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[Villain] Book 2 - Chapter 25: Control Mage
🕑 Added 2025-06-05 07:27:16 +0000 UTCDamien had an arm under Fay and Olympia’s chests as he flew through the massive hole toward one of its rock faces; slowly being pulled up the slanted surface by a cable was a metal box on crude rails. As he approached the elevator, he whispered to Fay, “Activate your mist.”
She nodded and softly chanted the spell, “ᚠᛟᚷ ᛞᛟᛗᚨᛁᚾ (Fog Domain).” Within seconds, a dense mist appeared all around them, and even Damien found it somewhat difficult to traverse the mist, but the low screeching of metal wheels on rails led him to his target.
Under cover of mist and the loud scraping from the Thralls rapidly ascending the stone walls, Damien used Phantom Form to turn his arm into an ethereal state and pushed his arm through the elevator’s door. He ignored the high-pitched screams from within and instead focused on undoing the door’s lock from the inside by rematerializing his hand.
With a click that sealed the occupants’ fate, the door screeched open on its hinges, exposing a well-dressed human family cowering in the corner of the box.
“Feast quickly and then throw them out.”
Olympia obeyed her master’s command and mauled the family. Five corpses were thrown to the horde of Thralls below a moment later.
The trio sat in the elevator. Damien looked at Olympia’s blood-caked skin and fangs that were dripping. “Fay, clean us”—he saw the red stains covering the elevator’s seats, where Olympia had slaughtered the family—“and the elevator, too.”
A gush of water left Fay's hands, followed by a pleasant breeze.
“Your Fire control has certainly improved,” Damien remarked.
Fay sweetly smiled at him. “Of course, darling. I suspect I have reached within the realm of B-grade already.” Her eyes flickered like a primordial flame. “And after tonight, who knows? A-grade may be within reach.”
“Now, now.” Damien chuckled. “Please restrain yourself. We need some people alive to become blood slaves and Thralls. Not to mention, a citywide fire would greatly inhibit our force’s fighting potential considering their weakness to fire.”
Olympia nodded with fear in her eyes. The sight of Fay absorbing that Firestone and unlocking her Fire affinity potential was terrifying. Of course, fire was scary while she was still human, but as a vampire, it had shot up the list to become her number one fear. Why can Master’s queen wield such a dangerous power? Unless Master plans to use her to kill his own kind…
There was a slam as Damien closed and bolted the door. Everything now looked clean and presentable apart from Olympia. “Wear this.” Damien brought out a simple blue dress from his spatial storage. “Just to get past the guards. After that, you can wear whatever you wish.”
Olympia held the blue dress as if it was precious. Not only was it a gift from Master, but she finally had clothes!
After a few minutes, the elevator stopped. Damien could hear guards rushing to open the door, but to avoid suspicion with the broken lock, he opened it himself.
A frantic, middle-aged human guard with an impressive mustache started blabbering after noticing the elevator’s occupants. “Good sir! What the hell is happening down there?”
“Well, I was visiting a family friend in the dungeon’s town when the most horrifying event occurred,” Damien began narrating a made-up story as Fay and Olympia put on their most scared faces without revealing the monsters they truly were.
The guard listened intently to the well-dressed noble. After hearing the audacious tale, he put a hand on the noble’s shoulder. “I understand. We need to get you and your family to safety. Quickly, sir, come this way!”
Damien raised his face, and his scarlet eyes pulsed with power as he activated hypnosis. “Lead me to the formation room.”
The mundane guard’s eyes glazed over as if he was daydreaming; without a word, he turned on his heel and brought them toward one of the fort’s most important rooms.
Damien smirked as he followed the hypnotized guard. He obviously knew the location of the formation control room from completing quests within the game, but he needed a person to vouch for him.
Or so I thought… I guess it’s different in real life. Damien watched with amusement as the guards standing upon the walls in front of him scrambled around with no sense of order or leadership.
I guess they all picked this job for an easy paycheck. Being the final line of defense at the entrance of a dungeon is rather pointless most of the time. Mostly long, boring days and nights filled with lounging around and filling out the occasional paperwork like the guard that looked at Jake Ravenhall’s identification card.
Damien composed himself and followed behind the absentminded guard, with Fay and Olympia close behind. They walked from the elevator station and joined a long line of residents attempting to pass through the wall before the monsters crested the hole’s ridge.
“JUST LET THEM ALL IN!” Damien heard someone shout, and the line became a rushed frenzy. Within a minute, Damien was ushered into the inner wall right as the gate slammed closed behind him. A second later, a golden barrier manifested across the entire wall as the formations sprang to life.
But they had already let the true monsters in. The rest? A mere distraction.
Damien could hear nails scraping stone as the Thralls appeared at the edge of the castle walls; light from burning torches illuminated their monstrous faces as they smashed past the elevator station and surged toward the gate.
“FIRE!” another person screamed, and with a deafening impact, the golden barrier shimmered as a sea of flames descended upon the Thralls.
Olympia lightly hissed at the flames—the smell of burned, rotten meat tickled her nose as she backed away like a scared cat. She then felt her master’s hand on her shoulder. He led her alongside the guard past the many residents and deeper into the fort. The group passed many hysterical soldiers as they ascended the stairs, but one look at Damien’s clothes and they didn’t even question them.
The night helped to obscure Olympia’s fangs and claws as she dutifully followed her master along the wall. Soldiers armed with crossbows fired down upon the hundreds of Thralls cresting the dungeon’s entrance.
“What the hell are these creatures?” a young man shouted as he reloaded his weapon behind the safety of a battlement. Another man took his place and fired an arrow into the flames below.
“Some kind of ghoul?” he replied over the screams. “But the Staedbergh Dungeon has only ever housed Earth-type monsters; the appearance of an undead horde means a lich might have made the dungeon its home!”
“Shit. We need to inform the guild master!”
Damien smiled as he walked past the soldiers and looked around. The hole to the dungeon was vast and reminded Damien of those massive, open-air mines back on Earth. Only the immense castle walls surrounding the hole topped with turrets hurling fireballs at an undead horde below reminded him that this was no longer Earth but a fantasy world.
Due to the dungeon’s entrance being at a slight incline, the castle’s defenses were focused around the elevator station, as this was the most likely side for a monster siege.
And therefore, the formation room would be on this side, too, Damien mused as the group approached the largest tower. In his mana sight, it radiated like a beacon of power and was almost blinding as it sucked in a vast amount of mana pouring out from the dungeon’s depths.
The guard placed his hand on a door, and the golden barrier protecting it rippled out before collapsing. Then, before the guard could even turn around, Damien used his spatial storage to summon his metal cards and decapitated the hypnotized human.
Without missing a beat, Damien shoved the guard’s body to the side. “Kill quickly and destroy everything,” he commanded as he smashed down the door with his foot. Splinters showered the room as the trio stormed in. Olympia moved first and jumped upon the closest mage. The mage was wearing gray robes and focusing intently on a runic control panel displaying a hologram of the fight outside. Unfortunately, his hands were inside two tubes, so he couldn’t even protect himself from Olympia ripping his face off.
A woman at another console slowly reacted to the situation and tried to extract her hands from her own control panel.
Damien strolled in, black cane in hand, and calmly observed the situation. His eyes locked with the woman mage. Her skin had a green tinge, and two small tusks protruded from her lower jaw. A half orc in a city like this? She must be a rather powerful mage to work here.
Looking around, Damien discovered the room was poorly lit from a few pieces of glowstone embedded in the ceiling. Time to test my new Darkness affinity spells. While training Olympia and waiting for Fay to absorb her Firestone, Damien had not been idle. Every day he practiced magic within the mana-rich depths of the dungeon and fought with various beasts and delvers.
“ᛋᚺᚨᛞᛟᚹ ᛒᛁᚾᛞ (Shadow Bind).”
Damien felt his body seize up, but he smiled. This was the drawback of such a powerful spell. He was a control mage who thrived at fighting things from range. The loss of his mobility was a small price to pay compared to others.
All the other mages in Damien’s line of sight paused. From this angle, Damien could see black hands emerging from the dark floor and grabbing onto the other mages’ shadows, locking them in place. He had sacrificed his own mobility to disable everyone else.
Olympia tore apart the first mage’s face before swiftly changing targets and leaping onto the half-orc woman with surprising speed. The woman screamed, but even with the impact of Olympia smashing into her, she remained perfectly still as she couldn’t move at all—as her body was locked in place by the Shadow Bind spell. So instead, her bones took the brunt of the impact. The half-orc mage coughed blood as Olympia bit deeply into her neck.
“ᛚᛁᚷᚺᛏ— (Light—).” A mage in the corner that was unbonded began chanting a simple light spell.
Damien quickly switched targets and directed his swarm of metal cards toward the mage.
The mage’s eyes went wide as he saw hundreds of metal cards rapidly approaching. He stumbled back and raised his arms, but they cared not for his weak resistance. Instead, the impact threw him across the room into a control panel, and his head rolled to the side as he slumped against the wall with his mangled arms across his chest.
With a simple wave of his hand, Damien directed a card to cleanly decapitate the mage’s head.
“ᛋᚺᚨᛞᛟᚹ ᚺᛟᚢᚾᛞᛋ (Shadow Hounds).” Two average-size dogs that flickered in and out of existence charged forward from Damien’s hands and ran around the room.
He watched the hounds for a while and concluded, “No traps, then.” So, without hesitation, he disabled his Shadow Bind spell and followed his companions into the room.
Fay had spirals of fire surrounding her arms, and she mercilessly pounded a human mage to death.
This was honestly the first time Damien had seen Fay truly fight. Her technique was crude even from his limited knowledge, but the power behind each punch and the screams from the mage confirmed to Damien that she was somewhat effective.
Damien’s cane tapped on the ground as he strolled forward. Lifeless bodies lay all around, covered in harrowing, deep gouges from claws. Damien saw Olympia happily feeding off a half-dead mage on the room’s far side.
He ignored her and navigated around the various runic control consoles. They were constructed out of white stone and reminded Damien of a control room in a power plant. Hundreds of various controls were tended to and operated by the now-dead mages that littered the floor in pools of blood.
Walking toward the center, Damien stood before a stone that shone like a star in his mana sight. It was hovering above a heavily enchanted metal dome.
Damien looked at the control panel in front of the dome. Although it was written in the runic script, to him, it was simple English. He quickly located the <DISABLE> option and pressed it.
The golden barrier surrounding the stone rippled and shattered. He didn’t waste a second and activated his Spatial Inventory. A moment later, a rift in space opened and swallowed the stone.
The control room went totally dark, and screams came from outside.
Damien chuckled as he left the control room through the broken door and saw the Thralls smashing their way through the gate.
“Let the slaughter begin.”
Comments
WrongColor
Thanks for the chapter, they seem a lot more coherent to me now.
