Karina tried to shake off her mood — shaken as she was by the old witch's power and the half-glimpsed truth behind things — and asked Lucian with a polite smile: "And you, sir? Could you perhaps be some legendary powerhouse? None of the famous mid-tier mages match your appearance." Born into a decent family and having successfully become a mage, Karina had always been a proud and confident young woman, but Adam's reputation outside the arcane tower was that of a "legend" — formidable in strength, ruthless in manner. As a result, Lucian, who seemed to be a prisoner of equal standing, had also become a legendary figure in Karina and the others' eyes, demanding cautious courtesy.
Lucian smiled and shook his head. "I'm just an obscure mage — no legend about me. I only arrived a day before you lot. You can call me Lucian."
"A day before? Mr. Lucian, you're not from around here?" The other girl — tall and refined — Ophelia looked at Lucian with faint surprise, and Alva, Brad, and Karina wore the same expression. Their gazes kept giving Lucian the strange illusion that he was some rare beast on display in a zoo, gawked at by humans on the other side of iron bars. His lips curled slightly. "Haven't you ever seen an outsider? Everyone here must be descended from outsiders, surely?"
Perhaps realizing her curiosity had gotten a touch too obvious, Karina flushed with embarrassment and laughed awkwardly. "Sorry, Mr. Lucian. We really haven't seen an outsider before. A lot of old families have stories about ancestors who came from the outside world and got trapped here, but that was centuries ago. People in the cities and villages have been breeding, fighting the beasts and monsters, and gradually growing in number — yet no outsider has ever shown up."
Adam chuckled from the side. "Oh, they have. It's just that, unless a large group gets swallowed in all at once, most outsiders choose to hide their identities and blend into human society first — like I did. And quite a few of them get killed by monsters in the forest, or get grabbed directly by the old witch. Like our friend Lucian here, the unlucky bastard."
"The old witch?" Karina, Alva, Ophelia, and Brad all stepped away from Adam at almost the same moment. He had just called the master of the arcane tower the "old witch"? They wouldn't dare say that even in their hearts! Even if he had been domineering before, hadn't he been reduced to a prisoner now? Was he not afraid the old witch would seize him, punish him severely — or even kill him?
Adam saw them recoil as though he were a monster and understood their fear of being implicated. He gave a bitter smile and spread his hands. "It's fine. The old witch never cares what we say. She only cares about her experiments and her appearance. See? Those servants over there didn't react either." He was referring to the guards watching the prisoners.
Adam's eyes flicked toward the servants. The ruddy-faced one glared back furiously. "Adam! If you lot keep talking about this, I'll whip you black and blue!" He wouldn't dare report the "old witch" label to the Witch herself. Legend had it that long ago, one servant, eager to earn merit, told the Witch that a test subject had been calling her the old witch behind her back. The Witch had repeated the words "old witch" several times through clenched teeth with a frigid voice, then had every person who had ever uttered the word executed — prisoner or servant alike.
The servants' reaction eased Karina and the others' worries. They sighed with relief: "So you're an outsider, Mr. Adam. No wonder you were so powerful the moment you showed up. Following that logic, those other men similar to you must be outsiders too."
Then intense curiosity surged up inside them. Brad, the young knight, couldn't help but ask: "Mr. Adam, Mr. Lucian — what's the outside world really like? Is it as wonderful as the poems and stories say? Are there many powerhouses not inferior to the Witch?"
Adam pointed at the pensive Lucian nearby. "I've been trapped in this Demon Land for decades. I'm not up on what's happening out there anymore. Better let Lucian tell you."
A few servants not far away stopped chatting among themselves and turned their attention to Lucian. They were curious about the outside world too, and life inside the arcane tower was mind-numbingly dull — a good story would be a welcome change.
Lucian was thinking about something noteworthy he had picked up from Karina's words, but he spoke offhandedly: "The outside world is incomparably larger than this place. Not just dark, terrifying black forests — there are emerald lakes, towering peaks, golden harvest plains, bustling cities, buildings floating in the sky…"
Though the descriptions were rough, the sheer contrast with their surroundings captivated Karina and the others. The city in the sky, the arcane steam trains that could soar to dizzying heights, the utterly inconceivable form of the Arcane Council, the impossible alchemical constructs — all of it filled them with longing.
"There are so many wondrous places in this world — a city that actually flies." Karina gazed dreamily at the silver moon in the sky, as though she could hardly believe a city could hang up there. Then, more eagerly than any of her companions: "Mr. Lucian, how powerful is the Arcane Council?"
Lucian glanced at the upper floors of the arcane tower and said in a level tone: "A mage of the old witch's caliber is a common sight within the Arcane Council."
"A common sight…" Even Adam turned to stare, shaken by Lucian's description. In his memory, high-tier mages and Heavenly Knights were rare no matter where you went. However powerful the Arcane Council might be, surely a mid-tier mage wouldn't run into high-tier ones just like that?
Lucian smiled. "Everything I'm saying is the truth — at least, it's true from my personal perspective." The prerequisite, of course, was that you could acquire something like the Holm Crown Ring and earn the recognition of the Elemental Will's upper echelons. Then he added: "And there are many mages ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times stronger than her."
"Really?" Karina felt this was beyond the limits of her imagination. She and Alva regarded Lucian with a new layer of awe and trust.
Seeing that his deliberate display of the Arcane Council's might had successfully made the prisoners in their desperate situation view him — however faintly — as someone worth following, Lucian nodded with satisfaction. His gaze slid to the servants, and he declared with calculated arrogance: "I was swept into this Demon Land because I was delivering a letter to the Dark Mountains for a certain lord. It likely won't be long before someone comes to rescue me. In front of an Archmage, the old witch is nothing but an ant — crushed at will."
The old witch was practically insane, and trapped here with no way out, she had zero fear of Archmages. But her servants were still sane. Hearing Lucian's bold proclamation, their expressions shifted subtly.
Lucian did not press the display further. Hollow words alone would not convince anyone. Better to stop at the right moment and let the servants, Karina, and the rest fill in the gaps with their own imagination. He didn't even need them to truly believe — as long as the impression stuck in their minds and could sway their judgment and decisions at a critical juncture, that would suffice. It was, after all, nothing more than icing on the cake.
"An Archmage? How powerful are they?" As a mage, Karina asked almost on instinct.
Adam answered for Lucian: "Powerful enough to level this arcane tower, wipe out the nearby cities and villages, raze the surrounding Dark Forest…" Having never personally witnessed an Archmage in action, he answered according to his own imagination, stunning Karina and the others again and making the servants' eyes flicker.
After a silence, Karina gazed at Lucian with a burning fervor born of her reverence for the Arcane Council and for Archmages. "Mr. Lucian, what tier of mage are you? What standing do you hold in the Arcane Council? And roughly what tier is the old witch?"
Lucian sighed softly. "Don't call me 'sir.' We're all prisoners — no rank, no status. Within the Arcane Council I'm just one of countless mid-tier mages, still a long way from high-tier. There's nothing particularly impressive about me. As for the old witch, she's probably seventh-circle, or possibly eighth-circle."
Revealing his mid-tier status was sufficient — no need to expose his exact level.
"A mid-tier mage? You really are a mid-tier mage!" Karina exclaimed, startled and delighted at once. In a region where resources and knowledge were severely deficient, mid-tier mages were exceedingly rare — even harder to advance to than Great Knights. So once Lucian's mid-tier status was confirmed, Karina — a young woman with aspirations along the path of magic — displayed the same worship and fervor that Alva, Brad, and Ophelia had shown toward Adam.
But Ophelia, Alva, and the others took several involuntary steps back, their faces pale. "The old witch is seventh or eighth circle?"
They had seen firsthand what Karina — a second-circle mage — could do. If a seventh- or eighth-circle mage was that far beyond her, what kind of power were we talking about? And why was she hiding inside the arcane tower instead of ruling the surrounding territories?
Seeing that they seemed to have figured something out, Adam nodded in confirmation. "The old witch has no interest in ruling anything. She's obsessed with magic and experiments. Those rumors about the tower were all spread by her."
The bright curtain that had draped over their past lives was ruthlessly torn away, revealing the darkness and despair beneath. Karina plummeted from the joy of meeting a mid-tier mage into what felt like a bottomless abyss.
"Are we nothing but penned-up livestock?" Ophelia asked herself, struggling and desperate, unable to see a glimmer of hope.
Lucian paid no heed to their bewilderment and asked the question that had just surfaced in his mind: "Roughly when did the legends about the arcane tower start appearing? When was the first disappearance of a mage or a knight?"
"About five hundred years ago, I think," Karina answered uncertainly.
Lucian didn't press further. He simply speculated to himself: "The old witch was trapped in the Demon Land before the Arcane Council was even founded? Then she may not know about arcanology. If I could become her assistant and show her a few 'wonderful' experiments, I might blow her mind — literally. But the old witch is mentally unhinged; she'll be difficult to communicate with and hard to interest. I'll need to rely on other methods."
For Lucian, the most pressing matter was to remove the Binding Shackles and the Anti-Magic Collar. Without spiritual power or bloodline power, the simplest solution was to find an area with an Anti-Magic Array — once inside, those two magical items would become inert. Unfortunately, he had yet to detect an Anti-Magic Field anywhere within the arcane tower. He would have to think of something else.
After exchanging more information, Karina and the others gradually steadied. They had already been captured as test subjects — things couldn't get much worse. And with Lucian, this "powerfully connected" mid-tier mage, around, they could not help clinging to a sliver of hope.
…………
Two days later, while Lucian was still chipping away at the stone bricks on the right-hand wall with his fingernails, the old witch broke from her routine and sent someone to bring him to the arcane laboratory.
Along the way, Lucian carefully observed the blood-flesh puppet knights stationed at key positions, as well as the gleaming, razor-sharp great axes and great swords in their hands.
The laboratory door opened from within, and Lucian saw Ophelia strapped to the dissection table. The old witch stood beside her, holding up a pitch-black mirror and studying her own gaunt, wrinkled face while chanting a strange incantation: "Magic mirror, magic mirror, tell me — who is the most beautiful woman in the world?"
"Uh?" Lucian, who had nearly started singing along, felt an even deeper chill creep over him.