The Archmetamagician: The Weave Collapses Again

Anser gazed at the cloud of dust billowing into the air, the acrid smell of gunpowder thick in his nostrils.

'Looks like they buried a huge amount of gunpowder here ahead of time. As far as ways to destroy the evidence go... this is pretty low-tech.'

He was very curious about what exactly had been hidden inside, but with dust filling the air and the ground collapsed, there probably wasn't much to see right now.

Besides, something like this was better left to the authorities.

He decisively went after the fleeing guards. He would kill as many as he could. Opportunities to farm experience points this recklessly didn't come around often.

Makaria, Adolf, and Giant Tail were also pursuing the enemy, but they were much more cautious. They stayed together and fought as a group, turning back before they had chased them even a kilometer.

That was how most adventurers normally operated. You only had one life, and there wasn't much room for error. No one dared take reckless chances.

Nothing was more frustrating than dying right before you got to enjoy the spoils of victory.

After pursuing them for a while, Anser stopped as well and hovered in midair.

The Griffon Cavalry had arrived.

They split into teams of five and scattered to pursue the fugitives. With the griffons' speed and eyesight, there probably weren't many people who could get away.

Quite a few other griffon riders spread out and flew toward the estate, presumably to secure the scene.

Two griffon riders broke away from their group and flew toward Anser. One was Liam, while the other was a stern-looking man clad in golden armor.

Their two griffons were anything but ordinary. They were large and imposing, with golden necks, wingtips, and talons. The way they looked at Anser carried traces of confusion and wariness, revealing considerable intelligence.

There were many breeds of griffon. An ordinary griffon had a Challenge Rating of 2 and considerable combat strength, but an Intelligence of only 2. It operated almost entirely on instinct and was extremely difficult to tame.

These two golden griffons possessed exceptional bloodlines, and their Challenge Rating had actually reached 5. An ordinary elite adventurer probably wouldn't be a match for them.

"Anser, this is Pancinell, commander of the Griffon Cavalry!" Liam called out, his voice slightly distorted by the wind.

{A pleasure to meet you, Lord Pancinell.} Anser communicated through Telepathy, which was considerably more elegant.

Pancinell nodded, then gestured for everyone to land and talk. He needed to understand the situation as quickly as possible. The corpses and enormous crater inside the estate had already given him a bad feeling about how serious this was.

The griffons lowered their heads and dove toward the ground, with Anser effortlessly following behind.

His six wings weren't just for show. Most other flying creatures basically had to fly belly-down, but he could fly standing up, sideways, or lying down, all while remaining exceptionally stable.

Of course, only Iris had firsthand experience with that last one. No one else had ever gotten the chance to ride a six-winged true dragon.

The griffons skimmed low over the ground. Pancinell and Liam jumped off one after another, landing heavily inside the estate before taking two quick steps forward to absorb the impact.

Then the two of them stared in shock at the charred corpses and ice sculptures scattered across the ground, remaining silent for a long time.

"Did... you kill all of them?" Liam stared at the ice sculptures wreathed in drifting frost, his emotions churning.

He came from a noble family, knew quite a few spellcasters, and had enough experience to understand what he was seeing.

Every one of the dead had been elite, well-equipped, with an exceptionally high proportion of adventurers among them. Yet they hadn't even had a chance to struggle. The sheer power of the spell was obvious.

'Ninth-level evocation!'

That was his instinctive guess.

It was the ultimate pursuit of spellcasters. Yet under the current circumstances, aside from the Chosen, how many spellcasters still possessed that level of spellcasting ability?

"My companions and I." Anser pointed toward Stoll and the others nearby.

"Lord Holrewen, tell us what happened first." Both Pancinell's form of address and his tone had changed.

He wasn't ignorant. He was worried that Anser might have killed the wrong people. If this turned out to be a mistake, there would be absolutely no way to clean up the aftermath.

"Lady Safahr was here just now." Anser noticed his concern and gave him a friendly reminder.

"Oh. Then that's good." Pancinell relaxed slightly.

But Anser's tendency to start fighting at the slightest disagreement still made Pancinell grumble inwardly. In his view, perhaps it would have been better to wait.

"Come with me, both of you."

Anser wasted no time. He led the two directly to the underground prison and told them everything he had discovered without holding anything back.

When Liam and Pancinell saw the "hell on earth" below, their reactions were even more intense than Anser's, despite him being a Paladin. They gritted their teeth, breathing heavily, their eyes turning red.

Waterdeep was, after all, a city governed by law. Both men had spent years operating in and around the city and held themselves to higher moral standards. They couldn't stomach evil this pure and bloody.

Pancinell raised a hand and touched one of the soul bottles. Endless despair and resentment battered his mind in a frenzy, making his expression grow even colder.

"You did the right thing."

He withdrew his hand, now realizing that he had misunderstood Anser.

Anyone would have erupted on the spot after seeing this, let alone a Paladin.

After that, the Griffon Cavalry became extremely busy—patrolling, rescuing people, clearing the battlefield...

Anser didn't sit idle either. He first helped rescue people, then joined Stoll and the others in gathering the spoils.

The Osprey Society's senior members and high-level adventurers had quite a few valuable items on them, and the firearms were good as well.

Under Waterdeep's laws, these counted as rewards for combating evil. He could take all of them as long as everything was properly inventoried and registered.

During that time, Anser found himself on the receiving end of countless reverent gazes. Faced with such staggering results, no one could remain unmoved.

Dozens of minutes passed.

A hundred Waterdeep cavalrymen arrived, followed by more than five hundred members of the City Guard.

They took over security at the estate and began a thorough search, while the relevant documents were taken away by magistrates who had accompanied them.

And several of those magistrates were Paladins themselves!

All Anser could say was that the Lords of Waterdeep really knew what they were doing—and they had guts.

If they mishandled this, the magistrates might end up turning on the Lords themselves.

Seeing that there was nothing more for him to do, Anser went alone to investigate the collapsed ruins. Aside from detecting a few traces of an ominous, shadowy aura, he found nothing else.

'Might've been some kind of ritual or altar for communicating with the Hells.'

House Cassalanter was harvesting souls with such urgency that there had to be some kind of secret deal with the devils of the Hells behind it.

'Waterdeep can deal with that headache. I just wonder whether Lady Safahr managed to catch that legendary adventurer.'

After signing the statement handed to him by a magistrate, Anser directly teleported Stoll and the others to Dawn Town.

There, at the newly purchased branch headquarters, he found Kaleno, Salian, and Finn and sent them back to Holrewen as well.

Gwyneth's safe return was a major event worth celebrating.

The crew of the Quesser and the people from Moonshadow Quelin all came from the city of Paros. Many of them had known each other for years, and their bonds ran far deeper than outsiders might imagine.

Having endured disaster and finally reunited, everyone felt immensely fortunate and unanimously decided to hold a lively celebration.

So they all pitched in to prepare a grand bonfire dinner.

It would be held in the plaza beneath the Black Tower, and the other villagers were welcome to join in as well.

Anser lounged comfortably on the top floor of the Black Tower, grinning from ear to ear himself.

[Experience Pool: 15,739]

More than fifteen thousand experience points from a single major battle.

That felt insanely good.

And he wasn't even tired. Fighting alongside Stoll and the others was far easier than operating alone.

Stoll in particular had chased down two adventurers of the same level by himself, killing them both while casually taking out quite a few of the enemy's trusted men along the way. Yet he'd come away with nothing more than a few minor injuries—not even enough to warrant drinking a potion.

Anser himself had practically become support and had almost failed to secure even the final kill.

He opened the Adventuring Party page. The bearded Adolf had leveled up as well. He'd made out like a bandit from this one battle.

He was a Path of the Beast Barbarian and fought with reckless aggression, but his efficiency at racking up kills was genuinely impressive.

Giant Tail the Lizardfolk and Makaria the Tiefling had only advanced recently, so they were still quite a ways short on experience.

Stoll, on the other hand, had already accumulated a decent amount beforehand. After this battle, he was only a few thousand experience points away from leveling up.

'I should raise my Fighter level. First, I'll max out Wisdom.'

Anser began running the numbers in his head.

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