Chapter Eighty-Eight: The Spell Lifted

The staff in Zhao Xu’s hands was nearly a meter long, carved from the heartwood of an ancient oak, with a yellow crystal set into its head. At that moment, his appearance was not far removed from the image people imagined for mages in tales of fantasy.

A staff is one kind of magical item. It stores several spells, and each time one is cast, it consumes anywhere from one to several charges of the staff. As a rule, a brand-new staff holds fifty full charges.

Another magical item is the wand, generally about thirty centimeters long, much the same size as the wands wielded by wizarding figures in Harry Potter. A wand also holds fifty charges, but each use of a spell consumes only one.

The difference between staff and wand is that each wand can store only a single spell, and only spells of fourth level or lower.

Nor are staves bound by that fourth-level limit. Zhao Xu’s warding staff, for instance, can be used to cast Shield, Resist Energy, Dispel Magic, Lesser Globe of Invulnerability, Repulsion, and Antilife Shell—each with its own charge cost.

Valued at sixty-five thousand gold pieces, every charge is worth roughly thirteen hundred gold pieces. Even Zhao Xu, using it, felt his heart ache.

Today he intended to use the staff’s Dispel Magic, which could suppress magical traps.

If he used a wand instead, a wand of Dispel Magic would cost eleven thousand two hundred fifty gold pieces for fifty charges, which works out to only two hundred twenty-five gold pieces per charge—far more economical.

Zhao Xu could always settle accounts with Luo Ya later; he did not expect to recover the full thirteen hundred gold pieces. After all, he had an adventure bonus to consider as well, so a discount could be worked out in the end.

Truth be told, he was more eager to go in and explore. A hidden trump card, once spent, was spent, and if he could smash the devil’s lair rather than merely drive off a spirit, he would earn far more favor with Antinoya.

Earlier, when facing that druid, Zhao Xu had drawn out the staff intending to cast Resist Energy upon himself to absorb the damage.

Once he reached third level and could cast second-level spells, he would also be able to release that spell on his own.

But his caster level was far too low; even then, it would absorb only ten points of damage, and he did not even have enough hit points to survive a single bolt of lightning.

If he cast it through the warding staff, however, his effective caster level would be the staff’s minimum caster level of thirteen, enough to absorb thirty points of damage. At the time, that would have been more than enough for him to take one or two lightning strikes without a scratch.

That was the tremendous advantage of a staff for a low-level caster like Zhao Xu.

Still, when Antinoya gave him this staff, she had not told him how many charges remained within it.

To venture forth with the staff while being unable to gauge how many charges were left was, in itself, a test.

“What is that?” Luo Ya asked. He had seen much of the world, but most of what he had seen were small wands; he had never seen a staff nearly a meter long.

“A magical item,” Zhao Xu said simply. “It can dispel magical traps.”

He then repeated the instructions for opening the secret door to the two rogues. Once he had suppressed the trap’s magical energy, they would need to rush forward and open the hidden entrance.

When he finished, Zhao Xu lifted the staff in his hand and made the motions of casting toward the magical trap ahead.

At once, the three possible modes of Dispel Magic rose in his mind: targeted, area, and counterspell.

Having some understanding of how magical traps worked, Zhao Xu chose the targeted form at once.

When the casting was complete, a shaft of white light shot from the warding staff in his hand and struck the brick that held the trap.

[Adventurer Midsummer casts Dispel Magic and engages the Cursing Trap in a caster level check. Adventurer Midsummer caster level check: 20 + d20 = 20 + 15 = 35. Cursing Trap caster level check: 5 + d20 = 5 + 10 = 15. Check passed. Trap successfully suppressed for 1d4 = 4 rounds.]

Only after seeing the message did Zhao Xu realize that using Dispel Magic on a magical trap was not a difficulty check at all, but a caster level contest.

In other words, the staff’s caster level was compared to that of the priest who had made the trap; whoever stood higher had the greater chance of victory.

Antinoya had not forged the staff to merely meet the minimum requirement of thirteen levels. She had simply given him a caster level of twenty, naturally allowing him to crush that fifth-level priest who had made the trap.

But Zhao Xu had no time to marvel. “Dispel Magic can only suppress the trap for four rounds,” he cried. “Open the secret door, now!”

The two rogues did not doubt him. They hurried forward, and Rainbow was the first to reach the brick that had once been so perilous to press.

At once, the mechanism at the entrance activated. The wall, which had seemed perfectly seamless, slowly lowered a stone door one meter wide and two meters high, revealing a passage beyond.

The trapped brick sank away with it.

“At last, it’s gone,” Yoyo said with visible relief as the brick vanished.

She knew full well that her own level was too low. If she were stronger, she would at least have methods to deal with such magic on her own.

The threat of a curse was a terrible nuisance to all of them.

“Can we go through?” Luo Ya asked.

Though he faced the support expert, everyone knew he was asking Midsummer.

Zhao Xu nodded. “The stone door has dropped far enough. We won’t trigger the trap again. Rogues, take the lead now, and keep searching for traps inside.”

At his instruction, Xier glanced once more at the party leader Luo Ya, while Rainbow simply moved to the front.

Throwing oneself onto traps was one of the rogues’ fates.

The entire team adjusted their formation accordingly.

Weapons in hand, all of them advanced slowly through the stone door in a state of high alert.

By torchlight, they gradually made out what lay beyond the door: a long corridor.

“Be careful,” Luo Ya warned. “If there are traps, we’ll be at a serious disadvantage.”

Hearing this, everyone drew a little closer together, as if courage were easier to gather that way.

“This feels a lot like going into a haunted house in the dead of night,” Yoyo said, and after leaving the room filled with blood-red warnings, her mood had lightened somewhat.

“Don’t go setting bad omens,” Rainbow, who walked at the very front, immediately cut in. “Have you forgotten what happened to us in the forest last time?”

He had long since had enough of Yoyo’s cursed mouth.

“Hmph, I just said I hoped we’d see a cute little bear. Who knew it would turn out to be a dire bear?” Yoyo complained.

Zhao Xu suddenly understood that this zoo ticket had not come cheap; the only question was how many resurrection stones it had cost.

Still thinking of the accidents Yoyo had once encountered, Zhao Xu tightened his grip on the staff in his hand. From here on, their path would depend on this staff.