“This kid…” Villin mumbled as he visibly facepalmed. About ten minutes had passed since he had met Golmi and he had gotten to know the boy’s personality a bit more.

Villin referred to him as a kid in his mind because of how he acted, he always seemed incredibly excited and happy when he talked, even though oddly enough most of the time his facial expression didn’t reflect his emotions at all.

From a distance anyone would think Golmi was a serious person, maybe even someone who felt himself above other people, but this illusion was far from the truth.

“Just, let me finish something up first, then we’ll head over to the third floor,” Villin said before turning away from Golmi who promptly agreed. 

Currently, Villin had extremely mixed feelings about Golmi. His background should be substantial since they had a secret transfiguration technique of great value, Villin knew this personally because it had helped him a lot. He didn’t ask Golmi where he came from though, even though he seemed clueless and trusting, Villin didn’t want to push it.

After all, he could be useful. He was easy to fool and had a good background, there was value in that. Additionally, he did give him an idea on transfiguration earlier, something that was also somewhat valuable. Villin intended to work with Golmi for now while keeping his guard up, if Golmi seemed like he was trying to play Villin like a fiddle, he would immediately quit the cooperation.

Before going to do the first part of the secret quest though, Villin had something to do that he wanted to do earlier but couldn’t.

He moved through a couple of rooms on the bottom floor before finding what he was looking for. The corpse of the lady he killed earlier was lying in a tiny isolated room on the bottom floor. Most likely put there by one of the spectators who didn’t want to look at the body when exiting the building.

A bit of time had passed but when Villin put a hand on her forehead, it was still rather warm, the magical currents within her were also still moving around quite rapidly. Since the wound that killed her was still mostly plugged by a melting icicle, magic power didn’t dissipate all that fast, other factors like the fact they were in a fully enchanted tower surrounded by enchanted walls that didn’t let magic power cross also contributed to the lack of dispersing magic power.

Glad she didn’t seem to be affected that much yet, Villin looked around and extended his magic power, making sure nobody was around that could see his actions. Then, he reached into his interspacial bag and took out a flat disk that was filled with enchantment.

It was something he had worked on quite a bit. First before going to Atlantis and then again afterward in his study, utilizing some of the new runes he learned.

But, of course, the core of the enchantments within this disk laid in some runes and a technique he learned all the way back in the first grade, or well, shortly after leaving the first grade. The Supreme Dark Arts Technique: Embed. 

The technique was supposed to put a section of somebody’s web within an item, now, a wand would be the most obvious place to put it. You would be able to dual-cast just like someone that used the actual dark arts could, albeit limited to the section of the web within the wand.

Villin had a different idea on how to use this technique though, but for that, he needed time. And time wasn’t something you generally had when using the technique since the web would rot. Because of this, Villin worked quite hard on creating a vessel that could hold all the magic power within, stopping the web from getting destroyed and rotting in a short period of time.

He succeeded, mostly. The disks he had on him now could probably store the web for two months without it degrading in the slightest. After this period of time, it would slowly begin rotting over a long period of time.

Considering that this mission was estimated to last for a month, he would have another month to work on the project, two if he didn’t care too much if some of the web’s edges were destroyed, plenty of time to initiate his plan, that is, if he got enough webs to finish it.

Looking in his interspacial bag, there were eleven disks in total, some less perfect than the one he was currently going to use but there were eleven nonetheless. Ten needed to finish his project and one spare, just in case.

After once more confirming nobody was close, Villin sat next to the corpse and closed his eyes. He felt magic power flowing through his body. From his web to his mind, from his mind to his body, and then, a tiny bit went to the disk where it got trapped.

After getting familiar with the route, Villin used his right hand, which wasn’t holding the disk, and pressed it onto the dead girl’s forehead.

When Villin’s magic power penetrated the girl’s mental space, it was clear that something was wrong, it wasn’t far away from collapsing.

This was expected though since it had lost its host. Villin’s magic power moved through the girl’s mind and made his way to where her web should be.

Looking around, he saw the dark-grey nodes had largely disappeared, it wouldn’t be long before the useful ones would rot away as well. It was quite the beautifully terrifying sight really, seeing a web, supposed to be so full of life, slowly being eaten away by the endless void, but Villin didn’t have time to appreciate the beauty of this tragedy. He thought back to the technique he read so long ago and he moved his magic power as he was supposed to. He combined his magic power with the rogue magic power within the web, floating around aimlessly, then, he tried pulling them.

When the rogue magic power around the web got pulled, the web itself followed. It had lost its host, the thing it previously attached itself to. In order to slow its demise, it tried to hang on to every bit of energy they could, the rogue magic power was the best source of energy it currently had, putting up no defense when consumed.

Thanks to this, it was rather easy to move the web in its entirety. It quickly moved through the two other, now mostly empty areas of the mind before reaching the border. The bridge really, between Villin’s mind and the mind of the girl.

Now came the most difficult step. He would have to move the rotting web past his own mind and stop it from connecting to his web. If it did, it may start rotting alongside it.

After taking in a deep breath, Villin took the leap, the decrepit web moved through the bridge between the two minds before appearing close to Villin’s own web, just behind the third line of defense.

Villin could feel the web gravitating towards his own, the main source of energy within the mind, but he managed to force it away with Ashera’s help.

Once past his web, the most difficult part was luckily over, there was nothing else really capturing the lust of the rogue web. It tried to consume some of the defenses but they moved away before it could properly want for them and kept following behind the rogue magic power being controlled by Villin.

From his mind, it went to his body. Even though this was normally quite dangerous, with Villin’s tough body and proper control of magic power, there wasn’t much of a threat at this point. He steadily led the web into the disk before sealing it. Like this, he had used the supreme dark arts technique for the first time without taking any damage himself. A rather rare feat, something he was unaware of.

Once it was within the web, Villin let out a breath of relief, he opened his eyes again and checked the surroundings, it seemed that nobody had come in the couple of minutes it took to do this.

The corpse of the lady was going through certain changes though. Her skin started turning grey and it became cold. Villin was sure that soon it would look rather horrifying, it wouldn’t be possible to hide that someone here used dark arts on her, something he’d rather keep secret.

Luckily, back when he joined a group to raid Decorus, they all had to learn a spell capable of destroying bodies. He quickly used that and a few minutes later all that was left was a pile of ash, wanting to destroy a body wasn’t such a weird thing, after all, nobody wanted it to begin smelling and it wasn’t a pleasant sight to behold, so Villin opted not to hide the ash, if he hid it unsuccessfully it could cause some genuine suspicion.

With his own mini-goal accomplished, Villin quickly went back to the naive Golmi, it was time to figure out how exactly this game worked.