Chapter 50: The Second Scroll

Over the next few weeks, life settled into a strange kind of routine.

I officially signed a new three-month contract as Arielle’s private magic advisor. Per my explicit demand, I was only required to visit the Voulstridge estate two days out of the week.

However, after the sheer mental and physical exhaustion I suffered from the frozen realm incident, I insisted on adding a special clause.

An extra fifty gold coins was added to my baseline fee as hazard pay and compensation for nearly freezing my soul to death.

Duke Voulstridge was vehemently against it. His intimidating face twisted into a glare that could curdle fresh milk, his massive arms crossed over his chest as he growled about my absurd audacity.

But Lady Silvia gently took the feather quill from his hand and signed the parchment without a second thought.

There was absolutely nothing he could do. His wife was already deeply fond of me for bringing her back from that icy void, and the Duke could only retreat into bitter silence. His jealous, terrifying eyes tracked my every movement, yet he dared not utter a single objection.

What a total slave husband he had become. The grand ice archduke of the noble territory was completely whipped by his own wife.

The rest of my time was spent living my quiet life as an eight-year-old boy in the Commercial District. I spent my mornings helping Victoria around our guild, taking care of local customers, and filing down brass keys.

In the dark hours of the night, I was secretly grinding my Locksmith skills to their absolute limit. I poured over dense manuscripts regarding ancient spatial magic, all with one specific goal in mind. I needed to decipher and unlock the ancient secondary seal placed on the deep supply room of House Voulstridge.

"Again," I said after taking a slow sip of hot tea.

I was sitting comfortably at a small cast-iron table in the center garden of the Voulstridge estate.

The afternoon sun was pleasant and warm, not too hot, while soft white clouds slowly filled up the sky as they drifted across the horizon.

A plate of freshly baked sweet cakes sat beside my teacup, filling the air with the scent of vanilla and melted sugar.

What a wonderful life.

"Too far! Again!" I shouted, slamming my teacup back down onto the delicate saucer.

Arielle was standing on the neatly trimmed grass in front of my table, sweating through her heavy practice robes.

She was trying her absolute best for the hundredth time today to hit a small wooden target board placed several feet away from us.

Cold sweat was forming in heavy droplets on her small forehead. Her chest heaved as she drew upon her internal mana, forcing her spatial pathways to align.

Several jagged ice lances materialized in the air in front of her, shimmering with blue light before launching forward with a sharp hiss.

The ice lances failed to hit the mark entirely. They plunged uselessly into the dirt three feet short of the wooden target and shattered into harmless frost.

"We can do this all day, Arielle! Again!" I barked.

Arielle did not say a single word in reply, but her small face was red with pure fury. She glared at me as if she wanted to impale me with one of those ice lances right then and there.

Unfortunately for her, she did not have the power or the courage to complain out loud. I was the official boss here, and my word in this garden was absolute law.

I ignored her death glare and lifted the heavy leather-bound book resting beside my plate. I flipped to the marked page and began reading it for the tenth time today.

The book contained detailed diagrams about complex magic circuits, specifically the exact structural pattern I had encountered on the secondary hidden lock back in the estate storage room.

Reading it felt almost useless. I had tried asking Lady Silvia about the seal when I had the chance, hoping she might shed some light on her family security measures.

"I don’t know that, honey," she had replied with an apologetic smile, gently patting my head. "I am not an expert about sealing magic at all."

She had genuinely denied knowing anything about it, which only made me wonder who had actually constructed such a complex lock in the first place.

Despite my harsh demands, Arielle made incredible progress over the past few weeks during our training sessions.

With the ancient Ice Spirit fully tamed and her turbulent spatial pathways finally stabilized, her actual mana control surpassed even trained adult mages twice her age.

She had successfully learned how to use short-range teleportation without dislocating her limbs, and she could now summon high-tier ice spells without accidentally blowing up the entire training courtyard.

The only problem is her concentration.

"Good job, Arielle. Now do it again," I said calmly as she finished her latest attempt. "Form a small ice dome. Make it just large enough for you to fit inside comfortably."

"I’m tired, you idiot!" Arielle shouted, her voice cracking with frustration as she wiped her sweaty forehead.

Even as she yelled at me, she raised her trembling hands and began casting the defensive magic anyway.

"I’m a genius, kid. Put some respect on my name," I replied smoothly, taking a generous bite of a strawberry cake.

Truthfully, I felt completely exhausted. I was so sleepy despite having consumed three full cups of strong black coffee since early morning.

My eyelids felt heavier than iron tools, and I was trying my absolute best to stay awake by constantly shoveling sweet cakes into my mouth. The sugar rush was the only thing keeping my brain functioning.

My exhaustion was well earned. After endless late nights of research and trial calculations, I had finally succeeded in opening the secondary seal late last night.

To break through the lock, I had to physically reconstruct the magic rune of my customized spatial key to perfectly match the frequency of the ancient seal.

It was painstaking work that nearly fried my mana pathways, but the lock had finally yielded with a satisfying metallic click.

What I found inside the sealed compartment, however, left me thoroughly bewildered.

There was no hoard of ancient treasure or legendary weapons. There was only a single, ancient parchment scroll, and even that was ripped in half.

The surviving text on the half scroll contained a cryptic warning. It stated that a specific key and lock must be protected at all costs, and under no circumstances should anyone allow the door to open.

I was extremely disappointed with the lack of loot inside, but what truly caught my attention was the mention of that door.

What kind of door was it?

Where was it located?

I had no idea. There was no illustration or sketch anywhere on the surviving half of the scroll, leaving the entire matter as an unsolved mystery.

I shifted my gaze away from my book and glanced up toward the upper floor of the main house.

Lady Silvia was standing on the second-floor stone balcony again.

She often watched our outdoor training sessions from above, giving me gentle, grateful nods whenever I corrected Arielle’s magic posture.

Standing right beside her was Duke Voulstridge. Even while dressed in a refined silk suit, he looked like a terrifying mob boss waiting to collect a debt. Yet, despite his permanent scowl, he treated me with genuine respect whenever we spoke in private.

Everything seemed completely peaceful on the surface. The afternoon breeze was pleasant, the tea was warm, and the Duke’s family was finally reunited.

But deep down, I knew this calm state would not last for long. The corrupted black threads were still out there, lurking in the dark corners of this world, waiting for their moment to strike.