Chapter 18: The first gear.

Gabriel didn’t act immediately. He continued about his day as normal, which at this time really only meant helping Alice get ready for bed. He prepared her nightgown and had a bit of tea with her, spending a bit under an hour reading some stories so that she could unwind and fall asleep with relative ease. Once he blew out the last candle in her room and stepped into the hallway, it was private time for him.

"Right then, where exactly are you hiding?"

Normally, Gabriel would spend the upcoming two hours gathering mana before he went to meet with Lawrence for their nightly training. But well, the opportunity he had been preparing for had snuck up on him like that so how could he not take advantage of it? So he held the candlestick and slowly moved through the dark hallway.

"Karas Dilu."

He muttered quietly and tapped into the mana he had managed to gather over the recent days, observing the candlestick. But it remained completely still, the flame flickering quietly.

"Karas Dilu."

He tried again, his brows furrowing slightly. The mana moved and the words were spoken correctly. But there was still no movement around the candlestick.

"Crud, figures that it wouldn’t be that easy."

"Karas Dilu."

The magic formation, he was struggling a bit with the actual magic formation. The theory behind it was simple, mesh the words together into a circular magic formation and then fill in the letters one by one using your mana. But putting it to paper and doing it in practice were quite different. He could picture the magic formation required for the spell, but visualising it, especially as he slowly filled it with mana, proved troublesome.

"Ah, to be a wizard in a TV-sho…"

He was mid-complaint when his words suddenly halted, the mana he activated for his fourth attempt halting. Wait, there was something there, wasn’t there?

"…I can live with looking like a fool for a while. It’s worth a shot."

Wizards, witches, mages, whenever they appeared in shows, what was it they always did?

"Karas Dilu."

Gabriel’s fingers moved. Like a conductor waving his stick, like a wizard brandishing his wand as he conjured his flames. The mana became the orchestra and his fingers the baton that directed the melody. Each finger was put in charge of a separate letter, each one carried a small strand of mana.

It looked awkward. Each finger moved in a stocky manner, without any semblance of rhythm or smoothness. But as he said, he could live with looking like a fool. And sometimes, fools got results.

The darkness that crept up Gabriel’s arm beneath the candlestick wiggled for a moment before slithering up and covering the brass item. Once the entire item was covered, the darkness collapsed, like a water pillar that lost its support. The darkness returned to normal, but the candlestick was gone.

"Karas Veck."

Gabriel’s fingers moved again, dancing to an awkward tune only he could hear. The collapsed darkness rose again as the formation formed in his mind, the candlestick resting in his palm as the darkness receded.

"…Ah, this body, I swear to god…"

Gabriel looked at the candlestick as he cursed. Two complete spells and three failed attempts that each took a third of the mana a complete one would. It was a pathetic number of spells, but that alone was enough to drain most of the mana he had. If he had to guess then he would have just barely enough for a single low-grade spell.

"And those were just low-grade spells… How the heck did Alice fling Calamity-grade spells like that in the show?"

Spells were divided into several grades depending on their strength, demons and knights falling into the same grades. The first three were the standard ones, Low, General, and High. Most normal, emphasis on normal, people would never go past these three grades.

But then there were the special cases. Disaster, Calamity, Cataclysm, Deicide. They existed outside the norm so they could not be classified by the normal standards. Each one, be they knight, mage, or demon, who existed in one such class, was the same as its namesake. A living catastrophe that could ruin cities, a country-ending threat, a continent-ending threat, and finally, a god-killer.

"I don’t even want to think about how annoying those formations must be…"

There were two ways to decide the power of a spell, with the first and simplest one being the number of words it contained. Most low-grade spells contained two to three words while general grade spells ranged between four and six. The second way was much simpler, often dubbed the Simpleton Path or the Barbarian Path.

And it really was simple, you just took the mana you would usually use in a six-word spell and packed it directly into a two-word spell. Naturally, controlling this process wasn’t as simple as it sounded, as the sheer weight of the mana could become too much for the magic formation.

Well, it wasn’t as if either method was something Gabriel needed to worry about right now. He hadn’t even formed the first of the four Core Stars so he could forget about putting out General-grade spells or packing excess power into low-grade spells. No, it would be best if he remained rooted in the present and what he could do right now.

"Ah, there you are."

His steps stopped in front of an engraving, or perhaps statue was the better word for it? It bulged out from the wall, but it was still part of the wall in the end so he wasn’t sure which word to use for it. A marble dragon that stretched out for a bit over two metres leaned against the wall of the hallway, it was a perfect replica of the one he saw in the hallway after he was called in by Leonardo.

In truth, there were quite a few statues like this spread out throughout the estate. And beyond that, there were many more minor parts that were similar, an eye, a scale, a piece of the wing, a whisker, a bit of the tail, a claw. The dragon’s image filled the entire mansion.

"Later has come, time to be useful my friend."

Gabriel murmured as he placed his hand on the statue, tracing some of the scales that ran along the spikes that rose on the statue’s back. It seemed as if he touched them in a random order, hopping from scale to scale and even touching some multiple times. But before long, he felt it.

The marble gave out beneath his hand, his arm sinking into it as if it was water. The corners of his lips turned up and he stepped forward, passing through the marble statue and into a dim and narrow hallway covered in cobwebs and dust. And behind him, the statue looked completely unaffected.

"Ah, I really want to shake the architect’s hand."

This hallway was the skeleton of the mansion. It filled the entire building, penetrated every room and lead to every exit. It was the final card meant to ensure the life of the duke, a secret passage known only to the duke and the one who would inherit the title. With it, escaping the mansion was easy, it would also be easy to spy on everyone in the mansion to ensure that they were actually being loyal.

Well, at least that was the intended purpose, for now it would serve as Gabriel’s personal highway. No one other than the duke knew about it at this point in time so there was no way he would think that someone else was using it.

"Right then. Leonardo."

Gabriel’s first target was already set so he didn’t hesitate before he started to walk, navigating the cramped hallway. Well, calling it cramped wasn’t exactly fair, it was wide and tall enough to accommodate a full-grown man so Gabriel actually had more than enough space.

After a short while, Gabriel reached his target. The hallway was lined with a multitude of ‘windows’, sections of the wall that were completely transparent so that he could see the surroundings. And spreading out beyond the window in front of him was Leonardo’s bedroom, which was currently empty because Leonardo had yet to return.

Gabriel didn’t move immediately, he crossed his arms in front of his chest and just watched. And watched. And watched. And watched. In the end, he stood there for nearly an hour and three quarters, it was almost time to meet up with Lawrence.

Only then, after not having seen any movement for nearly two hours, hid he move. He pushed on the ‘window’ and stepped through it, walking out from the wall that held the carving of a dragon’s scale.

Leonardo’s room really was pointlessly large, it was about as big as a normal house thanks to the conjoined rooms that were attached to it. But today, what Gabriel came for was quite important to Leonardo so he kept it in a place where he could easily reach it, by his bed.

Standing by the bed, which was covered in satin sheets and had silken drapes hanging from attachments in the ceiling, was a nightstand made from dark blue wood, a crystal lamp standing atop it. He pulled out the one drawer it had and removed the books, unlatching the fake bottom to reveal the real treasure that Leonardo wanted to keep close.

A necklace. Beads made from white gold covered the cord, each one intricately engraved to depict various animals or plants. The centrepiece was a beautiful emerald that was nearly five centimetres wide and almost twice as wide, oval in shape and perfectly smooth in its rounding. Surrounding the emerald and attaching it to the beads was a faintly pink casing decorated to resemble the Vritara family’s emblem, their motto engraved along its sides.

"For someone who speaks so much of hate, you really have a hard time letting it go…"

This necklace was special to Leonardo, in the show it had been his dearest possession. But the problem was that he got it from his mother when he got his spirit awakened and became a General-grade mage in the past. He was supposed to hate his mother for her infidelity, and he probably did, but he wasn’t able to rid himself of this necklace.

Gabriel held the necklace in one hand and fixed up the nightstand, making sure that everything was just a centimetre or so off from how it used to be. This was the first thing he came for, there was however one more.

He got down on the ground and crept under the bed, fiddling with the carpet until he found what he was looking for.

Click.

A soft sound came from beneath the carpet before a section of it slid away, revealing a secret compartment filled with logbooks that detailed his various business dealings. Gabriel removed them all and then started to fiddle with the sides of the compartment, his fingers quickly tracing the engraving he was looking for.

Click.

The wall slid open, revealing another hidden compartment containing only a single logbook. This one was for Leonardo’s more unsavoury businesses, and it would be the first thorn stabbed into his side. Gabriel would have chosen to not keep a log like this, but Leonardo had already lost a lot of money in the past because he hadn’t kept proper track of everything so he chose to keep one to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Gabriel looked at the logbook, he had a general idea of the contents even without opening it. This thing, once this thing got out it would start everything. It would be the first step in getting Alice to the head of the family, the first gear to start a cascade.

For but a moment, an inkling of a question flashed by his mind. Why? Why go about things this way? Why not find another path to happiness? Why?

But that question, it was squashed as soon as it rose. He didn’t even need to think about it, his instincts crushed it for him. He was Gabriel, and the only path to happiness he was ever taught was to aim for the top.

He closed the compartments behind him and crawled out from under the bed, straightening his clothes before he walked back to the wall and activated the entrance to the secret passage.

He held the logbook in one hand and placed the necklace on top of it, breaking off one of the beads and putting it aside for now.

"Karas Dilu."

The two items were swallowed by the darkness and vanished. Dilu meant store, the darkness would keep the items safe for him until he wanted it to Veck, Release them. That one bead still remained in his other hand though, he rolled it between his fingers as he walked.

"So this is where you live."

He stopped when he reached a ‘window’ that showed him the scenery he desired, the room of a certain female chef. She had to get up quite early so she was already asleep, snoozing away peacefully. Gabriel quietly stepped through the window and crouched down, rolling the bead beneath her bed before he stood up and stepped back into the wall.

"Sweet dreams."