Chapter 24
"Good fortune."
With those words, Ariel's voice could no longer be heard.
Perhaps she was worried that entering the hotel might somehow interfere with the communicator.
'What a shame.'
Thinking about the communicator's flaws, I couldn't help but think that.
It allowed people to converse with someone far away.
That alone was enough to prove the communicator's value.
Whether for military purposes or everyday life, being able to speak with someone at a distance held that kind of value.
But it was such a flawed device that every country had enacted laws completely prohibiting its military use.
The communicator's principle was very simple.
It simply fired mana at the other party to make a call, a principle much like the radio waves of telephones from my previous life.
The problem was that a mage could interfere with this mana midway.
Not only could conversations be tapped, but in skilled hands, the communicator could even become a long-range bomb that used it as a medium to fire magic. Such a device.
In fact, in one country, a war had once ended just three minutes after it began when someone used a communicator as a medium to cast a wide-area spell.
"Breck."
[What is it?]
"The operation's already gone awry from the start. How about we switch to moving according to our own judgment?"
[...]
At my words, Breck's voice coming through the communicator stopped for a moment.
The premise of the operation was to simultaneously raid the places we believed to be the mage's workshops.
But that premise had collapsed long ago.
Breck, who knew that well, sighed and lamented.
[Haa. All right, then let's act according to our own judgment.]
"Good... [White Shadow], you all act according to your own judgment as well."
[Understood.]
With [White Shadow]'s words, I too cut off the communicator, emerged from the alley, and headed straight for the lounge bar that was my target.
"Creepy..."
Looking at the lounge bar in front of me, I couldn't help saying that.
It had a shabby exterior. The door handle had long been covered in dust, as though it hadn't been touched by human hands in years.
Perhaps because it was across from a shop where many people came and went, it only made the eeriness stand out more.
"Look at all this dust."
Swish.
Since I had no desire to grab a handle covered in that much dust, I began slowly opening the shop's door using smoke.
Creak.
The door began opening with the unpleasant noise unique to old doors.
A stale, unpleasant, musty smell of dust began to sting my nose.
"..."
I didn't enter right away. Standing before the entrance, I slowly began inhaling the cigar between my lips.
The cigar rapidly began to shrink.
Eventually, once it had burned down until only about a finger's length remained, I put the fully smoked cigar into the portable ashtray inside my coat and began exhaling the cigar smoke filling my lungs.
The smoke exhaled from my mouth began enveloping the floor, walls, and finally the ceiling.
...Bingo.
"What, this was the jackpot?"
***
What is a mage?
People might offer various answers to that question.
One who pursues the truth of mana—this was probably the most common answer.
No, no, no. That isn't what a mage is.
"A mage is!"
A gloomy room cluttered with all manner of experimental equipment.
In the middle of that room, a middle-aged man, gripped by madness, raised his voice at the test subject before him.
"What is a mage!!"
Simply someone who pursued the truth of mana, or perhaps the world?
If they possessed such a single, simplified goal, then surely so many fields of study would not have arisen when training mages at the Magic Tower or academies.
Magecraft, elemental studies, alchemy, astrology, spellcraft, magitech engineering, and so on and so forth.
Could the sole thing desired by so many fields of study really be the pursuit of truth?
"Of course not!!!"
No. That's not it. A mage's truth isn't anything like that!
Approach magic with reason?
Tune mana and construct magic formulas with cold rationality?
He, too, had lived with those thoughts.
But not anymore.
Then what is a mage?
Thanks to telekinesis magic, numerous surgical instruments began floating around the man.
A mage's truth—the truth of humanity—was...
"Instinct!"
People who lived by curiosity. That was the root and truth mages pursued.
That was what a mage—and a being who had awakened an ability—pursued.
That was Heros's conception of the truth of mages.
Therefore, following his instincts, Heros was about to dissect the test subject who had awakened an ability through the drug [Mirage] he had created, when...
Thud.
"Kgh!"
A foreign sensation suddenly emerged around the pit of his stomach.
'What is this...?'
Heros bowed his head through the horrible pain to identify what had pierced through his body.
'...Smoke?'
Yes, smoke.
Smoke that had transformed like an awl had pierced straight through his solar plexus.
"Kgh!"
The moment he realized this, Heros vomited blood rising from his esophagus and began gradually rising into the air.
"Hngh!"
Once he was completely lifted into the air, the amount of blood issuing from his solar plexus and mouth began visibly increasing.
His life was unmistakably on the verge of being extinguished.
Woooooo.
The magic that supported him, installed dozens of times throughout his workshop.
Those magic circles emitted a fierce resonant hum and began extending the life of the slowly dying Heros.
Drip, drip.
Hanging in the air, Heros began blankly watching his blood fall to the floor.
How much time passed like that?
Step. Step.
Footsteps began reaching Heros's ears as his consciousness gradually began to fade.
"As expected, mages are tenacious inside their workshops."
"Hngh..."
A young man with gray hair and a cigar in one hand.
After looking at Heros for a moment, the man casually put the cigar to his mouth and exhaled a long stream of smoke.
Smoke began thickly filling his workshop.
The smoke should have vanished, but it was not disappearing to a bizarre degree, spreading its domain as though it were devouring the workshop.
"Oops. What kind of magic circles did you set up here?"
"..."
"Twelve life-support spells, five magic-support circles, eighteen enemy-detection circles? Good grief."
'How?'
This was a mage's workshop.
Naturally, magic being laid out was a basic fact, but learning the number and types of magic circles he had installed was an entirely different matter.
'He must be an ability user.'
This smoke. It must be that fellow's ability. But how?
He was curious. He couldn't suppress his curiosity.
He was on the verge of bleeding to death after spilling a basinful of blood, but it didn't matter.
Treating his own life as nothing, Heros continued thinking.
"Ah... ahh..."
Dozens of hypotheses formed, shattered, and reassembled in his mind.
Driven by curiosity bordering on madness, Heros rolled his eyes to inspect his surroundings despite having his solar plexus pierced.
'Smoke... Why lay out smoke?'
Gain information from smoke? Reconnaissance? Control... Even piercing my solar plexus was smoke...
"So that's it... Kgh... Keh-heh-heh."
"Hm?"
"Your power. Your a... ability... lets you learn the in... formation about anything the smoke touches... right...?"
Saying this, Heros looked at the awl made of smoke that had pierced his solar plexus.
"What an... amazing ability..."
It had enough destructive power to destroy the defensive magic installed in the workshop, yet was also useful for reconnaissance and obtaining information.
It was a truly perfect ability.
"Ahh, I'm curious..."
In his gradually blurring vision, Heros desperately looked at the face of the man trying to kill him.
Murky gray hair, much like the smoke from this cigar.
He stared at the man as if engraving every feature of his face into his retina—or rather, his soul—so that he could recognize him even if he died, even if he were reincarnated.
Slash!
"What are you talking about?"
And those mad thoughts came to an end as his body split into two.
***
The mage's corpse had been completely sliced in two by my ability, with the solar plexus as the dividing point.
"...The name of my ability is Smoke Manipulation."
Perhaps because its owner had died, I watched the magic circles engraved in the workshop slowly disappear.
Using smoke to examine the corpse, I confirmed that all vital functions had ceased.
Its pulse and heart had stopped long ago.
"It can't even be seen unless mana has been awakened, and its physical strength is determined by how much mana I put into it."
My voice echoed through the workshop.
Anyone seeing this would think I was a madman calmly talking in front of a corpse.
But I deliberately revealed a rough outline of my ability.
[You have revealed part of your ability.]
[The other party has confirmed your ability.]
[The ability's manifestation, destructive power, and range have increased slightly.]
Constraint.
Another ability besides my smoke ability.
An ability that grants me a benefit when I provide an enemy with information about my ability, weakness, or advantage.
In the past, I once tried to explain my smoke clone ability to Mist to gain additional power, but it had failed.
After that, as Mist and I contemplated this constraint, we learned quite a few things.
One. For this constraint to activate, both the other party and I had to be hostile toward each other.
Two. If the other party did not recognize me, the constraint would not activate. The reverse was true as well.
Finally.
This was something I already knew.
Naturally, this constraint would activate only if the other party was alive or conscious enough to hear my words and think.
In other words.
"You're not dead?"
The mage was not dead.
The mage's corpse, split in two.
Even with the magic circles engraved in the workshop disappearing, making it a situation in which anyone would have thought him dead, he was not dead.
Grin.
"Caught me, huh?"
Hearing my words, the mage Heros looked at me with a spine-chilling smile on his physically halved face.