Ch.90Underground

The staircase leading to the basement was darkness itself.

If the interior of the building with its lights off was merely “quite dim,” this basement approached true darkness where one couldn’t see even an inch ahead.

It was difficult to even see my own legs. My thighs were submerged in deep darkness, and everything below was completely invisible.

I could somehow make out my elbows and torso, but when I stretched my arms forward, everything below my elbows disappeared into the darkness.

Having my arms clearly attached yet being unable to see their ends was something impossible except in the most unusual places.

Especially when the basement entrance was still visible.

‘Did they install some special device?’

Considering I had just started descending the stairs, I should have been close enough to the entrance for some faint light to reach me.

Yet no light penetrated here at all.

This phenomenon was naturally impossible. I suspected they had layered magic that absorbs light with magic that summons darkness.

Not only had they thoroughly hidden the basement entrance, but they’d also applied special magical treatment to the stairs. There must be a reason for such measures.

And that reason must be connected to the Black Blood Demons.

There was no hesitation in my steps as I descended the stairs.

If I misstepped and shattered my ankle, I could just heal it. Even if I slipped badly and tumbled down the stairs, I’d recover at the bottom.

It might look undignified, but who cared when there was no one to see? No one would laugh at me sprawled at the bottom of the stairs.

But Charlotte apparently didn’t share my thinking.

“Why are you walking so recklessly, my dear?”

Charlotte snapped her fingers, and a softly glowing white sphere flew from behind my shoulder. I narrowed my eyes at its bright light.

The sphere that had flown from behind my shoulder hovered in front of me for a moment, then rose above my head and began to emit light.

The sphere instantly drove away the thick darkness surrounding me. The staircase brightened in an instant.

When I turned my head, I saw Charlotte with spheres of light floating on either side of her. Her long silver hair, reaching down to her waist, shone brilliantly as if bathed in moonlight.

Despite having the light sphere right in front of her eyes, her face showed no sign of discomfort or frowning.

“I care not for this mere darkness. But you are different, are you not?”

“You didn’t need to do this. Even if I slipped and fell, I’d recover at the bottom.”

“Are you suggesting I should simply watch as you injure yourself?”

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

At my words, Charlotte briefly made a peculiar expression. The light from both sides overlapped on that strange expression.

Her peculiar look soon returned to her usual demeanor.

“Well done, my dear. I shall commend you.”

Charlotte’s voice sounded incredibly affectionate, but from my perspective, I had merely stated a fact.

The moment I showed any sign of tumbling down the stairs, Charlotte would use her phantom chain magic or telekinesis to support my body.

I turned back toward the lower part of the staircase. Despite the sphere of light floating around and brightly illuminating the surroundings, this place wasn’t completely lit.

Sixteen steps. That was the limit of what the sphere could illuminate.

Charlotte’s magic could light up an entire colosseum with a light source no bigger than a pinky nail, yet here there was clearly something—

“The walls are magically treated.”

“What?”

My head whipped around at Charlotte’s words. I wondered if she had read my mind again.

The person who had indeed read my mind was casually running her index and middle fingers down the wall as if it were nothing.

Nothing rubbed off on her black gloves. After examining the tips as if analyzing them, Charlotte spoke again.

“Were you not curious? I merely provided an answer. Though far inferior to the Royal Mage Corps, they seem to have employed a fairly competent mage for a criminal organization.”

“I was only thinking to myself. How did you know?”

“What do you think?”

Charlotte smiled at me. Realizing she had no intention of answering, I quietly continued down the stairs. Footsteps followed behind me after a slight delay.

There were exactly 80 steps. Quite deep for an ordinary basement, but woefully inadequate for concealing activities involving the lethal substance known as Black Blood Demon.

A depth like this meant that if an incident occurred, the effects would immediately spread to the ground above.

As these creatures began to actively spread, contaminating various parts of the continent, even ordinary adventurers were starting to recognize the toxicity of Black Blood Demons.

So the moment anything suspicious became apparent, anyone would immediately notice. The danger was immense.

This meant one of two things: either they were overconfident in their abilities, or they were fools who didn’t properly understand the danger of what they were handling.

Either way, it didn’t matter. They were people who needed to be killed regardless.

As I paused briefly due to the rising unpleasantness, Charlotte stepped forward. A magic circle drawn on her palm was glowing.

“From here on, I shall take the lead, my dear.”

“You, Charlotte?”

“They dared to display magical tricks before me. So, I must make them understand the difference with their entire being.”

Saying this, Charlotte brought her palm with the glowing magic circle to the wall. Blue light burst from her palm as it touched the wall.

Strange patterns appeared in the air.

The light bursting from her palm drew all sorts of geometric patterns in the air. I examined them. They weren’t any specific language, just some kind of magic circle.

Following the patterns drawn by the light, the darkness gradually receded. Rather than simply illuminating the surroundings with light, it felt as if she was driving away the very source of darkness.

The patterns drawn by the light slowly faded. Simultaneously, the place that had been dark enough to swallow everything became much brighter.

When Charlotte withdrew the blue light, our location had returned to an ordinary basement, just a bit dim.

A corridor extended in a straight line from the stairs, with a wooden door at the end.

I vaguely understood what Charlotte had just done.

‘It seems she completely dismantled the magic circle drawn here.’

Magic dismantling was fundamentally different in its operating principle from the concepts of breaking or blocking magic.

While other methods merely destroyed or broke complex mechanisms, magic dismantling was like taking apart each component of the device.

Since magic circles essentially require complex calculation formulas, dismantling reverses those formulas. It might sound simple, but the reality was entirely different.

Simple magic might be one thing, but I could guarantee that across the entire continent, only Charlotte could dismantle a magic circle that interfered with an entire space without having any specific physical form.

It meant she had assessed the scale of the magic circle just by looking at it, determined how and where to interfere, and perfectly recreated the method used to draw the magic circle to reverse the magical formula.

As Charlotte said, the person who installed this magic circle seemed to be quite a skilled mage, but they faced too formidable an opponent.

‘Are the walls just ordinary wooden walls?’

The entrance to the basement, now cleared of darkness, was utterly ordinary. The walls and floor were made of common wooden planks, and that was all.

Seeing this ridiculously amateurish setup, I felt bewilderment rising before anger.

“They were not as amateurish as you think.”

Spheres of light rose around Charlotte again.

These were much smaller than the ones she had created on the stairs, but they illuminated the corridor much farther.

“The darkness laid in this corridor also served as a defensive magic. Did you not notice how the visible range in the darkness narrowed as you went deeper? Had you descended just a bit further, you would have been consumed by that darkness.”

“That was defensive magic? Not just for distraction?”

“With ordinary light sources, one wouldn’t even be able to gauge where their feet were. For a child’s prank, it was quite a respectable magic.”

If even Charlotte said that, then probably no ordinary mage could have broken through it.

If the magic surrounding this place was that powerful, then the appearance after it was removed made sense.

Since almost no one could break through it, they probably didn’t feel the need for additional defenses.

“However, there is nothing special here.”

Except for the woman before my eyes.

With a single gesture, Charlotte shattered the wooden door into something close to dust with a thunderous sound and stepped forward without hesitation.