Unsealing Emptiness

“Go and notify Sir Rufus,” the Empress ordered as she motioned with her hands for them to leave. The royal guards didn’t waste a moment and quickly stood up to leave the throne room.

Only after the guards had left did the Empress wave her hand and a fist-sized crystal appeared before her.

The crystal shone with bright blue light and dense Mana surrounded it. It was the crystal used to control the defensive formations.

Just when she was about to pour Mana into it, a sudden voice came from behind the throne.

“His Majesty should already be returning, your grace. Are you sure we should waste so many resources on formations?” The person who spoke still did not show his figure and hid in the shadows.

The Empress paused at his words. She didn’t look behind and seemingly knew who the voice belonged to.

.....

“Earlier it was the formation which activated all the defenses, but we found nothing. Now there is such a thing going on in the Palace after I disabled them. It is too much for it to be a coincidence...” She shook her head sideways and continued,

“We couldn’t find the intruder for hours, do you think we will be able to now? Activating the defenses would cost us, but it is better to be safe than sorry.”

After explaining, the Empress turned her head and stared in the shadows and sarcastically asked, “Or do you have a suggestion, Mr shadow? Didn’t you also check everywhere in the estate before and found no one?”

In face of her question, no answer came from the shadow and the Empress nodded her head before turning her focus back to the crystal.

. . .

Meanwhile, Ozul had found something in that hidden corridor. One corner of the wall felt hollow from the other, but when he pushed it, nothing much happened.

‘A hidden door... The way to open this should be somewhere here,’ Ozul began to push all over the wall.

*Clunk!*

With some mechanical sound, the spot of the wall where he had felt hollow on the other side started to slowly slide down. It turned out that he had to push a particular spot near that spot.

“There it is...” Ozul muttered. If there was a secret passage here, there were high chances that his arm could be there, given that Emperor Luthien hadn’t taken it with him.

Before Ozul were stairs leading downwards. From where he stood, he couldn’t see the end of them. He was just about to go down when Jinx beat him to it.

Having no other choice, Ozul again had to follow her down.

There was already barely any light in the corridor, so with each step that he took, it became darker. Though it wasn’t a problem for him since darkness never hindered Ozul. Instead, he felt way better.

He continued to follow Jinx down the narrow stairs. But even after a few minutes, they didn’t reach the end. It felt as if the stairs were endless.

Just as he was starting to wonder if it was also some kind of trap, Jinx stopped.

Ozul also stopped and since he didn’t see anything in sight, he tried to sense if there was anything out of the ordinary. This time again, he sensed nothing on the side of the wall, so he began to push everywhere until a small part slid back.

Just like before, another narrow passage opened, but the exit was right there in front of him this time.

‘Hmm? So bright...’

The end of the passage shone with blinding light.

Ozul narrowed his eyes and moved forward. Though just as he did, he had to forcibly open his eyes wide because of the sudden pressure of Mana that suddenly swept everywhere around him.

*Gzz...*

He didn’t know if it was because he was too deep underground, but the sound was a little muffled. Still, he knew what had happened.

“So they finally find out,” he muttered as he looked behind him. Even though there was nothing when he had just passed through that narrow tunnel, now he felt a threadlike beam of Mana connecting both sides.

Ozul figured that this thin line of Mana probably acted as the ‘thread’ to activate the ‘trap’ which in this case, might have been some deadly attack from the formation.

He was already anticipating it but didn’t know that the defensive formations would be spread throughout the Palace like this.

Ignoring the fact that he should have tried to be a little more discreet because now he might have to take care of tens of such traps, Ozul turned around to look at the place he had entered.

It was a spacious room, again decorated with luxurious ornaments, but the room wasn’t as sparkly as the halls of the Palace. Though the reason might be because of all the wooden bookshelves that were neatly arranged everywhere.

In them, Ozul saw hundreds of books, each probably containing some information that Emperor Luthien didn’t want others to know.

What Ozul was more interested in was the fact that he sensed tremendous Mana from the opposite side of the room!

He ignored the giant bookshelves and directly made his way towards the source. This time, Jinx only followed behind him.

When he reached the end of the giant room, in front of him was a massive wooden table.

The table didn’t have anything out of the ordinary, but the box of crystal placed on top of it certainly looked something special.

It was a transparent box of glass. Inside, Ozul could see a big red crystal, shining with a bright red light.

‘What is it...?’ He questioned in his mind. That thing exuded a very strange kind of Mana that felt a little different to him.

Before trying to get closer, Ozul checked to see if there was any type of trap set up or not. Only when he was a hundred percent sure that there was nothing that could act as some sort of a trigger around the glass did he step forward.

He held the glass box and carefully lifted it up from the shining red crystal.

However, just as he had lifted the glass box halfway up, he noticed something that made his eyebrows shot up in shock.

‘Damn it!’ Ozul cursed in his mind because he noticed that it was actually the glass box itself that was exuding that strange dense Mana. And the red crystal under it was rapidly turning darker.

Without waiting for another second, he hit his feet on the floor, and Ball of Purity quickly covered him.

*Boom!*

The red crystal exploded, engulfing the whole room in flames!

The explosion destroyed almost everything in sight, while Ozul was thrown back and hit the wall, almost creating a hole in it.

Fortunately, Ozul had covered himself in the Ball of Purity at the last second. He didn’t think taking the blast at point-blank range would’ve ended well for him.

As he removed the shield to look around the room, the whole room was still burning. The tall bookshelves were already reduced to mere ashes. The books certainly couldn’t avoid that fate either.

“Fu... That was close...” Ozul muttered as he slowly stood up from the ground.

He had checked everything around the table and the glass box and found nothing before. He didn’t think that the crystal itself would be explosive.

He had only realized in the last moment that the strange Mana he felt was actually from the glass box.

It was to lure the intruders into activating the red crystal that exploded and destroyed everything in the room.

An explosion of that size and power would have certainly even harmed a Rank-9 Mage at such a close distance.

When he looked around, the walls had big cracks. Parts of it already seemed to be ready to fall any minute now.

‘They still held on...’ Ozul was surprised that the walls could still stand after that explosion.

He sighed and looked for the other door that he had previously noticed when he had arrived.

Even after being so careful, he still fell for the trap. Although it didn’t even scratch him, Ozul didn’t like the fact that he was caught off guard.

Just when he was about to reach the door that had also somehow survived, Ozul noticed Jinx still on her spot, licking her paws.

“...”

Ozul had no words for the black cat that somehow didn’t even find the need to move from its place in the face of that explosion that just reduced everything to cinders in the room!

‘Oh right, I should let her lead...’ Ozul remembered that Jinx somehow knew everything and had also previously stopped him from opening that trap room.

Ozul didn’t know how Jinx knew everything or how she even survived the explosion, but he had realized that she was his safest option right now.

‘Can she make it so things can just pass through her...?’

With such thoughts in his mind, Ozul made his way to the next room.

. . .

Meanwhile, in the throne room, the Empress was getting a report from Rufus when they suddenly heard the loud explosion that shook the whole Palace.

Rufus didn’t know, but the Empress’ was well aware of everything within the Palace. She instantly figured out what could have been the reason for the explosion.

“Sir Rufus, take charge of the royal guards and control the situation if any arises,” saying that the Empress stood up from her seat and waited for Rufus to leave the throne room before she turned towards the shadows and said,

“As of now, all of you are permitted to leave my side...”

Following her words, a couple of blurry figures moved and disappeared from the throne room. They were the hidden guards of the Royal family that only they knew about. All one of them had the strength of a peak Rank-8 Mage.

Though she had sent all of them to stop the intruder, the Empress wasn’t sure if they would be enough because the infiltrator could very well be a Rank-9 Mage.

“I just hope he doesn’t get involved...”