Supreme Magus novel Chapter 657

Neshal and Gaakhu checked both doors, just to be safe. One could easily understand the value of what lied beyond a threshold based on how heavily defended it was.

The Main Office had just a good quality door, with no defensive arrays and no locks at that. Turning the handle released in the air with the smell of paperwork that all those present knew and hated.

The room was filled with filing cabinets and had three desks, one for each side of the room except for its entrance. The place closely resembled the academies’ administrative offices.

The Professors could almost hear the echoes of a clerk demanding for a report to be filed in triplicate.

The Armory, instead, had a solid metal door. It also had several powerful arrays restricting its access, a holographic pad to insert a password, and heavy metal cylinders acting as locks.

Getting rid of the arrays was the easy part. The Professors only needed a few seconds to find the mana crystal cable running along the door frame and cut it along with the power fueling the magical defense system.

"Gods, they were real morons." The group commented in unison.

The holographic pad was still active, displaying both numbers and letters in the ancient Odi language.

"Okay, we have two choices. We could force the door with magic, but it’s risky. There are no active arrays any more but we don’t know what kind of weapons are stored here. They might explode or worse." Gaakhu explained.

"Our only other option is to guess the password. If this was the Crystal Griffon, I would devise a way to safely crack the metal door open. Our passwords are obscenely long and convoluted.

"The Odi, however, have proven to be conceited at best. I bet that the password is ’Odi’."

"Ten silvers on ’Armory’." Neshal said while pointing at the door tag.

"Twenty on ’Open’." Morok said.

Professor Gaakhu input the word of her choice in the Odi language first. The holographic display emitted a beep and the metal cylinders were pulled inside the door frame.

"I can’t believe they picked a three-letter word password!" Morok handed the Professor twenty silver coins while he inwardly cursed the Odi to the best of his abilities.

"We call them Odi, but in their language, they were called Minhuyti. It means ’the chosen race’." Gaakhu said with a smug grin. "I think that you’re right Neshal. Arrogance was the cause of the Odi’s fall."

Neshal was glad that her colleague agreed with her, yet she was still pissed off by the lost bet.

The door slid on its hinges easily, as if it was made of paper. Inside there was a huge room, 20 meters (66 feet) wide and 15 meters (50 feet) long. The walls and ceiling were entirely made of metal and so were the shelves filling the room.

They were regularly spaced, going from one end of the room to another.

Most of the shelves were empty, but some stored weapons with several magic crystals embedded on their surface. Unlike the racks in the antechamber, the weapons were locked behind a glass-like substance that in turn was protected by a multi-layered array, each one fueled by purple crystals and the usual cable.

The floor was made of metal as well, but it was covered by a layer of sand a couple of centimeters (1 inch) thick.

"Seems we found the motherlode." Morok said while stepping inside the room.