Numb from the shock, Lucian stared blankly at the left wall. It took him several seconds to react before he walked over to the wall and lowered his voice toward the spot where the tapping had come from: "Who is it?"
"Adam, your neighbor. Mate, didn't we just meet a moment ago?" As a deep, magnetic voice rang out, the stone brick at that spot suddenly shifted, caving inward toward the opposite side. With a rasping scrape, the brick was removed as if by magic, revealing a connecting hole and a pair of deep blue eyes.
"No Magic Circle protecting it?" Lucian raised his left eyebrow the way Natasha did, asking with mild surprise. Inside the magic tower of at least a high-ranking mage, the walls weren't reinforced or soundproofed with Magic Circles—and this was a prison cell, yet it didn't even have basic anti-destruction measures!
A smile spread across Adam's sharply defined, rugged face. "Because this is a land that seals demons! There are quite a few ore veins and terrifying magical creatures in the nearby forest, but the variety is woefully incomplete and it's extremely dangerous. Just being able to build a magic tower is proof of the old witch's formidable strength and deep reserves. So apart from a few key locations on the exterior and the core, every part of this tower is just ordinary construction. Hey, mate, I've been rambling on and I still don't know what to call you?"
He seemed to have been bursting at the seams from a long period without anyone to talk to, his chattiness utterly at odds with his tough exterior.
"Mister Adam, you can call me Lucian. By the way, how did you dig out that stone brick?" Lucian maintained his habitual politeness.
Adam blinked his eyes through the hole, clicking his tongue. "A polite one, eh? Hey, mate, are you a mage or a knight? Low-rank, or mid-rank?"
"Mage. Mid-rank."
Hearing Lucian's terse reply, Adam smiled. "Come on, mate—we're both test subjects now. Why be so formal? Just call me Adam. Adam, the Great Knight of the Dark Bloodline." He extended his right hand, where his untrimmed nails glinted with a sharp, cold light. "I scraped the brick out slowly with my fingernails. The binding cuffs suppress my bloodline power, but they can't make my changed body revert to what it was before."
Lucian looked down at his own neatly trimmed nails and said with dry humor, "If the old witch weren't here and we only had ordinary guards, we could have broken out of prison with our fingernails." He paused, then pressed on. "Adam, do you know what the situation is around here? And do you know what experiments the old witch is actually running? I passed out in the Dark Mountains and woke up in this cell. I have no idea what's going on."
Adam's excitement at finally having someone to talk to slowly subsided, and his tone grew heavy. "Mate, knowing the situation won't do you much good. Within the magic tower's defensive perimeter there are two towns and quite a few villages. The people in them are probably the descendants of humans who've been trapped in this demonic land over many generations—there's a legend that an entire village on the edge of the Dark Mountains was swallowed in."
"Further out, this area is surrounded by an oversized forest similar to the Dark Mountains—extremely dangerous. There are Scarlet Demon Trees, Man-Eating Vines, Three-Armed Behemoths, Feathered Serpents, Cockatrices, and other powerful dark creatures. I landed in that forest when I first fell into this demonic land and barely made it out alive. What lies beyond the forest, I can't say for certain, but if the pattern holds that the farther you get from the boundary, the stronger the monsters become, then there are probably Chimeras, Soul-Imprisoning Demons, Sphinxes, and dragons—top-tier creatures."
He was extrapolating based on the monsters he'd encountered in the Dark Mountains.
After finishing his account of the surroundings, Adam's voice grew ever more somber. "Beneath this magic tower there's an ancient ruin that seems connected to the secret of this sealed land. The old witch has been trying to crack it, hoping to find a way out. But she's only at the seventh or eighth ring in strength, and she's never succeeded. So most of her experiments are about how to use limited resources to enhance her arcane power."
"Oh, and in one of her magical experiments something went wrong—both her soul and her body were contaminated. She can no longer shapeshift into a youthful form, and her life is draining away rapidly. So she's still searching for a solution to that problem." Lucian could hear the note of fear creeping into Adam's voice the more he spoke.
Lucian asked with both confusion and concern, "Could the old witch already have a lead on solving the problem—and are we the material for that experiment?"
Adam's voice was thick with deep-seated fear. "The old witch's soul was contaminated. Even after switching to several young women's bodies, she couldn't stop the rapid aging. She couldn't even maintain her form for a single minute. So she believes the root of the problem lies in the soul. She wants to try splitting her soul—cutting away the uncontaminated portion and severing all connection with the original, so the contamination can't spread to it. Then she'd nurture and strengthen that portion until it becomes a second version of herself."
Lucian swallowed with some difficulty. "And after the split—who takes orders from whom? Which one is the old witch?"
As far as Lucian knew, no true soul-splitting experiment had ever succeeded. Even the partial soul separated and hidden in a phylactery during lich conversion, or the severed finger used in life-concealment spells, were not completely disconnected from the original soul and body—they were still linked in some mysterious way. No matter how far apart they were, the soul in the phylactery would only revive when the primary soul died, avoiding any philosophical or cognitive conflict. And if an attack managed to interfere with that link, the revived soul would bear the same injuries.
Adam blinked with a bitter smile. "Who knows? Every single person whose soul the old witch has split has died on the spot—their souls dissipated. Without exception."
He pointed at the wall behind Lucian. "The fellow in the cell behind you is undergoing the experiment tonight. If he doesn't come back, that means it failed again. But if it succeeds… perhaps we'll earn our freedom."
"If the experiment succeeds…" Lucian repeated the words without finishing the thought. In his mind, though, a grave notion took shape: combined with cloning technology, it might mean a path to immortality.
Among the current achievements of arcane magic, even a flawless conversion into a lich or other life-extension methods couldn't prevent the gradual decay of the soul over time. And if one split off a portion before aging began, it would still be influenced by the original. The longest-lived legendary mage on record with the Arcane Council had been six thousand four hundred and forty-nine years old. All the rest had either died before that age or vanished without a trace.
Adam lowered his voice once more. "Mate, I have to warn you. Prepare yourself early."
"What?" Lucian looked up at the wall with its missing brick. On the other side were Adam's deep blue eyes.
"The old witch believes the experiments have been failing mainly because the souls she's using aren't strong enough. So a rare mid-rank mage like you is almost certainly going to become the primary subject. But before that, she'll do everything in her power to boost your soul strength. For you, it's both a danger and an opportunity."
Adam's deep, magnetic voice had delivered some decidedly unwelcome news.
Lucian took a deep breath and gave a slight nod. "I'll look for my chance. Adam, can you tell me what you know about the magic tower's internal layout? For instance, where is the energy chamber?"
"No problem. If you need any help, you know where to find me," Adam replied readily, his eyes narrowing slightly.
After their exchange, worried about being discovered by the servants, Adam put the stone brick back in its place.
Lucian walked back to his bed in silence and sat down, paying no mind to Adam's ulterior motive of encouraging him to find an escape route while hanging back to reap the benefits. Regardless, he would try his hardest—and he could use Adam as a source of intelligence along the way.
After eating the dinner the servant brought, Lucian made the most of his time to sleep and recover his strength. Next, he would need to figure out how to remove the binding cuffs.
……
In the dead of night, the iron door was suddenly thrown open. The red-faced young servant addressed the sleep-bolting Lucian with a cold tone: "My master has ordered me to take you to bathe in moonlight. It will aid the recovery of your body and soul."
Though the word "yard time" from his previous life flashed through his mind in an instant, Lucian wasn't about to refuse an opportunity to get out. He quickly followed the young servant to the terrace that jutted out from this floor of the magic tower.
The silver moon hung high. Its cool, clear radiance was no different from the world outside; when it fell upon the terrace, it cast a rippling expanse of silver-white light and shadow. Every cell in Lucian's body drank in the moonlight with desperate hunger, rapidly mending his still-unhealed injuries.
"Hey. Mate, you're out too?" Adam's warm voice came from behind Lucian.
Lucian turned around and smiled. "Hey, Adam. Come to bathe in the darkness?"
"That's right. I participated in an experiment this afternoon as well—naturally, as test material."
Adam split into a broad grin. The brilliant smile softened his rugged features considerably. He was huddled in a corner where the moonlight couldn't reach, seeming to merge with the darkness itself.
Then he lowered his voice. "That fellow didn't come back."
"How tragic," Lucian replied with performative sorrow.
The terrace wasn't particularly high above the ground, but the old witch had no worry that two powerless men could escape beyond the magic tower's perimeter. For their part, Lucian and Adam had no immediate plans either, and they chatted idly about the dark forest in the surroundings.
Suddenly, a brilliant burst of light erupted from a small hill in the distance, turning the area as bright as day. Leaning against the terrace railing, Lucian's keen eyes caught sight of two men and two women sprinting out of the hill and dashing toward the magic tower with agile movements—they had apparently just triggered some magical trap.
"Whoa, not bad. This adventuring party has two Second-level Knights, one Second-ring Mage, and one full Knight," Adam remarked, emerging from the shadows, watching with a hint of excitement as the two men and two women below dispelled traps and cut down skeletal servants.
Lucian turned to him with a puzzled look. "What?"
"The old witch is dead lazy outside of studying and experimenting with magic. To keep her test subjects from going extinct, she left various training methods for awakening bloodline power and quite a few arcane books in the nearby villages and towns, then hid the magic tower and let them develop on their own—so the test subjects wouldn't just languish and rot."
"At the same time, she had people secretly spread word that there's a magic tower around here hiding infinite treasure and boundless power. Find the tower, break the seal, defeat the wicked Witch, and you'll get everything. So the test subjects keep delivering themselves to her door, no need for her to go hunting."
Adam watched the "fierce" battle below with evident relish.