The underground wine cellar was completely sealed off from the outside world. In the darkness, Amora struggled to gauge the passage of time. She counted her heartbeats and opened a jar of honey, sitting calmly for an hour and a half. When Mongel still hadn't returned after that time, Amora began to suspect he might have run into trouble. She wasn't sure if she felt relief or fear at the thought.
Mongel occupied a strange space in her life—somewhere between an enemy and a mentor. Amora often fantasized about beating him senseless, escaping far from his grasp, or even reporting his illegal experiments to the Imperial Prosecutor's Office. Yet, she had never seriously considered his death.
After all, it was he who had given her life and, in his clumsy way, raised her to this day.
Thinking about this, Amora unconsciously finished half the jar of honey.
The sugar gave her a slight boost of energy, and she decided to inspect the wine cellar more thoroughly.
Mongel typically relied on banned substances rather than alcohol to relieve stress. In many ways, he was a strict ascetic—avoiding smoking, drinking, and sex entirely. As a result, this wine cellar had mostly served as Amora's confinement room and a storage space for discarded materials over the past decade.
Amora hoped to find more food here; otherwise, she doubted she could survive until she could leave the cellar.
On the first two shelves of the wine rack, she found four jars of honey. Subtracting the half jar she'd already eaten, three and a half remained. The higher shelves were out of her reach. Several wine barrels stood nearby, but only one contained half a barrel of wine. The rest were used for distilling alcohol and were unsuitable for drinking. Amora thought about using the barrels as a step stool to reach the higher shelves, but they were too heavy for her to move.
She continued searching every corner of the wine cellar, inspecting even the dust-covered areas with meticulous care, but found no additional food.
In one corner, large iron containers sealed with metal held experimental waste—high-radiation, high-energy debris. These materials should have been buried underground, but Mongel had only minimally treated them for containment before tossing them into the cellar.
Amora also discovered various animal skeletons, many of them grotesquely deformed. Clearly, they hadn't died naturally. It seemed Mongel had conducted other experiments she wasn't aware of.
She didn't dare dig further into the pile of bones, fearing she might uncover a human hand or skull. If she did, her real concern wouldn't be fear but the grim possibility of having to decide whether to eat human flesh to survive.
After turning the wine cellar upside down, Amora finally understood that Mongel hadn't prepared any essential supplies or tools that might change her situation. He had simply chosen the safest spot available for her to hide temporarily.
Realizing this, she stopped wasting her energy. Clutching the half piece of black bread, she crouched on the ground and calmly began analyzing her current predicament.
The dark, enclosed space limited food and air, though the water supply seemed adequate. Mongel had injected her with nutritional serums during his experiments, which theoretically meant that while Amora would suffer from the sensation of hunger, her body functions should remain stable. If he had also left a ventilation system intact, she might be able to survive for quite a while.
If the concealing magic Mongel had set up failed during this time, Amora would be able to leave the magically isolated wine cellar. At that point, she would face one of two scenarios: either the attackers had left, or they were still nearby.
If the attackers were gone, there would be little to worry about. But if they were still lingering? Amora couldn't think of any way she could escape the military unscathed. She was not a magician like Mongel, nor could she wield a sword like Lian. Any average adult could easily overpower her, let alone the legendary magical corps.
She felt helpless. She was still young, and her knowledge was confined to magical theory. Mongel had never taught her how to survive in harsh environments or how to use that mysterious magical system to kill well-trained military magicians.
All she could do was wait, trying to maintain an optimistic mindset, and adapt to whatever came after the concealing magic failed.
Time crawled by, each heartbeat amplified in the oppressive silence. At first, Amora thought she might doze off, but she didn't. She had already slept too much during the earlier experiments, and now her nerves and fear kept her wide awake.
She kept her eyes open, staring into the unknown corners of the darkness, until a faint light fell across the tips of her shoes.
Rubbing her eyes, Amora confirmed she wasn't imagining things. It was indeed a faint glimmer of light, seemingly seeping through the crack in the door. Excited, she scrambled to her feet and rushed to the door, but her hand froze just as it touched the handle.
Cautiously, she brought her eyes to the crack, letting them adjust to the light before observing the situation outside.
The light was dim, tinged with the dark blue of pre-dawn, but it conveyed a clear message: morning was approaching, and the concealing magic had faded. Outside, all she could see were smoking ruins. The old house had collapsed, leaving the underground wine cellar exposed to the open air.
The area appeared deserted. There were no signs of movement, not even a dog or bird. The silence was so profound that Amora almost believed she had gone deaf.
She wanted to observe a little longer, but the smoke began wafting into the cellar, stinging her eyes and making them water.
It seemed the attackers had left.
Amora waited a moment, then gently turned the door handle and stepped cautiously out of the underground wine cellar.
Surveying her surroundings, she quickly realized that it wasn't just the old manor that had collapsed—nearly every building was in ruins. A massive fire had started here and engulfed the entirety of Camper City. Apart from the city's central stone clock tower, which still stood defiantly, everything else had been reduced to ash. The fire had burned throughout the night and was still not extinguished. In the distance, flames flickered and thick smoke continued to rise.
Amora headed straight for the location of the secret laboratory. She spotted statues on the ground that had been melted and felt a pang of unease. There were no signs that Mongel had survived. It seemed likely that he had chosen to perish alongside his laboratory in the end.
As she moved closer, the ground became too hot to tread on. She could even smell the soles of her rubber shoes melting. Unable to go further, she stopped at the edge of the laboratory site.
On tiptoes, she carefully examined the melted statues. The edges of the melted sections were smooth and even, but they spiraled inward, with explosion marks at the center. Amora extended her hand to measure, imagining a spear being thrown at high speed, spinning as it struck the statue. The friction-generated heat melted the statue, and the spear exploded within.
"A materialized magical formula… and it's a spear?"
Amora pulled a hair tie from her coat pocket, precisely 20 centimeters long. Using it as a reference, she estimated the diameter of the statue's damage and quickly crouched to calculate the energy of the explosion using a piece of charcoal she found nearby.
"Tactical-level materialization formula. Materialized entity: a spear. Spear length: 2.11 meters. Spearhead length: 21 centimeters. The energy core appears to be in the spearhead, with a maximum diameter of 7.5 centimeters and a minimum diameter of no less than 3.5 centimeters. Energy output is in the form of… light and heat."
She scrawled and adjusted her notes on the ground, eventually sketching a rough outline of the spear, with darker lines marking the approximate energy circulation structure. She then detailed cross-sectional diagrams, attempting to reconstruct the energy core and the overall energy structure.
Ordinarily, such work would be done effortlessly by standard military magical systems, but Amora had to rely on her naked eye and rudimentary sketches.
She moved around, inspecting several damaged statues, pieces of furniture, and remnants of walls. At the fastest pace she could manage, she calculated the energy damage on objects of different materials. Surprisingly, while there were slight variations in energy levels, the reconstructed energy structure was identical across all samples, and the spear dimensions remained consistent.
"A standardized materialization weapon. Given these specifications…" Amora struggled to pinpoint the origin of this magical formula.
The era of magicians painstakingly interpreting magic had long passed. Military magical formulas were now taught through simpler and more efficient methods, with strict protocols governing the formation and alteration of consciousness. By constructing identical magical formulas in consciousness space using the same steps and methods, the resulting magical effects became standardized—this was the hallmark of military standardization.
Each magical corps adheres to its own standards. A magical formula that materializes a spear might require a length of exactly two meters in one nation but two-point-one meters in another. By calculating this ten-centimeter difference, it becomes possible to determine the origin of the magical formula. This was precisely what Amora was attempting to do.
A standardized weapon, a spear, with these specific dimensions and an energy circulation structure like this…
Amora didn't know much about military operations on the continent, but she happened to know which magical corps this weapon likely belonged to. The corps was so renowned that the sight of a spear materialized from an energy weapon immediately brought it to mind.
Three empires, six magical corps, thirteen sky fortresses.
These were basic facts that any ordinary person would know. The magical corps responsible for the destruction of Camper City was one of these "common knowledge" entities—
The Emerald Holy Spear Corps of the Holy Lanskarter Empire.
The charcoal in Amora's hand snapped as her thoughts returned to the present. Identifying the Emerald Holy Spear Corps wasn't particularly helpful now. Her immediate priority was to locate Mongel's belongings and leave this treacherous place as quickly as possible.
Ever since stepping into the ruins, Amora had been searching for something critical to her survival—Mongel's black jade ring. She was constantly reminded of the collar still fastened around her neck, with its embedded magical circuits linked to her nervous system. The control center for those circuits resided in the black jade ring. The ring's owner could end her life at any moment, and destroying the ring would render the collar's magical circuits completely inert, likely causing the mysterious magical system to collapse.
At present, the magical system hadn't connected with Amora's consciousness, leaving her unsure of its current state or the ring's whereabouts.
Perhaps Mongel had survived and fled to some remote corner of the world with the ring. Perhaps the ring had been taken by the Emerald Holy Spear Corps as evidence. More likely, it had been destroyed along with Mongel's body.
Amora scanned the smoke-filled ruins, unable to quell her unease.
If the ring was still with Mongel or had been destroyed, her safety wasn't in immediate jeopardy. However, if it had fallen into the hands of the Emerald Holy Spear Corps and was being analyzed through a series of experiments, she could be facing brain death at any moment.
The thought of spending the rest of her life as a comatose shell, oblivious to the world, made Amora restless. She had no identity papers, let alone a plan to cross mountains and forests to another empire in pursuit of the Emerald Holy Spear Corps and her ring.