Tales of the Legendary Magus

Chapter 219: The Game

*Pop*

The guards around weren't sure what happened when they heard the pop. Since they were almost directly behind the thief, they didn't have a good line of sight on the situation. Most didn't even see Villin opened his eyes.

But this pop got everyone's attention. They could see the lady hadn't moved the slightest bit for the last couple of seconds, then, Villin got up and lightly pushed her to the side with one of his feet.

The woman didn't resist at all as she fell onto her side before rolling onto her back, showing everyone the origin of the earlier pop sound.

When they looked at her face, most of the guards here swallowed nervously. Looking on her right cheek and below, there seemed to be a white fluid that was flowing down. When looking at her right eye, their vision was obstructed by a large icicle that pierced the location deeply, reaching all the way to the brain and causing her eye to 'pop'.

Seeing all of this, even the blonde boy frowned slightly. He hadn't been there when Villin dealt with Alexi so he only realized now how brutal the boy was. It reminded him of his parents, a rather unhappy thought.

"Tch." 

Villin didn't say anything as he walked past the lady and moved towards the stairway. He didn't even bother to take her pill, he had been paying a lot of attention earlier and knew that she had only gotten a regular healing pill. Villin already had some higher-quality versions of those with him, made by Kayley, he had no need for it.

Going up the stairs, Villin checked out every floor. He was surprised to note only a third of the floors had living spaces in them. The others were gyms, sparring halls, libraries, and some resting areas. 

Currently, since the tower had just started being used, only the living spaces and resting areas were being used. The resting areas had some people just sitting around either observing the situation or asking around for people that knew healing spells to fix their black eyes, some had even broken a bone or two.

The living areas were sized depending on the floor you are on. The lowest living area had fifty rooms. Each holding a bed and a small closet. The very top floor only had a single living area encompassing the entire floor. It was the typical gist of the higher the floor, the better quality rooms you have.

None of the doors had locks on them, allowing anyone to enter at any time if the door didn't get blocked by the occupants.

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Before doing anything else, Villin decided to go to the main mess hall on the fifth floor. There were about fifteen people there at the time making it a pretty spacious area. The food was stocked properly, there was plenty of everything even for two-hundred people. Villin went ahead and grabbed a plate with food and sat alone in the corner of a room where he had an oversight of everyone that was in the room.

Thirteen of the people in the room were just sitting down talking or eating, not doing anything too irregular. The final two though, they were acting oddly.

They seemed to be a team as they regularly came together to talk, their main activity was different though. They were knocking on several areas of the floor and walls.

At first, Villin thought they were just a couple of weirdos but he kept an eye on them. When one of the two, a man with a fancy mustache, made a discovery, Villin didn't miss it.

The man was knocking on various sections of the floor as he had been. Then, he seemed to find what he was looking for as he remained at a certain section. Villin noticed he got slightly excited as he pulled out his wand and pointed it at the ground. The man didn't cast a spell but Villin saw a very small section of the floor opening up, just a few centimeters in width and length. 

Villin saw the man sneakily grabbing what was inside of the hole, a small box, before he pretended to casually be leaving the room, closely followed by his friend.

"Oh?" Villin walked up to the section where the man had found the box and put his hand on the now seemingly sturdy ground below. He immediately felt enchantments on the ground below him, with his transfiguration, he also felt a hollow space underneath.

The runes created an extremely simple lock that only required magic power to open. When magic power was inserted into this section of the floor, the secret section will open up, revealing its contents.

Villin simply got up and left, the other people in the room hadn't paid attention to his actions and didn't realize something was going on.

"Hmm, the chances of it being the work of spies is very slow but still possible. More likely is that it's some sort of test or quest the auction organized to further encourage competition and reward the more skilled guards." Villin told himself as he followed the duo going up the stairs.

At first, Villlin wasn't sure where they were going. This high up had very few rooms and all of them were highly contested. But soon, as they kept rising, there was only one location left where they could be going. The top floor. A single living area that was absolutely massive and had everything you may need.

Villin cast 'Invaecus' on himself turning mostly invisible and he was extremely careful with his steps as he followed the duo towards the penthouse.

At this point there were quite a few scorch marks on the walls around, a lot of people had rushed here as soon as possible and a large fight broke out, causing many to get hurt.

Villin wasn't sure what the duo was planning, were they going to try and take the penthouse?

As Villin thought about this, they arrived at the door that looked as if it was made out of wood and that led to the penthouse, then, the two knocked, two times fast, once slow, and three times fast again.

This seemed to have the desired effect as just a few seconds later two people Villin recognized opened the door. "Success?" 

Asked the rightmost individual that opened the door. She had a black tattered robe on and two swords on her back. She had dark makeup around her eyes similar to her brother standing next to her.

The man with the mustache responded, "Yeah, we got it. What about you guys, find anything else. 

In response, the duo both shook their heads before the brother spoke, "We found some symbols behind a painting, possibly a code. We can't do anything with it though as it stands."

His sister also decided to give her input, "Yes."

"Okay, well, maybe we'll know what that means after having a look at the box we found." the mustached man said before walking past the twins, entering the penthouse, "Now, close the door, we don't want to have people listening in. The longer other people don't know, the better."

And with that, the door closed, the sound insulation was also excellent so Villin couldn't hear a thing they were saying inside.

Villin was left standing a few meters from the door with a thoughtful expression, the short conversation he overheard created more questions than answers but that being said, the questions it created were also useful to have by themselves.

The possibility of the hidden box being caused by a spy was extremely unlikely, if something was hidden in a location as simple as 'behind a painting', there was no way that the auction, who highly valued security, would miss such a thing. This was further confirmed when they said 'The long other people don't know, the better.' insinuating that other people would probably find out.

Villin decided to assume there was a hidden 'game' within the tower. Even though only half an hour had passed, one team that consisted of at least four people already knew about it and began playing. The fact that they also had the penthouse probably wasn't a coincidence either. It was most likely that the first hint, or the existence of the game, was confirmed for whoever got to the penthouse first. Either that or someone in that team had a daddy or mommy who was in a high-ranking position in the auction. An unlikely thing since they should then be in the main Goodlaw forces, not the hired ones.

There were a few ways to proceed now that he had this information. The first option was to burst into the penthouse, try to take out whoever holds it, and take whatever they gained. The risk in that plan was great though and he had no idea of how strong the opponents were.

The second option was to go around and try to find hidden sections using his transfiguration.

This was the best idea Villin could currently think of. Then again, the creators of 'the game' probably did think of people that could use transfiguration. Even though the earlier box could be found that way, there were probably certain ones that couldn't be found in this way.

"Oh well, I'll try it and I'll probably get enough clues from those ones to be able to get a proper idea of the game." Villin figured as he thought of it.

Even though only about a dozen minutes had passed, he wasn't thinking about the lady he killed at all, something that would've been nearly unthinkable just a couple of years ago.