Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 27: Attack on a Rainy Night
The last time I came to this manor on the outskirts of Jackdaw Town was during the day.

Jeffrey vaguely remembered that this country villa once belonged to a baron and was backed by a vast orchard.

The wall built with a stone brick base and wooden grilles is only less than one person high. If the nearby townspeople and farmers did not know that there was a necromancer living here, anyone could easily climb over and steal vegetables and fruits.

Although it was almost midnight, Geoffrey and the witch hunter Stani, who were sneaking towards the manor, still did not dare to light torches.

Necromancers always like to be active at night, and this time period is their working time.

Following Jeffrey's instructions, Stani carefully explored the manor wall and skillfully cracked all the triggered magic traps. This was the method he usually used in the past when attacking spellcasters who lived alone.

This young necromancer did not seem to be completely defenseless, but his methods were too immature.

Stani sneered inwardly. Come to think of it, it was normal for civilians to be afraid of necromancers, but he had never heard of a necromancer being afraid of an ordinary civilian.

In their eyes, living people are just unprocessed experimental materials, and they are eager for someone to deliver them to their door.

This arrogant and foolish idea was exactly what Stani wanted. In the past, he had often relied on this arrogance common among spellcasters to attack many mage apprentices and low-level spellcasters.

The two of them climbed over the fence quietly and touched the side wall of the manor building.

"There are no lights on in the main building. The necromancer is not in his room?" Stani asked in a low voice, looking at the trembling Jeffrey with a gloomy gaze.

"I...I don't know...I'm not sure. The last time I came here was during the day, and I only went into the first-floor living room and the spacious laboratory cellar next to it..."

Stani was stunned. Isn’t the main building the main activity area of the necromancer?
Jeffrey stammered, adding, "His laboratory is behind the main building, near the orchard."

The witch hunter nodded slightly and pulled Jeffrey close to the wall to sneak behind the main building.

Suddenly, there was a faint sound of muffled thunder in the sky, rumbling over the head.

Stani was delighted. A rainstorm was coming, and tonight was the best time to attack.

The sound of thunder and rain will cover up their sneak movements and wash away all traces of them.

The witch hunter slowly approached the low and spacious experimental workshop, stopped in front of a tightly closed window, took out a thin metal sheet as thin as a ruler from his waist, and inserted it into the gap of the window frame with skillful movements.

With a slight click, the internal window latch slid open and the window gently opened to the outside.

Even the doors and windows of the laboratory don’t have special locking devices. What an amateur!

Stani straightened up slightly, tilted his head and leaned in through the window to look. It seemed to be a separate storage room with shelves against the wall filled with various bottles and jars.

He pushed the window open with confidence, pinched the window frame with one hand, pushed it gently, and climbed in quietly.

He turned around and dragged the clumsy Jeffrey into the storage room.

"I'll go out and scout first. You wait in this cubicle. Don't touch anything and don't make any noise."

Jeffrey nodded with chattering teeth. Sneaking into a spellcaster's laboratory was a suicidal act that he had never dared to think of in the past.

Not to mention the pale skulls placed on the shelves in this room, and the unknown flesh and blood organs soaked in glass containers.

None of these things made him almost scared to death, and his legs were as soft as dough and he couldn't move.

Stanike had no time to appease this disposable scapegoat. He drew the unsheathed longsword hanging at his waist, pushed open the door of the storage room, and walked out quietly.

This experimental workshop is much larger than expected. Except for the two separate storage rooms at the end, all the windows in other areas of the workshop are sealed with iron sheets, with only a few circular ventilation holes near the top of the wall.

The entire workshop was empty, with only the footsteps of the witch hunters' boots echoing on the ground.

A large number of pried-open crates were discarded casually in the corner, and a tangled mess of metal pipes hung from the ceiling, like dry vines, hanging from top to bottom to the ground, connecting to a number of strange instruments that Stani was completely unfamiliar with.

The most conspicuous one is a huge metal cylinder standing in the center of the room, nearly five meters high. The heavy base is engraved with dense magical inscriptions, which light up and go out repeatedly like breathing.

There seemed to be some mechanism running inside the metal cylinder. A continuous low hum could be faintly heard, blending in with the sudden heavy rain and muffled thunder outside the house.

The Necromancer was obviously not in the laboratory either... Could it be that my estimation was wrong, and he had actually secretly left Jackdaw Town and headed to a place outside Grizzly Castle?

Stani felt a little frustrated if the attack could not be carried out tonight.

To find the next opportunity, you have to go through a long period of lurking and waiting.

He slowly walked to the huge alchemical instrument, thinking about how to destroy these magical items used for evil and blasphemous experiments.

With the rain so heavy, the idea of setting it on fire is obviously unrealistic.

If I act alone, I won't be able to get any combustible materials like dragon flame or kerosene.

I can only try to find out in the necromancer's experiments whether there are any alchemical materials with explosive or corrosive effects that I am familiar with that I can use.

Just as he was about to search carefully, a metal cover suddenly flipped up from the ground not far away.

The witch hunter narrowed his eyes slightly and immediately rolled silently behind the metal cylinder, holding the sword tightly in his hand and staring at the front.

……

"Phew~ Every time before a rainstorm, we have to come to the underground storage room to check, otherwise when we wake up the next day, all these zombie transformation materials will be soaked into human-shaped pancakes."

Harvey muttered irritably as he climbed out of the cellar clumsily.

He pushed the iron sheet that had been placed next to the cover in advance, squatted down and passed it down from the cellar entrance.

Someone seemed to be taking over from below.

"Sir, you don't have to do this yourself every time. I can do it by myself."

The witch hunter heard another voice in the cellar.

"You are my assistant, not my apprentice. More people means more efficiency."

The man on the ground is his target, the necromancer named Harvey!

The other person was facing him with his back completely exposed, squatting down and talking to the people below towards the cellar entrance.

Not at all prepared!

Stani changed the long sword in his right hand to a two-handed grip, pointing the tip of the sword at the back of the unconscious spellcaster.

Invigorate your abdomen and take deep breaths to mobilize the blood strength in your body which has become slightly weakened due to aging.

Take a breath.

Two breaths.

three……

"Who are you!" A sudden shout came from behind him. He was discovered!

"Lord be careful!"

Without any hesitation, Stani stood up, stomped his feet hard on the ground, and with a huge forward force, he pounced on Harvey's back.

Harvey only felt as if there was a gust of scorching wind blowing towards him from behind, and his back seemed to feel a slight sharp pain.

The sense of crisis of being locked onto by a ferocious beast instantly made his scalp tingle.

He heard Pierce's loud warning, but it was too late to react.

He could only fall forward in a panic, and rolled headfirst into the cellar with a thud.

(End of this chapter)