Chapter 10
An abandoned residential district on Underground Level 15.
I’d heard it had once been workers’ quarters, but now it had no door plaques, no maintenance records, and no one came looking even if someone died there. In other words, it was a den of criminals.
A first-tier mage named Raden lived there in hiding.
Even after being driven out of the upper levels, he couldn’t give up the title of mage. Though his registration had been revoked for failing to pay his procedure fees, his ACU output had fallen below half, and he had been reduced to throwing his weight around only among criminals in the underground levels.
Still, a mage was a mage. At least, that was what Raden believed. No—what he wanted to believe.
“Be quiet.”
He extended a hand toward the man before him.
The old ACU implanted in his throat heated up, and a blue glow spread from his fingertips.
“I told you this is all the money I have! It’s true!”
The man whimpered as he held out the metal credits he possessed.
But Raden merely scoffed at the sight.
“Then hand over at least one organ you can sell.”
“Please….”
Raden used magic to squeeze the man’s throat slightly. It was nothing more than a threat, not a particularly powerful spell.
First-tier telekinetic auxiliary formula.
It was a crude spell, unable to lift heavy objects, open thick iron doors, or serve much use in a proper fight, but it was enough to threaten an unarmed lower-level resident who knew nothing of magic. It was even more effective against someone already frightened.
He could make a living with this sort of thing alone.
Take, threaten, sell.
That was how Raden had eked out a living in the underground levels, one day at a time.
While waiting for the day he could return to the upper levels.
It was then.
Bzzzt.
The magilight in the ceiling flickered. Raden looked up at it and clicked his tongue in irritation.
“Fuck… now of all times?”
Bzzzt, bzzzt.
The light went out and came back on twice more.
“Damn it.”
This happened several times a day, so it wasn’t particularly strange. If anything, it was the underground levels having electricity at all that should have been surprising.
But this time, something felt wrong.
Raden frowned at the strange pressure weighing on him.
“What the hell?”
The next moment, the lights went out completely.
Bzzzt.
And when they came back on…
A black-haired, black-eyed young man stood before him.
“Eek!”
Startled by his appearance, Raden screamed and stumbled backward.
The man whose throat had been squeezed collapsed to the floor in the opening, but Raden paid him no attention. He had no idea how long the young man had been standing there.
There had been no footsteps, and almost no mana response, either.
“Y-you, what are you?!”
The young man did not answer, merely watching Raden as if observing him.
“What kind of bastard crawled out of….”
Raden clenched his teeth.
It didn’t take long for fear to turn into anger.
‘I don’t know what kind of bastard he is, but he isn’t a mage. If so….’
The ACU implanted below the back of his neck heated up.
Blue light flowed from the back of his neck to his shoulders, then from his shoulders to his arms and legs. His heart throbbed as though it would burst, and vitality filled every muscle in his body.
First-tier physical enhancement.
For a mage, it was merely an auxiliary spell, but against an unarmed human from the underground levels, it was more than enough.
Raden kicked off the floor, charged at the young man, and swung his fist with all his might.
“Die!”
The young man moved only one step.
As Raden’s fist cut through empty air, his wrist twisted, and pain surged into the inside of his elbow.
“Guh…!”
As his body pitched forward, the young man grabbed his shoulder and twisted it down as if pinning him.
Crash!
Raden’s face slammed into the floor. His enhanced body dented the old floorboards, but that was all. Raden couldn’t even understand what had happened.
“Kheugh…!”
When he struggled, the ACU heated up again. Raden tried to use physical enhancement to push himself up once more, but—
At that moment, the young man’s fingers dug into the back of Raden’s neck and tore something out.
“A-argh…!”
The young man watched him, then muttered to himself.
“…So that’s the extent of first tier.”
Raden’s face twisted.
“You….”
Pinned to the floor, he ground his teeth.
“Do you look down on first tier, too?”
He vented the resentment he had built up over never being treated with respect, despite being a mage, simply because he was only first tier.
But the young man gave no answer.
“You piece of shit who can’t even cast magic!”
Raden thrashed and screamed.
“What do you know, you bastard! Even a first-tier mage is still a mage! I… I was recognized in the upper levels…!”
“Shut up.”
Crack.
A foot approaching him. That was the last thing Raden saw.
***
Kael carefully lifted the ACU from the neck of the unconscious first-tier mage.
‘This tiny thing.’
He looked down at the ACU resting in his palm.
It was about the length of two finger joints. Fine patterns were etched into the black metal casing, while silver circuit lines thinner than hair intertwined inside.
‘An artificial mana circuit.’
Kael lightly ran a fingertip along the edge of the casing.
He had heard it was a device of the lowest tier.
And yet its internal structure was astonishingly complex. An intake that drew in external mana, a purification layer that filtered out impure flows, an auxiliary processing circuit connected to the user’s nerves, and even a small buffer that regulated mana pressure just before output.
‘Interesting.’
Kael marveled at the pinnacle of magitech engineering.
Narrowing his eyes, he also felt a tinge of regret.
Handling an ACU firsthand had made one fact even clearer.
If he broke this device, the mana trapped inside would flow out for a brief instant in the form it had possessed before being bound into a spell formula.
In that instant…
Kael’s mana circuits would resonate with that form, and he should be able to use magic.
Of course, it would be more like forcibly transferring someone else’s spark to a piece of firewood that had already dried out…
Kael slowly rolled the ACU across his palm and fell into thought for a moment.
Since it was a low-tier device, the amount of mana he could draw out would be limited. He couldn’t expect the kind of firepower that had split castle walls and shaken the foundations of the Demon King’s castle as before.
But small spells should be possible, and Kael thought that would be enough.
‘The preparations are complete.’
Kael rose and once more headed somewhere.
***
Pale had been scouring the underground levels for several days.
The wastewater junction on Underground Level 18, the waste compression sector on Underground Level 17, the illegal resident block on Underground Level 16.
The search continued all the way back around the scrap market on Underground Level 19, but there had been no meaningful results.
The target’s unique wavelength would be picked up intermittently, then vanish. Sometimes it was detected in a pile of scrap, sometimes on the wall of a transport pipe, and sometimes on the rusted doorknob of a room where no one lived.
As though someone had deliberately scattered the traces.
That fact was slowly fraying Pale’s nerves.
“Say that again.”
Pale spoke calmly, and the subordinate standing before him answered with his head bowed.
“The search of Underground Level 16 found no sign of the target. However, there were three locations where similar wavelengths were detected, and all were confirmed to be residual responses from discarded magitech devices.”
“Residual responses.”
“Yes.”
“Residual responses again.”
Pale slowly nodded, then turned and shouted at his subordinates.
“Are you saying that after all these days, all you’ve found are residual responses?!”
Not only the subordinate before him but also the agents standing nearby held their breath.
“The target is not a ‘residual response.’ The target is a ‘person.’”
If alive, the target was someone to kill; if dead, someone whose corpse had to be confirmed.
At the thought that the child still hadn’t been caught, Pale slowly raised his hand.
The subordinate belatedly raised his head, but—
“Lord Pale, I….”
The words never reached the end.
Blue mana stretched from Pale’s fingertips like a thin thread and coiled around the subordinate’s neck. The subordinate’s eyes widened as he clutched his throat with both hands.
“Ghk…!”
The oppressive force filling the room was beyond words.
Pale slowly curled his fingers without changing his expression, and the subordinate’s body rose slightly into the air.
He struggled, but the movement did not last long.
Thud.
When the corpse fell to the floor, the faces of the agents around them turned pale. Someone took a step back, then immediately straightened up.
Pale slowly looked around at them.
“You incompetent bastards.”
No one could answer him. If they opened their mouths carelessly, they would become corpses in an instant, just like that man.
“You still haven’t found one little brat, and you’re making me go through all this?”
His voice, brimming with fury, echoed through the room.
“You can’t even search one underground level properly, yet you wear the name of Seraph’s Security Office.”
Pale glanced down at the corpse on the floor, then turned his gaze away again.
“Search again. Transport pipes, wastewater pipes, scrap markets, illegal clinics, organ bazaars—search every place where a mana response remains.”
One of the agents objected to his order in a trembling voice, but—
“But Lord Pale, some of those sectors have already been searched more than three times.”
“If you want to be next, you may continue speaking.”
“…No, sir.”
The objection was immediately withdrawn.
Pale looked down at his wrist terminal, but the report was accumulating nothing but records of failure.
He felt a sense of unease in one corner of his mind.
Because Pale was not Seraph Industries’ loyal dog.
He had already received an outrageous offer to switch to another megacorp.
There was only one condition.
Quietly eliminate the young successor candidate within Seraph.
In particular, make it look like an accident in the official records, and recover the body or erase it completely.
He hadn’t thought trampling one hothouse flower would be so difficult. Lure the child to the underground levels, deal with them, and it would be over. No matter how powerful a megacorp was, it was difficult to discover what happened in the underground levels.
But the child had survived. No—the child might still be alive.
Because of that one possibility, Pale had been digging through the underground levels’ heaps of garbage for days.
His expression began to twist as a sliver of doubt crept in.
If this dragged on, the offer could be withdrawn and another candidate chosen.
And he would be branded a traitor and finished just like that.
‘There’s no time.’
It was then.
Ding.
A brief notification appeared on his wrist terminal. Pale frowned as he checked the sender.
‘No sender information and route untraceable?’
He stared at the screen for a moment, then opened the message.
[I’ll tell you where the child you’re looking for is.]