Chapter 41

Chapter 41 - Lifting a Corner of the Mystery

Here we were at the end of a hallway. If I had not carefully investigated, I would have had no idea that the Fox happens to appear at this very dead end along with a few other traces. The place is carpeted which makes finding traces even more difficult, but without any magic barriers blocking my way the traces were obvious in my new eyes.

Following my lead, I traced his movements and uncovered a secret here that he would likely not want to surface. And that is exactly what we want. 

Hidden under carpet was a trapdoor leading to an unknown secret location that the fox that was leading this base currently would not like to be known. Of course, I would not make the same mistake that he did so I erased the traces of us on the way here as I showed my discovery to the others. 

"Way to go! If we find some secrets hidden here or evidence of suspicious activity, we could use this as an excuse if something were to go wrong!" Wendy cheered happily. 

Hearing this, I showed a clearly confused and surprised expression. This was not what I expected her to blurt out at all! 

Vanessa quickly shook her head, holding it in her palms as Mellie laughed happily on the side. Luke showed a lukewarm smile at the situation which made her think and then get embarrassed at what she had said so carelessly. 

"I-I mean, this would help us on our way to save as many people as possible!" She tried to recover but it was much too late. After some laughter, our banter was then stopped by Luke.

"Just leave it here for now. Let's explore this place first."

Agreeing with his decision, I carefully sensed one last time to see if there were any traps at the door. Once I did, I opened the door and snuck in first. Following me was Vanessa who was steady with her shield at front followed by the two mages and Luke was left last to watch for any people that might see us sneaking around. 

Due to our movements, we had to cover the entrance of the trapdoor with the stealth cloak to enter in so we were cautious to move carefully to not alert anyone. 

Thankfully nothing idiotic like getting the cloak stuck on the edge the trapdoor or an enemy happening to be at the entrance of the secret base as we entered happened. 

It was completely empty and a little crowded likely because the place this leads to needs to be kept as secret as possible. Now that we were in likely enemy territory, we had to make sure that we were careful with our movements this time. 

Due to needing to be in a combat state, we decided to put away the cloak that had done a lot of good work so far. Once we left, if we were still unknown we could use it. But for now, using it would be more of a hinderance than a strength. Especially since our actions are more on the flashy side. 

With how tight the corridors are here, we can't really sneak in if an enemy happened to be leaving at the moment. This hallway is already quite tough for us to fit side by side which made sense. 

But all of that meant that if a situation were to happen we would need to quickly take down the enemy before they could warn others. Once alerted the effect of the cloak would be much lessened. 

So we carefully traversed the slightly cramped hallways as we remained wary to any possible disturbances. Luckily for us, there were no other people in the corridor so we were able to sneak all the way into the base here. 

At the end of the hallway was a heavy and locked gate that seemed like trouble. If we opened the gate, there would be obvious traces as the dust from our movements would appear on the gate itself. If someone were to carefully examine it, they would be able to find these traces. 

"So will we do this? If we do, our next actions have to be quite swift as we can't afford to let anyone who enters here check the condition of the gate." I asked.

"What choice do we have? It does not seem like there are any other hidden entrances that we can find soon. So let's see what those guys are hiding in here before the news of that Lion prince's return gets here." Luke answered

Having confirmed it, I went ahead and put on a pair of gloves on me. This is to block any traces of myself when doing anything bad that I learned from Alice once. She was saying something about fingerprints or something. I can't fully recall since my mind was preoccupied with her retelling of detective style stories.

What I do know, is that we humans have clear and unique fingerprints and while other beast folk do not. Blurring these traces will lessen the likelihood that a human gets blamed for this issue. After all, a clear fingerprint would prove human. And if it is unclear, they could also assume a beast folk from another faction did it. 

All of this quickly passed through my mind as I opened the gate and we could see inside. 

In there was a large meeting room with a bunch of bookshelves with all kinds of scrolls and other written records. This was really helpful as the shelf was all neatly organized by dates so we could clearly find everything that we were looking for. 

Because of this, we were able to quite easily find some rather incriminating evidence and even some things that confirmed some of our suspicions. 

"Hey guys, over here!"

Arriving over to Wendy, she then spoke about the discovery that she had found out. 

"There is a mark here that you all would likely find interesting."

Glancing at the mark, we saw a rather familiar symbol hidden in the edge of the sheet of paper. On it was the mark of the Shadow Serpent which helped to clue in their involvement here. 

"So they really were behind it... But this document seems to be coming from an elder?" Luke, while surprised, had a feeling that something like this was going on. What was peculiar was that it was someone who called themselves an elder who wrote it. 

"Elder is not a position within the Shadow Serpent. My family has sent some undercover agents into their group and did not find anything of the sort. Instead this feels more like..." Before Vanessa could say her guess, her sentence was finished by the priest Kellie who was on the side. 

"The Beastman Elder Council."

"Beastman Elder Council?" This was a name I found particularly unfamiliar so I asked. In addition to me, Wendy and Luke also were both confused and turned to the two of them. After looking at each other with grave expressions on their faces, they then decided that Vanessa would explain the situation. 

"The situation has changed, if it is the Beastman Elder Council involved, then we have to abort this mission. They are the secret hidden alliance of beast folk who secretly govern the race from the shadows. The Aloph family has records of their existence from a thousand years ago. They were the group responsible for the development of the Beast folk race in ancient times, but recently they hid themselves behind the race known as the Golden Lions and disappeared from view. We have had spies search for their existence and found nothing so we believed that they had disbanded a long time ago. But it seems that they simply hid deeper in the shadows." Afterwards, Mellie also said her piece to supplement the information given by Vanessa. 

"The church has also sent some of our own shadow forces to infiltrate and we found out that there was an event that lead to them hiding." Showing an awkward smile, she inwardly apologized to her in her own mind before stating the conclusion that the church ended up at. 

"Specifically, it was discovered that it was likely a force under the demon king at the time that had wiped out most of the elder council."

Hearing this, the others all turned to me with confused expressions. I was also confused with them, but it made a lot of sense. Among demon royalty, Alice would actually be considered the oddball among them all. In fact, the current Demon King is abnormal when considering the entire history of the demon race. It was just that in comparison to Alice, he was more plausible.

After all, how could the Demon King not be feared all over if they did not terrorize all of the races in the world? Although I did not read through all of the records, at least I know of some of the more scary stories told to me by Alice when I was first learning about the world. 

Most Demon Kings at least had massive swathes of armies that could blot out the sky and most of them were strong enough to fight on the frontlines with most of the other races needing to join hands to deter them. Most importantly, about 80% of them had no close connections besides their generals. 

This was due to an ability of the Demon King that even Alice had no idea about until recently. Hidden within the underground sealed library of the Demon King Castle, there was a record of some of the abilities that were common among Demon Kings. Although a few things seemed exaggerated, it all hinged on three specific abilities that all of them had. 

First was a variant of Dark attribute magic known as Sin Magic. Although the records seemed quite exaggerated, what could be deduced was that this variant of Dark Magic has the ability to manipulate the will and emotions of their target. In history, it was mostly used to demoralize armies as it was not as useful when facing the Hero who would awaken an opposing magic to counter the effect and to prevent themselves from getting affected when they concentrate the effect on them. 

Second was that at the time they attain the throne, the demon king would gain an inheritance hidden within the essence of the concept of Demon Kings. She explained it as something similar to the Bloodline memory that Dragons had where at certain ages a dragon can read some of the inheritance and knowledge hidden within the bloodline of a dragon species. 

Finally and most importantly, when a bloodline that has contained a Demon King were to fall completely, the essence of that bloodline would then be generated within a certain secret area and be granted as a mutation to an unknown hidden demon to continually perpetuate that particular bloodline. 

Now, of these three, the last one had a lot more to talk about so I will explain the first one which is easiest to explain. 

Most types of magic are based on particular phenomenon shown by nature or passed through specific species. Mages then extrapolate that information and understand it fully before writing it down as a specific spell system. Then, generations of development goes by as the spells in that system slowly get more mature and developed until it becomes the spell systems that we know now. 

But, for some more basic spells when a user delves into a particular category deep enough, they could also develop a branch of that magic to the point that it becomes its own spell system. 

One particular example is with Fire magic. Basic fire magic is easy enough, user generates heat and flames that are fueled by their magic. But for some people, that alone is not enough. Delving deeper into Fire magic, they eventually develop other methods of casting and using Fire spells that can't easily fit into the broader Fire system categorization. 

Most well known is a branch known as Sun Magic. As a combination between Fire and Star based magic, it allows the user to channel the flames and energy of the sun themselves. As a drawback, the user then becomes dependent on the time of day and weather conditions. In exchange, the cost and power of spells they cast skyrockets when the conditions are met. 

There were several spells of a similar style through the history of humanity and magic. With the foundation of the Demon King Castle, such information has long been compiled and sorted for a successor to follow.