The First Legendary Beast Master

While Cara told stories to the girls, Karl and the majority of the Palace Guard were searching through the rubble of the Palace, looking for survivors.

Fortunately, most of the wing was unoccupied. However, with the new training area near the Library, which was directly below the blast, there would be at least some people nearby.

The access hallways were collapsed, but Karl could feel the mana fluctuations of many living creatures beneath them.

"I don't think that the barriers on the Library broke. The training space that I made is also definitely intact. I can feel the spell, and I can sense the mana crystal that I put in the room. Both are fine.

But the upper levels collapsed, which sent rubble out into the courtyard and blocked the door.

We should start from the side to get to the Library area for the majority of the survivors, and then I will head for where Cara is.

That should be where the Princess and Lukas' Consort are as well. It's not far from my suite, so it was close to the centre of the blast. But they all had barriers on them, I cast it while we were waiting for the sparring to start.

Better safe than sorry, right?" Karl explained.

"You put a barrier spell on them? Oh, that is a relief. Mildred isn't nearly as strong as we are, and she's a Shaman, not a Warrior, so she's not physically strong." Lukas sighed.

Karl sighed in relief. "That also means that she has healing magic. If they were injured, she could heal them, and then they just have to wait for us to find them.

How did you want to relocate the stone? Should we have a team pile it up? Or do you want me to just obliterate it until we get to the victims?"

The dragons flinched a bit at that.

"This is a historical building. Every stone in this wing is tens of thousands of years old, mined from a quarry that no longer exists. The loss of so much of it is already a tragedy, but deliberately destroying it is a crime that could land someone in prison for the rest of their days.

I don't know what would have possessed someone to use a bomb, even if they were targeting you.

Just knowing where they were and the consequences of that sort of decision should have been enough to stop them from doing something so monumentally stupid." Barry elaborated.

"You make a good point. If they thought that this might be the only way, or their only choice, I can see them not caring about consequences. But they didn't target me. In fact, they didn't even bomb a room that I was supposed to be in.

If I had pretended to be in the room but had actually teleported out, or left with a portal, that could make sense.

But we're in public. A hundred people could see us at the time of the explosion.

I think that they were targeting your bride, or possibly Rue." Karl replied, agreeing with Cara's deduction.

The Crown Prince looked horrified. "Who would target Mildred? She's so kind and gentle that everyone from the maids to the Queen likes her. And the Queen only barely tolerates most of the King's faction.

The fact that she likes my Mildred is already a miracle. No, I think that someone is targeting Rue, to stop her from rising to prominence, and they either didn't know, or didn't care that there were others with her.

Not to mention the staff. How many of them were lost today?"

Karl frowned. "At least three is my guess. There were two sent to the room, and then one accompanying the ladies.

That one might be fine, depending on where they all were when the explosion occurred. But the two inside the room are almost certainly not.

The Illusionary Domain collapsed, which means that the damage had to have been severe. I built it with [Reality Warp], so everything in there was a solid object. To destroy the illusion was not an easy feat."

As Karl listened in on the conversation that Cara was having with herself, planning ways to torture whoever tried to ruin her plans for the day, he also realized that they hadn't just blown up the illusion, they had used anti magic to remove it before the bomb went off.

Removing the Illusionary Domain would have been a secondary effect. The intended purpose was to remove any protective magic or barriers on the targets before the attack.

Insidious.

However, the ladies weren't close enough to be hit with that part of the attack. It had been mostly contained within the Illusionary Domain, and what escaped was only enough to take out the wards on the room itself.

"Your domain, is it a spatial warp effect? It occupies much more room than it should, but I don't understand just how it works." The Prince asked as they rushed to the scene.

"Sort of. It's not space element, more like it partially removes the area from reality. If you walk out an unprotected edge, you'll end up wherever you should have been in reality. That's why I put a barrier around the outside. If I didn't, then there was a chance people could leave and find themselves in someone else's room.

That wouldn't make you a whole lot of new friends, and certainly not in a good way. But in this case, it might be the key to survival. You see, if the timing is off, and they collapsed the illusion before the detonation, then there is a chance that the people who were present at the time of the explosion are actually multiple rooms away.

If they were flying, they might have appeared outdoors, but more likely they were in one of the nearby suites on this level, or the one below it, as the garden has a lower level." Karl elaborated.

The rescuers breathed a sigh of relief. There was a chance, however slim, that there were survivors, and that they hadn't just lost a member of the Royal Family, plus an unknown number of other Nobles, staff and guests, to a terrorist attack.