Dragon's Tale 56 (Patreon)

The first step of my amazingly daring heist into the estate of a Patrician house was rather inglorious, to find something to wear, since I was suffering from a noticeable lack of clothing after the latest adventure, after changing rooms several times. I could have walked back to the main courtyard where I had removed my clothes, which was the easiest solution. 

Unfortunately, it was not the best solution. My clothes had been chosen carefully by the school, designed to make my figure as eye-catching as possible to enhance my celebrity factor, while making sure that I was more like an object of desire and admiration rather than an actual threat. 

In other words, it might be easier to sneak around naked rather than wearing that flashy costume, made almost entirely of glistening leather and metal. 

Luckily, while the perimeter of the estate was surrounded by a number of deadly wards that would cut even a Sorcerer into shreds in seconds, the same level of security didn’t apply to the inner courtyard, which was exclusively for noble guests. 

So, I triggered my magic, wrapping my body with a combination of air and water, creating a simmering field distorting the light, giving me something close to invisibility as long as I stuck close to the shadows, and still subtle to avoid the attention of any mage as long as they hadn’t been actively searching for an infiltrator.

Still, that didn’t mean that I had no need for any clothes. I was tempted to go back and steal the clothes of one of the sleeping nobles, but I didn’t do so, afraid that there might be some servants that’s taking care of them now that their mistress was not there anymore. 

It wouldn’t be the first Roman party that every single participant collapsed in the exhaustion from an alcohol-fueled orgy. 

Luckily, the clothes of a noble weren’t the best clothing for infiltration as well. A noble guest in a place they weren’t supposed to be seen would raise almost as much commotion as a gladiator in the library. No, I needed something that would help me fade. 

Unlike the rest of the house, which was silent at this dark hour of the night, the servants’ quarter was filled with lights and action as they prepared for the next day, washing, cooking, and many other activities. 

Two slaves carrying a huge bag filled with clothes opened the door, too focused on their exhaustion to notice the slight shimmer as I slipped inside the washing room, which gave me a significant number of options to pick clothes, from the almost nonexistent clothing of pleasure slaves to expensive linen and silk-blend has worn by the select slaves that was responsible for the financial and management estate matters, their position much higher than a free citizen without a noble heritage. 

I slipped behind the shadow of the door, waiting for the maids to drop the bag and leave the laundry room. Only after they slammed the door, I started my search. After some examination, however, I managed to find a large gray robe perfect for my needs. 

I donned the robe, and after a few simple illusions to reinforce the spell, the intimidating gladiator was gone, replaced by a weak library assistant that almost melted against the background. “That’s a familiar feeling,” I murmured even as I left the room and started walking toward the library. 

Back in the school, as a little bastard noble, the worst sin I could do was to get people’s attention, so, I perfected an attitude that would make people not notice me. Fast steps, lowered head, slightly slouched shoulders… It was trickier than one might think, because it was a weak pose, and unless a certain balance was achieved, it actually made people notice a little weak prey rather than avoiding their attention. 

However, the perfection of the pose meant I was indistinguishable from the background as I arrived at the library. 

Entering through the main door was easy. I looked like an assistant hoping to finish some work before the library got busier even someone had noticed me. Luckily, no one did, allowing me to cut through the stacks of basic books magic scrolls, and arrive at a second entrance. 

“It’s going to be challenging,” I murmured even as I examined the complicated nature of the ward dancing on the surface of the door, mainly Earth and Air to avoid destroying the books even if the defenses were triggered. Even then, the spells were geared more like an alarm rather than an actual weapon, optimized to catch infiltrators rather than defend against invaders. 

That was the task of the outer wards. 

Cutting through the wards was by no means a simple task. If I hadn’t studied in the wartime library of Julius Caesar in the lost city for months with the express interest of breaking into the traditional Roman wards, it would have been impossible without it. 

Even with that, I trusted to do so because of my extraordinary lightning ability, which was perfect through cutting any defensive magic. No one defended against that, because it was impossible to use lightning without creating a huge commotion. 

Well, near-impossible to anyone but a Sorcerer with a unique penchant for lightning spells.

“Let’s start,” I murmured even as I raised my finger into the air, drawing a rune. It was a small, weak one, one that would be ignored by anyone if it was a simple arcane rune. Even if it had been a regular elemental rune, even as a famously explosive one like fire, at most, it would have been received an appreciative nod, tricky, but ultimately could be mastered by a determined mage, just like a determined warrior learning to ride an angry stallion. 

In comparison, powering the same rune with lightning was trying to ride a bloodthirsty tiger. One moment of inattentiveness, one slip, and the lightning would have run amok. Or, it would have had been, if it had been cast by anyone else. 

Under my finger, another rune soon appeared, joining the first, then a third, and a fourth… Soon, it created a reinforcing circle, and the lightning started to flow with an increasing speed, the destructiveness of the lightning contained thanks to the movement even as I pushed more and more mana to its structure. 

It was the adaptation of a trick it had been recorded in the library of the lost city, discovered in a dusty corner. In its original state, it was an interesting trick, but with limited application due to its design. The same runic structure was designed based on featureless arcane energy, using the rotation to cut little pieces into the ward, and rotation to suck and contain the excess magical energy before it could trigger the detection aspects of the ward. 

However, since it was using arcane energy meant that the excess energy could only be contained at the core, the limited capacity easily overflowing. Which meant, while the structure worked perfectly to unravel weak wards, the kind forwards guard bases and scouts might use when an army was on the move, allowing the army to ambush them by ignoring the ward. 

Permanent wards were too strong to penetrate through the method, their power too strong, their flow too dynamic, for their flow to be contained. My modifications meant that the lightning structure was not storing the power removed from the target ward, but clashing against it, its lightning nature burning the various elements taken out from the ward, while its electric cage prevented the resulting from being detected by the ward. 

Of course, while the trick was a viable one, slowly drilling into the structure of the ward, it was far from simple. When there was finally an opening I could slip inside, I was already sweating in exhaustion. It was much harder than killing the chimera back in the arena without using magic. 

Still, no matter how exhausting it was, I was finally inside the private library of a patrician family, which was the whole point of my dangerous travel to Rome, disguises, fake identities… Luckily, all was not in vain. 

I looked around, enjoying the sight. It wasn’t the biggest library I had seen, not even close. The room itself was wide, but the shelves stood apart from each other, and no shelf was truly filled. There were only around four hundred books. Their looks were equally unimpressive. Rather than having a uniform look, they looked wildly different. Some were clothbound, while others were leatherbound with gilded spines. Some had metal engravings on their covers, shining brand new, while others were tied by strings, barely held together under their own weight. Some even had wooden covers in different stages of dissolution. 

If it wasn’t for my magical sensitivity, I might have mistaken the library gathered by a nouveau-rich merchant trying to impress his peers, only to forget to assign a servant for maintenance. Every single tome locked in the room was radiating magic, stronger than anything I had felt from a book. Even compared to the lost library, it was overwhelming, because the library was not maintained for almost five centuries, meaning many had lost their magical nature — along with the secrets that might have been locked behind their magic. 

My eyes gobbled up the titles, even as I cursed the fact that I had hours rather than days to browse the riches hidden in the room. 

It was time to work…