The First Legendary Beast Master novel Chapter 1173

Chapter 1173: Abandoned Guild House

Karl stepped up to the barrier around the dilapidated stone building, and raised his hand to inspect the surface.

It wasn’t a barrier spell that he was familiar with, but it was most likely cast by Orthos before he left. The question was if Karl could enter without damaging it.

The spell had held the house in something close to stasis for thousands of years, and Karl didn’t want to do anything that would destroy the historical artifact. Even from here, he could see Dwarven runes carved into the stone, long since inert, but undamaged by time.

If he could spot some of the building’s defensive measures already, there had to be more. And if there were more, most of them would be considered lost arts by now.

At least by most people.

"Are you sure that’s wise, Sir?" The Bunga City guard asked cautiously as Karl’s hand touched the barrier.

"No worries, the house still belongs to the Guild. It won’t harm me. I’m more worried about damaging it when I enter, if it was intended to be a stasis spell to preserve the house.

So, I’m trying to determine what it does first."

The Guard nodded slowly as Karl analyzed the barrier, and then tried to use his limited understanding of the Fundamental Rule of Mana Manipulation to trace the spell to its origin.

The spell stones were overgrown with grass, buried under a few centimetres of dirt and plant roots by the ages. But with mana flowing through them, they were easy enough to understand.

It was a preservation spell, the same sort that he had cast on the pantry, though written by a mage and not a Runecrafter, so the spell was somewhat different.

That meant all it was doing was slowing the aging of the building, and keeping unauthorized people out.

That was a feature that the pantry didn’t have, but he could see the value if he was making a copy for someone like Deve, who had a whole houseful of curious badger children to keep away from snacks and cleaning supplies.

There wasn’t anyone in the Alliance House or Guild House that wasn’t allowed to access the food as they pleased, so Karl hadn’t thought of it before seeing it in action.

Tentatively, Karl took a step forward, and the barrier offered no resistance to him as he stepped onto the overgrown walkway and headed for the building.

Dana followed him into the yard, but the Guard simply ran into the barrier as if he had walked into a wall.

"Just wait there for a few moments, while we make sure that the building is safe to enter." Karl instructed, with no intentions of letting strangers into this relic of a house.

"That should be a preservation barrier, right? What happened to this place?" Dana asked as she looked around the yard.

"If the spell functions the same as the one that I placed on the pantry, it only slows decay to one percent of its original rate. It doesn’t stop it completely. That would be much more difficult without an affinity for time magic.

So, a cake in the cupboard reaches day old status after three months. But this place has been abandoned for thousands of years. Even with the barrier, it has essentially gone decades without maintenance.

That’s why the stones are all still perfect, but the yard is a mess and the paint has peeled.

I don’t know how well the building was made to begin with, I didn’t really inspect it last time I was here. But it should be solid enough to enter." Karl explained.

The front door was open, with another barrier over it to keep out both strangers and the elements, going by the leaves that had been piled against it by the wind. Karl stepped over them and into the house, which looked faded and dusty, but still intact.

When the previous residents of the Guild House had left, they had taken most of the furniture. Karl could see the spots along the wall where large pieces had once stood, and the divots in the floor where something on rollers, likely a grand piano, had once stood.

But in the dining room, the massive Ironwood table remained with one single chair, and a carved stone tablet.

{To whomever should find this tablet.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify