Holding onto Ri’s hand, Dyon flashed into the castle.
Ri looked around stunned. “We’re… this is the castle… How?…”
Suddenly, Ri blushed, realizing she was holding onto Dyon’s hand too tightly and went to let go. But, Dyon’s grip was firm.
“Don’t let go. I’m not sure what’ll happen if you’re not connected to me. Remember, the words in the sky are the only reason we can be here… if the elders can’t handle it, I don’t want to think about what would happen to you if you let go.”
Ri froze. Dyon was right. But, she felt an odd feeling holding onto his hand like this. But, that feeling disappeared when she heard the next thing Dyon said.
“Your hand is to dainty and small,” Dyon kneaded it playfully, “so soft. Bringing you along is definitely worth it.”
Ri rolled her eyes, but still didn’t dare let go of Dyon’s hand. Instead, she flicked his forehead with her other one. Why couldn’t he be serious for once? He had completely overcorrected from that angsty teen he was not long ago.
“Focus you idiot! What are we doing here?”
Dyon got a serious expression on his face.
“At first, I wanted to leave my spatial ring with you in case anything bad happened where we’re going… but you insisted on coming… and I don’t know if the ring will be able to handle not being connected to me.”
Ri looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
Dyon shrugged leisurely. “Elder Flyleaf told me that because the Elves are so good at spatial magic, they took everything importance with them… so, wouldn’t that mean that your ‘dead kings valley’ is somewhere around here? Where else could it be?”
Ri was stunned. “You want to enter that death trap? And you wanted to do it alone?! What’s wrong with you! Do you even know anything about it?!”
Ri only got more anger when she noticed Dyon was smiling gently at her. 𝘪.𝘤𝑜𝘮
“UGH! You’re so reckless! There’s only one place in this city that has information about that place. And, it’s not even this castle. If you were hoping to find out something about it here, you’re out of luck. And considering how exclusive the place I’m talking about is, it’s unlikely you’ve been there,” Ri pulled on Dyon’s hand as she stormed forward, “I can’t believe you!”
Dyon chuckled. He knew exactly what place Ri was talking about. But he didn’t tell her that, he was having a fun time watching how concerned she was. She truly did make being a tsundere adorable.
‘Is tsundere even the proper characterization for this woman? She’s not hiding the fact she cares. She’s just being angry while she cares… what do you even call that… I got it!’
“Ri, my little feu glace, don’t be so angry!”
Ri continued storming through the castle, going up stairs, down corridors, and through secret rooms. Everything was like a maze, yet, Ri never hesitated in her movements.
Finally, she stopped in front of an unassuming door. “What the hell does feu glace mean?”
Dyon smiled. “It means fire ice in French, you like it?”
Ri looked at Dyon confused. “Why are you calling me that?”
“Obviously because you’re a great combination of the two,” Dyon said grinning.
Ri sighed, too tired to deal with Dyon’s antics. She didn’t know what ‘French’ was, but she assumed by the context that it was a language of some sort.
“Beyond this door is a long corridor. It looks simple, but if anyone other than me or the princess touched this door, they would die. You coming here alone was suicide,” Ri flicked Dyon’s forehead, “think before you act next time.”
Dyon chuckled. He of course knew things wouldn’t be so simple, but, before Ri forced him to take her with him, he had already prepared numerous counter measures… of which included a small-scale teleportation array. At his current level, Dyon could create a teleportation array that spanned a 10km radius. Although that was nowhere near the level of the array he used to come to the Elvin Kingdom and negligible considering the sheer size of the planet, it was more than enough to teleport from one side of a door to another. What would defenses mean to him then?
All Dyon had to do was to sense whether or not the door had any protections against said teleportation, then he’d be good to go. He could already tell that it didn’t, so he wouldn’t have even had to use his second plan.
If the door had happened to have protections against teleportation, though, Dyon would have simply created array puppets to trigger the doors mechanism again and again until they were weak enough for him to pierce through. It was a crude plan… but effective regardless.
Because of his past of being tricked by those in disguise, namely Chenglei and his attempt to kill Dyon in the legacy world, Dyon spent a lot more time studying disguising techniques corresponding to array alchemy. It was nothing too difficult actually.
But, because of his relatively low level in array alchemy, he could only manipulate how light reflected off of things to trick those watching. Essentially, he could make himself, inanimate objects, or anyone else, look like a completely different person or thing for an extended period of time. Then, from afar, he could place arrays within them to manipulate their movements.
Using these techniques, tricking a security system into tripping itself was easy. He didn’t even have to go the extra step of making the object look human. All he needed to do was manipulate the movement of a humanoid array… which could easily be accomplished by changing the form of a defensive array.
Despite all of that preparation, Dyon ended up not needing to use it. But, he knew Ri knew he was smarter than what she was saying, so, he let it slide.
“Ladies first,” Dyon grinned.
Ri rolled her eyes, reaching for the door.
To Ri’s touched, a slight glow appeared on the surface of the door, before it pushed in.
𝑖𝘦.𝑐𝘰𝘮