Chapter 1173: Abandoned Guild House
Karl stepped up to the barrier around the dilapidated stone building, and raised his hand to inspect the surface.
It wasn’t a barrier spell that he was familiar with, but it was most likely cast by Orthos before he left. The question was if Karl could enter without damaging it.
The spell had held the house in something close to stasis for thousands of years, and Karl didn’t want to do anything that would destroy the historical artifact. Even from here, he could see Dwarven runes carved into the stone, long since inert, but undamaged by time.
If he could spot some of the building’s defensive measures already, there had to be more. And if there were more, most of them would be considered lost arts by now.
At least by most people.
"Are you sure that’s wise, Sir?" The Bunga City guard asked cautiously as Karl’s hand touched the barrier.
"No worries, the house still belongs to the Guild. It won’t harm me. I’m more worried about damaging it when I enter, if it was intended to be a stasis spell to preserve the house.
So, I’m trying to determine what it does first."
The Guard nodded slowly as Karl analyzed the barrier, and then tried to use his limited understanding of the Fundamental Rule of Mana Manipulation to trace the spell to its origin.
The spell stones were overgrown with grass, buried under a few centimetres of dirt and plant roots by the ages. But with mana flowing through them, they were easy enough to understand.
It was a preservation spell, the same sort that he had cast on the pantry, though written by a mage and not a Runecrafter, so the spell was somewhat different.
That meant all it was doing was slowing the aging of the building, and keeping unauthorized people out.