Chapter 143.2 : Infiltrating Proxia Empire

historical

（The effect is to detect intruders but.............. Such a bothersome effect. There might be another one as well. There are even patrolling guards during the daytime that check the barrier. Better to wait till it’s dark then.）

Rio frowned, as expected ―― He thought that there might be a relationship between this barrier and Reis, thus he heaved a sigh. Though he wanted to sneak into the castle, that alone might prove to be too troublesome.

Later, Rio arranged his stay at an inn and decided to gather some more information regarding the situation inside the castle so that it won’t come back to bite him later on.

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In the end he got no important information at all. Though he would have been able to do a more thorough investigation if he were to spend a few more days in this place, the probability of him getting more information without any assistance was low.

As a result, Rio chose the high risk high return method. Late at night when all the citizens of the imperial capital had fallen asleep, wearing black clothes, he secretly slipped out of his inn through the windows. His target was the rampart ―― Climbing some walls he went ahead without meeting any kind of problem. The imperial capital at night was extremely quiet, especially in the residential area. There were almost no people walking outside aside from the patrolling soldiers.

After going a bit further in, from a certain point closer to the imperial castle, after leaving the noble district, he came out to the paved plaza which commanded a great view of the townscape when the scenery was interrupted. The plaza before him was hidden by the massive wall of the imperial castle. Rio stopped his gait right before entering the plaza.

（They built a watch fire and there are many soldiers going around. The range of the barrier is also precisely calculated to be just right to hide the castle. Should I take a look around the castle for the time being?）

Despite being low, there was still a possibility that this barrier had a crack. So Rio decided to go around the range of the barrier that enveloped the castle. First he looked for an opening at ground level.

The gap he was looking for did not exist. At the very least, an infiltration from the ground was impossible.

Thus he was left with no choice but to try to infiltrate from the sky to see whether it’ll be obstructed or not. Nevertheless, he wanted to avoid infiltrating from the sky as much as possible. Due to the type of the barrier, he would be discovered at the same time as he infiltrated the area within the barrier. He was left with no choice but to infiltrate via the sky however.

Rio’s body slowly rose from the ground till he reached a height that was higher than the barriers range. After rising some distance from the ground, he took a better look at the castle from above. There, he noticed..

（There’s a faint crack at the top part of the barrier. It might be a trap but............）

Perhaps due to a lack of magic power, he finally discovered a gap on the top part of the barrier.

He thought he needed to study the nature of the barrier as it could be taken as a trap as well, but his potential ambusher might be aiming for that opening.

But then, there were no other routes for infiltrating aside from this one. He shouldn’t have missed any routes except for those that are secret and known only by a select few.

The matter of planning to make a new infiltration route would take too long and currently he could only find this gap which might be fixed by tomorrow.

After hestitating for a while――、

（Let’s try to enter then.）

He decided to enter by using that gap. He knew the risks of this choice from the very beginning and he had already decided to go as far as torturing if that meant getting the information he needed. There was no time for hesitation as someone inside the castle might know the whereabouts of Lucius.

Since there were numerous soldiers patrolling inside the garden, he descended on top of the roof and entered the castle from there under the cover of night. First he needed to grasp the structure inside the castle as much as possible.　Rio went into the castle through a window of an unused room. He confirmed that no one was around while being on high alert for the patrolling soldiers. As he started walking carefully――、