MUTE BUT ALMIGHTY: Return of the Archmage

C5

"Say it again," Damon whispered, stepping closer to the bloody carpet. "Say the word you spoke when you came through the spatial portal."

The surviving assassin lay trembling on his stomach, his face pressed flat against the cold marble floor. Blood mixed with saliva dripped from his mouth, pooling beneath his chin.

"The Prime... Equation," the assassin gasped out, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror. "The symbol on his left palm... it didn't just bend my fire spell, My Lord. It consumed it. He's not a cripple. He's manipulating the structure of the world."

Damon stood over him in dead silence. His hands twitched at his sides, his fingernails digging so hard into his own palms that small drops of crimson welled up along his knuckles.

"You're hysterical," Damon said, his voice flat and eerily quiet. "You panicked because a dying dog managed to trigger an old trap in the Cursed Wing."

"No!" the assassin wept, trying to lift his head. "I swear on my soul! He moved through the miasma like he owned it! The other two... their necks were snapped by the air itself! You have to kill him before he—"

Crunch.

Damon’s boot slammed down onto the back of the assassin's neck. The heavy iron-soled leather crushed the man's throat and spine instantly against the stone. The assassin gave one violent twitch, his legs jerking once before going entirely limp.

Damon pulled his foot back, wiping the smear of dark blood onto the dead man's black shirt. He didn't look at the corpse. He turned toward the dark corner of his study where Elder Vane stood, motionless in the shadows.

"Clean this up," Damon ordered coldly. "If a single word about a geometric mark or the Prime Equation leaves this room, I'll have your entire lineage dragged to the execution posts."

"Understood, Young Master," Vane bowed low, his face pale in the dim candlelight. "But what about the target? The Imperial Sect Inspector is waiting in the outer reception hall. If we do not produce Lancelot by midday tomorrow, they will breach the Cursed Wing themselves."

"He won't make it to midday," Damon sneered, his chest heaving as he stared out the tall window into the dark courtyard. "He thinks hiding in that dark pit buys him time. He has no idea what is coming for him."

Deep beneath the earth, in the pitch-black silence of the Cursed Wing, Lucas sat cross-legged on the frozen stone.

The air around his body didn't smell like stagnant decay or bitter miasma anymore. Within a five-foot radius around his seated frame, the air was warm, crisp, and pure.

Lucas closed his eyes, driving his inner perception straight into the core of his spiritual sea.

Where his destroyed cultivation base used to sit like a dry, cracked riverbed, a spinning silver geometric structure now hovered. It wasn't made of flesh or organ tissue. It was a perfectly balanced matrix of thirty-six glowing nodes, interconnected by razor-thin threads of refined mana.

Apprentice-peak control, Lucas thought, a cold smile touching his lips.

He didn't need a traditional cultivated core. By using his past-life knowledge to rewrite the surrounding curse array, he had converted the lethal environment into an infinite battery. Every time the outer miasma tried to crush his body, his silver matrix swallowed the crude energy, refined its equations, and pumped pure spiritual force back into his broken meridians.

His cracked bones had knit back together. His torn muscles were stronger than before.

"Let's see what else you're hiding," Lucas whispered into the dark.

He extended a thin thread of silver mana out from his hand, driving it deeper into the second layer of the ancient array beneath the floorboards.

As his silver thread touched the central nexus, the black stone beneath him vibrated with a low, thrumming hum. The golden and crimson equations floating in the deeper void flared into blinding light.

Lucas’s breath hitched in his throat.

The curse was not designed to kill him.

The realization hit his mind like a physical blow. The crude purple miasma that the family elders thought was a lethal poison was actually just a cover—a heavy, artificial blanket placed over this wing two hundred years ago to suppress something far more dangerous.

Beneath the outer poison lay a suppression seal. And beneath that suppression seal sat his own bloodline.

Lucas raised his left hand. The skin of his palm split open slightly, releasing three drops of dark crimson blood onto the stone floor.

The moment his blood touched the ancient golden equations, the array didn't fight back. It drank his blood greedily.

ZZZZZT!

A blinding flash of golden light erupted from the floor, shooting straight into Lucas's chest.

Lucas gasped, his neck arching back as an intense, scorching heat surged through his veins. Deep inside his chest, right behind his heart, a hidden mark began to burn. It wasn't the slave brand Damon had tried to force on him. It wasn't the weak, low-tier crest of the current Peterson clan.

It was a crest made of three intertwined golden rings surrounded by geometric runic script—the true Peterson Sovereign bloodline mark.

"They didn't seal this wing to protect the estate," Lucas muttered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum. "They sealed it to hide what my ancestors really were. The current elders aren't the true masters of this family. They're usurpers."

Creak.

The heavy iron door at the end of the stone corridor groaned open.

Lucas instantly pulled his silver mana back into his chest. The glowing golden equations on the floor vanished back into the dark, and the air around him cooled down in a fraction of a second. He slumped his shoulders forward, assuming the posture of a weak, exhausted prisoner sitting in the filth.

Quick, light footsteps hurried down the stone passage.

"Lucas?" Esther's frantic whisper echoed through the dark.

She rounded the corner, clutching a wooden tray covered by a coarse gray cloth. She dropped to her knees beside him, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps.

"Esther," Lucas said softly. "You shouldn't have come back so soon. Damon's guards are on high alert."

"I had to," she whispered, setting the tray down with trembling hands. "The upper estate is in total chaos. Damon killed one of his own personal guards in his study an hour ago. They're scrubbing blood off the marble floors."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small cloth bundle containing hot dried meat and a small flask of clean well water.

As she handed the flask to him, her fingers brushed against his left hand.

Esther froze.

She didn't pull her hand back, but her eyes went wide with shock. She looked up at his face, staring directly into his eyes in the dim moonlight filtering through the high iron grates.

The air around Lucas's fingers was visibly distorting, bending the faint light like heat rising off hot metal. And deep within his dark pupils, two faint silver geometric rings spun in dead silence.

"Lucas..." Esther breathed, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "Your eyes... your skin..."

Lucas looked back at her calmly. He didn't hide the silver glow in his eyes. "Does it scare you?"

Esther stared at his hands, then down at the clean linen bandages she had wrapped around his wrists yesterday. The blood that had soaked through the cloth was gone. His posture was no longer that of a dying cripple; his shoulders were broad, his breathing steady, and his aura radiated a quiet, suffocating pressure that made her chest tighten.

She took a deep breath, clutching her small hands together over her knees.

"No," Esther said, her voice turning firm and solid. "It doesn't scare me. I don't care if you're using dark magic or ancient spells. If it keeps you alive, I'll help you."

"Damon will kill you if he finds out you're helping me recover," Lucas warned her quietly.

"Damon is going to kill all of us in the outer yards anyway once he takes full power," Esther replied bitterly, her eyes burning with quiet hatred. "He raised the servant tax yesterday. He had my brother beaten because he didn't bow low enough in the hallway. You're the only one who can tear him down."

She leaned closer, her voice dropping even lower.

"I stole something from the head butler's office while they were cleaning the blood," Esther whispered, pulling a folded piece of parchment from inside her sleeve. "It's the patrol shift schedule for the underground gates for the next three days. I can open the eastern drain grate for you tonight if you need to escape."

Lucas looked at the parchment in her hand, then up at her determined face.

"I'm not escaping, Esther," Lucas said, taking the parchment from her. "I'm going to take everything Damon owns. But keep watching the upper halls for me. I need to know every move he makes."

"I will," Esther promised, nodding fiercely. "I'll lie to the guards. I'll tell them I saw you coughing up blood if they ask."

She gathered her empty basket and hurried back toward the iron gate, her small frame vanishing into the damp gloom.

Lucas watched her leave, feeling the heavy weight of the stolen schedule in his grip. With Esther acting as his eyes on the surface and the Sovereign bloodline mark waking in his chest, his hold over this dead wing was absolute.

He closed his eyes and began drawing the surrounding miasma back into his silver matrix, preparing to push his cultivation into the True Foundation realm.

BOOM!

The heavy iron gates at the entrance of the Cursed Wing didn't just open—they were blown off their heavy bronze hinges by a massive burst of explosive spirit energy.

The iron doors crashed onto the stone floor with a deafening screech that echoed through the subterranean halls.

Lucas opened his eyes instantly.

A squad of ten heavily armored enforcement guards marched into the corridor, their long steel spears gleaming with cold blue light. Behind them walked three old men wearing white physician robes embroidered with the official silver crest of the Grand Elder Council.

Leading the group was Senior Physician Marcus—Damon's primary lackey on the medical board.

"Grab him!" Marcus barked, pointing a long bone rod directly at Lucas's chest. "By order of the Vice-Patriarch and the Grand Council, the prisoner Lancelot is to undergo an immediate, mandatory physical examination!"

Lucas sat perfectly still, watching the guards fan out to surround him in a tight semicircle. "An examination? Under whose authority? The Imperial Inspector hasn't given any orders."

Marcus sneered, pulling a heavy black iron syringe filled with a thick, bubbling green liquid from his velvet pouch.

"The Imperial Inspector does not govern internal clan medical procedures, trash," Marcus said coldly, stepping forward as two guards grabbed Lucas by his shoulders. "Your body carries an unknown contagious poison from the miasma. The council has ordered a complete extraction of your spinal fluid to ensure the public safety of the estate."

Lucas felt the guards' heavy iron gauntlets digging into his collarbones, forcing him down onto his knees.

He looked at the long, hollow needle gleaming in Marcus's hand. He recognized the bubbling green fluid instantly—it wasn't a testing reagent. It was Soul-Dissolving Acid, a high-grade military poison that melted a cultivator's brain and central nervous system within thirty seconds of entering the spine, leaving behind no physical trace of foul play.

Damon wasn't trying to hide his murder anymore. He was executing him right here under the guise of an official medical safety procedure.

Marcus leaned down, his face twisting into a cruel, triumphant smile as he raised the heavy syringe above the back of Lucas's neck.

"Don't fight it, boy," Marcus whispered maliciously into Lucas's ear. "The Vice-Patriarch sent his regards. He said to tell you that your funeral will be held tomorrow morning with full honors."

Marcus drove the black iron needle straight toward the base of Lucas's spine.

Lucas didn't scream. He didn't struggle against the guards holding his shoulders.

Instead, he reached into his vest with his free right hand and pulled out a thick, folded piece of parchment sealed with a heavy, imperial crimson wax seal—the official medical protection order signed directly by the Imperial Sect Inspector himself that he had taken off the lead assassin's corpse.

"Read the red seal, old dog," Lucas said, his voice echoing like thunder through the chamber.

Marcus froze, the needle stopping less than half an inch from Lucas's bare skin as his eyes fell onto the glowing imperial crest.