Chapter 39

Chapter 39 - Magic and Arrival!

Seeing such a sight was not as tough for me to see, but it was still quite uncomfortable. After all, the mocking and lazy leaders were far less efficient than the operations that Alice had working for her. 

After seeing such a sight, Mellie could not help clenching her fist and wanting to rush out, but was stopped by Vanessa and Luke. Thankfully the surrounding noises were loud enough to block out the small noises on our side so after they calmed her down we then had to decide on what to do next. 

Of course the group would help to release these prisoners here, but how they would do that would be up for question. 

"What should we do?" Wendy asked quietly to the leader of the operation, Luke. 

After some time contemplating, he ultimately decided that they should go and investigate within the base of the beast folks themselves. Of course, that does not mean that these humans would be left hanging. In order to ensure that nothing would happen to them, he casted a new spell that I had not seen him cast in a long while. 

"Luck Blessing!"

Now, spell names don't need to be said aloud to take an effect, but saying them aloud does indeed help the caster focus and better imagine the mental image of the effect that they want to take place. But because this mission was more on stealth rather than in combat, he hid the visual effects of the spell through excellent spell control and hid a trace of good luck within these humans. 

After leaving the tower, while the others were in a low mood and when we had left a long enough distance I asked the team a question about the specifics of that spell he had just casted. 

"What was that spell? I have heard Luke casting it before, but I never understood the specific effect that takes place when it is casted." I asked. 

Now that they were further away from the area the team's mood had calmed so they were able to explain clearly what the spell was to me. 

"That was the Luck Blessing Spell. It is a rather rare spell that only a small fraction of spell casters with Light affinity have access to. The specifics of the spell is that the user actually takes a part of their own luck to hide within a person's body. Afterwards if in a short time during the spell duration they experience a near death situation, then the hidden luck would burst forth and things would go in their favor so that their life would be saved to the upmost degree. Afterwards a signal would be sent to the recipient of the situation before the connection fades."

This explanation by Wendy helped to clear up the specifics of the spell, but it still ended up raising some questions for me. Likely seeing my confusion, she continued her explanation as we continued walking in stealth through the area with the others quietly listening in the background. 

"It is rather rare as a spell as the user has to have an excessive amount of luck as reversing a near death situation would then mean that the bad luck meant in a killing situation would then be reflected onto the user. So if you are unlucky, that misfortune could end up killing the caster. Of course, you don't have to worry about that situation when it comes to Luke. He is rather strong and as the hero he has a natural resistance to most luck based targeting. Unless a demon king is targeting a hero's luck, most other sources of misfortune would be either neutralized before it arrived or only negligibly affect him." She explained. 

It was rather strange, but it sort of made sense for me. Although Luck is not something you can directly touch, but it does indeed exist. Metaphysical concepts like that have been spoken about by Alice in the past, but except for space I had never really had any contact with anything of the sort.

"But I thought that he used Light Magic? Is Light magic related to Luck in some way? Why doesn't he know Luck Magic?" I asked her.

Hearing this, it was not just the witch girl who was confused, but the other three listening in were also confused as well. 

"Luck Magic?" Since this concerned him, he asked me upright about what this was in particular.

"You don't know it?" 

"I have never even heard of that branch of magic before!"

This back and forth was quite surprising for all of us and it eventually lead to me having to explain about the special categories of magic all over from what my mother had taught me from the start. 

"According to Alice, there are the regular Elemental magics, Special Elements, Rule and Rune based magic, and finally a category of spells known as Special Magic. You should know about the first three at the very least right?" As an introduction, I felt that the basic types of spells would be a good way to gauge the level of knowledge that the team had overall. 

"Yeah, those are indeed the categories we know! But Rule and Rune? Aren't Runes their own branch of magic independent from the spell system? And what is Rule Magic?" Wendy asked curiously. 

They did not even know that much?! Well at the very least, what I have to explain has been more cleared up. If we had more time I could explain further, but since we were still on the go and had things to do I could only simply explain the bare bones subject of the situation. 

"To put it simply, Rule Magic is magic that enforces certain rules upon certain areas and places. Once on the later stages the user can apply these rules upon people and even concepts. For example, the spell system of Cutting Magic can apply a cut on both a surface to cut it up, or a cut on a body to make a clean cut surface on a person or even at the highest level even things like space and time could be cut in order to achieve the effect of teleportation and Time Hopping." I explained rather simply. This example was what I was taught at first so I felt like it was appropriate to use that as an example to explain it to these folk who have not yet encountered this branch of magic. 

Although confused, Wendy eventually had a light bulb glow above her head as she exclaimed her idea. 

"So it is like Sealing Magic!"

When she said that, the other two also understood the idea after she said that. Although I felt that Cutting Magic was a better way to explain things, but the fact that they are familiar with a Rule based Magic System like Sealing Magic was a nice surprise. 

"That is indeed correct. Sealing Magic is an under the Rule based Magic System." I responded slightly exasperated. 

On the side, Wendy was quickly jotting down her thoughts on her notebook she had pulled from her breast pocket and wrote down what she had learned today real quick. As a spell caster from a family and even race of spell casters, she was of course infatuated with learning any kind of knowledge especially related to spells and magic. Since even their family had no official record of this way of dividing magic, it was of paramount importance to write down these findings and the one who gave this knowledge in order to not forget and to pass it down further. 

When that was done, she asked if she could keep this record with her family to which I agreed. When I did, the whole group was rather surprised for a moment. Although confused, I decided to continue the basic lecture until we reached the base that the lion man spoke of before. 

"For special magic, these spells are usually ones that don't fit under the classifications of other categories. This section is also where things like Formations and Alchemy would land in terms of magic. But what I wanted to say was that Luck magic is one of the bigger spell systems in this category. It is somewhat related to the ancient branch of Divination which is also a branch of Formation type spells. Luck Magic is mostly characterized by the spell Fate's Gaze where the user can see the threads of fate that exist among and between people and to manipulate them. What I heard was that there were spells to directly interfere with and manipulate the fates and luck of people with the cost of bearing karma with each change in fate." Although somewhat confusing and not as clear as spells like the basic Elements, it was indeed an introduction that could introduce them to the concept of Luck magic. 

I can't really explain further about this topic so any further questions would have to wait for when I asked the clones for knowledge in this area. Thankfully, that was enough to explain the spell category so I did not need to ask more about the concept. Although I noticed that they did not really understand it, I noticed that they most certainly kept this in mind as we finally reached a point where we could see the base ourselves. 

Along the way there were several patrolling officers of course and we were quite simply able to evade them under the cover of this really useful stealth cloak. 

The others all were once again amazed by the craftsmanship of the cloak and in their minds all wanted to ask about whether the Demon King had these and had been quietly investigating and watching us this whole time. 

After all, the only time that Felicia was ever discovered was when she had been too close to the window in the Empire's castle and had her stealth taken off by Luke who had an abnormal level of hidden strength and a special bloodline that allowed him to detect her quietly with his intuition. 

But that matter would have to wait as we had arrived at our destination and now she was there waiting for Luke to figure out what to do next. 

"Ahem, let's all sneak in to the base and see who in particular is in control of the base and if there are any other people that we would need to save before leaving."

Nodding our heads, we all quietly followed along his direction as we headed straight towards the entrance of the base. Our footprints left no traces upon the ground as the cloak draped over our traces as we quietly followed after a carriage that was quietly being investigated at the moment. By simply following the carriage we were able to quietly sneak into the base without any one any wiser of the situation. 

Doing this we were able to sneak in and by following the patrolling team members we could get a clear idea on the structure of the whole building. 

After confirming that there were several routes to escape the area if need be, we followed and eventually found our way to the administrative area where the beast folk in this base kept all of their important documents. 

Here there were all kinds of herbivorous types of beast folk as well as a leader who had fox ears and two tails extending out of their back. 

Looking at it, I noticed that the place was rather stifling and uncomfortable even for us hiding here let alone the people working here. After some time searching we were able to find a map sprawled open in the room as well as document that was listed as private. 

Being rather curious, we made sure to wait until most people left for what can be assumed as lunch break when they locked the doors and windows to open and check the documents all over. 

Once we did, we found one labeled as personnel changes that we felt could be important for this situation that was going on. After taking that as well as some records about dates and other things of note, we waited until they returned to sneak out while someone opened and entered the room to go to what was written down as the head office of the building. 

After going through all of the records, we could confirm with absolute certainty that there was indeed something going on here and after checking this office they would then go to the prison rooms to check them out as well.