Genius Wizard Takes Medicine [EN]: Chapter 738

The clown, as if noticing the reaction, grinned and rummaged through his coat.

“This one, too, died while trying to imprint a soul. It’s a very fresh and valuable item.”

“…….”

“I happened to win this as a stake in a gamble, but I didn’t have a good way to store it, so I left it with Agneta.”

The clown pulled out two thick wires from his coat, sticking one into the corpse’s mouth and the other into its chest.

Just as if connecting wires to the positive and negative terminals of a battery, the clown finished his preparations and threw the ends of both wires into the lake.

Zzzzzzzzz!

The entire lake in the castle courtyard was instantly covered in a dazzling electric shock.

“Hwaaaaaaack!!”

“Ughghghgh-!!”

The corpses, unable to react, were electrocuted and sank, their eyes rolled back in all directions.

The clown, seeing this, burst into insane laughter.

“Hehehe, hahahaha! Look at them, don’t they look like bugs?”

“…….”

“Puhuhu, hahahaha- ugegegegek.”

After laughing for a while, he suddenly started trembling all over and making strange screams.

Lenox, watching from behind, wore a dumbfounded expression.

The wires the clown had dropped were somehow wrapped around his legs.

“Has he gone mad…….”

[……Did he just electrocute himself?]

Ignoring Agneta’s dumbfounded message, Lenox slammed a shock magic into the clown’s back.

Thud!!

“Huh?”

The clown’s expression turned blank as he was kicked by Lenox and fell into the lake.

Plunging into the lake, the clown let out an indescribable scream, with only his legs sticking out.

“Aghdhdhdhdgrrrrlak.”

“…….”

While Agneta was speechless at the absurd response, Lenox looked down at the scene with his arms crossed.

Only after some time did the clown manage to crawl back up the castle wall, muttering.

“I, I thought I was going to die…….”

“I saved you. You should be grateful, not complaining.”

The clown was electrocuted not by simple electricity, but by the Torben mage’s residual thoughts.

Instead of trying to dispel the electrocution on the spot, it was better to throw him into the lake and forcefully spread the inflammation.

The clown seemed to know this, as he only grumbled and didn’t offer any further objections.

Lenox turned away from the clown and immediately started walking.

“You can find the Archduke yourself now. I’m going ahead.”

Through the information obtained from interrogating the 6th Prince, he knew where the ruins were hidden within the castle.

To be precise, the ruins were not inside the castle, but in a secret passage inside the mountain range connected to the Giant’s Castle.

Using magic detection, he reconstructed the inside of the mountain range into a 3D map, filling in the spaces beyond his senses.

Lenox, with his eyes closed and hands together, muttered.

“Five…… no, about six times.”

[Six times?]

With one hand on the hard outer wall of the castle, he slowly moved his wrist to adjust the direction.

Lenox, carefully concentrating with his eyes closed, raised his magic power and activated his magic eye from inside his mask.

[Blink]

Whoosh!!!

Lenox’s body flipped upside down on the spot and fell into a dark room where no light entered.

It was an illusion as if he had been sucked down below the floor and appeared in a completely new space.

Thud!

Lenox’s body, momentarily losing its sense of balance, staggered and then slumped to the ground.

“Ugh…….”

While barely holding back the nausea from his spinning head, he heard Agneta’s surprised voice in his ear.

[A special type of space teleportation technique…… and to forcibly increase the distance by overlapping the same technique, I’ve never seen anything like this. Special type mages are really strange people.]

“Quiet.”

However, Lenox was secretly surprised that Agneta had immediately recognized what he had done.

What Lenox had done was not simply using Blink multiple times to move several times.

Blink is a powerful teleportation technique that changes the user’s location without interfering with their body.

However, if there is already matter at the teleportation point, there is a low probability that the user’s body will collide with the space section.

Since the path to the ruins was blocked in layers, there was a high chance of an accident if he simply used Blink multiple times.

Therefore, Lenox chanted Blink several times in advance, then connected the chanted techniques to forcibly increase the distance.

Although the distance and magic efficiency were significantly lower than using Blink honestly several times, it was the only way to increase the distance of a single Blink.

Agneta had immediately understood the principle after Lenox used that method to reach the ruins.

[Even though I’m seeing it directly, I have no idea how it’s possible. What does it even feel like to manipulate space directly?]

“You’re a messenger who travels through the imaginary dimension, asking strange questions. When it comes to crossing space, you should be superior, shouldn’t you?”

The reason Agneta can exist as a messenger of Pandemonium is because she can cross the imaginary dimension to deliver messages all over the continent.

[Crossing space via the imaginary dimension and directly manipulating space are completely different categories.]

Agneta replied.

[What I do is, if you have to put it that way, using a medium to take advantage of the ‘result’ of space moving. It’s different from directly teleporting space like you do.]

“…….”

[Of course, at a shallow level, my method might be more efficient. But if you dig deeper, your technique is much closer to the essence, and more real.]

“You know nothing about the essence of techniques. Where is the real and fake in the way you handle the laws of the world?”

Lenox scoffed.

“The fact that you have such a standard means you’re not a mage. You seem closer to a natural talent who relies on innate abilities.”

[That’s right. Maybe so. I’m not really interested in such definitions.]

However, Agneta surprisingly agreed with Lenox’s ridicule.

She seemed to have no hesitation or interest in how she was defined.

[But isn’t it because I’m not a mage that I can see it?]

“What?”

[Which method is closer to the essence when handling something. Maybe I feel that way because I’m looking at it from outside the scope of techniques.]

“…….”

[Hmm, I still don’t really know. Is the fundamental limit that makes up the way of thinking somewhere else…….]

Since Agneta herself handles manipulation techniques purely with her innate senses, it’s understandable that she doesn’t think of herself as a mage.

However, how she, who was born differently from ordinary humans, defines herself and what she worries about is not something Lenox needs to care about.

There isn’t much time to discuss the spider’s way of thinking in this place, and he’s not interested.

“Cough, cough……!!”

Although he used a somewhat extreme method, he had skipped several complicated procedures and arrived at the ruins in one go.

Lenox, who had slumped down and was looking around, slightly opened his mouth at the countless busts embedded in the communal wall.

“This is…….”

The Giant’s Castle. The ruins of the Giant Soldier Corps, one of the few remaining on this continent.

As the name suggests, dozens of giant corpses, already dead and decayed, were displayed like taxidermy on the walls of the ruins.

Rotten and stuck-on skin. Skeletons with only bones left. Yet, they were enormous, several times the size of humans.

The dead of the Giant Soldier Corps, who had not let go of their weapons even in death, were in an imposing position, looking down at the humans who had entered the ruins.

“…….”

Only then did Lenox understand where the giant’s forearm, hidden in the basement of the castle, had come from.

And why the knights of Kabahim were trying to hide and protect a place other than the castle audience chamber.

On the floor of the ruins, where the giant corpses were looking down, there was a mountain of old polearms and artifacts.

Most of them were rusty and old weapons and armor, rather than valuable items.

Only items that seemed to have a story behind them. But Lenox immediately stepped into the mountain of polearms piled up in the ruins.

“Find the key and get out immediately.”

The area of the ruins itself was quite large, but fortunately, it was not so large that Lenox’s magic detection could not explore it all.

However, to find a small object like a key among the indiscriminately piled-up polearms, he would have to narrow the range and turn the detection sensitively.

Just as Lenox was prepared to spend some time and started moving,

[Victor. I found the key.]

Agneta held out something to Lenox from above.

It was not so much a key as a piece of metal that looked like a long screwdriver. The end was densely engraved with unknown symbols.

[When Sabrina and I were trying to find it before, I saw something similar when we were bringing over the data.]

“Take out the Ark. We’ll start the comparison right away.”

Instead of answering immediately, Lenox gestured to Agneta to take out the Ark of Gyro.

He had brought Agneta here to check if the key and the Ark matched.

But the moment he brought the key to the Ark, an intangible force began to push the key away with a strange resonance.

Clang!!

[……Huh?]

“…….”

Ignoring Agneta’s flustered voice, Lenox stared at the shape of the key.

[Doesn’t the key fit? This is a problem.]

“No, the key itself is a match for the Ark. There was a reaction in the Ark immediately after the connection.”

[Then?]

“There’s a foreign substance mixed in the key. Something in the ruins is interfering with the reading.”

The moment he inserted the key into the Ark’s entrance, an intangible force blocked the reading even though it recognized the shape of the key.

Regardless of whether the key was genuine, the backlash was caused by a specific technique or curse on the key itself.

The Ark recognized this and refused the entry of the key, which was imbued with an unknown force.

“I wonder if it has something to do with why the ruins of the Giant Soldier Corps are preserved in this way…….”

He wanted to smash the Ark and take the bones of the guide, but such Arks often erase the contents immediately after being destroyed.

Moreover, the 48-layer dimensional function that makes up the Ark is an area that even Lenox cannot easily touch.

At this point, it was as if the designer himself had twisted it so that it was impossible to read it by any method other than the key.

“Escape the castle and find a curse remover. Once the force on the key is removed, it will work normally.”

[That’s a relief. I thought the key we found after all this effort was going to be worthless.]

Lenox ignored Agneta’s words and turned to walk towards the passage in the distance.

“It’s not a worthless item.”

Someone answered the spider’s words with a nonchalant voice.

“What’s piled up in these ruins is the most precious treasure in the castle.”

“……!!”

A low male voice was heard from a place where there had been no sign of presence until just now.

Lenox instantly raised his magic power and turned his gaze towards it.

On top of the mountain of old weapons piled up like a mountain, someone was lying sprawled out.

A man with disheveled hair, lying on the tomb of weapons with his back to Lenox.

Even though he was wearing loose shirts and pants, it was obvious at a glance that he was quite large.

“The relics of my comrades who fought and fell with me on the battlefield. If it’s to preserve them, it’s only natural to allocate this much space.”

The man said, slowly tilting his head.

“A thief like you wouldn’t understand, though.”

“Who are you?”

“Do you have to ask?”

As he tilted his head all the way back, his unkempt hair swept back, revealing his face.

The man, lying sprawled out and looking at Lenox upside down, had an unreadable languor on his face.

He raised the sturdy restraints on his hands and feet and gave a murky laugh.

“I am the owner of the castle that you sneaked into like a rat.”