Finale

Joseph met up with a maid in the main hallway he always used. She notified him that Catherine was led into the library and she was reading books.

As he walked in she was sitting at a table in the middle of the room. Piles of books were around her and she was reading them one by one at an incredible speed. She was flipping through the pages after looking at them like she already read them.

As Joseph walked closer she closed one more book and looked up at him.

"These are extremely rare books. I can't believe someone has all of them in their library."

Joseph shrugged.

"That is really good."

"Yes! With these, I already got a bunch of answers to my questions. Like, why do I need some specific runes for one of the powerful spells I always use. Also, I got a new way to use some of my magic. It is really wonderful. If you have been reading these I can understand why you could use some magic I didn't even know about!"

Joseph smiled at her awkwardly.

'It's more like I came from a world where science is more advanced, but whatever.'

"I would also like to read books. Do you have any advice on which one should I start with?"

She picked out three of them from the pile and pushed them to the other side of the table.

"These ones are good for your level. They might help with some of your problems and one of them contains the knowledge about how to make personal pocket-dimensions."

"Oh. Right, I still didn't learn that. In the middle of everything I actually forget about it."

He sat down to read the books.

"How are you reading them so fast anyway?"

Catherine smiled at him.

"It's a spell that lets me memorize faster. It is made from time and space magic. It is really hard to use and you need a lot of mana to keep it up. You should learn different things first."

"I see. Thank you."

"Mhm."

They were reading until night. They only stopped to go to eat. After a while, Catherine also started to read normally, when she ran out of mana.

At lunch, Joseph introduced Catherine to everyone in the mansion. Most of the people didn't really care about them coming back. The mood of the place was really down.

'I can't blame them. It seems like too many people got hurt or even died when that dragon came. Though it is strange. It has been more than half a year ago. How is that no one got healed meanwhile?'

In the evening they met up with Cley in his office, after dinner.

"Mr. Cley this is Catherine a great witch. Catherine this is Mr. Cley, leader of this mansion."

"It is nice to meet you, Catherine. I'm sorry that we couldn't properly welcome you, but this last month was really bad for us."

"It is no problem."

Joseph was surprised by Cley.

"What happened in this month?"

Cley looked surprised at him.

"What? I'm talking about everything that happened with the dragon."

Meanwhile, Arborus came into the room.

"Guys there is something wrong!"

Joseph looked at him.

"I think we noticed it as well."

Cley was really surprised by them.

"What are you talking about?"

Joseph and the other two explained to him that it was more than half a year ago that everything happened. They don't know how could they only think that it was a month ago.

"This is a problem. How did we not notice that more time went by?"

Catherine started to walk outside.

"Everyone follow me!"

They did it without saying a word. Then they all left the mansion.

"Joseph go back into the house and wait for a minute."

Joseph did as Catherine said.

As he came out everyone was talking about something disturbance in time.

"So what now?"

They all looked at him.

"You've been in there for almost ten minutes."

"It only has been one min..."

Joseph looked at his magical watch.

"Wait what? The time changed as I came out. What is going on?"

Cley shook his head.

"It seems like something went wrong. The time inside is slowed down for some reason."

He walked back in and everyone followed him.

They went through one door and landed in a big open dome-like room. It was made out of a white stone, probably marble, and had a giant magical circle on the floor, also different items and crystals on the wall linked to the circle by different lines, which looked like lines on a circuit board.

Cley walked into the middle of the room.

"There must be something wrong here."

He closed his eyes and held up his hands. A light blue shimmering arc of light appeared between his hands and a crystal on the wall.

Meanwhile, Catherine was inspecting the circle and different items. It seemed like she was looking for the same thing as Cley.

After a while, a blue spark showed up in one of the items on the wall and everyone instantly looked at it. It was a small circle-shaped golden medallion with a black stone in the middle of it.

Catherine ran up to it, pulled it out, and threw it into his pocket dimension.

"That was close!"

Cley stopped with the spell and walked up to her.

"Thank you for your help. It would've been a big problem if that would've exploded."

"Yeah. It is good that we found it. If we would've let it be there for a few more days, the mansion would've been destroyed."

'It seems like they are explaining it to us, rather than to each other.'

As they were walking out Arborus and Joseph were looking at them confused.

"What was that thing in the wall?"

"Was it something connected to the barrier around the mansion?"

Cley noded.

"Yes. It was helping us defend the mansion, while Flin teleported it away. It seems like it got damaged in the process. It's strange because I've checked it when we got away. It was fine by then. I guess it still wore out."

Joseph was relieved.

"Was that thing making the mansion's time go slower?"

"I think so. Though it's hard to say with complex magic like this."

"Is it not a problem that you removed it?"

Cley scratched his head.

"I think it's fine. Though we don't have anything protecting us against sieges now. But what are the chances, that we get attacked?"

Joseph smiled.

"I think it's low if the stronghold holds out in the canyon."

Cley noded.

"Yeah. We have already made contact with them. They seem to be reasonable. We provided them with some magical items in exchange for information and food."

They walked out of the mansion while talking and repeated the experiment.

There weren't any problems now so they returned to the office and talked late into the night.

A week went by without any strange things happening. Joseph and Catherine were learning together.

One day Joseph woke up to a strange ping sound.

As he opened his eyes he saw a window flash in front of him.

[D.n*er

R-n!?^"&...............................]

'What is this? Silvia are you there?'

He heard a familiar roar from outside of the mansion.

"What is this doing here?!"

He jumped out of the bed and got his equipment on himself.

As he left the mansion he saw everyone standing outside in armor and holding different staffs in their hands. In the moonlight, it looked like he was dreaming, but the fresh night air woke him up fully.

Catherine was talking to Cley as Joseph walked up to them.

"What is going on Cley?"

"It seems like the black dragon is black."

"What? Why?"

"I'm not sure, but it shouldn't be here."

Joseph looked in the direction he heard the roar from. In the starlight, there was a black spot in the distance. It was closing in at an alarming speed.

Joseph reached them as they looked in the same direction.

"What are we going to do?"

"We hope that it doesn't want to fight. If it wants, then we'll have to try to defend ourselves. I doubt we can kill it."

Joseph was really confused as he turned towards Catherine.

"Maybe it's Tobald, who led Draco in here."

"I was thinking the same, but Cley said that Mjölm was burnt to the ground. He got a message from the kind right before the line was cut."

"Oh my god..."

Meanwhile, everyone was casting different spells to make barriers and shields around them.

They thought that it is useless, but they didn't want to give up.

After less than 10 minutes the dragon was floating above them. It was just as black as a cloudy night. But there was a new distinguishing feature. On its chest, it had a giant cross-shaped injury, that was still slightly bleeding.

'It seems like Mjölm didn't go down without a fight.'

The dragon breathed in a large amount of air and roared into the night sky. Everyone froze up as a window showed up for Joseph.

[D...

Yo..e par˙l°z)d!]

'Ch...'

The dragon descended and landed on the top of a barrier that someone set up.

After the dragon hit it with its tail, the barrier got smashed and it landed on top of a few people as they still weren't able to move.

Cley was the first, who got freed. He held out his staff as a yellow line of energy shot out towards the wound the dragon had.

"You cursed creature! Go back to hell where you came from!"

All the plants around them started to wither and the beam started to get bigger and bigger. The creature roared in pain as it swiped away a few more people with its tail. Then it leaned forward and ate Cley in one go.

Catherine and the other handful of survivors started to move.

A giant circle that Catherine prepared before appeared under the monster. It was the same which she used to disintegrate different things.

But it knew how to disable the circle. It lifts its left leg up and plowed up a giant part from the circle as its wings started to dissipate.

Meanwhile, the others were shooting different spells at its wound but it didn't seem to be fazed by them.

Joseph finally got to move as everyone except for Catherine was lying on the ground dead with a few strikes from the monster.

'It's strange. It's not using its flame breath. Maybe it can't?'

"Catherine do you have any idea how to kill it?"

"Guess two and easier!"

She got hit by the tail of the dragon as a shimmering light appeared around her. It got cracked all around her and broke into pieces as she flew back.

"Catherine!"

Joseph pulled out his sword.

'Charles! Any idea?!'

He only heard a deep sigh and felt the sadness coming from the sword.

'Oh no!'

He had all his mana in his wand, but he knew it wouldn't help.

He was standing in front of the dragon as it was looking down at him. They did not move, just looked at each other.

'Does it not want to attack me?'

As he thought that he saw the dragon move its tail from side to side and saw glittering lights in its eyes like it was a puppy playing with a toy.

"So that's how you want to go?!"

He held his wand forward towards's its wound. It swiftly tried to crush him with its left leg, but Joseph pulled back his wand and stabbed himself into the chest with it.

Catherine was standing up and coughing blood when she saw Joseph stab himself.

"What are you doing?!"

As the dragon's leg came down on Joseph a shimmering light appeared around him and got crushed into pieces.

But right before he got smashed into pieces his whole body glow in blue light and cut through the leg of it. The dragon lifts up its leg crying out loud as it had a hole in it.

"If I go down, you come with me!"

He started to run towards the dragon not paying attention to the countless windows popping up in front of him.

'This is the last thing I came up with. Instead of shooting out the magic, I'm going to overload my whole body with mana and use it as a blade. It's a shame that it's only useable once.'

As he got close enough the dragon tried to fly up, but its wings were too damaged from Catherine's spell.

"Catherine! Help me get up to its chest!"

She gritted her teeth.

"I can't believe you came up with something so stupid! But here you go!"

She used most of her remaining mana to cast a strong wind under Joseph and propel him towards the dragon's wound.

It didn't have a chance to dodge the attack as Joseph flew into its chest and then a muffled explosion was heard from inside of its chest as it vomited out blood and fell forward dead.

A last window appeared in front of Joseph.

[Attention!

You've leveled up! You have unspent stat points.]

'Shut u...'

Everything went black for Joseph for a moment.

Then he was sitting in a chair in front of Silvia, who was reading a paper.

"It seems like you are back..."