on to her temporarily-dead older sister's torso as she flew high through the sky. She looked to her right, where her brother Patrimmon supported Brenelle's legs as they flew. His grim expression mirrored her own, and his eyes wandered to Brenelle's right hand where it rested on her chest, adorned by an orichalcum ring. Lornera willed the air to calm around them, despite their tremendous speed of flight, and voiced her primary thought.

"What the hell was that? Recindril surprised her and caught her off guard with something, I'm sure of that much. A house treasure, probably; a powerful one. What details did you notice?" Patrimmon glanced at her, but quickly returned to facing forward.

"Does it matter? Father will annihilate them for this. We prevented them from taking her ring or violating her corpse. That's what counts. The matter is out of our hands now." He barked a laugh.

"Good thing Hinren didn't earn his ring yet. Though with how he's going, I don't know if he ever will." Lornera scowled, but kept quiet as they passed through another cloud. The cloud deformed wildly in their wake, turbulence blowing pieces of it in all directions. She pressed her lips together and shook her head, her hair tossing lightly in the bubble of calmed air accompanying them.

"I don't know. A group of ordinary nobles, even a lot of them, shouldn't be able to beat our father, but… They shouldn't have been able to beat Brenelle, either. A regular enchanted item shouldn't have been able to force its way through a noble house's heaviest wards straight to their most powerful treasure, ignoring all decoys and tearing apart all obstacles. And there's the sabotage in the guards' equipment as well.

We haven't heard of any signal being blocked like that again yet, not since the first incident, but it happening even once also shouldn't have been possible.

"Something is going on that we haven't gotten to the bottom of yet, and I don't like the direction it seems to be heading. Too many impossible things have happened, all of them against the Crown's interests." She took a deep breath and let it out heavily.

"I don't trust my old understanding of what is impossible anymore. I can't. Father losing should be impossible, but what if it isn't? How can we be certain?" Prince Patrimmon remained silent for a few seconds, then gave her a hard look.

"I'm not convinced things are that dire, but… Fine. If you want to treat this that seriously, I'll play along." He lapsed back into silence for a moment of thought.

"No one can match our speed, but among nobles, the Tostral soul plan is well-known for making them faster than almost anyone else. Perhaps Recindril could come close enough to Brenelle's speed for some kind of trickery to bridge the remaining gap." Lornera adjusted her grip and nodded.

"Trickery, Brenelle underestimating him and holding back, and an especially strong house treasure. Perhaps even multiple such relics, if his faction has been gathering them." Patrimmon shook his head at that.

"This is only the second house treasure they've raided for." He chuckled wryly.

"And the owners of the first one haven't reported it stolen. They probably joined up, and Recindril let them keep it. I bet this one will do the same." He shrugged.

"I suppose it will save us the nuisance of retrieving it for them." Lornera frowned for a moment, then sighed.

"Perhaps. As for the relic itself… It felt like dungeon mana, but unusually primal and destructive. Plenty of house treasures are made from dungeon cores, so that part's no surprise, but dungeons are poorly suited to the kind of raw damage-dealing I sensed. We should check the backup records for what treasures House Tostral has registered when we get back." Patrimmon shrugged again.

"Yeah, we might as well. I doubt knowing that will make any difference when Father takes the field, but it can't hurt." Lornera nodded and fell silent for a while. They streaked through a few more wayward clouds, the ground below seeming to crawl past despite their speed because of how far below it was. As the walls of Kalor City came into view, she shook her head once more.

"That's not what I'm really worried about, though. Whoever sabotaged the armor and made those vault-breakers, and whatever else… Whoever they are, what are their true limits? What are they capable of when they decide to stop hiding?" Carlos cocked his head and smirked.

"You know, I think I've been suspecting this result in the back of my mind ever since Darmelkon told us that dispelling the lock left the whole book blank." Amber stared at him for a few seconds. They were sitting beside each other, inside their private warded luxury tent, with Sandaras's spellbook resting on a small portable table in front of them.

"You… suspected that the information was actually built into the lock spell itself? Really? Who would even conceive of such a bizarre idea?"

"Sandaras, apparently." Carlos laughed as Amber gave him a playful shove. He held up his hands in mock surrender for a moment, then settled back into a more serious tone.

"More to the point, it's the closest analogue I've yet found with spells for how people back home—back at my old home, that is—handled important secret information. Encryption. Except the Ganler word for it is usually used for things that my old people would consider the children's toy versions of the concept." Amber swayed on her seat, her eyes wide open and staring blankly.

"Uh. … Yeah. I, uh, got that. Comprehension of what you meant came through." She blinked a few times, then shook her head.

"No wonder you're so good at math, if that is considered normal there." Carlos raised his right hand toward her and wobbled it.

"Eh, kind of. Most people don't do that sort of math themselves, but we do teach most people the foundations needed to prepare for it. Mainly because those foundations are so useful for so many other things too, but still." He shrugged.

"Anyway, let's see what we just unlocked." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Yes!" Amber excitedly clapped her hands together and leaned forward over the book they were examining. She ignored the familiar title and warning embossed on the cover, flipped rapidly past the standard spells in the front section, and reverently turned the final page to reveal the beginning of what they had newly unlocked. She read the first page slowly, just taking in Archmage Sandaras's words without really thinking about them at first.

Carlos shuffled a little closer beside her and leaned forward to read along. Congratulations, young graduate—if you are in fact still young—on your achievement of deciphering the first layer of my spellbook's lock. I have organized my notes somewhat, but I do not care to spend the time to fully rewrite them. You will just have to deal with the terseness of writing that was originally intended for only myself to ever read.

Since you demonstrated the skill and understanding to unlock this section, I'm sure you will have no difficulty making sense of this anyway. Without further ado, the introduction transitioned directly into a list of abbreviated points. The first one could perhaps arguably be considered a header or label for the section's topic, but was not marked as such. Real obstacle to advancing spellcraft is the spell complexity barrier. Conceptualizer helps, but is still limited.

Some enchantments are more complex than any spell I know of. Guild secret technique? Or specific to enchantments? A pair of notes scribbled in the margin first speculated about forcing the Enchanters Guild to reveal their secret, then dismissed the possibility as futile. Incantation structure is unwieldy. Inefficient. Can I mitigate that somehow? Patterns help. Not enough. How do patterns help? Aha! Limit is on number of pieces. Patterns combine some pieces into one.

Need to find a more general way to combine pieces. Term for combined piece groups? Chunk? Don't like the sound of it. … Eh, I'm not teaching anyone. It'll do. What chunks can I make? One for each pattern, of course. Effect plus parameters? How to work with chunks? Giving each a name works for written planning. A few subitems under that note described some generalized chunk definitions, including function-like syntax for invoking an effect and more concise ways of expressing math operations.

Carlos noted that it did not include anything specifically for operating on lists, or for defining custom data structures or types. The final subitem declared, "Too many different chunks to put here. Need a dedicated section for them. See chunks list section." Made a spell I can write but can't learn. Chunks don't work with conceptualizer. If only I could modify it. Need a new variant of conceptualizer, but no room left. Hit my limit on soul structures years ago.

Could have conceptualizer purged and remake it, maybe? No soul shell left, though. No instant rejection of starting a new structure now?! What changed? TALK WITH NOBLES OR THE CROWN, OR FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF. Chunks made of smaller chunks? Combine chunks like they're the original pieces? Combine big chunks into even bigger chunks? How big can this get? There were a few more notes about various kinds of chunks and methods of organizing them, but nothing truly novel to Carlos.

After that came a list of many assorted "chunks" that Sandaras had devised, along with various ways to express them in written form. Margin notes scattered throughout the list griped about one or another expression being still too unwieldy, though a couple of them instead noted, "Too abbreviated. Forgot what it means." Carlos chuckled when he saw the first of those.

"Yeah, it's a fine line between cumbersomely wordy and inscrutably concise." Amber sat quietly for a long moment after she finished reading all the chunks, then let out a long sigh.

"Well, that was disappointing. I've looked up to Sandaras for so long, I was so excited to learn new and amazing things, but it's all inferior to what you've already taught me. It feels like the legends I heard are all just lies." Carlos wrapped his right arm around her and gave her a sideways hug.

"I understand why you feel that way, but keep in mind that Sandaras figured all this out without anyone teaching it to him. That makes this impressive as hell. Seriously. Any decent student can learn from a good teacher. Figuring out new things, new concepts, and especially new paradigms and fundamental ways of thinking, is so much harder that there's no comparison. Besides…" He ran his fingers along the edge of the next page, which refused to budge.

"There's still more to unlock. Honestly, I wasn't expecting even this much from someone without the kind of education I have, legend or not. And this is just the first and least-securely-locked section of his secret legacy? Now I'm getting excited to discover what else might be in here!" Amber hugged him back and nodded, but then sighed again and shook her head.

"I can't bear to focus on that right now; the disappointment is too fresh. Can we talk about something else?" Carlos shrugged and nodded.

"Sure. We can discuss Felton's news about the rebels beating Princess Brenelle two days ago, or the Crown's still-brewing response, or how we're still a couple days away from being able to fix royal guard gear without a stagnant mana pool to fuel our work, or how we're going to approach the wellspring, or I could think of another advance spell design principle to teach you, or…" He looked at her expression and his voice trailed off to nothing. Carlos smiled gently and squeezed her a little.

"Actually, never mind any of that. None of it is truly critically urgent, and I think we've earned a bit of a break. Don't you?" Amber rested her head on Carlos's shoulder and smiled. High Lord Trellion Corsa absent-mindedly went through each of his vault's security barriers in sequence, his mind focused on the concerns that brought him here. To hell with appearances and dignity, and with hiding a treasure in hopes of a surprise advantage someday!

If even the Crown's heir isn't safe, then I need all the power at hand that I can get to protect myself! He placed his hand on the innermost safe and fed it a bit of mana, and after a moment of deliberation, the safe's door opened. Lord Trellion started reaching in, then froze in utter shock. He blinked several times, and his jaw dropped open. What the–? Where is it? He looked at the status indicator lights beside the safe's door.

Aside from the single orange light for the door being currently open, they glowed steady green, indicating no attempt to break into the safe or tamper with it since the last time he had personally manually reset the wards. Of course, tampering could theoretically bypass detection, but the Enchanters Guild emphatically advertises that it shouldn't be possible with their best and most expensive safes, like this one.

He looked into the safe again, and even waved his hand through the spot where the Corsa Bracer should be. The bracer was missing, as if it had never been there. He took a deep, slow breath, then slowly closed the safe again and turned to walk back out. How did this happen? A dungeon core relic doesn't just vanish without a trace! … I'll have to report this to the Crown, but will they even be able to meaningfully respond before this mess is already over?