10-Underground Castle Exploration

"..." - Speech.

'...' - Thought.

{...} - Magic casting.

[...] - Telepathy.

---------------

I have a pat-reon! pat-reon.com/Kerolos_Hanna. or just look up Kerolos_Hanna. I have advanced chapters posted already. I put out one chapter for each of my fanfics during weekdays. And two more chapters for each fanfic on weekends. Three chapters per week! I made it very cheap so check it out!

---------------

The next day in the morning, Captain Yami sent the squad members to their missions. The first mission, was the dungeon exploration. Asta and Noelle were accompanied by Luck to the location of the newly discovered dungeon. Finral had dropped them off near by.

After dropping them off, Finral came back and sent Noah to the meeting location for the second mission; the elder lich ruin exploration. Once Noah got inside the mage headquarters castle, he got to the room where he'll meet the other members of this mission.

Getting to the agreed upon meeting room, Noah saw three people. The first person he saw was Leopold, then he saw a tanned thin tall woman from the blue rose knights, and lastly was a black haired girl with a fuzzy white hat, her name is Fragil, from the aqua deer squad.

After Noah arrived, it was only the four of them in the room, "Hello everyone" - Noah greeted as he got closer.

"Hey Noah. You're joining us on this mission?"- Leopold

"Yes" - Noah

"Glad to hear it" - Leopold smiled.

Not too long after, a middle-aged man with short messy blond hair and purple eyes walked in.

"Sir!" - All four saluted at once.

"I'm glad that all four of you made it. This will be an exploration mission, put your lives above all else, and make sure to come back safe" - Julius

"Sir, do we have a leader for this mission?" - Leopold

"You will meet him in a moment" - Julius said before leaving the room.

A minute later, a man with brown hair and a slim build. He had a scar on his forehead. He also had a stubble mustache and goatee.

"Randall? What are you doing here?" - Leopold

"I was tasked by the wizard king to help on this mission. So lets not make any mistakes. Am I clear?" - Randall took the lead

"Yes sir!" - All four said in response.

"Alright, lets introduce ourselves to the rest of the team. Though we are from different magic squads, we're comrades" - Randall

'I know that not just anyone will be captain Feugoleon's second in command. It seems like Randal is an upright man just like his captain' - Noah could tell that this team is good. The only person he hasn't seen from the show, is the girl from the blue rose knights. But he wasn't worried, he knew he can handle himself.

"My name is Leopold Vermillion, I'm from the crimson lion kings squad, and I use fire magic" - Leopold went first

"I'm Noah Silva, I'm from the black bulls and I use Ferrofluid magic" - Noah

"My name is Fragil Tormenta. I'm from the aqua deer squad. I use snow magic" - Fragil

"My name is Sina Gwyn. I'm from the blue rose knights. My magic is location magic" - Sina

"Lastly is myself. I'm going to be in command for this mission. My name is Randal Luftair. I'm the vice captain of the crimson lion kings and I use air magic" - Randal

After that the squad went over the plan they had. Well it's not a plan really, its more like a series of 'what if' scenarios. The result was always to make sure to not die, and to not leave anyone behind, and map as much of the castle as possible.

After that a spatial magic user from the wizard king's private unit came and took us to the location of the ruins.

Getting to the ruins, Noah took a good look at them. It was a small cave that could barely fit one person at a time. Going through the cave in a single file with Randal in the front, all of them were able to reach an underground circular clearing. In that clearing there was another tunnel, this one was bigger.

Going through the second tunnel they made it to a cave. The cave was beyond massive. It seems like a mountain hollow on the inside. In the middle of the cave, or the hollow mountain, was a castle made out of black stones.

As the team walked towards the castle, they reached the fence that surrounded the castle. Jumping over the fence, the team found themselves standing in the middle of a garden. Not the pretty type. This one was full of tombstones, and dead plants.

Sina used her magic to draw a map, her location magic allows her to make maps. It's similar to Mimosa's ability, but this one is way more accurate, and detailed.

"There is nothing but dead bodies and dead plants in here" - Sina

Noah was looking around, he can see that nature mana is dense here. From what he can gather, its almost as much as the grand magic zones.

The team was very careful. Noah kept up his senses to scan around him, he finally caught onto something, the front door had a magic trap on it.

"Be careful, the front door has a magic trap on it" - Noah said in a low tone, only loud enough for the rest of the team to hear

Randall nodded at him. Instead of going through the front door, the team carefully and slowly made their way around the castle.

After exploring the outer area of the castle, it was deemed that the only entry to the castle is the front door only. There were no other doors, or even windows.

"It seems, we'll have to figure out the trap on the front door. Otherwise we will have to go back to the wizard king with empty hands." - Leopold

Standing in front of the big metal front door, Noah used his ability to take a closer look at the trap.

"This is very complicated. We would need a rune master for this" - Noah said.

"It's complicated indeed" - Randall said as he looked at the door through a lorgnette; hand held spectacles.

"We don't necessarily have to go back for a rune master. We can send a picture of it to the wizard king and he will have someone tell us how to dispel it, if possible" - Randall

A moment later Randall used another device to take a picture of the rune trap.

'It seems that he came prepared, he has different types of tools to help with this' Noah was satisfied with Randall's foresight.

"While you do that, I'll take a closer look" - Noah

After Randall took the picture, Noah approached the door, and reached his hand to the trap rune. His hand was hovering a few inches above the rune.

Noah coated his hand with a layer of his ferrofluid magic. He made sure to be careful as to not trigger the trap. The way the trap works, it will trigger on contact. Noah hasn't touched the door, or tried to open in with magic, so the trap didn't trigger.

Noah tried something risky. Even though it was risky, he had a gut feeling that he can do it. Noah started to absorb the energy that drew the runes themselves.

'Runes are written with mana. The purer the mana the stronger the runes. The more complicated runes, require higher level of man to function. Obviously the higher the level of runes, the stronger the effect of it. If I can absorb the mana that was used to write this rune, then we can open the door without risking anything' - Noah thought as he felt a small amount of the mana used in the ruins, get absorbed.

As Noah was absorbing mana, Fragil approached him, "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to see if I can disable this trap" - Noah said before ignoring her, he wanted to put all of his focus on the runes.

As Noah got more comfortable with absorbing the mana out of the ruins, he was able to increase the rate of absorption.

Not long after Noah, had absorbed all the mana in rune. "I got it" - Noah told the rest of the team.

There was no response. Looking behind him he saw the whole squad were sitting down.

"What are you doing?" - Noah asked the squad

"We're waiting for the response from the rune department" - Randell

"I already said I disabled the rune" - Noah

"What do you mean?" - Leopold

None of them knew about Noah's ability to absorb all kinds of energies, so they weren't sure what he meant.

Randall walked up to the door, and used his lorgnette again, "How did you do it? Without any tools nonetheless"

"I just used my magic" - Noah

"Your magic is unique. Just like captain Nozel, your magic is never seen before" - Fragil chimed in

"Alright, since we got the door opened, we can keep going forward. Sina, make sure to keep mapping." - Randall as he stepped inside the dark castle.

*Hours Later*

The team had carefully explored the entire ground floor. There are tens of rooms with very high ceilings on the first floor. The majority of the rooms were empty or had worthless objects like a bed, a table or a chair, and so on. There were few room with valuable things, they mainly contained gold ingots, silver, diamonds and other valuables. Once they finished exploring the whole place, they decided to send the findings of the first floor back to the mage headquarters before going any further.

A little while later, all the ingots and other valuables were transported back to the capital with the help of the spatial mages.

After that was done, the team decided to move on to the next level. Walking towards the stairs they saw a set of stairs the lead downwards, and another that led upwards. It was difficult to tell how many levels are there, "Lets break up into groups. Noah and Fragil, you go down. Leopold, Sina, you're coming with me upwards" Randall commanded

Nodding their heads, they went their separate ways.

"So, Noah. How did you disable that rune back there? I met a rune master before. They need tools to print the runes, and infuse it with mana at the same time" - Fragil

"Nothing much Fragil. I just disconnected the rune from its mana source" - Noah half lied

"How can you do that?! Mana is imprinted in the runes as a medium, how do you disconnect it?" - Fargil

"Royal family secret" - Noah put his index finger over his lips with a smile. He didn't want to give too much information, so he half-lied.

Noah noticed that after he absorbed the rune, he felt a change within his body or more specifically, his mana. He can't pinpoint it yet but he can feel it. Though he can tell that it's not a bad change. After that slight change, Noah wanted to keep this a secret. One thing for sure though. He will absorb more magic sources.

Making their way down the stairs, there weren't any traps.

"There are no traps, since we entered. And there have been no other runes either" - Fragil

"My best guess is the spirit died abruptly. No one will trap their house unless they knew they won't come back to it" - Noah

"That's true. That's why dungeons are full of traps. They're tombs left behind by the old mages, they're meant to test the visitors" - Fragil

"Let's stay on guard though" - Noah

After walking down the stairs, Noah and Fragil found a long hallway, with doors on either side of the hall. Each room led to a different laboratory. Going through each lab, most had a table with some paper notes on them. Looking through the notes, Noah saw a few trials and stats about different rituals and experiments.

This spirit was capturing younger and weaker spirits, and trying to turn them artificially into liches to serve it.

"What a mad thing to do" - Noah could only gasp at the results.

"What are you looking at?" - Fragil walked away from a table full of test tubes and flasks, and approached Noah

After Fragil saw the notes Noha gave her, she was shocked. After calming down she handed them back to Noah. Noah opened the bag he had with him, and started to collect all the notes he saw.

After going through each laboratory, Noah was able to make a few conclusions.

'First, it seems that each lab would test a different way to turn spirits. The first lab would forcefully inject them with chemicals. This seemed to fail, since most of them would burst and die. The second lab seemed to be more about pain and emotional stress. The minor spirits would be tortured and forced to feel despair. This had some success since some of them did turn into liches, but they couldn't keep their sanity.

The third lab was empty with no notes, so I'm not sure what kind of experiments were conducted here, if any at all. Then the fourth lab. In this lab they injected the spirits with negative/corrupt mana. This seemed to be success. Since in the notes, it mentions one spirit that was able to keep its sanity after turning into a lich. The name of that spirit was mentioned briefly'

"Draco Mortem? I never heard of that spirit at all in the original show. I wonder what kind of spirit it was?"

---------------

More chapters are out my pat-reon. pat-reon.com/Kerolos_Hanna!

If you enjoyed my story, please leave a review, and hit me with some power stones. Feel free to leave any suggestions. Also don't forget to check out my other fanfic: Lightning Human in MHA!