Depraved Noble: Forced To Live The Debaucherous Life Of An Evil Noble!-Chapter 485: Oh No! I’m Getting Dumber By The Second!

Cassius crossed his arms, the faint glint of confidence never leaving his eyes.

"Since I can’t use magic myself, you’ll be the one doing all the practical work, Aisha." He said evenly. "I’ll direct you on what to do and how. For starters—I’ll need a runic blueprint of the entire array: framework, structure, components, everything."

Julie blinked. "A runic...blueprint? What does that even mean?"

Aisha turned toward her, slipping back into her element with a small smirk.

"Think of it like a house’s blueprint, Captain." She explained, holding her hands apart as though she were framing an invisible model. "You see, just like an architect’s drawing that shows where every brick is laid, how the foundation connects, how the walls are shaped, where the beams align, and even the color and pattern of the tiles—this blueprint does the same, but for magic."

She gestured to the invisible barrier before them.

"It shows every rune, sigil, mana circuit, and stabilizing mark that constructs this entire spell array."

Julie nodded slowly. "So...basically, a magic floor plan?"

"Exactly." Aisha said. "But far more complicated. It’s not just about where the runes are—it’s how they interact, the exact flow of energy between them, and which inscriptions hold priority in the spell’s hierarchy."

Then she turned back to Cassius with a proud, almost smug expression.

"Normally, if anyone else were asked to map an array like this, they’d tell you it’s impossible. But lucky for you, I’m one of the most talented mages in the continent."

She placed a hand on her hip with grace.

"So yes, I can do it all by myself."

Cassius raised a brow. "All by yourself, huh?"

"Of course." Aisha lifted her chin proudly. "But—" She paused dramatically. "—I’ll need about 80 or 90 blank books. At least four hundred pages each. And you better have them all or else it’s going to be even more difficult for you."

Cassius blinked.

"80 to 90?" He tilted his head slightly. "Doesn’t a normal spell blueprint only take a few pages? Thirty, maybe forty at most?"

Aisha let out a short laugh.

"That’s for normal spells, dear Cassius. Or maybe an intermediate-grade spell, if we’re being generous. This, however, is a Ninth-grade Array. It’s so complex that even a single rune has several layers of interlocking patterns."

"The entire array’s blueprint could fill an entire library, if written in standard runic notation. So yes." She said smugly. "I need enough books to fill a small room. Better start unloading."

Cassius exhaled through his nose, shaking his head with a small grin.

"You’re lucky I’m a hoarder." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Then, with a simple wave of his hand, a torrent of thick, leather-bound tomes materialized in front of her in a neat, towering pile—old, heavy volumes with thick parchment pages.

"You...You actually had that many blank books?" Julie’s eyes widened.

Meanwhile, Aisha crouched and inspected a few of them, flipping through the crisp, untouched pages.

"Perfect." She nodded in satisfaction. "High-quality parchment, durable binding, clean weave...good, they’ll handle the ink transfer."

Then she looked up and called.

"Captain! Skadi! Help me lay these out."

Skadi blinked, tail flicking in mild confusion.

"Lay them out? Like...all of them?"

"Yes, all of them!" Aisha snapped, already arranging several tomes in the dirt. "Open them up to the middle and lay them flat—side by side. We need a clear grid."

Julie sighed but complied.

"Alright, alright. You’re the boss."

Together, the three women spread the books out, flipping open each thick volume and arranging them in meticulous rows and columns across the ground.

The pile dwindled slowly as the field of open pages grew wider—until over a hundred heavy tomes lay spread in a perfect rectangle, their pale paper gleaming faintly under the crimson sky.

"Alright." Aisha said, straightening up and dusting her hands. "That should do."

She then stepped forward, standing at the front of the open books. Her eyes closed, lips moving in a quiet, fluid chant.

"Words once bound, now be free,

Flow from page and come to me.

Ink arise, obey my hand,

Shift to where I now command."

And then Cassius watched as the ink in every book began to shift.

Words bled off the pages, the black letters peeling away like smoke and collecting midair in a swirling, shimmering sphere above her head.

Julie and Skadi could only stare as the floating ink mass pulsed—growing denser, darker, until not a single page had a letter left.

Then, with a sharp motion of her hand, Aisha reopened her eyes. The ink sphere burst, scattering in a fine mist that drifted back down onto the open books.

But the words that appeared this time weren’t the same.

The pages filled rapidly with unfamiliar runes, geometric symbols, and flowing script that neither Skadi nor Julie could read.

Skadi’s ears twitched as she squinted at one of the nearest tomes before she shouted,

"Oh no, Captain. Oh no. I think my brain broke."

Julie looked up. "What?"

Skadi pointed helplessly. "I swear I knew how to read five minutes ago, but now I can’t even recognize these letters! Everything looks like squiggly lines doing a dance. I think I got dumber just by looking at them!"

Aisha let out a snort of laughter.

"Relax, you dummy. Your brain isn’t shrinking. This isn’t common writing—it’s runic language. Only high-level mages can read it. It’s specifically made for spell construction and deconstruction."

Skadi’s eyes widened in relief.

"Oh, thank God. For a second, I thought I was losing brain cells faster than I already do."

Julie pinched the bridge of her nose. "You’re not helping your case, Skadi."

Cassius couldn’t help but laugh quietly. The tension from earlier seemed to melt away for just a moment as he watched the three of them interact.

Julie then gazed down at the hundreds of pages now covered in strange, glowing symbols and flowing runes that looked alive in the dim light.

"Aisha..." She began curiously. "Now that you’ve got the entire blueprint of the spell like you said...doesn’t that mean we could recreate it later on?"

"I mean, using this same concept—couldn’t we technically replicate any spell or array that exists?"

Aisha chuckled softly, shaking her head and looking at Julie like she was a toddler who knew nothing.

"It’s not that simple, Captain." She said. "What you’re seeing here is just the surface—the outer scaffolding of the spell’s construction. Like I told you earlier, it’s only the framework."

"The real depth of this array lies far beneath what I can show you. There are layers upon layers of condensed runic systems, structural counterfields, and mana synchronization networks that can’t even be expressed properly in written form."

She gestured toward the flickering symbols, her voice growing faintly frustrated.

"To put it simply, this blueprint here represents...maybe three or four percent of the entire array, at best. Sure, you could try to replicate it, but you’d be missing most of what makes it actually function."

"It would take weeks, maybe months, to reconstruct something like this properly and the array has to be active the whole time, which is even more harder to accomplish."

She looked up at Cassius with a pointed glare.

"And that’s why I said this was impossible. Even replicating the spell would be a nightmare...Deconstructing it? That’s a whole other level of insanity."

Cassius merely smirked, brushing off her pessimism with a quiet scoff.

"You talk too much."

"Excuse me?" Aisha shot him an irritated glare.

Cassius ignored her irritation, stepping closer to the massive square of books spread across the ground. His expression grew thoughtful

"Alright." He said. "It’s your turn to help us now, Julie."

"Me?" Julie blinked, caught off guard. "I’m a swordswoman, Cassius. Sure, I use wind elemental magic, but that’s part of my swordsmanship—it’s combat-based. I’m not a mage, and I don’t deal with this kind of stuff." She gestured helplessly at the runic books. "I really can’t help with this."

"Oh no, you won’t have to do anything complicated. All I need from you..." He said, pointing at the rows of open books. ..."is to flip every single page here—one by one. Every second."

Julie tilted her head, confused. "Flip...every page? Every second?"

"That’s right." Cassius said casually, as though asking her to do something completely mundane.

Still perplexed, Julie shrugged and took a step forward.

"Alright then, if you say so..." She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. Her sword hummed faintly on her waist, and the air stirred around her—soft gusts forming into rhythm.

Her eyes then glowed faintly green as she raised her hand, and a gentle breeze swept over the field.

The first set of pages fluttered, flipping over in unison.

Cassius smiled faintly. "Good. Just like that. Keep it steady—once per second."

Julie did as she was told. The air pulsed gently, and one by one, page after page turned in perfect rhythm—like the ticking of a clock.

The sound of paper fluttering filled the clearing, merging with the faint hum of energy coming from the mountain.

Meanwhile, Cassius’s eyes glowed faintly, crimson light reflecting off the ink-filled pages.

He wasn’t just looking at any one book—he was staring through them, his gaze flickering from page to page, line to line, like a machine processing information faster than the eye could follow.

Skadi leaned forward, her tail flicking excitedly.

"Oh, look! Look, Captain, he’s doing the thing again!" She said, her voice rising in delight. "The thing where he just looks at the pages once and somehow reads them all! He’s so cool when he does that!"

Julie smiled slightly at Skadi’s enthusiasm but didn’t stop flipping.

Skadi continued in awe. "I can’t even finish reading one page in ten minutes, but he’s reading all of them! All of them at once! Master really is amazing!"

Aisha’s lips twitched slightly as she watched.

"You’ve got to be kidding me." She muttered. "There’s no way in the world he’s actually reading and comprehending all of that. That’s absurd! Impossible!"

She gestured frantically at the books.

"Even I need a reference dictionary for runic structure—and this isn’t even normal runic text, it’s high-order arcane structure! He’d have to translate every single line while flipping pages this fast—there’s no way!"

She turned toward Julie desperately.

"Right, Captain? He’s bluffing, isn’t he? Tell me he’s bluffing."

Julie, however, only smiled faintly, her expression oddly calm.

"No...I don’t think he is." She said softly.

Aisha froze. "You can’t be serious."

Julie nodded slowly, her gaze never leaving Cassius.

"When I first met him, I’d have said the same thing you did. I’d have laughed if someone told me he could do something like this. But after seeing what he’s capable of, all the things he’s pulled off...honestly? Nothing he does surprises me anymore. If he says he’s going to break through this array, then I believe him.

Then she looked back at Aisha with a teasing smirk.

"And something tells me you’re about to lose that little bet of yours."

Aisha’s stomach twisted slightly.

"No way...no way." She muttered, shaking her head. "There’s no way that’s going to happen."

But as she spoke, her voice lacked conviction. Her eyes drifted toward Cassius—his expression calm yet utterly focused, the faint light in his eyes growing brighter as the runes began to glow in sync with his gaze.

A nervous chill ran down her spine.

No way...right?

And yet, deep down, even as she denied it, a creeping doubt began to take root in her chest.

She was already starting to regret ever making that bet.