90 – basement
The stairs leading down to the basement were pitch black.
If the inside of the building where the lights were turned off was just a bit dark, this basement was close to real darkness where you couldn’t even see an inch ahead.
Even my legs were hard to see. Both legs were immersed in the deep darkness from the thigh up, and there was no visibility below them.
At least I was able to see the elbow and torso somehow, but when I stretched my arm forward, the lower part of the elbow disappeared into the darkness.
Obviously, the arm is properly attached, but the end of it is not confirmed, it was absolutely impossible except in a decent place.
Especially if you can still see the entrance to the cellar.
‘Did I use a special device?’
Considering that it hadn’t been long since he had started coming down the stairs, he was standing on a street where the light from the entrance of the stairs could dimly shine.
But no light came on.
Naturally, this phenomenon is impossible. I think it might have been a combination of light-absorbing magic and darkness-inducing magic.
Seeing that the entrance to the basement wasn’t enough to be thoroughly hidden, and that the stairs were treated with special magic, there must have been a reason.
And the reason must be related to the black blood monster.
There was no hesitation in my steps going down the stairs.
Even if you trip and break your ankle, it’s enough to get it repaired, and even if you roll down the stairs with a slight twist, it’ll come back to normal from down there.
It might be a bit unsightly, but what does it matter when there’s no one to show it to. It’s not like anyone would laugh at me when I fell face down and got stuck at the bottom of the stairs.
But Charlotte didn’t seem to think so.
“Why are you walking so foolishly, my lady?”
Charlotte snapped her fingers and a softly glowing white orb flew from behind my shoulder. I squinted my eyes at the bright light.
The orb that flew from behind my shoulder seemed to stay in front of me, then went up to my head and started to glow from there.
It took an instant for the sphere to dispel the thick darkness around me. The stairs lit up in an instant.
When I turned my head back, I saw Charlotte floating on either side of an orb of light. Her long silver hair that reached her waist shone brilliantly as if it had been bathed in moonlight.
Since the sphere of light was floating above my head, it would have been as if it were right in front of Charlotte’s eyes, but there was no ugly frown on her face.
“I don’t care about this darkness at all. But, don’t you?”
“I didn’t have to do this. Even if I stumbled and fell anyway, I’d be able to recover from down there.”
“Did you mean to just watch me get hurt?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be?”
At my words, Charlotte made a strange expression for a moment. On top of that strange expression, lights shining from both sides overlapped.
The strange expression soon returned to its usual state.
“It’s quite good, my lady. I’ll give you praise.”
Charlotte’s voice sounded very affectionate, but from my point of view, she was simply telling the truth.
The moment I get the feeling that I’m about to roll down the stairs, Charlotte will use illusion chain magic or telekinesis to support me.
I turned to the bottom of the stairs again. Even though spheres of light floated up and brightly illuminated the surroundings, this place was not completely illuminated.
Sixteen stairs. It was the limit that the sphere could reveal.
It’s the magic Charlotte uses that can light up the entire huge Colosseum with a light source the size of a fingernail, but there’s definitely something here—
“It’s a magical wall.”
“What?”
My head jerked at the words Charlotte had uttered. It was from the thought that I had read my mind again.
The person who actually read my mind was slowly sweeping down the wall with his index and middle fingers as if that was nothing.
There was nothing on the black gloves. Charlotte, who had been touching the end as if to analyze it, opened her mouth again.
“You didn’t wonder. That’s why I’m just giving you an answer. It’s far worse than the Royal Wizards, but it seems like you’ve brought a wizard with a fairly high level for a criminal organization like this.”
“I’m sure I thought it to myself, but how did you know?”
“What do you think?”
Charlotte smiled at me. Realizing that I had no intention of answering, I calmly went down the stairs again. Footsteps with a slight delay followed.
There were exactly 80 steps. It was quite deep for a normal basement, but it wasn’t enough to hide the act of dealing with a deadly substance called a black blooded monster.
At this depth, when an event does occur, the aftermath will immediately spread to the ground above.
As they began to attack in earnest, the continent was polluted all over the continent, so gradually even ordinary adventurers realized the toxicity of black blood monsters.
So, the moment something suspicious appeared on the surface, there was a high possibility that anyone would notice it at once. Because the risk is enormous.
this was one of two things. Either you’re overconfident in your skills, or you’re an idiot who doesn’t even fully grasp the dangers of what you’re dealing with.
Either way it didn’t matter. He’s the one who should be killed anyway.
I was about to stop for a moment at the rising discomfort, but Charlotte stepped forward. The magic circle drawn on his palm was shining.
“From here on out, I’ll take the lead, dear.”
“Are you Charlotte?”
“Didn’t you dare to use magic in front of me?
Saying that, Charlotte held the palm of her hand with the glowing magic circle on the wall. Blue light burst from the palms that touched the wall.
Strange patterns floated in the air.
The light bursting from the palm drew all sorts of geometric patterns in the air. I checked the pattern. First of all, it wasn’t a specific language, it just seemed like a kind of magic circle.
Following the pattern drawn by the light, the darkness lifted little by little. Rather than simply illuminating the surroundings with light, it felt as if the source of the darkness was being driven away.
The patterns drawn by the light gradually faded. At the same time, the dark place that seemed to swallow everything became brighter.
When Charlotte withdrew the blue light again, the place we were in was back to a plain, slightly dark basement.
From the stairs to the farthest there was a straight hallway, at the end of which was a single wooden door.
I just vaguely realized what Charlotte had done.
‘It looks like the magic circle drawn here has been completely dismantled.’
Dissolving magic was an action completely different from the concept of breaking or blocking magic in general.
If the other method was nothing more than destroying or destroying a complicated device, dismantling magic was disassembling each and every part of the device.
Since the essential requirement for a magic circle is a high-level arithmetic expression, it is to rewind the arithmetic expression in reverse order. It sounds easy at first glance, but the reality is completely different.
I can assure you that Charlotte is the only person in the entire continent who can dismantle the magic circle that interferes with the entire space without any specific entity, even if it is simple magic.
It meant that he could figure out the size of the magic circle just by looking at it, figure out where and how to intervene, perfectly reproduce the way the magic circle was drawn, and rewind the magic technique.
As Charlotte said, the human who installed this magic circle seemed to be a very skilled wizard, but the opponent was really bad.
‘Are the walls just plain wooden walls?’
The entrance to the darkened cellar was normal itself. The walls and floor were made of ordinary wooden planks, and that was it.
Looking at this absurdly clumsy appearance, absurd emotions rose before anger.
“I didn’t prepare as clumsily as you thought.”
A sphere of light rose again around Charlotte.
This time it was much smaller than the one I made for the stairs, but it lit up the hallway farther out.
“The darkness that covered this hallway, it can be seen that it also served as a kind of defensive magic. Doesn’t the range you can see in the darkness get narrower? Perhaps if you had gone down a little further, you would have been engulfed by that darkness. “
“That was defensive magic? Isn’t it just for distraction?”
“With a normal light source, he wouldn’t have been able to even measure his own feet. It was a magic that was quite acceptable for a child’s prank.”
If that Charlotte were to say something like that, it would probably be impossible for even a moderate wizard to penetrate.
If what was enveloping this place was that powerful magic, I could understand what it looked like after it was removed.
Few people would be able to destroy it, so they probably didn’t feel the need to do anything else.
“But, nothing special.”
Except for the woman in front of me.
Charlotte, who smashed the wooden door to powder with a roar with a single gesture, stepped forward without hesitation.
