Exploring the castle, each went their own way. Lucas and Asta explored the library as Malek looked for a treasure room. As the duo checked out the library, they found quite a few books that contained basic information on spells and magic.
"These are mostly worthless. Was this castle meant to function as a school or something?", Asta questioned out loud. Lucas, who had the same thought, nodded.
"I think this is just to fill up the library. It's impressive from afar, so visiting mages would be impressed, even if the contents are terrible."
"What a waste," Asta didn't bother taking any more books in his hands as the titles on the covers displayed their boring subjects. There was no point since he already knew all the things here. Skipping some rows, he started to look if there were some harder sections before stumbling on a large door.
"Lucas? Can I use your help for a minute?"
Lucas was flipping through the pages of a book that looked interesting, but the title was way more grandiose than the contents, making him throw it aside. "Sure, what's the problem?"
Once Lucas saw the large doors, he knew something precious had to be situated inside. Seeing the complex arrays on the doors, Lucas didn't even bother thinking about how to disable them.
"Is going through the wall an option?", was his first thought. Instead of tackling this hurdle head-on, he looked for another solution.
"No. For once, I have to complement whoever made this. This is a great design with plenty of fallbacks, I can only call it incredible," Asta's tone of voice wasn't excited, as one would expect. He was too focussed on understanding what was in front of him.
Hearing Asta give praise to someone else, he knew whatever is behind the door had to have been valuable. "So what do you need me for? I don't understand any of this."
"I am well aware of your incompetence on the field of arrays."
"You didn't have to say it like that, you know? I assume you'll need my magic?"
"Yes. I'd rather not let elemental magic stain my body. If I'm correct, an alarm will go off if we try to force it open."
Lucas needed a second to think things through. "How far?", instead of trying to dissect the array, Lucas was once again seeing if there was an easier path. If the alarm went off but the mages were far away, they could simply run fast enough.
"The range is hard to calculate, but the destination is the issue. Could be hundreds of places. It just sends the magic signal to all arrays that have the correct receptacle. Meaning that if they set it up in every stronghold, all the forces would be aware of what we've done."
"Huh, if it's such a strong defense, that only means the rewards behind it will be that much greater."
"Can we alter our plans further?", Asta asked since he knew figuring out the entire array wasn't going to happen any time soon.
"No problem, I'll write up a few drafts to adjust the schedule. Don't worry about it, just fixate on unlocking it," Lucas didn't mind-altering his plans if it meant getting whatever was behind that door. While Asta was putting all his efforts into unlocking the door, Lucas did another sweep of the castle to be sure that no one else was lurking around.
Rejoining Asta in the library, Malek was there as he was polishing some arrows. They looked extremely refined and powerful, surprising Lucas. He frowned as he stared at the objects.
"Interested? I found these in some storage room, the metal is quite rare, and the production quality is top-notch. This is a great find!", Malek wall all giddy as he rubbed the arrows with a cloth.
Lucas made his way over to Asta. The man in question turned to look at Lucas and saw his questioning look.
"You noticed it as well?"
Lucas nodded, as they both noticed a single detail that seemed contradictory. Extremely well-made and powerful arrows, ones that anyone would've wanted, even for just the metal it was made out of, and yet.
'There were no archers in this castle,' Lucas prided himself on his analytical ability and scheming. Before they even arrived at the castle, Lucas already knew who he would be facing against. During the time the mages fought against the Croctows, there were plenty of ways to fire off a spell, but not a single one used something similar to a bow and arrow.
"You think it's from our friend?", Lucas almost whispered.
"There's good reason to believe so. The question we should be asking is why? Sadly, I don't have the time to think it through."
Since the array before him was extremely complex, he had no spare room to think of anything else. Nodding in silence Lucas moved away to check some things for himself.
Time slowly passed as both Malek and Lucas had to keep themselves busy until Asta was done. Lucas had it easy since he had way too much work in the first place. Besides all the spells he wanted to improve upon, he needed to rewrite some of the plans and needed to learn how to control his flight better.
Malek, on the other hand, suffered during those few days as he instantly got bored and needed something to stimulate him. Sending him out to hunt for monsters in the environment, Lucas hoped he would keep himself busy for some time.
While he expected nothing to really happen, Malek returned from his hunt with a bloody core of a wandering Rank 3 soldier. Apparently, he was venturing towards the castle, so Malek took care of him. Proud of his accomplishment, Lucas worried that they were already found out, making him create some countermeasures to secure their time here.
At some point, all were sitting in the library waiting for Asta to say something. It had been almost a week's time since they raided the place. Lucas worries hadn't manifested yet, but every second passed was a step closer to that realisation. The moment they send their army to this place, merely running away wouldn't be enough.
"I think I got it," a dry voice appeared in the room. The moment Lucas heard it he brought over a glass of water. Any normal mage would simply conjure water in their mouth, but Asta wasn't like that.
Happily receiving the glass, he rehydrated his parched throat. "Like I said, I think I understand what we have to do. The only problem is, we will need elemental power."
"I don't see the issue, Malek is extremely powerful in the Rank 3's," Lucas said, not only to soothe Asta's worries, but also to please Malek.
"Just firepower isn't what is necessary here," Asta turned around to face Lucas, "We need controlled power."
Malek felt his smile droop down as he knew that he would be pretty useless here. "I'm out, I'm not going to limit my strength for no reason. Power should be left free."
Asta never even bothered to listen to Malek as he was everything Asta stood against. "Lucas?"
The man felt like he needed to sigh. "What kind of power do you need?"
"I need the firepower to be around Rank 3 for just a single second. Then it needs to be halved and kept up for a minute." It was spoken so matter-of-factly that it might've even been interpreted as normal by onlookers.
"Are you serious?"
"Can you or can you not do it?"
Lucas let out a big sigh. "Fine, where do you need it?"
Asta moved back to the door and placed his finger on all the spots Lucas needed to target, with an emphasis on spots as he moved from one side of the door to the next. "These corners need to be destabilized for me to access the underlying runes. That will allow me to change the runes that arrange the signal to be sent. I cannot change the signal itself or the internal key that will allow others to receive it. Frankly, this is a very well created-"
"Asta."
"-the choice of certain runes stood out to me, so I needed a moment to check what they were again. There were a few that I didn't recognize in the slightest, but using the surrounding context I was able to decipher the meaning behind them. Obviously this is just speculation on my part, but I'm confident."
"Asta!", Lucas raised his voice ever so slightly only for Asta to look at Lucas with a frown. "I was explaining."
"I heard. I'm glad you were able to figure it out, but there's no way for me to attack four spots simultaneously while keeping the power into Rank 3."
"Exactly," Malek added, "he's still a Rank 2, he can't do it in the first place."
The duo didn't even hear his remark as they both knew each other's capabilities quite well. "I don't expect you to attack them all at once, but all spots should be handled within 5 minutes, or we will trigger the alarm."
That did ease his worries slightly, but Lucas still felt like this was a risk too great to take. Looking at the security, he knew that the stronger the lock the more valuable the items inside were.
'If we fuck this up, all the forces will be on our asses within minutes.'
'If we succeed we'll get incredible treasures though.'
'You don't even know that for certain! For all we know they only keep old artifacts that hold historical value and nothing else.'
'The price would be great then, no?'
'Are we missing any money right now? Just leave it alone. I'm against it.'
'I'm for it.'
'Then we're at a standstill.'
'Not exactly. Asta and Malek also want it open, it's three against one.'
'Quit your bullshit.'
'If you let me do it, I'll let you take care of the next two outposts by yourself.'
'...'
'Well?'
'I'll take care of our dome, you focus on controlling the power. I won't have any room to spare since we'll be going all out.'
Lucas grinned slightly. "Let's do it. There is just a single issue left."
Malek was clueless, he was even surprised that Lucas dared to say he had the power of a Rank 3. His good friend, on the other hand, nodded in understanding. "Energy."
"Exactly. I can pull a lot of energy towards me for certain spells, but having enough mana for four consecutive Rank 3 attacks is asking too much."
"Then let me use a gateway of yours, and I'll supply you with my mana," Malek said with a big smile, knowing that the quality of his mana was far superior to both of his companions.
The only issue was letting a mage inject foreign mana into your body was extremely dangerous if one had evil intentions. Doing so would most definitely give you energy, but it also put your life in the hands of the mage. Were it not Malek suggesting it, Lucas would think he was after his life.
"No, I suggest you pour it into this ring," showing the ring around his finger, it was a large crystal compressed into a simple ring. "What a weird little thing is that?"
Not commenting on it, Asta went over the plan to break through the door. While Lucas had a large part to play, the most sensitive and crucial part was the one that Asta would undertake.
To rewrite a part of the array in a few minutes without making it fail after they were done would require serious precision and speed. "While I hate to admit it, this will not be simple, even for me."
Continuing his declaration, "I will need a day to mentally prepare myself. I hope this will be enough for you to control your powers."
"Sure."
Time passed slowly as Lucas tried to figure out how much power he would actually need to use. The first time he learned about controlled magic was from Micheal all the way back in Avesta, but throughout the years, he learned spells that had no mana cap.
The Dark Beam he learned in The Underground could quite literally dry his entire mana pool in an instant if he gave it that much energy. His strongest spells like the Blue Flame Swords and deviations from that all sapped his energy at a constant pace.
Now, he needed explosive power without the explosions and limited in power. In other words, Lucas had no clue on how to form the correct spell. Standing on a nearby tower in Proktor, he had a hard time coming up with anything.
Malek had joined him not long after. "And, any ideas yet?"
"Nothing specific. I thought of trying trial and error, but that requires too much energy and time I do not have."
"We can always just wait another day, you know?"
"No, we've already spent too much time here. I killed a messenger while Asta was working. They know this castle has fallen by now. We need to hurry things up."
"Then what are you stuck on?"
"I don't know how to limit the power so that it fits Asta's requirements," Lucas wasn't expecting anything grand from Malek, but voicing his thoughts out loud might actually help him out.
"Why not just use a Magic Circle?", it seemed like an obvious answer to Malek.
'And expose all the runes we so carefully put together? Fuck this guy.'
'It was just a suggestion, though I completely agree. Giving away even our personal rune would be a terrible idea. Even if it's just the two of them.'
'I guess we can trust Asta, but Malek? Dude's a goblin in a Dragon's body.'
'We both know that this is a temporary cooperation, he'll be too free. We can't give it away.'
Staring into the distance, the enemies were bountiful, he needed a way to continue mitigating as many risks as possible.
"That won't be an option. I don't know magic circles, and learning them in a day will be too little. I need a direct solution."
"What about the fracturing rune then?", spoken as Malek used a self-made toothpick to play around with. The man looked bored out of his mind.
Lucas had never heard of this rune. "What is this rune?"
"It's pretty self-explanatory, it's a basic rune that fractures any spell. Used correctly, you could split your spell into two or more pieces. Or I think that was how it's meant to be used."
"Can you show me?"
"Huh? I don't know it, I just know of its existence. It's something any beginner mage learns though."
Right as Lucas was about to protest that he hadn't seen such a thing during his time at the academy, he was reminded who his teachers were. A man clad in dark, teaching about the dead and souls, while the other was a lazy bum that gave basic lessons and taught him how pressure worked.
"If it's a beginner rune, would the library have it?"
"Perhaps."
Seeing no better solution, Lucas headed to the library while figuring out how to create a magical circle of his Dark Beam. That was his most powerful spell that he needed to break through the power of Rank 3. If he couldn't find anything useful, then he would at least have something to fall back on.
Scrounging the rows of the library, the amount of dust Lucas had to wipe away tickled his nostrils.
Turning page by page, the first few books held nothing of interest. They all contained extremely basic information about magic told in different ways and metaphors. Skipping anything that wasn't related to what Malek mentioned, he moved from book to book.
While all extremely basic in theoretical concepts, there were still plenty of parts that Lucas only partially figured out. He frowned as ideas and magical formulae were displayed in a simple fashion as he had to squeeze his brain dry every time he tried to find a new spell.
The books held mathematical expressions on how a spell was meant to be made and how runes all were held together and how they worked in tandem. It was too much to learn on the spot so he just put it in his ring before finding the next book.
He wouldn't dare admit he didn't know some of the pure basics, but that didn't mean he would avoid learning.
Eventually he found one where the specified rune was visible in.
'The Rune of Fracturing; a rune that is meant to split up the conjured spell into multiple parts. It does not have any influence on the mana inside the body, but when the spell is brought into the open world, it will separate the magicules in the amount of specified groups. To gain full control, a Rune of Suspension can be used to simply keep the spells ready in the outside world.'
'Well... this is bullshit,' part of Lucas felt betrayed. He had been working his ass off to form simple spells and even harder to copy spells from others. The only reason he rarely made unique things was because he didn't really know how to form a spell that had the correct foundation.
Sure, he learned a ton from existing spells, looking for similarities between them all gave him a broad understanding. This didn't mean he was able to forge his own spells though, often relying on existing spells and adapting them to the scenario. A simple rune like suspension would allow him to create his spells and hold them outside his body, instead of constantly keeping track of them. A rune like fracturing would allow him to make his spells a lot more dangerous.
'It sounds so simple,' and that's why Lucas felt so annoyed. These were two runes he found by luck, how many beginner runes did he miss? How much was he grasping in the dark while others had full lanterns to guide them?
Holding back his curses, Lucas diligently learned the necessary runes. There were only two he needed to master, but there were plenty more. He hated the fact he needed the books that were given to first years in most academies, was he that stupid?
Lucas tried not to think about it as he ravished the books in rapid speed. The promised time was there a lot sooner than Lucas wanted.