Chapter 46
The VVIP guest quarters where the Empress Dowager had been staying burned down!
“So Her Majesty will be staying at the estate for the time being?”
“Ugh, I don’t want to get involved with those attendants. They’ll meddle in everything….”
According to the information made public, the fire had been caused by one of the Empress Dowager’s attendants mishandling an ember.
Thus, the attendant was held responsible and dragged off to prison…
Well, not really. They merely said that was what had happened, and the incident was wrapped up.
The attendant might receive some abuse, but they could not allow the dignity of the Imperial Family to be undermined.
- Roar!
“Ho ho. I never expected to enter the fourth tier at my age.”
Thus, the troublesome elder Aurelia marveled at the enormous fireball rising from her hand.
It was magic she had stopped using after realizing at the age of sixty that she lacked the talent to advance beyond the third tier.
Who could have known that a single session on that waterbed would propel her straight to the fourth tier?
“You may even be able to aim higher.”
And just as the Magi Tower Master had said, Aurelia’s condition was perfect enough for her to aim even higher.
“It feels as though I’ve returned to my younger body….”
“Mm-hmm. In fact, you have.”
If she could maintain this condition, her life expectancy might well exceed a hundred by a considerable margin.
The Magi Tower Master was overjoyed that the lifespans of her beloved nieces and nephews had been extended.
“This is all thanks to you, Akion. I’m truly grateful.”
“Ho ho ho! Thanks to my granddaughter’s husband, my wrinkles, back pain, and minor ailments have all vanished.”
In that sense, both the Magi Tower Master and the Empress Dowager expressed their gratitude to Akion.
Being praised by the Empire’s elders was certainly an honor, but….
“I believe I merely made use of the principles governing the world that the Lord of Heaven designed.”
“My goodness, how modest! I really want to make you my son-in-law!”
“Hehe, I understand how you feel. However, Lilia, it’s still too soon for the word ‘son-in-law’ with Akion─.”
Akion was not being modest; he had merely benefited(?) from the Lord of Heaven’s atrocious coding.
He felt guilty accepting their thanks.
And above all, what an enormous commotion would there be if this became known?
“However, I would like this matter kept secret until Her Majesty the Empress Dowager returns to the Imperial Palace.”
“Hmm, I understand. Surely people who want to experience or obtain one will come swarming.”
To think that merely lying down for one session of physical therapy could restore blocked mana circuits to perfect, like-new condition?
Magicians, knights, and people in every other field that used mana would come rushing in with their eyes bulging.
And if such mana circuits were best cultivated from childhood… nobles with young children would be even more desperate.
Human greed was something one ought to be wary of.
Even with Enersis and the Imperial Family standing firmly behind it, there would surely be people who sought to get their hands on this.
“I’ll also make sure the attendants keep their mouths shut. It seems the news has already spread to some extent….”
“Let us keep it under strict control. As for the people within the family… Hmm. You decide what to do, Akion.”
“Yes.”
Therefore, they decided to hide it separately in the warehouse of Akion’s Workshop.
After all, very few people could enter that place.
*
- Creak….
And one of those few was….
“Hmm…!”
Miss Goldie Heritage herself.
When Akion occasionally went out, he would entrust her with the key to the workshop warehouse, but it was so bothersome that he had eventually given her a duplicate of her own.
“Sniff sniff… Sniff sniff! Good. No one’s here….”
And Goldie knew the whole story behind the VVIP guest quarters being burned to the ground.
Why, she had even watched from outside as the Empress Dowager raised that enormous fireball.
- Creak, creak.
Although Akion had forbidden her from approaching or using it… honestly, mana-circuit improvement was not something just anyone could receive.
In fact, this world had things like meridian clearing and opening blocked channels, just like in martial-arts worlds.
It was a process in which an exceptional mage or knight infused a disciple with mana to open the disciple’s blocked or constricted mana circuits….
“Found it…!”
Since this was an incredibly difficult opportunity to obtain… even Goldie could not resist.
“I’m sorry, Young Master…!”
As a lightning mage whose growth had recently stalled, she had been feeling frustrated.
She had been unable to see a breakthrough no matter how hard she searched for a clue… and then the Young Master had dared to develop such a sly waterbed.
For today alone, Goldie decided to be a mischievous little mutt.
- Click!
- Vrrrrrr…!
“Mmm.”
Thus, Goldie lay down on the bed and began receiving the waterbed’s physical therapy.
For reference, Goldie chose “Maximum Intensity” and “Full-Body” from among the switches.
- Rat-a-tat!
“Huh?!”
Because of that, the waterbed began operating at maximum strength,
and the mana contained in the acupressure high-pressure water began stabbing into Goldie’s mana circuits.
Like waste being washed out of pipes… her constricted circuits began to forcibly expand.
- Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
“Eeeek?!”
The high-pressure massage did not hurt, but it mysteriously stabbed into every weak point in her circuits.
The mana within it began ravaging Goldie’s entire body.
“Hieeugh, huff, mmph…!”
As waves of ecstasy washed over her, sighs and excited cries burst out on their own.
Goldie had to cover her mouth and endure it.
- Thudthudthudthud!
“Mmph!”
The merciless mana infiltration of the mana-infused high-pressure water massage.
Eventually, even a seasoned mage would have her eyes roll back from such an ecstatic massage, and then….
- Zzzzt!
“Hhng! Whine…! Awoooooo─!!!”
Goldie ultimately ended up howling at the end.
“Hiiing…!”
For beastfolk, howling was generally an extreme form of emotional expression.
In that sense, Goldie’s howl had been filled with joy… which made her terribly embarrassed in case anyone had heard it.
Still, the good thing was,
- Vrrrrr….
“Whoa….”
her body felt lighter than it ever had since the day she was born.
Goldie wanted to rush outside and try out her magic immediately,
“What? Is someone in there?”
“Gasp?!”
but she covered her mouth at the voices coming from outside.
However….
“Didn’t you say no one would be here at this hour?”
“Of course! We got all the information from the attendant wench we brainwashed this evening!”
The conversation sounded somewhat full of malice.
Above all….
- Sniff….
The scent of rotting blood entered Goldie’s keen nose.
“I just hope it’s only a dog….”
“Heh heh. You planning to use it as a sacrifice?”
They smelled like dark mages.
*
Dark mages hiding in the shadows and dreaming of rising to prominence.
Persecuted for taking the lives of utterly worthless lowborns, they dreamed of someday summoning countless demons once more and ruling the world.
“What, it’s not some kind of beastfolk, is it?”
Things had been going badly for such people lately, with one misfortune piling on another.
It had all begun with the vampires’ defeat on the Empire’s northwestern outskirts.
“Tch, that saintess bitch says beastfolk are human too and insists on looking after them.”
“What human is some animal hybrid? Ha! It would be more appropriate to use them all as slaves.”
The dark mages had secretly supported them, and they had been a little spooked when the Saintess and the knights appeared at the scene.
“Hahaha! What good is emitting that light supposed to do!”
“I fear no light that contains neither holy power nor sunlight! Krah hah!”
But the vampires’ performance had exceeded their wildest imagination,
and when a chance to capture the Saintess arose, the dark mages watching from a distance even let out cheers.
They could insult the Lord of Heaven by killing the Lord of Heaven’s hound that persecuted them.
“Holy Light─!!!”
“Kraaahhhhhhhhh─!!!!!!”
“Gyeeeeeeek!!!!”
That is, until the Saintess’s Death Beam burned all the vampires to ash.
Honestly, they could still have recovered from things up to that point.
They still had plenty of trump cards.
“Still, didn’t we have a little fun with the ogre?”
“The one a bishop carefully raised, right? Well, it wiped out at least one baron’s territory….”
They had empowered an ogre on the Empire’s outskirts and intended to have it rampage through an entire territory as a sacrifice….
“AHAHAHA!! You stuuuuupid bastaaards!!”
“Gweeeek!!!”
But this time, they were left dumbfounded by a new weapon called the Holy Light Investigation Device.
Everything evil that was touched by its light burst into flames,
and no matter how gutsy a dark mage was, all the color drained from their face.
“Even that… Hoo, huff….”
“Calm down, calm down. As long as we don’t expose ourselves to that light, we’re fine, aren’t we?”
A perfect counter to dark magic had appeared.
Simply being exposed to the light weakened dark magic.
That scene of the Lord of Heaven unfairly screwing them over became a trauma for most of the dark mages who had witnessed it.
“We even toppled Viscount Stillburn’s territory by releasing the half-demons we’d been saving, and Volkov got wrecked too thanks to Lord Glacies, whom another bishop awakened by sacrificing his own life!”
“H-huff. Right. Yeah.”
Of course, dark mages possessed unyielding pitch-black spirits.
Simply put, they were the sort who rose again through hatred and greed no matter how many times they were trampled down.
Thus, in Stillburn, they incited the half-demons and sent an Armor Basilisk,
while in Volkov, the dark mages sacrificed an entire diocese, including its bishop, to awaken Glacies.
How exhilarating it had been to watch the two territories get utterly overturned.
“But that… too, hhk, gurgle!! Akiooon!!”
“Good grief, shh, shh! Calm down!”
And then they were all utterly destroyed.
That electric driver drill thing,
and the wonder called the spiral spear prototype developed from it.
Only around then did a certain name reach the dark mages’ ears.
Akion Enersis.
Incandescent bulbs, motors, turbine pumps, boilers, and so on.
The developer of countless artifact-level technologies that enriched daily life, and a genius alchemist.
Digging into the matter revealed that he had been involved as a major figure in all of these events.
“I’ll fucking kill him…!”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down. We didn’t come here to kill him today.”
Every dark mage wanted him dead, but….
Honestly, Enersis was terrifying.
His magic skills were insanely good. There were even rumors that the Magi Tower Master traveled glued to his side.
So they changed their plans.
“Let’s steal and carry off an artifact that bastard cherishes!”
“H-huff. Right. Yeah. I got too excited. Sorry.”
They decided to perform what they called sacred teleportation and what was really just theft.
Thus, the dark-mage duo carried out the operation as ordered.
First, they secretly infiltrated Enersis, then brainwashed and restrained one of the attendants working at the Enersis estate.
Then they stole anything that looked expensive from the workshop warehouse they had learned about.
“And we absolutely have to take that waterbed!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Among the items the attendant had mentioned was a magic tool called a waterbed.
As that attendant had happened to witness the Empress Dowager’s fireball incident firsthand, they had spilled all the details….
“If we get that, our tier… Hehehe!”
“And perhaps headquarters will reward us handsomely. Heh heh!”
As Akion had feared, the crazed dark mages had simply infiltrated the place.
Using the secret route taken by the attendants, they reached out and grasped the doorknob of Akion’s Workshop’s warehouse.
- Clack.
“Well, look at that. They didn’t even lock it.”
“What if someone steals something? Is it really acceptable for a genius to be this careless?”
Laughing heartily at the unlocked warehouse door, they opened it.
Having discovered the carelessness of the man called a genius, the two sneered, but soon….
- Crackle!!
“Huh?”
They found themselves facing a dog-beastfolk maid wrapped in lightning.
Judging from the traces of mana, it was clearly magic….
- Crack! Boom!!
“Gweeeek!!”
“Huuurk?!!”
A full-power punch from the golden-haired doggy shot out in an instant, bending one dark mage’s waist forward.
- Bang!!!
One punch sent him crashing into the wall on the opposite side of the workshop, where he was knocked unconscious.
How could a mage possess strength on par with a knight’s?!
For a moment, the remaining dark mage misunderstood.
“Don’t tell me you wield dark magic too?!”
“It’s basic physical therapy!”
No way.
It was merely Goldie rampaging under an overwhelming sense of omnipotence brought on by the waterbed treatment.
- Crackle! Boom!!
The problem was that her rampage was charging in an incredibly positive direction.
Physical enhancement on par with a knight’s, along with improved reaction speed.
And even while Goldie was wielding lightning magic at more than ten times its usual power, she had composure to spare.
- Rumble!!!
“Ah….”
The remaining dark mage watched as the dark warehouse was lit brightly by flashes of lightning,
“Fucking Enersi─.”
- KABOOM─!!!
and lost consciousness to Goldie’s Golden Dropkick.
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