Creature Farm Chapter 40: Intruder

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Sulo

 

“He went upstairs…” Augusta looked up the stairs. “My study is up there. Is his goal, like last time, my research notes?”

“Didn’t you say that the notes are encrypted, and you can only crack the cipher text on it with the codebook?” Kyfayar asked, “Is it the codebook that the thief wants to steal?”

Augusta grinned, “Humph, I’m always on guard. You stay here to prevent any of the thief’s accomplices from coming in. I’ll go upstairs and have a look.”

“What can you do alone? He may be very dangerous!” Kyfayar cried, “I’m going with you.”

Augusta gave him a disgusted glance, “Just you? Forget it! Stay here.”

Kyfayar’s wolf’s ears drooped.

Augusta rushed up the stairs and found a rolled up Persian carpet at the door to his study. It should be the same carpet that the unicorn saw. It seemed that the thief had been plotting this for a long time, and even their means of escape was ready. The magician grinned grimly and snapped his fingers, and a fire burst out over the flying carpet. 

Hehe, dare to covet the property of mage Augusta, let you fly in and roll out.

Should I kick open the door of the study to appear more powerful and bold? Augusta thought for a second and gave up. Why can’t I go through my own door? I still like the mahogany door. 

He opened the door calmly. The study was turned upside down. The neat books on the bookshelf had fallen to the ground, every cabinet and drawer was open, and the documents and scrolls lay on the floor like toilet paper that had been torn to pieces. In addition, there was no one in the study, as if the audacious thief had left, leaving a room full of mess.

But it was not that simple. Daring to steal the research notes of a great mage, who was already alert, only to suddenly quit? Augusta looked into the middle of the room. There was a magic whirlpool that ordinary people couldn’t see. In Augusta’s eyes, it was a dark hole. 

The magician carefully poked through a pile of manuscripts on the ground with his toes and picked up a thin notebook buried underneath. This was his codebook. If you didn’t chant the right mantra when you touched the codebook, you would be sucked into an unknown dimension. This even applied to Augusta himself. Since the last burglary at his home, he had not only strengthened the magic barrier around the house, but also added magic traps to the codebook. Now that the trap had been triggered, it seemed that the thief was really aiming for the codebook.

“I’d like to see who this thief is!”

Augusta dropped the codebook and jumped into the magic whirlpool.

All of a sudden, he fell from his study into a dark space with no heaven and earth. This space was so vast and boundless that no one would be able to find the end. It was like a boundless universe. 

A road of suspended rock stretched from Augusta’s foot into the distance. Looking down from the edge of the road, he could only see a bottomless darkness. There were more rocky islands drifting around. 

Another floating path of rocks hung above, just parallel to the one he was standing on. Augusta pushed hard and jumped into the air. The gravity suddenly reversed. He was sucked up to the path of rocks above his head, and then fell flat against it. This dark space had turned around.

He was now standing on the path of rocks that had been ‘above’ him a moment ago, while the previous path of rocks he had been standing on hung upside down.

Augusta raised his hand and made a gesture, closing the magic whirlpool that sent him into the dark space. If he had tried to go through the magic whirlpool again, instead of returning to the study, he would be transported to another place in a different space. In this strange and wonderful space, the entrance did not necessarily send one back to where they came from. 

The magician patted his clothes, dusted them off, and looked around. It’s dead quiet here. Where’s the thief? I hope he didn’t run too far because he was too scared. Although Augusta hated thieves, he didn’t hate them immediately.

Suddenly a flame came from behind Augusta when he was looking around! I didn’t expect an attack! When he felt the heat of the fire, he instinctively raised a barrier to protect himself. When he and Cavaldien participated in the magic challenge, they practiced this kind of magic arts day and night so that they would form a conditioned reflex. His body had not forgotten it after so many years. That was one of the few benefits that he and Cavaldien had gained from their acquaintance.

The flame bounced against the barrier and turned into scattered hot air. Augusta turned around. A man dressed in black and wearing a white mask stood on the path of rocks above him, hanging upside down like a bat to Augusta. It seemed that he was the thief who didn’t know the height of the earth. Breaking into my house and stealing, you dare to attack me!

The magician’s mouth curled. He had been a great master for a long time.

The masked thief took a bottle out from his arms and threw it at Augusta. Due to the different forces of gravity on both sides of the path of rocks, the bottle flew in a strange arc towards the position where Augusta stood. 

Logically speaking, Augusta would have to crush the bottle with his barrier, but according to his experience in the magic road challenge, since the other party knew that he would use the barrier to protect himself, there must be something strange in the bottle. The same means of attack could not be used a second time, defensive means was also a reason.

With a wave of his hand, he reversed the gravity of the bottle. The bottle that had just been flying towards him was immediately called by gravity. It flew upwards to the path of rocks above and smashed against it. An electric current shot out of the broken glass bottle. If Augusta had just blocked the bottle with a barrier, the moment the bottle broke, the electric current would have broken through his barrier.

Seeing that the trick failed, the masked thief took out a bottle and threw it at his feet. A thick cloud of smoke suddenly rose. Augusta realized that he was trying to escape. The magician couldn’t give the enemy such a chance! He waved his hand casually. The thief who had not yet escaped from the fog was caught by a huge hand. He left the ground with a bang and fell on Augusta’s path of rocks. Before he could tell what happened, Augusta waved his hand at will again, and the thief fell back against the path of rocks above. He was like a tennis ball bouncing between two paths of rocks.

“Stay, stop!” The thief yelled, “I surrender! Spare my life!”

Augusta hit him again. “It’s a little late to surrender now, Mr. Herbert Gunther.”

The thief tried to get up from the ground. Augusta made a gesture of pressure, and the thief’s back felt as if there was a heavy burden pressing against his back and had to lie down.

“How do you know it’s me?”

“First, your bottle. It was an alchemical potion, so I guessed you were an alchemist, or at least one of your fellow alchemists. Second, you broke the magic barrier around my house. Although I’m not the greatest mage in the world, I’m confident that my magic is not bad. There are few magicians in the world who can break my barrier from the outside, but I can’t think of any of them who will be against me. 

“However, the barrier is much easier to crack from the inside. The thief must have been to my house, and when I was not paying attention, he put an anchor that could break the barrier in a certain place in my house, and was confident that no one would find it. 

“I’m not so stupid that I wouldn’t even know if there is a magic anchor. However, even if I ignore it, Kyfayar and Quentina often clean the house, so they are bound to find it. But no one found the anchor. So I guess the anchor must be something in our psychological blind spot. We let it exist, and didn’t care about it. Maybe I even allowed it to be in my house.”

Augusta raised his chin, “That shivalinga. You and Lilianna came to visit and gave me that as a gift. Of course, because it was so embarrassing, I asked Kyfayar to leave it in the attic, and then I never took care of it. Your anchor was safe in my own home. When I realized this, your identity would be revealed. Also, you asked me about Kyfayar’s transformation, and I told you that when he changed, I would send him to the nearby forest. In other words, I would definitely leave home on the full moon night — that’s the best time for you to invade.”

The magician looked at Herbert, overwhelmed by invisible gravity, “Does Lilianna know what you’re doing? Is she involved in your plot? No, I don’t think so. Your association with Lilliana is suspicious in itself. The timing is too good. Not long after my house was broken into, you picked up Liliana. You were just using her as a springboard, looking for opportunities to enter my home, and asking about my situation? Otherwise, you won’t be completely sure: the shivalinga is a gift from a friend, so I won’t lose it; but I can’t take it out to look at it, so I would also not find the magic anchor on it.”

Herbert snorted, “What if I said she was my partner?”

“Impossible.”

“How can you be sure?”

“If Lilianna wants my research notes, she would just come and ask for them. She hasn’t asked for them before. Of course, whether I give it to her or not is another matter, but if she really wants to, she will definitely open her mouth, not steal.”

“That woman…!”

“It’s really bad luck for Lillianna to meet someone like you. She probably thought you were the one for her, dreaming of a long life with you.”

Augusta snapped his fingers. The heavy burden on Herbert’s back disappeared, and a magic whirlpool appeared on his head, sucking him up. “But you’re even worse off. Haven’t you heard of a saying — “

Herbert was sucked into the whirlpool. “You’ll regret it, Aug…”

“— would you rather annoy ten dragons than a witch?”

Kyfayar sat on the stairs, hands in his arms, shivering from the cold. Why don’t I get myself some clothes to wear? He thought. But Lord Augusta asked me to stay here and wait for him. What if he doesn’t find me when he comes back? It’s better to bear with it.

He hung his head dejectedly and didn’t discover the magic whirlpool that appeared above his head.

“…usta!” A broken sound came from the whirlpool.

“Huh?” Kyfayar looked up in disbelief.

Then he was hit in the face by a man in black who came down from the sky! He didn’t even have time to scream and fainted.

 

This was what Augusta saw as he walked out of the study: Herbert throwing off his mask and trying to get up, while Kyfayar frothed and fell unconscious, wearing nothing at all. The scene was very indecent.