Chapter 12
When Kael opened his hand, small metal fragments lay in his palm.
ACU.
The ones that had been embedded in Pale’s subordinates until just moments ago.
‘He said his subordinates were fourth-tier.’
Kael examined the ACUs in his palm one by one.
‘Roughly six fourth-tier ACUs.’
The difference from the first-tier ACU he had used to deal with the subordinates moments ago was unmistakable.
The amount of residual mana, the degree of refinement, and the density of the internal circuits were all distinctly superior.
Enough.
What he needed now was the driving force to ignite his mana circuits. Everything would be decided in the instant the circuits caught fire.
Kael slipped one ACU between his fingers.
Pale burst out laughing when he saw that.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you’re good at little tricks.”
When Kael did not answer, Pale slowly walked forward and continued speaking.
“Almost as though you were using magic. If you’d been in the upper levels, I might even have found you a job in a circus. What a shame.”
Kael paid little attention to his mockery.
At that moment.
Pale disappeared.
“…!”
The distance between them closed in an instant.
Blue mana surged explosively through his legs, waist, and shoulders. Physical enhancement and neural acceleration engaged simultaneously. He moved so fast that the water pooled on the floor burst upward a moment later. Pale’s fist came viciously flying toward Kael’s eyes.
“When an adult speaks, you should listen.”
Pale bared his teeth.
“Brat.”
Kael twisted his body and narrowly avoided the fist.
The fist grazed his cheek.
His skin split, and a burning sensation spread across it, but he was fortunate that was all that happened.
The wall behind where the fist had slammed literally exploded, sending shattered fragments flying in every direction.
Kael rolled to the side to retreat.
Pale did not stop, immediately following with a second attack.
Every movement was fast and precise.
There were no exaggerated motions. It was enough to make Kael think the claim that he was sixth-tier was no empty boast.
‘As expected.’
He had to make a quick decision.
‘It’s difficult to keep up with a sixth-tier mage without using physical enhancement.’
The mages of this world surpassed the average physical capabilities of the mages from Kael’s world. All of it was thanks to the cyberware covering their bodies. And bodies enhanced with magic reached a level beyond imagination.
‘It feels like fighting a demonkin rather than a human.’
Kael gauged Pale’s abilities as they clashed.
Pale then took another step toward him.
“You’re pretty good at dodging.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It won’t be a bad thing to use as your last words.”
Blue mana coiled around Pale’s fingertips like thread.
‘Close-Range Suppression Formula.’
Seeing it, Kael did not retreat. Instead, he raised a hand.
“Are you surrendering now?”
At that moment, the fourth-tier ACU held between Kael’s fingers entered Pale’s field of vision.
Pale looked as though he could not understand what Kael was doing.
“That….”
Kael met Pale’s provocation with a retort.
“An adult?”
He pressed the ACU with his fingertip.
“You brat.”
Crack.
A fracture spread across the ACU’s outer casing.
At that moment, the refined mana trapped inside burst out and scattered.
Kael’s withered mana circuits responded.
***
Pale narrowed his brows as he watched the scene.
At first, he did not understand what that action meant.
For a mage, an ACU could be called both a weapon and a heart.
Consequently, breaking one was an unimaginable act.
There was no predicting what the opponent would do.
Just as Pale reached that conclusion,
his lips moved.
Fortificatio Corporis
[Physical Enhancement]
For the briefest moment, he felt mana emanating from his body.
During that brief instant, Pale, who had been certain the man was not a mage, was thrown into confusion.
The opponent’s figure vanished.
No.
Pale simply could not keep up with his speed.
“…!”
He was too late.
Kael was already standing before him.
Pale raised a defensive formula. The skin-enhancement formula was already active, and the impact-dampening formula responded in time as well. But Kael’s fist flew faster than either of them.
Boom!
The fist struck Pale’s face head-on.
His vision spun, and he felt his nasal bones crumble. Even so, the impact was not completely dispersed. Pale’s body flew across a sealed room and slammed into the opposite wall before finally coming to a stop.
His consciousness cut out for a very brief moment.
“….”
When he opened his eyes again, he was kneeling on the shattered concrete floor.
He tasted blood in his mouth. His own blood, something he had never tasted before, left him dazed for a moment.
Pale slowly raised a hand and touched his face. Red blood stained his fingers.
“….”
He could not understand what had just happened.
Magic?
Without an ACU?
That bastard didn’t even have cyberware. He was completely bare.
The detector had not picked up an ACU.
If so, had that bastard just kept up with a sixth-tier mage’s movements for a moment with his bare body?
No. To be precise, he had been faster.
When Pale looked beyond the broken wall, he saw Kael’s shadow through the dust and debris.
Pale gritted his teeth when he saw how calm Kael looked.
‘No.’
He corrected his thoughts.
‘I let my guard down.’
That was the truth.
He had considered his opponent a halfwit without even an ACU and looked down on him as someone who only possessed a few tricks.
That single misjudgment had created the situation before him.
Having reached that conclusion, Pale began to assess the situation.
His opponent could produce output at least comparable to his own tier. He could use magic despite having neither cyberware nor an ACU. Pale did not know how, but that was not what mattered right now.
‘I have to use my full power.’
Rumble.
The ACU began calculating a spell formula, radiating heat hot enough to sear his skin.
When Pale released one level of the ACU’s limiter, his eyes began to turn red.
The red-eye transformation phenomenon.
It occurred when highly concentrated mana pressed against the nerves and blood vessels, usually when high-tier magic was being used or when an ACU momentarily entered an overloaded state.
Naturally, side effects followed, but this was no time to worry about them.
Amid the burning heat beneath his skin, Pale looked down at the red circuit lines that had emerged across the back of his hand.
The ACU displayed warning messages in his field of vision.
[Output limit exceeded.]
[Increased strain on the nervous system.]
[Recommended overclock duration: 18 seconds.]
“Not bad.”
Boiling anger simmered beneath his voice.
“It was my fault for letting my guard down.”
Kael still did not answer.
Pale wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and steadied his breathing.
“From now on, I’ll fight in earnest.”
Overclock.
A method of forcibly increasing the processing speed of spell formulas.
Unlike merely increasing mana output, overclocking temporarily raised the synchronization rate between the user’s brain and ACU. Reaction speed, spell-formula deployment speed, and the rate at which mana flow changed all increased.
This also carried considerable risk.
But Pale accepted that risk and acknowledged that the young man before him was no longer a halfwit.
At least for this moment, he had to regard him as being of the same tier.
Pale abruptly lowered his waist. His reddened eyes fixed on Kael.
At that moment.
Kael took out a second ACU and crushed it.
Fortificatio Corporis
[Physical Enhancement]
Kael kicked off the floor and closed the distance.
Pale gritted his teeth.
Fast.
Even though he had broken through his own limits,
Kael plunged inside his guard.
Pale extended his left hand and tried to cut Kael’s throat with a thread of blue mana.
Kael twisted his head and easily dodged. At the same time, the edge of his hand struck Pale’s elbow joint. The defensive formula dispersed the impact, but the connected auxiliary circuit still wavered for a beat.
“Ghk….”
Pale immediately swung his arm at him, but Kael used his elbow to deflect its trajectory and slipped in beside him.
Bang!
The corridor wall shook from their collision.
Pale was not driven backward, but Kael did not fall away either.
That fact was fraying Pale’s nerves.
‘This is impossible.’
Breathing roughly, Pale raised his output once more.
“Haa… haa….”
The flesh beneath his skin grew hot, as though it were burning.
[Overclock duration limit nearly exceeded.]
[Increased strain on the nervous system.]
Red warnings appeared at the edge of his vision, but he ignored them completely.
He had to pour everything he had into this now.
But then.
At some point, the unidentified opponent had begun to outpace him.
‘Where did this monster even come from?’
There was no way an unregistered human with no detectable ACU, no cyberware, and no registration information could fight at this level.
If so, there was only one answer.
A secret agent of another megacorp, or an experimental subject whose registration had been erased.
Either way, he was no ordinary lower-level resident.
Pale knocked Kael’s fist aside and took a step backward.
“You bastard….”
His red eyes glared at Kael.
“Who do you belong to?”
Kael looked at him for a moment.
“Belong?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
Pale’s voice grew rougher.
“That level of combat ability isn’t something a guy who’s scraped by in the underground levels could possess. Which megacorp? Aegis? Voltline? Or….”
“Something like that.”
Kael cut him off and brushed the fragments of the broken ACU from his hand.
“I’m the master of some mage tower.”