The door remained sealed, and no one responded. Only the distant sounds of fighting, the clash of blades, and gunfire echoed through the area. If not for Albert's keen experience, noticing the faint trace of mana indicating that the workshop was still operating at full capacity to power the Sanctum Sanctorum's mechanisms, one might think the workshop was empty.
Unperturbed, Albert opened the door and entered. Inside, the workshop was filled with bronze golems armed with various weapons—halberds, spears, great axes, great swords, swords, and shields—all wielding cold, archaic weaponry.
At that moment, the golems' eyes glowed bright as fiery red mana activated their mechanisms. The mana cores roared to life as the golems slowly advanced toward Albert.
"Hmph, old tricks," Albert muttered as he watched the golems march toward him. This was the oldest trick in the book for mages.
When facing another mage in their own Sanctum Sanctorum, the first thing the owner would do is leverage their home advantage by sending familiars, servants, or golems to wear down the intruder's mana, reducing their reserves as much as possible.
This tactic was even taught at the Hightower Academy, so every mage learned it. The smarter ones always had a counter up their sleeve, and Albert, being an old fox with countless tricks of his own, was no exception.
Without hesitation, Albert pulled a plasma blaster from his pocket and fired a shot at the golem's mana reactor, killing it instantly without expending any of his own mana.
This plasma blaster was designed and produced by Nexus Prime with the objective of creating a convenient weapon to deal with mages and magical constructs. The prototype had been given to Albert before he came here, allowing Nexus Prime to collect field data for further development.
Normally, conventional weapons couldn't harm mages or magical beings who knew how to cast missile protection spells, which would prevent any ordinary projectile from piercing their magic shields.
However, Nexus Prime, an A.I. that once had its goal to eradicate all humans in its own timeline, perceived mages as a threat in this world. It devoted 20% of its processing power to developing weapons and strategies to eliminate all mages, and this plasma blaster was one of Nexus Prime's tools for that purpose.
The plasma blaster allowed Albert to make short work of all the bronze golems encroaching on him. The golems were of high quality, boasting both magic resistance and missile protection properties; they could even reduce a fraction of the plasma blaster's power.
However, against the plasma blaster designed by Nexus Prime, their mana reactors were destroyed, leaving them as nothing more than piles of scrap metal on the ground.
Albert advanced through the workshop, noticing that the space around him began to shift and change its layout. Someone was controlling space magic within the workshop, attempting to entrap him.
But Albert remained unfazed. As long as he could pinpoint the location of the Kameni patriarch, this nuisance would end immediately. No matter what tricks were used, Albert was not concern
Deep within the Sanctum Sanctorum, in the ritual room, Patriarch Kameni watched Albert through an orb.
After putting away the plasma blaster, Albert stood still, clutching his cane as he closed his eyes and concentrated. The magic insignias within him roared to life, initiating a pre-programmed sequence that significantly shortened the activation process.
Suddenly, the structure and ley lines within the Sanctum Sanctorum trembled as a strange, chaotic magical sequence began to permeate its magical framework.
The ley lines functioned like fuel lines, providing energy to the Sanctum Sanctorum, while the structure supported and activated various magical phenomena. These were typically the hardest to target, as the mage who created them would have implemented numerous defensive measures to protect them from attack.
The same was true for Patriarch Kameni's Sanctum Sanctorum. But, unfortunately for him, Albert's magic was an entirely different beast—unpredictable, even to Albert himself.
"Oh, lucky me, it's this magic," Albert muttered as his magic began to disrupt the structure and ley lines of the Sanctum Sanctorum.
"What!? What is this!?" the Patriarch, hiding in a secure area within the Sanctum Sanctorum, exclaimed in alarm as he witnessed his domain crumbling from the inside out.
Rumble...
The rumbling intensified. One by one, the magical integrity that supported the Sanctum Sanctorum began to crack and crumble. Its functions vanished, became uncontrollable, and went haywire as some spells exploded, releasing their power.
Boom! Boom!
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As the magical structure crumbled, so did the building itself. The space magic holding it together disintegrated, leaving the jumbled mess of the structure unsupported by magical energy, fully subject to the force of gravity.
Imagine stairs without support or a room floating without pillars—without magic holding it in place, everything would collapse to the ground.
As concrete and wooden planks crumbled, the Patriarch stumbled down from the magical space, hastily escaping to reality. Had he not done so, he would have been consumed by the collapsing space.
In the best case, he would have been injured; in the worst, his body might have become trapped within the earth's crust or been ejected from the planet altogether, given that the earth is always rotating and moving, while the collapsing space was locked in place.
"Hello, Patriarch, how are you? And here I thought you weren't going to welcome me," Albert said with a mocking smile, watching the patriarch grovel on the ground after escaping the crumbling space.
"You! Do you think doing this to us and Lord Hephaestus will spare you!? You and your master, Daniel, will pay for this... this sacrilege!" the patriarch roared in anger at Albert.