WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 70

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The stairs opened onto the Grand Hall, the room where the lord held audiences, received guests, and convened with his vassals. Blood had been spattered in places, but the fighting here had clearly been light. The room had changed hands so many times in such a short span, though, that every decoration was gone. Bare walls, empty floors. No different from a ruin.

"No obvious ambush in here. I've heard the Undying King and Margrave Yumuran moved toward the east steeple. Cora has three steeples in total, and to reach the west, north, or east steeple, you have to pass through the central corridor connecting each one."

All three steeples were visible through the Grand Hall's windows. The west steeple rose somewhat higher than the hall itself, and each subsequent one climbed roughly half again as tall, placing the east steeple a full ten meters above the west. The connecting passages were arched bridges. The one running from the Grand Hall to the west steeple showed a large hole in its upper section and a thick streak of soot.

Heading toward the west steeple, Ethan said, "The passage is barely wide enough for one person."

"Which makes it difficult for their command to escape."

"Is there no stairway down from the east steeple to the ground?"

"According to Count Saikal, the stairway was destroyed in the last battle and was likely never rebuilt."

"Then they're completely cornered."

"What an interesting way to put it."

With no more enemies to worry about to the rear, Boen had fallen in behind Wica.

"The hand cannons are from Byutlas, aren't they?" Ethan asked. "How old are they?"

"Yes. About a hundred years."

By Damarth Yumaha's standards, hand cannons were practically new. Regular cannon had only appeared a few hundred years prior, which made them feel fresh against the older magical traditions. Ethan, though, knew about the Glock 45.

"What if you made them smaller? A hand cannon is already a scaled-down cannon. You could shrink it further, make it easier to carry."

"Interesting thought. For some background, attempts were made over a hundred years ago to do exactly that. Back then, the weapon was far more dangerous. It took time before it became safe enough to use reliably. As it stands, the current hand cannon is at the minimum size that lets a person carry it and still fire a ball with stability. Shrink it further and the reliability drops, the destructive force falls short, and on top of that it becomes harder to use as a bludgeon."

"What about making it easier to fire? Loading the magic reagent and the ball seems like it takes a while."

"With proper training, it's not particularly slower than casting a spell of equivalent strength. If anything, it's a touch faster."

Not wrong, exactly. But Ethan knew how far hand cannons lagged behind Terra's firearms.

Demi offered an explanation.

<Right, I get it. It happens in Damarth Yumaha too, to an extent, but a family's magic is respected and protected by the Mage Council. If someone tried to steal Byutlas's gunpowder and cannon secrets, the family could raise an army to defend them, and no one would have grounds to stop it. Gunpowder and cannon magic belongs to Byutlas and a handful of other alchemical families. With so few houses developing it, there's a natural ceiling on how far it can go. And as long as it doesn't look obviously inferior to other types of magic, they'd rather make it more reliable than push it any further.>

<Precisely.>

"Are you interested in alchemy?" Wica asked. "I could write you a letter of introduction. Even without one, the Byutlas family always welcomes alchemists. You should be careful for now, though."

"Why?"

Wica gave a thin, wry smile. "The Byutlas family has been in a family war for the past six months. Three brothers, one already dead, the other two deadlocked. As you well know, if you go anywhere near a family mid-war..."

"You'd be suspected as the other side's spy. And if you died under that suspicion, you'd have nobody to blame."

"Exactly."

Family wars differed from real conflicts only in scale and in the shared blood of their participants. Powerful figures mobilized every person and resource at their disposal to kill or force the submission of their rivals, sometimes incurring debts to outside families along the way. Such alliances could draw lords closer together, but if the candidate a lord had backed lost, the resentment could flare into a genuine war.

The Mage Council, broadly speaking, preferred a mage who held sole dominion over a family to a middling one, so it did not oppose family wars. The Kings' Roundtable declined to condemn them either, since the wars served to keep mage power in check.

Ethan had explained family wars before, so Demi was able to follow Wica's account without difficulty.

<Maybe. There might be a way.>

Either way, it wasn't something to worry about right now.

They reached the west steeple and found the bodies of knights and battle mages. It looked as though a fight had broken out near the entrance, the Undying King and his command overtaken here on their retreat from the Grand Hall. It must have been fierce. Despite the cramped space, scorch marks ran up the walls, and thick, congealing pools of blood lay wherever the eye landed.

Halfway up, the interior of the north steeple came into view through the far end of the corridor. No one in sight.

"Do you think they moved into the west steeple?" Ethan said. "Maybe there's a standoff in the corridor over there?"

"Could be."

"Should we head that way first?"

Wica glanced up the steeple. "Something feels off..."

"Should we check the upper section here first?"

"No. It might just be my imagination. Better to push forward than waste time."

It was the wrong call. They'd know that soon enough.

Ethan was halfway down the corridor to the north steeple when a voice came from behind.

"Ethan! Wica-ssi! Enemies from the rear!"

Boen, at the back of the group.

Ethan spun, leapt his own height off the ground, pushed off the wall, and cleared them both in a single vault. A knight was charging straight at them.

"Get down!"

"...Again?"

Ethan dropped low. Wica's hand cannon fired. The heavy armor caved at the chest and the knight went down, but another was already coming.

Ethan gripped his sword and set his stance. Then Wica called out, "Ethan. Enemies from the other side too. We're surrounded."

"...What happened?"

"Don't you see, Ethan?" Boen said. "The assault team. Professor Rivielton. They lost to the Undying King."

Ethan and Wica each dealt with the knight in front of them while Boen's crystals covered both flanks. Manageable for now. How long they could keep it up was another question. Pinned in close quarters with no room to prepare a large spell, mages always had the worse end of it against knights. And the enemy wasn't only knights. Margrave Yumuran's retainers would certainly include mages of their own.

"No," Wica said. "That's not certain."

"What do you mean?"

"What Boen said. Rivielton-ssi may be in the east steeple right now."

The east steeple was the farthest, past two full towers. Hard to understand how anyone could end up there.

"How?"

"They might have used illusion magic, but even without it, a decoy would be enough. The command feigned retreat while hiding at the top of the east steeple, then used a decoy to lure the assault team right into it."

"So they trapped the assault team? What does that gain them?"

"Aren't we living it right now?"

Wica's reasoning held. The command could weather a direct clash with the assault team, but adding reinforcements to the mix would be too much. So they set a trap for the reinforcements, disposed of them cleanly, and left the assault team pinned.

"And if the tide turns in the Undying King's favor and the guard's siege of the inner fortress collapses, he can slip out without any trouble."

So then...

"...You're certain?"

"Certain? ...Yes. It's hard to imagine Rivielton-ssi losing."

Ethan let out a slow breath. "Then let's try it their way."

After Loading, Ethan spent two and a half months before making his way to Cora Fortress to catch the Undying King. First he helped Laken send the battle mages up, then helped Admoel bring down the Undying Church's temple. Now it was Wica's turn.

Halfway up the steeple, the interior of the north steeple came into view through the far end of the corridor. Still no sign of anyone.

Ethan pitched his voice low. "I can guarantee it. There are enemies waiting in ambush above this steeple. I heard them."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Wica glanced upward and gave a slow nod. She had felt something off before Ethan's Load, so she seemed to take his word without hesitation.

"Then I have a solution. Apologies to Count Saikal, but let's do this."

From her bag, Wica pulled several heavy sacks. She reached through the steeple's loopholes, pressed them against the outer wall with a smear of glue, cut a fuse, and lit it.

"Let's get clear."

"Ah, right."

The smell told Ethan it was gunpowder. He moved quickly toward the passage to the north steeple. Wica was in no hurry at all. She had calculated the timing to the second.

"Look there." She paused and pointed through the corridor's loophole. The west steeple filled the view. "I attached them to the outside to collapse one wall. The corridor should be safe, but brace yourselves for the noise. Here it comes."

Boom!

The word barely left her mouth before the explosion split the air. The west steeple snapped in half at the middle, the upper portion toppling outward. Screams drifted through the roar, faint, swallowed almost immediately by the crash of falling stone.

Ethan looked ahead. The knight who had been moving in for a surprise attack stood completely still, staring at the falling steeple.

Ethan raised his sword. "Enemy ahead."

"Confirmed."

"I'll take the lead."

He charged.

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