Low-Fantasy Occultist

Chapter 455

Dawn was painting the eastern horizon in pale streaks of violet and gold by the time Nick walked back through the iron gates of Crowley Manor.

The adrenaline of the night's hunt had finally begun to recede, leaving a profound, satisfying warmth in his chest. His coils hummed with the newly integrated fire, an element that would work well with his more volatile emotions.

Even better, he had secured the Crystal Forest against anything below Prestige, bound the missing half of Akas, and expanded his arsenal.

I’ll need to set aside time to better figure out the spirit’s backstory, but for now, this is good enough.

Yet as he stepped into the main foyer, the tense atmosphere told him he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his good mood for long.

He found his mother and brother in the Lord’s study. Darien stood before Elena's desk, still dusty from a long night of patrols, his expression drawn and frustrated.

"The lumber is still arriving from the outer camps," Darien reported as Nick closed the oak door behind him. "And the quarries in the south are pulling stone. They couldn't stop the raw materials without setting fire to the forests and giving us a chance to strike back, but the processing has hit a wall.”

"Explain," Elena ordered, even as her brow furrowed. Nick knew his mother to be a woman of action, but it seemed the months spent ruling Floria on her own had forced her to learn to still her instincts.

That only made her look even more dangerous, like a caged wolf waiting for its chance to strike.

“It’s the hired mages," Devon spat with suppressed anger. "The earth-shapers and artisan casters we contracted to lay the foundations for the new eastern district all submitted notice this morning. Every single one of them claimed magical exhaustion, illness, or a sudden need to return to their home.”

Nick moved to an empty armchair without needing to ask for clarification. “So they finally moved.”

“This is worse than we expected," Darien agreed, giving him a curious glance but not asking where he’d been. The lieutenant had long since learned that the youngest Crowley simply did as he was wont. “Without the mages to shape the stone and cure the timber, the laborers have to do everything by hand. They are hauling rock with pulleys and digging trenches with shovels, since they still have the skills, but this has dramatically slowed our pace. At this rate, the refugees will be living in canvas tents well into the winter.”

Well, we knew they wouldn’t just pay up, even though that would have made life easier for us.

"They were smart enough not to fall into our trap and hire mercenaries for a direct confrontation with House Crowley.” Elena hummed. “Instead, they used their deep pockets to buy out our contractors. They want the refugee camps to become a festering slum so the people lose faith in our ability to provide for them, forcing us to the negotiating table to beg for their intervention.”

"We can arrest the mages for breaking their contracts," Devon suggested, looking like he’d just need the word. “There might have been provisions for illness and force majeure, but this is clearly something else.”

"To what end?" Elena shook her head. "Forcing a mage to shape stone at swordpoint would be counterproductive, Devon. It would ruin our reputation and give the merchants exactly the ammunition they need to call us despots, not to mention the nobles who have been working to undermine us. No, the Consortium is playing the economic game. If they refuse to fall for our provocation, we must beat them on the same field, however unsatisfying it may be.”

“We’ll need to know exactly who they bribed and what they promised, then,” Nick said, standing back up. "I will get the proof.”

It’s been a while since I last infiltrated an enemy stronghold.

"They are renting the old Massey townhouse in the inner district," Darien warned. “But it is heavily warded, My Lord. They brought their own security from the capital.”

"Wards are only a problem if you trigger them," Nick waved him off. He looked at his mother. "Give me until tomorrow’s dawn. Let Devon show the flag at the camps today. Keep the laborers moving, pay them double for their hard work, and maintain high morale. I will find the leverage we need.”

Elena met his gaze, and though he could see she wanted nothing more than to draw her blade and deal with the upstarts herself, she knew this required a subtler touch. She nodded once. "Be unseen, Nicholas. We cannot afford an accusation of burglary.”

"I was never there," he promised.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Nick spent the next few hours resting and meditating to familiarize himself with the subtle shifts in his soul as the fire affinity took root.

Unsurprisingly, the power of the Basilisk Core was no joke, having allowed him to skip directly to [Proficient], and with that came much greater ease in coming up with spells or even raw manipulations of the element.

Having already significant experience with other elements, especially rowdy ones like lightning, made achieving basic proficiency quite easy, and by the end of his session, Nick was sure he could wield fire in battle as easily as he wielded his water magic.

He also had numerous ideas for combining the elements, but for the moment, such a success still eluded him because the affinities were simply too well defined.

He’d either need even greater control over his mana, something he doubted he could achieve beneath Prestige, or he’d need to mix his spiritual magic into the matrix, but that would require more than a few hours of training, so he set it aside for the moment.

Worse, I’m pretty sure the spiritualist connected to the shadow didn’t die. I didn’t receive any Exp for it. I didn’t have time to notice yesterday, not with Akas’ fragment showing up, but that means he must have been very powerful. The sheer amount of damage I inflicted through the connection before it snapped would have killed just about any mortal mage.

He knew that would be a problem down the line. But for the moment, he had other matters to deal with.

When night finally draped Floria in darkness, he left the manor.

He moved through the sleeping town under the flawless cover of [Mire], erasing his presence from the physical and spiritual planes even further with the help of his [Ring of Unknownigness], rendering him a ghost.

He navigated the streets of the inner district until he reached the Massey townhouse, a three-story timber estate currently flying the silver banners of the Valerius Consortium.

Darien was right; the property was highly secure. Nick could feel the intricate lattice of defensive and alarm wards woven into the structure, far surpassing every other building in the town except the Manor itself.

Considering that the merchants couldn’t have held it for more than a month or two, the work was very thorough, and it made him wonder whether they’d planned to come into conflict from the very beginning.

Other groups had bought their own buildings and layered protections against thieves, but no one else seemed ready to face a siege.

With the help of [Empyrean Intuition], he found the microscopic seams where the runic arrays overlapped. Once he had mentally rehearsed the entire operation several times, he used [Territory] to gently widen a gap.

Because he wasn’t damaging the wards, no alarm was triggered, but he was very aware that if he were found during his search, escaping in the same way would be almost impossible.

Still, he stepped through the distortion, bypassing the perimeter without disturbing a single thread of magic.

Once he stood in the courtyard, Nick tapped into his new fire affinity and attuned his perception to the ambient temperature. The townhouse transformed into a map of thermal signatures, revealing the glowing outlines of the guards patrolling the ground floor and the sleeping servants in the upper quarters.

There was only one room on the second floor where the occupants were awake and active.

Silently, Nick flew up the side of the building, touching down on a balcony. With his wind magic, opening the door was a moment's work, and he drifted through the carpeted hallways, entirely invisible to the guards he passed.

Soon, he reached the oak door of the study and let his awareness seep through it.

Inside, a stout man in a velvet doublet was pacing before a crackling fireplace. At a writing desk sat someone who had to be a subordinate, rapidly updating a stack of thick ledgers.

"The earth-shapers are demanding an additional fifty gold per week to sustain the strike," the young man muttered, dipping his quill into ink. "They are nervous. The Crowley heir was seen in the camps today, paying the laborers from his own purse to keep the work moving.”

“Bah, just pay the mages," the stout representative snapped. "Pay them whatever they want, but make it clear that House Crowley is bleeding capital to keep those peasants digging by hand and that they can't sustain it. In a day or two, Lady Crowley will invite us to the manor, and we will secure exclusive rights to the town’s exports in exchange for bringing the mages back to work. Our men will be returned to us, and we’ll become the true masters of this town. Those mages had better remember how much they put us through, then.”

Nick waited in the hall, listening to the conversation and taking mental notes on everything. Most of it was coordinating the supplies and support needed to expand the trade blockade, even going so far as to include Oakenhollow and Honeyton, just in case House Crowley proved more resilient than expected and needed to see the real danger of standing up to the Consortium before bowing its head.

I kinda have to admire their balls. I’m sure this is done with the express permission of the main branch of the Consortium in the capital, but while those people are essentially untouchable to us, these guys are very much not, and they have to know that, for all their preparation, if we really wanted to, we could break through their wards and take them hostage as well.

But then, that might be what the main branch was hoping for. Such a violent reaction to a mere trade dispute would allow them to go to the Royal Court, and he had no doubt they were much better positioned to steer any investigation in their favor.

House Crowley was growing and would one day become formidable on the strength of their incredible concentration of talent, but for the moment, they were still small enough to be viable prey. If the hunt was successful, the Consortium would reap all the benefits of Floria’s growth for itself.

Twenty minutes later, the man dismissed his subordinate, who locked the ledgers in a safe behind the desk, bowed, and left the study, heading down the hall toward his quarters.

The representative lingered for another moment to pour himself a glass of wine, then retired to the adjoining bedroom.

Once more, Nick used his [Territory] to widen the gaps in the locking spells placed upon the door, careful not to trigger the numerous subtle magics woven into it.

Just that alone took him several minutes. Of course, he could have shredded through the spells if he had been more overt, but even the [Mire] could only mask so much magical noise. If he had been that loud, someone would have noticed, and he could sense several fairly strong guards in the townhouse.

Finally, he worked his way through it and stepped into the empty study. Cloaked in muffling magics, he approached the safe and took a moment to study it. It was a sturdy piece of craftsmanship, enchanted to resist physical tampering, and covered with a layer of ghostgrass to make unlocking magics impossible.

Fortunately, this wasn’t his first rodeo. Nick pressed his palm against the cold iron, feeling the tumblers inside through the metal’s subtle vibrations. A subtle application of [Hubris’ Reach] nudged the internal mechanisms into perfect alignment, and the door clicked open with a soft sigh.

With a smile, he reached inside and retrieved the ledger the clerk had just updated.

For a moment, he considered just memorizing the names and numbers held within. That would be enough for his next actions, but his mother needed hard proof, so he took the entire thing and vanished it into his ring.

It would mean the theft would be noticed by the next evening, but that just meant they needed to move quickly.