Tales of the Legendary Magus

When Villin rushed up the staircase, he heard two more explosions go off before it went quiet. When he opened the door to the first floor, he nearly immediately managed to figure out what happened.

He saw two magi had large cuts on their torsos, they seemed to be badly hurt and were resting against the wall.

A few minutes to the side of them was a large pile of broken stone and dust, Villin quickly recognized it as a destroyed statue, it used to be a statue representing a contracted, having just learned about magic.

The only other two other people in the room, ignoring the people that had just rushed here and were observing the situation, were the twins that had control of the penthouse. They held their swords in their hands and were full of dust. It was clear that they had been involved in what had just happened. 

Villin noticed a few people that had just gotten to the floor, same like him, were reaching for the wands, they saw the sight before them and probably assumed the twins attacked the other two magi in the room, a normal assumption considering the cut-wounds and swords.

Villin decided to be the reasonable one at this time though as he took a step forward, "What happened?"

He didn't want things to grow too far out of control. If things got too chaotic, he was afraid that the Goodwill family may cancel the 'game' and just take those that showed a lot of promise in the previous test.

The twins looked at him expressionlessly, breathing somewhat heavily. They looked around and saw how tense some of the newly arrived spectators were before they decided to respond. "The statue came alive and attacked us. They were in the area and helped defeat it." the male twin responded as he glanced at the pile of dust and stones.

"Yes. Statue attacked." his sister responded in her usual short-spoken fashion.

Villin noticed the guy to his right hadn't moved his hand away from his wand, he seemed to be about to speak when Villin interrupted him, "I see. The same thing happened to me and Golmi, we were exploring the tower when a statue came alive and attacked us, we barely managed to get away with our lives."

Hearing these words coming from a seemingly uninvolved third party, the newly arrived spectators focused on the broken statue more compared to the twins.

"Wait, so you're saying they're golems?" someone asked who just got down the staircase to check on the sound. Villin recognized the voice to be one of the men that saw him killing the lady downstairs but since the latter only saw his back thus far, he only noticed it was Villin when he turned around to respond.

"Some sort of golem yeah. We should assume it's a test from the Goodwill family to see if we're qualified to guard the VIPs." Villin responded, lying a little more with every word that came out of his mouth.

Even though the man shut up as soon as he noticed it was Villin that had been speaking, the others looked at each other somewhat worriedly, the situation seemed to have been defused as Villin's words were taken at face value. Soon a couple of magi went up to heal the two hurt magi and when they recovered it further confirmed what happened.

Apparently, they were in the room talking when they heard a sound behind them, when they looked behind, they noticed the twins unsheathing their swords as they ran from a mobile statue. Seeing how the statue seemed unarmed and was only two meters tall, they decided to help and used some explosive spells to fight it. They underestimated it though and they both got hurt badly before the group of four managed to defeat the thing.

About sixty people gathered on the floor at the end of the day, some already having been here and others having come after hearing the commotion. They were all discussing the situation pretty calmly, even though a couple of magi got hurt, they were already on their feet again and nobody was all that afraid. If it was a test, it was probably created by the Goodwills who had a good reputation, it was probably not meant to kill anyone.

Just ten minutes after the statue here was defeated, someone rushed through the main door, having come from a higher floor. It was a woman with a cut on her forehead. Her clothes were ripped in multiple places and she was breathing heavily. When she saw the number of people that were in the same room here, she heaved a sigh of relief, "Here you all are! I knew we were missing too many. We need your help up the tower! The statues in the penthouse came alive a dozen minutes ago, they've been making their way down attacking any person they meet! They've taken the top three floors now and we've been getting pushed back, one magus has been killed and two others were hurt beyond the point where we know how to heal them! We're starting to run low on magical energy as well."

Hearing that a battle was being waged in another section of the tower, the sixty guards that were here were extremely taken aback. A few quickly rushed upwards to help while another few pretended to be doing something or sneaked downstairs, away from the action.

"What the hell? Why?" Villin wondered as he thought about the situation. He wasn't sure why the Goodwill family would do this. And then it hit.

The 'game' he had been playing was hard to get into, but it was very possible that someone that did, spread its existence. If that happened, the Goodwill family would need to have a good reason for having the game in, it seemed that they decided to go with the most obvious thing. It was just testing the guards, as long as too many didn't die, most wouldn't mind since they knew they were in for a dangerous task. 

If the 'game' didn't spread, most of the guards would only be faced by the statues that came alive, the few that were playing the actual game, wouldn't be paid attention to by them. They would simply disappear to be sacrificed to Aurus Goodlaw sneakily. If the 'game' did spread, the main group of guards would still fight the statues while also looking to progress. The person that finished the game wouldn't just disappear but instead publicly rewarded. After this they would either be left alone or in a few months they would sneakily be hunted down and sacrificed.

Villin thought of the options he had right now. The first was to compete in the 'game' but spread the news about him doing so. This would be idiotic since he didn't want to be hunted down later down the line. The second option was to hide somewhere he'd be safe. Let the other guards handle the situation and only come up once the situation was well under control. This also wouldn't be ideal since there was a decent chance that those actively running away and not helping at all would be fired as a guard.

The last real option was to just follow the main brunt of the guards without standing out too much. Simply fighting the statues without attracting so much attention that he may be picked as a sacrifice.

He had to say, the fact that Aurus Goodwill used the dark arts made things a lot more annoying to deal with and he'd have to be sufficiently careful.

And so, without hesitating for more than a couple of minutes, Villin headed up together with the main crowd trying to figure out what was going on.

On the way up, Villin glanced into rooms on multiple floors and saw that stationary statues hadn't been destroyed yet. Since a statue had begun moving on the first floor, it was clear to him that any single one of them could be an opponent but it seemed like in the chaos, most hadn't thought that far yet, that being said, there were a few that split off on various floors, they probably figured out what he had but wanted to take care of the future threats themselves since their employers could be watching.

After going up the stairs for a while, explosions could be heard coming from higher up, soon the yells of magi could be heard as well, either casting spells or groaning after being hit.

The seventh floor had been turned into a temporary base as the battle was currently situated on the eighth floor and the staircase around the ninth. On the seventh floor, people seemed quite organized, even though only a dozen minutes passed, everything ran in organized chaos. 

On one side people with cuts and broken bones were being healed by magi whose clothes were still unripped and had much less dust on their clothes. Nobody complained though since healing spells were rare.

"What are you three doing there? You've been healed up already so get up there you scumbags!" a man yelled, causing the three that had been staying back, to quickly rush up so as to avoid angering him further.

The man that had spoken was the one that had taken the commanding position in this newly-started battle. When everything went chaotic, he ordered people around and knocked down the disobedient one, quickly causing everything to fall into place. It was nobody other than Alexi.