“What, hey! Where are you going!”
His companion—no, it was like dogs were barking at him, but Wayne paid no attention to them. He headed towards the corner of the magical tower where a desk was.
Slam!
He angrily flipped the desk over. Perhaps his extreme rage was the main factor, but although Wayne’s physical strength was weak as a mage who rarely exercised in addition to his old age, the desk fell easily. There was a small pillar where the desk used to be and revealed a hidden space. Walwiss’ eyes twitched when he saw this and thought, ‘What is he planning to do again?’
The pillar was a device that controlled the tower’s defense system. It also controlled the magic interference system that was widely spread out around the magical tower.
“What are you planning!” one of the mages who was part of the coup shouted.
Wayne shook his head, and his companions looked at him in horror. But it couldn’t be helped. His glazed, wide eyes indicated that Wayne was no longer sane.
“Give up,” Walwiss told him.
“Even if the magical tower has a defense system, it’s not a solution to everything. It’s not like you have any more reinforcements. What do you plan to do with your small force? Stop making more sacrifices, and…”
“Shut up!” Wayne shouted. Walwiss gave up on persuading him. It wasn’t because he was scared. He became certain that no amount of talking would be able to persuade Wayne.
“Not a solution? Even if it’s not a proper solution, there’s something that is powerful enough!”
“Are you talking about the final defense system?” Walwiss couldn’t help but click his tongue. “So, how are you going to activate it? It’s not a power granted to the likes of you guys. And I have no intention of activating that power.”
All mages who could participate in the tower’s top conference were able to control the defense system. However, only the head of the magical tower was able to control the final defense system.
Wayne made an almost lunatic smile. “Stop fooling yourself! Then, tell me! How do I know about this?!”
Wayne began to operate the device. He placed his hand on the gear’s handles and poured in a unique-looking mana pattern; it was a password.
“It’s useless—!” Walwiss’ eyes opened wide. Everyone else did the same. With shocked faces, they all looked at the small pillar that shot up from the center of the limiting device. It was the device that could activate the final defense system.
“Y-You, how could you—!”
“You are the one who taught me!”
“What nonsense! When did I—!”
“You taught me!”
Walwiss closed his mouth and listened.
“It’s all your fault! It’s your fault that a coup happened at the magical tower and the situation reached this point! Everything that happened and will happen is all your fauuult!”
Wayne lifted his fist high and slammed the activation device down.
Wiiiiiing!
An ominous mana began to flow inside the magical tower.
* * *
‘Is it about time to make my escape?’ Orland surveyed his surroundings. He was locked inside the tower’s conference room, and he saw other people in the same situation as him. Unlike those locked inside the basement prison, they were all mages who held high positions and authority in the magical tower. The coup forces had locked them up separately.
Unlike the basement prison, the conference room didn’t have a power that restricted magic. The activated defense system would also affect the conference room, but its power wasn’t anything that the people in this room couldn’t deal with. Yet, the cuffs on their limbs restricted their freedom. They were all wearing similar cuffs to the one that Walwiss was wearing; it was a type of artifact specially crafted to restrain mages.
The artifact didn’t restrict the mage’s magic. It simply exploded as soon as the mage tried to use even a little bit of mana. Thus, no matter how skilled they were as mages, they couldn’t act rashly. It was the same for Orland. He quietly observed his surroundings and waited for the right moment. He wondered how much time had passed. A door opened, and one person came in. He heard a bit of commotion from behind the door. The troops guarding the mages chatted with the person who came in, and they all talked for a bit. Then, many of them stormed out of the conference room.
Orland clenched his fist. ‘He came!’ He was sure that Zich had come in person. That meant Orland also had to move soon.
‘Not right now though!’ Orland glanced at the entrance and monitored the situation. The number of guards had decreased significantly; they probably used up many of their forces to deal with the situation. Just like that, some time passed by.
‘Okay, should I go out now?’ There were five keys for the mages’ cuffs. Orland had already copied all of them and placed them inside the conference room beforehand. Furthermore, he had managed to grab them thanks to the commotion from before. While escaping from the guards’ eyes, he freed his hands from his cuffs.
‘I did it!’ He curled up his body to hide the fact that he had taken off his cuff and incanted a spell secretly.
Thud!
Orland got up. Everyone’s eyes shot towards him, and the guards around him took out their swords. But it was too late.
Booooom!
All the guards froze into ice simultaneously.
“Y-You!” Orland saw other mages looking at him in surprise. Their hopeful eyes made Orland laugh inside his heart.
‘Yes! This is it!’ There was nothing more satisfying than seeing gazes that admired him. However, Orland hid his inner thoughts and released them from their cuffs.
“I will explain later. Let’s focus on fixing our current problem for now.”
The mages nodded. At this moment, Orland was the natural leader. He took out the staffs that he had hidden with the keys and gave them to the other mages; the staffs were more luxurious than the ones that Zich had handed out to the people inside the prison.
“Elena!”
Elena was locked up with him. Feeling down due to the guilt she felt for partly causing this whole commotion, Elena raised her head.
“You should wait here! People who are going to protect you are coming soon!”
After he saw Elena nod, Orland led the mages out of the meeting room. If he defeated the coup with the mages he had right now and framed Walwiss for instigating the coup, Orland’s plan would finally be successful. However, everything didn’t go according to plan. A completely unexpected dilemma suddenly appeared in front of him.
“This is…!”
An enormous amount of energy surrounded the magical tower. Orland and the other magicians knew what it was, so their faces became stiff.
“Dwayne!” A mage next to him shouted, “The final defense system has been activated!”
* * *
The magic interference effect in the magical tower completely disappeared. However, the people who were blocking the coup were not happy at all, because an even more serious threat had appeared in front of them.
“Get down!” Alben shouted, and all the mages on the stairs immediately got down to the floor.
Swish!
Sharp ice spike flew above them and disappeared. The magicians slowly raised their heads again, and Alben’s sharp voice struck against their ears.
“The final defense system has been activated! Use all your magic on defending yourselves!”
All the magicians began raising their staffs and defending themselves. Magic also came flying towards Zich and his companions. As Zich swung Windur, all the magic that came flying towards him were split in two.
Lyla asked, “Is this the final defense system?”
“Yep.” Zich nodded at Lyla’s question. “Its abilities are pretty simple. When the final defense system is activated, a huge mana storm sweeps into the magical tower, and various magic attacks come out.”
Slice!
Zich continued to talk while cutting all the rocks that came flying towards him. “The type of magic, strength, and location that come out from the tower are all random. But even then, there’s a limit; magic greater than a certain amount of magnitude and power won’t come out of the tower.”
“Even this is dangerous enough!” Lyla shouted as she intercepted a magic that came flying towards her.
Hans asked, “Sir, I thought this could only be activated by the head of the magical tower. Has the head been defeated by the coup?”
“That’s probably not it.” Lyla replied to Hans’ question, and then, she glared at Zich. “It’s obvious that he played a part in this.”
Zich replied shamelessly as if he did nothing wrong, “But I had no choice; if I wanted to trick Wayne into thinking that Walwiss was the mastermind behind this coup, I needed to give him some kind of evidence.”
Hans and Snoc carefully scanned their surroundings to make sure that no one was listening to their conversation. Fortunately, the other magicians were too busy blocking all the magic that was flying towards them, so no one was paying any attention to Zich’s words.
Lyla said, “So the evidence you gave him was how to activate this system?”
“I told him the password, to be exact. I secretly wrote the password in one of the codes that Orland sent to Wayne and his group. I merely wrote down the mana pattern but that was enough. Since they are all qualified to attend the top mages conference, they all knew what the password signified.”
Zich wielded Windur and crushed all the magic that was flying towards the magicians behind him. “Even though Orland thinks that he made Wayne and his group believe that Walwiss was their leader by his own skills and efforts, the decisive reason why they believe that is because of the password I gave them. Since they have the authority to approach the magical tower’s defense system, they must have secretly checked if the password was real.”
“And they completely fell into your trap.”
“Yep, precisely.”
“I have a rough idea of how you found out the password for the final defense system so I won’t ask you about that, but did you really hand over the password to Wayne and his group for just that reason?’
“Of course. I’m a kind person. I haven’t thought for a second that Orland might get frazzled and shocked if the final defense system was activated without his knowledge.”
“Yeah, right!” Lyla began nullifying one of the magic flying towards her again and kicked Zich’s shin. “Then you shouldn’t have brought other people here!”
“That’s why I only brought a fraction of people outside the dungeon. Don’t worry. All of the people here are strong enough to endure the defense system here. If we help them, we’ll all be able to get to our destination.”
“And where’s that?”
Zich pointed his fingers up and said, “The conference room.”
* * *
Even though Orland had confidently left the conference room, his hopeful heart was suddenly crushed by the enormous mana that shook the tower.
Orland shouted to the mages near him, “Damn it! That Walwiss Dwayne! He really activated the final defense system! Even though his underlings are still inside the magical tower!”
“Is he in his right mind!” One mage despaired as he saw the coup members, who tried to block them from coming out, get destroyed by the magic from the tower’s final defense system.
Orland frantically tried to address the situation. He was busy blocking all the magic that came flying towards him, but he also could not understand why the final defense system had been activated.
‘Perhaps, did father hand over the password to Wayne and his group?’
This was the only explanation, but Orland could not believe it. His father was not the type to hand over such important information to another person.
‘Was I wrong about him?’
However, there was no leisure for him to think more about this.
“Dwayne! Let’s quickly go back to the conference room for now! If we continue to move forward like this, it’ll be the same as trying to complete a suicide mission! You also know that the final defense system’s power in the top floors is incomparably stronger than the lower floors, right?”
Orland gritted his teeth. He racked his brain to find the best solution, but he did not take too long to make a decision. “…Let’s withdraw for now.”
They hadn’t moved very far from the conference yet; it was possibly for all of them to safely go back in. Moreover, the conference room was one of the very few places that the final defense system’s magic didn’t reach. They all began to withdraw back into the conference room. Fortunately, they were all high level mages, so while some were injured, no one died. Orland was about to go back into the conference room when—
“You’ve also arrived, Mr. Dwayne.” Zich waved his hand and welcomed him inside.