Chapter 684 : Mountain

Above the ancient castle under the night sky, Frederico, a high-ranking member of the Dark Gold Society in his evolved form as an

Aurum Gargoyle

, spread his metallic wings and hovered with his enormous body aloft. From the gems embedded in his eyes and wings, he rained down scorching rays upon the castle below. This cage of radiant beams should have been the death trap for the elusive thief darting about inside the structure—but one crucial ray among them behaved in an utterly unexpected way at the last moment.

That ray, which should have pierced the thief, was bizarrely reflected after passing through their two top hats—redirected straight back at Frederico himself. Even Frederico was visibly startled as his own heat ray struck him squarely, engulfing him in a brilliant, blinding flare of light.

This was the power of “Magic Hat,” an ability granted to Thief K after Nephthys possessed an Anecdotal Spirit Body and assumed their form. It originated from the classic magician’s stage trick of pulling objects from a top hat—sometimes even producing an item from one hat that had been placed in another. Once transformed into a mystical ability, this concept allowed Thief K’s hats to become spatially linked. Anything placed into one could emerge from another—including attacks.

Thief K possessed four identical standard high-top hats. The interiors of these hats were interconnected, allowing anything that entered one to exit from another. This didn’t apply only to objects—but also to attacks. As long as the attack was small enough to pass through the mouth of the hat, it could be absorbed by one and fired back out through another.

With the exception of curses or intangible mental attacks, almost all compact offensive techniques—bullets, arrows, beams, thrusts—could be intercepted and reflected by the hats, provided they could fit through the brim. This ability was especially potent against high-power projectiles or piercing attacks. However, it was ineffective against large-scale or high-density area attacks. There were only four hats, and they could not absorb too many trajectories at once. If the projectile was too large for the brim, it couldn't be redirected.

After being struck by his own reflected ray, Frederico’s massive metallic body was swallowed in a burst of light. Yet when the flare faded, he reemerged in the air—unscathed. His glistening surface was unscathed, only faintly reddened and glowing for a moment before cooling back to normal.

“That… was my own attack? What a bizarre ability…” murmured Frederico with a heavy tone as he looked at the rapidly cooling surface of his hand.

Then, he turned his gaze to the devastated ruins of the castle below.

“So many strange, unheard-of powers… Thief K really is tied to the legacy of Revelation, aren't they? That just means I absolutely can’t let them escape this time…”

With that, the gems on his wings and eyes lit up again, launching another volley of radiant beams downward. But the thief—still hiding within the castle—was prepared. From the two hats they already had, they pulled out two more. Under an invisible force, all four hats floated into the air and aligned their brims upward, perfectly intercepting the beams that pierced through the ceiling.

Though Frederico’s beams were fast and plentiful, the thief’s agility allowed them to dodge most of them. The rest were absorbed and reflected by the hats. With Dorothy’s precise real-time battlefield detection and trajectory calculation support, the thief executed flawless evasive maneuvers, pairing with their hat’s redirections to advance rapidly toward the castle’s edge.

Meanwhile, Frederico maintained his beam barrage, applying relentless pressure. He was waiting for the thief to exit the castle—at which point he planned to unleash a massive blizzard to freeze their in the open. However, just as they broke through the lower part of the castle and fled outside, a reflected beam struck Frederico’s face, the brilliant flash temporarily blinding him.

This refraction had significant consequences. The thief had just escaped the building through a window and vanished into the forested wilderness beyond. Inside his own domain, Frederico could sense their location. But outside? That sense failed. He had intended to catch them midair after they left cover by freezing the landscape with his blizzard—but with his vision lost at that crucial moment, he couldn’t tell which direction they had flown. In an instant, he lost track of them.

Now, Frederico had two options: bombard the surrounding forest with blizzards or firestorms and hope to flush them out—or risk that they would slip away into the night unseen. He chose not to gamble.

Instead, he opted for a more reliable method of containment.

Flapping his wings, Frederico soared to a towering spire atop the castle. He spat a fireball that blasted the spire's rooftop apart. As rubble scattered and tumbled down, a softly glowing spell array was revealed atop the ruins. In its center stood a massive stone warhammer, covered in runic inscriptions—so large it seemed impossible for a human to wield.

Landing beside the ruined spire, Frederico extended one hand and lifted the hammer with ease. Then, raising it high, he smashed it down onto the spell array.

As the hammer struck, a pulse of mystical forces rippled outward in glowing arcs. A strange wave spread rapidly in every direction. Under its influence, the terrain surrounding the castle began to change dramatically.

Rumbling thunder echoed from all around. The ground trembled. From the wilds and forests in the distance, something strange began to rise—rock.

Stone, thick and solid, began to erupt across the land like growing trees. Within mere seconds, they swallowed the grass and forest and stretched skyward, blocking even the moonlight. From within the castle, it looked as if towering curtains were rising in every direction, enclosing the entire structure.

But these weren’t curtains—they were mountain walls. Enormous and dense.

With that single hammer strike, Frederico summoned an entire mountain, which shot up from the earth to encase the castle completely.

In an instant, the castle was no longer in the wilderness—it now stood inside a massive subterranean cavern. Wind and moonlight were completely sealed away. From within the structure, one now looked out into a vast, pitch-black hollow space capable of holding the entire castle.

This mountain hadn’t been conjured from thin air. It had always existed. The castle had originally been built within a massive cave inside a mountain. The mountain had merely been hidden using a powerful ability.

“A whole mountain appearing out of nowhere… what an incredible domain skill…”

At the edge of the cavern inside the castle, Dorothy, who had barely flown into the cave just in time to avoid being caught outside, murmured to herself in awe. She had never seen such a magnificent and surreal transformation.

The gargoyle’s ability to pass through rock was not true physical phasing. In essence, it allowed the gargoyle to become “hidden” to the material world—to become “nonexistent.” This same principle, when reversed, could be applied to the surrounding terrain: the mountain could be made to become “nonexistent” to all others, entering a state of concealment from the world.

Frederico had reverse-engineered his own power, and with the aid of a ritual and mystical artifacts, he concealed the entire mountain’s body. His base had always been a castle built within a mountain—he had merely hidden the mountain itself. When fools dared to assault his stronghold, he could simply lift the concealment and “release” the mountain. In doing so, everything within hundreds of meters around the castle would be swallowed in an instant, buried alive within the mountain. And even if they didn’t die, they would be reduced to prey for Frederico, who could phase through walls.

𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

High-ranking Beyonders fighting on their home ground often enjoyed domain advantages—and for Stone-path Beyonders, those bonuses were especially overwhelming. This concealed mountain was the battlefield weapon Frederico had prepared for himself.

Because the mountain’s reappearance rose from the ground upward, the thief—who had been hiding in the forest just outside the castle—was swallowed almost instantly by the suddenly “grown” mountainside. Fortunately, they possessed Escape Magic and used it soon after being engulfed to teleport out of danger. Now, however, they only had one use of Escape Magic remaining.

But since Escape Magic only allowed teleportation within fifty meters, and they had been over a hundred meters from the mountain’s outer edge, they could only teleport back inside the mountain—into the enormous cavern that housed the castle. And since the mountain had now devoured all external foliage, its rock walls were flush against the outer castle walls. Thus, when they reappeared, they were back inside the castle—and Frederico immediately sensed their presence again. With the cover of the trees gone, they were once more exposed to Frederico’s firepower.

Without hesitation, Frederico began unleashing another barrage of heat rays and blizzards toward the thief. The thief was once again forced to dash and weave through the castle’s many buildings, trying to find another way out. But this time, there was no possibility of escape—the castle cavern was completely sealed off, with no passage to the outside world. They were trapped.

“There’s nowhere to run in here, rat!”

Sensing her constant movement below, Frederico snarled coldly. While maintaining his barrage, he gripped the stone warhammer and dove sharply downward. He had decided to end this futile cat-and-mouse game with a more direct method.

…

While Frederico was fully focused on capturing the thief, things inside his castle’s main hall were going rather poorly for his subordinates.

BOOM!

With a thunderous crash, Adèle—having just dodged a sharp stone spear—landed a heavy punch squarely on Craven’s back. The blow sent him flying across the hall, crashing into a distant wall and shattering his back armor with countless fractures.

Seeing this, Angley and Roke retaliated by launching a fireball and an air cannon, respectively. But Adèle, as if already anticipating this, glanced at them and subtly redirected their targeting intent. The result? They missed Adèle entirely and struck each other instead—Angley was engulfed in flames, Roke was blasted away by the shockwave.

“Ugh! Where the hell were you aiming?!”

“Bullshit! You’re the one who aimed wrong—are you blind?!”

After taking multiple hits from friendly fire, the Dark Gold Society trio started bickering furiously. Especially Angley and Roke, who had just exchanged blows—they now broke into open insults, on the verge of fighting each other.

Just then, Craven, having barely gotten back up, saw the argument and rushed over to mediate, shouting:

“Stop it already! Don’t let that woman’s power affect you! It’s Desire Control—she’s a Bourbon! Frederico told us: never lose your temper when facing a Bourbon!”

“Shut up! You’re the one who missed the most!”

Craven had barely finished his sentence when Angley and Roke turned and shouted back at him—and each gave him a punch. After taking both hits, Craven lost his temper too and snapped.

“Bastards… If I don’t teach you two what unity means, you’ll never learn!”

And with that, Craven activated his abilities and launched an attack at both of them. The other two immediately countered. In an instant, the three gargoyles were locked in a full-on brawl, hurling attacks and exchanging elemental energy with each other.

Adèle stood at a distance, smiling faintly as she watched the show unfold. All the while, she quietly intensified the anger in their hearts.

Then suddenly—

A scorching heat ray sliced through the hall from above, cleaving everything in its path. It cut across all three brawling gargoyles. The ray’s intense heat was so overwhelming that even gargoyle skin melted into molten rock. Screams of agony rang out as all three collapsed to the floor.

“Aaaagh!! What the hell is that?!”

“That was… Frederico’s ray?! That bastard—how did it even hit here?!”

“Goddamn that old bastard! What kind of aim does he have?!”

Writhing on the ground, the three gargoyles clutched their wounds and howled in pain, hurling curses. Their anger was so intense that they momentarily forgot all notions of hierarchy within the Dark Gold Society.

“That old bastard Frederico! Who the hell does he think he is?!”

“Always bossing over everyone like he’s some bigshot—seriously?”

“Crimson-rank my ass! Aurum Gargoyle my ass! Just because he joined before us, he thinks he’s all that? Doesn’t hold a candle to my skills!”

“Damn right! That smug bastard’s been riding high too long—he’s blind now too! It’s time someone taught him a lesson!”

“Yeah! Let’s go kick his ass—screw him!”

After loudly venting their grievances, the three gargoyles stood back up, flapped their wings, and flew off in a fury toward the source of the beam.

Adèle watched them leave, smiling as she lit a cigarette and placed it between her lips.

“A temper like that is bad for business… Might cost them dearly.”

“Indeed,” came a voice in reply.

“After all, harmony breeds wealth.”

The response came from above—atop the hall—where Dorothy stood in her cloak, surveying the beam’s cut across the stone floor. In her hand, she held a tall top hat, the brim aimed straight down toward the hall.