Chương 419: Exploring the Castle

Our first steps into the castle were blessedly silent. No monsters leapt out at us as we strode into the castle. That being said, while we were free of monsters, I noticed several other oddities about the castle as we moved forward.

"Doesn't this place seem quite a bit bigger on the inside than the outside?" I asked.

"Even though it's not quite as extreme as the spatial fair we saw last time we were in the Market, the designers of this building still used a lot of spatial magic. This corridor is much longer than the building, and I can't see the end yet." The other three nodded.

"Not only is the length of this hallway greater than the length of the building, but we should have passed through another room by now," said Felix.

"From the outside of the castle, I could see a classroom window located pretty close to here. There were desks and books inside. I was actually pretty hopeful that a few of the books might have some useful tips for Anise. However, we should have reached the classroom several minutes ago - and I haven't seen any sign of it. The corridor isn't curved, either. I suspect the castle might be dozens of times larger on the inside compared to the outside." He grinned.

"It does mean we need to search a lot more, but it also means the castle could contain more useful stuff. At first, I thought this place would mostly be tailored to Anise's needs, but if all four of us can find something useful, that would be for the best."

"If we can just find better bodies to use, that would be good enough for me," said Sallia.

"I would love to have some more time in the Market." I nodded. If we could just extend the time we could stay in the Market by a few years, we would have far more development time before we reincarnated again. As we chatted about our plans, the corridor abruptly ended. I didn't see a room in front of us - instead, it was more like between one step and the next, the hallway suddenly disappeared and we teleported into another room.

I was so startled that I took a step back - which caused me to return to the hallway we had just been in. Odd. I eyed my friends, and only after I confirmed that we were unharmed and we could return anytime we wanted to was I willing to continue moving forward. I stepped back through the spatial distortion, and ended up in a brightly lit room. On the wall directly in front of us was a long row of larger-than-life paintings.

The wall of paintings stretched into the distance, as if this entire room were dedicated to housing this absurdly large wall of paintings. The eyes of each painting followed me as I moved through the room, giving the entire room a subtly unnerving feeling. Just below each painting, there was a large golden plaque.

"It looks like they're former headmasters of this academy," said Anise, as she inspected one of the plaques." Each one has a specific year underneath, although I don't know what calendar system is being used here." I examined a plaque of my own, and confirmed that Anise was right. Every single painting had two different dates written on them. The closest painting had a picture of a pretty young woman with emerald green hair and a vivid smile. Its plaque read: Headmaster Triesta.

Year 423, 512 (Sel-Veridian calendar of Mages) to year 423, 514 (Sel-Veridian calendar of Mages).

"The headmaster in that picture only served for two years. I wonder why she stepped down so quickly," said Felix. He scanned several other plaques, before he frowned.

"In fact, no headmaster seems to have served longer than five years - pretty odd, considering the fact that people are effectively Immortal in the Market. At first, I thought maybe headmasters served for a few years, before leaving for reincarnation and returning in a century or two. But I don't see any repeat headmasters. Bizarre."

"Some sort of school tradition, maybe?" said Sallia.

"The School might have some kind of policy about headmasters only serving once. It could be an odd tradition, rather than a clue about the nature of this place. It could also be tied to the nature of transmigration itself. As transmigrators, we seem to have a lot of incentive to reincarnate frequently. Or, well… that would be true if we weren't limited by number of lives, at least."

"Maybe," I said, although I felt a bit doubtful of Sallia's explanation. While headmasters serving only once, and only for a few years, might serve as some kind of tradition, or some hint about the nature of long-term stays in the Market, I felt there might be something more to it. I did a quick check of the ridiculously long wall, and confirmed that there were hundreds of paintings on the wall - and not a single headmaster had served for longer than five years or repeated their stint as headmaster.

However, I also realized that I might be jumping at shadows. We just didn't have enough information right now. There was so much 'common sense' information about the Market that had been lost when the Market collapsed. We had no idea what assumptions we were making that might be incorrect or faulty, and no old transmigrators to consult. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. We shrugged it off, and continued deeper into the castle.

I used my soul-sight to keep an eye on our surroundings, but at least until we exited the hallway of headmasters, I didn't see anything. When we stepped into the next hallway was when I spotted our first monsters. The third hallway was filled with decorations. Banners, paintings, and old weapons and artifacts lined the walls, almost as if this hallway was meant to serve as a museum instead of a place for people to move through.

There were several wands, staves, gems, and other unusual objects that I originally thought might be Market items - but sadly, they turned out to be ordinary decorative objects. However, at the end of the hall, I saw two suits of armor standing guard in front of a doorway. Unlike the first hallway we had walked through, this hallway at least had a clear exit - but it was guarded. These suits of armor had souls - in other words, they were monsters in disguise.

However, to my surprise, they didn't seem to have noticed us yet, even though the four of us had already stepped into the hall. They simply stood there. <Those are alive, > I said, sending images of what I was looking at to my friends. <Got it. Fortitude estimate? > <Around grade 15 or 16. The spiders from the spatial fair had slightly lower stats, but there were also a lot more of them. Perhaps this area is more focused on elite monsters? > I said. <Two monsters with around Grade 16 in stats…

I think I could handle one of them for a while, with all of my physical boosts, > said Sallia. <Now that our base stats are way higher, I don't have such a huge difference in stats to contend with. I should be able to handle one of them during a fight, although I might need help to deal with unexpected abilities or threats. > <I can probably blast one of the others with an {Empowered Spell} tossed onto an extinguish, > I said, after some thought. <It might be a bit of a waste to use an {Empowered Spell}, though.

> <Save it for now. Only use it if it's an emergency, > said Felix. <I have an idea. Miria, you got the ability to instinctively make and detect traps from that first monster we killed, right? These monsters don't seem to have noticed us yet, and I also have some knowledge of traps. They weren't my main focus last world, but I still dabbled a bit in the subject. I thin we should put that knowledge to use.

> Felix spent a few minutes explaining his idea to me, while I anxiously watched the monsters out of the corner of my eye - but to my relief, the monsters didn't respond to us, even as we stood in the corner of the hallway, plotting. It was as if they had some kind of specific requirement needed to awaken them, and that requirement hadn't been met. Since the monsters weren't respond to us, the four of us became increasingly relaxed as we planned.

After we finalized our plans, Felix used an hour and a half to string together some basic materials in his {Dimensional Factory}. By the end of his work, he had created four land mines that were built from a mixture of essence, duct tape, and hopes and dreams. The six mines were ugly things, and Felix was nearly out of essence - but the landmines would pack a solid punch.

Due to Felix's essence modifications, the land mines didn't have any impact at all on organic matter - but they had an exponentially boosted impact on metal. Which was perfect, because as far as we could tell, the two suits of armor guarding the hallway had no organic components at all. They were haunted suits of armor. After Felix finished making the traps, I quickly buried the six landmines in close proximity to each other, right at the end of the hallway.

The land mines would set each other off - but that was the goal. We wanted to make sure the statues took as much damage as possible the moment they stepped on the land mines. It took us nearly an hour to set up. After that, Anise and I both bombarded the two suits of armor with a few weak extinguishes and fireballs. The statues finally 'woke up' and charged us… only to step on the bombs.

I was prepared for the haunted suits of armor to somehow survive - in fact, I had explicitly planned a follow-up barrage of extinguishes, and Sallia had boosted herself to limit using her spells before the fight started. However, none of that proved needed, because the moment the two suits of armor stepped onto the land mines, a blast of essence, force, and powder ripped through the air. A moment later, the two statues turned into splinters of metal. A moment later, I got a System notification.

Slaughter: Kill a Forsaken Statue for the first time. Achievement +800 The land mines had done so much damage that I didn't even get an ability from the monsters - because extinguish had barely played a role in the battle. The lack of a new skill was disappointing, but it wasn't that big of a deal. I grinned. It was nice to have an easy battle for once. My Achievement increased from 125, 724. 37 to 126, 524. 37, and we stepped past the ruined statues and into the room they had been guarding.