Chapter 187
‘Damn.’
Yoseph felt the magical signal cut off deep within the Imperial Palace and gritted his teeth. He missed them. A magical disruption had occurred. He could try magical tracking, but he wasn’t a monster like the Archmage, so it would take him a lot of time to do that.
But it wasn’t like he had no clues at all. He had seen the Crown Prince, looking suspicious, pass by.
Yoseph quietly hid and watched the Crown Prince’s disappearing back. He looked strangely pleased.
There was an hour left until midnight; he must have left to prepare for the ceremony. He waited until the Crown Prince had completely disappeared from sight.
‘He definitely came out of that wall.’
Yoseph glanced at the wall where the Crown Prince had emerged. It looked like an ordinary wall of the Imperial Palace. When he approached and touched it, he only felt the texture of a solid wall. He felt something with his fingertips and groped to identify it.
‘…As I thought.’
Ancient characters were inscribed there. It was ancient writing that an ordinary mage would have difficulty deciphering even after a week, let alone several tens of minutes, but he completed the annotation in an instant.
Having made his judgment, he deciphered the characters and simultaneously activated the magic in reverse. Then, the wall softened and sucked in his hand as it was. Yoseph stepped forward without resistance.
Having to take the risk himself to learn the enemy’s information was not to his liking. He frowned slightly. But it was right for him to move directly rather than involving other uncertain factors in such a matter that required security. And more than anything, even if this whole plan succeeded, it would be meaningless without her.
‘Lady Roina.’
What if he had noticed and acted a little faster? A bit of regret lingered, making his mouth bitter. But even the fastest regret is still late. Now was the time to move.
Yoseph looked at the changed scenery of the room. It was clearly a magically created space. The room was like a color-inverted version of the original Imperial Palace. That such a space was hidden in the Imperial Palace. Yoseph couldn’t suppress his astonishment and looked around the space.
‘It’s like a dungeon.’
A dungeon where ancient monsters were said to have hidden and created. It was a place where all sorts of bizarre things could happen, and it was the cradle of magic, but a place where an ordinary mage could never enter alone. Because they would obviously be devoured.
Scholars could only enter such dungeons after the Archmage had dealt with them. For nearly a thousand years, the Archmage had steadily eliminated such monsters, so now, such a living dungeon could not be found. Yoseph had only read about it in ancient literature.
He read the traces of magic hidden everywhere. He didn’t have the ability to read energy in real-time, but ancient symbols and languages were his specialty. Everything that looked like mere ornate patterns appeared to him as sentences moving with a single context.
He moved his lips and retraced the formula with his fingers, completing the calculation.
‘Something is hidden here.’
He placed his hand on the floor and activated the magic in reverse. Because the place was filled with magic, it was possible to make the inscribed magic work even with a small amount of mana.
However, Yoseph, who didn’t have much mana to begin with, felt a slight dizziness as if his energy was being sucked away, and he bit his lip. It was a gloomy and unpleasant energy. He felt a sensation as if it would swallow his life and twist his ego. But he gritted his teeth and endured it. Because now was not the time for him to collapse.
When he properly activated the magic, something like a giant egg of darkness suddenly rose up.
Yoseph, overwhelmed by a sense of exhaustion, collapsed onto the floor.
“Ha, what is this?”
He let out a hollow laugh. It was because the Archmage was sleeping inside the round darkness, which was intricately intertwined with black tentacles.
A cavity surrounded by darkness as if it were alive, a prison filled with cold air and dampness. The hidden side of the splendid Imperial Palace. That was where Roina was trapped. It was unknown since when the Imperial Palace had been such a space, but this place had become a bizarre place, constantly surrounded by dark magic.
She had come to find the captured Lutan, but she ended up getting caught as well. To make matters worse, she had shown such a humiliating appearance in front of Lutan. Even if she escaped this situation, would she be able to look him in the face properly? Everything had become uncertain.
But even so, Roina did not fall into despair. Because falling into despair was exactly what the Crown Prince wanted. A golden energy wriggled within her. She would do what she could do now.
‘I can escape.’
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