Chapter 2
-Good morning, citizens of Magitera! Today, corporations are posting record profits, and citizens are putting in record overtime!
-What keeps the city moving? Mana? Or your souls?
-The answer is both! So don't be late for work, and don't forget to check your mana circuits! Just yesterday, 23 people were hospitalized due to circuit overload!
-This has been Silas Bolt, and once again, Magitera thanks you for your labor!
Thud.
Thump.
A wandering hand finally found the remote.
Beep.
So much for a good morning. The bottom levels didn't get sunlight in the first place.
Magitera, Lower District, 7th Industrial Zone, Block D-12, Underground Level 20, Unit 1409. That was the address of the place I currently lived.
It was called a “residence” in name only. The room was so small that there was no space left once I lay down, and it was packed so tightly that it was practically a chicken coop.
At least it had a bathroom.
“Haaah….”
A sigh escaped me.
At this miserable environment and absurd situation.
It felt a little shameless to say it myself, but I had been a fairly famous archmage, after all.
A spacious room incomparable to this shabby one.
Lavish meals every day.
And above all, an environment perfectly suited for researching magic.
I had planned to spend the rest of my years in a mage tower.
….”
I still wondered whether this was a dream, so I pinched my cheek.
After doing that for a year, it had become a habit.
It had taken a great deal of effort to adapt to Magitera, the place I now lived.
..
..
The first place I transferred to was Magitera's first floor.
The sunlit ground level.
And the lowest level among the places where Magitera's “citizens” lived.
Thinking back now, I had been lucky.
If I had landed in an underground waste-disposal zone or an irradiated ruin on the outskirts from the beginning, I would have died before even learning the name of this city.
Of course, I had known none of that at the time.
Everything before my eyes was unfamiliar.
Flying vehicles cutting across the sky and corporate logos floating in midair.
Surveillance drones patrolling every corner of the streets.
Now, I knew what they were.
The security surveillance drones equipped with mana lenses and small levitation circuits were especially impressive.
They patrolled all of Magitera and could check citizenship, residency rights, tax records, circuit registration information, and more, but.
To my eyes back then, they simply looked like small familiars made of metal.
I tried to hide myself while gathering information in my own way.
I had judged that I shouldn't act rashly until I had at least figured out how this place operated.
Of course, that judgment itself wasn't wrong.
The problem was that this city had far more eyes than I had imagined.
Not long after I emerged from the alley and blended into the main street, a small drone descended overhead.
It was shaped like a sphere sheathed in silvery metal.
A blue crystal lens was set in its center, and thin levitation wings unfolded on either side.
The lens turned toward me.
Beep.
A blue light swept over me from head to toe.
[Scanning.]
Red letters soon appeared in midair.
[Checking identification.]
[No registered citizen information found.]
[No residential authorization.]
[No tax records.]
[No employment registration.]
[Mana circuit registration information mismatch.]
The sentences appeared one after another, and.
The final sentence began blinking red.
[Illegal resident confirmed.]
I quietly stepped backward.
I intended to run.
At the very least, I had to get away from the crowded street.
But it was too late.
Large men appeared at both ends of the alley.
I learned later that they were employees of a private security company contracted by the Public Security Bureau.
One had an entire arm made of black metal, another had a thick mana conduit inserted into the back of his neck, and the last had red lenses in place of his eyes.
The same emblem was engraved on all their chests.
A winged shield and a gear.
I mistook that emblem for the crest of a noble family back then, but.
Now I knew.
It was the logo of a security company.
“One illegal resident confirmed.”
The red-lensed man spoke.
“Age?”
“The scan says approximately sixteen. Low circuit output. No combat aptitude.”
I laughed briefly to myself.
No combat aptitude, huh.
To say that to an archmage who had slain the Demon King.
Of course, I couldn't refute him at the time.
But I hadn't received the title of archmage for nothing.
It wasn't as though I had no way to deal with the three men before me.
A black metal prosthetic arm, a mana conduit in the neck, and red lenses in the eyes.
All three had openings.
The prosthetic arm's joints were overly exposed, the mana conduit was plainly visible at the nape, and the red-lensed man reacted slowly to his left blind spot, likely because he relied on a visual correction device.
Break one man's joint in an instant, rip out another's mana conduit, and shatter the last man's lens.
It wasn't impossible.
But that was where it ended.
Even if I knocked them down, the surveillance drone had already scanned me. The results would have been transmitted somewhere. If this entire street was the enemy's eyes and ears, causing a disturbance here would be almost suicidal.
More importantly, I was suffering from mana depletion at the time.
I could move once.
But I couldn't guarantee I could move twice.
Without knowing anything about this world's weapons or methods of subduing people, relying solely on close combat and starting a fight carried far too much risk.
I slowly exhaled.
‘Not now.’
A mage had to distinguish between fights they could win and fights they needed to avoid.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
I opened my mouth as calmly as possible.
The man with the black metal arm grabbed my shoulder.
“Misunderstandings get handled upstairs.”
“Upstairs?”
“No.”
The man smiled.
“Downstairs.”
At that, I didn't resist.
Pretending to cooperate while gathering information.
That was the best I could do.
Soon, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck.
An injection.
It was a mana suppressant.
More precisely, it was a cheap neural suppressant injection used to subdue illegal residents on the underground levels.
Its effects were crude, but sufficient.
Rather than bite my tongue and endure it, I deliberately relaxed my body.
My vision tilted.
The illusion signs along the street stretched out, then tangled together.
..
..
I opened my eyes inside an unfamiliar room.
There were no iron bars.
Instead, a friendly notice was posted on the wall.
[Welcome to Magitera.]
[Residents without citizenship may obtain legal residency through a temporary labor contract.]
[If you refuse the contract, the procedure for expulsion to the outskirts will begin.]
Expulsion to the outskirts.
Did that mean I would be sent outside the city?
If so, it might not be so bad. If this city wasn't the world I knew, then it was equally unfamiliar whether I was inside or outside it. If I escaped this enormous prison, I might actually find clues for dimensional transference more easily.
But I postponed making a decision.
I slowly surveyed the room.
One entrance.
One window.
A middle-aged man sitting at the desk across from me.
Something resembling a small crystal eye was embedded in the corner of the ceiling. It held a blue glow and blinked at regular intervals, illuminating the room.
A magic tool for surveillance?
That was my guess.
A thin blue line also flowed through the door. A lock, most likely. The shape of its markings differed from the sealing formulas I knew, but its function seemed similar.
The man, who had been watching my face intently, stood up.
Then he walked to one side of the wall and grabbed the cord of the black blinds covering the window.
“Look.”
Shrrrk.
The blinds rose.
I looked out the window without thinking.
A huge outer wall came into view before I could even see the sky.
The outer wall surrounding Magitera.
A colossal wall tangled with blue mana circuits stretched all the way to the horizon.
But the wall itself wasn't the real problem.
It was what lay beyond it.
The land was black and rotting.
Polluted land.
The words came to mind. At the same time, the land of the Demon Continent overlapped with it.
“…?”
Something moved in the distance.
At first, I thought it was a rock, but then it raised its head.
It was a magical beast as large as a bison.
The beast lowered its head and licked the ground.
The soil touched by its tongue began to bubble and boil.
I narrowed my eyes.
“It’s not looking for food.”
The man looked at me.
“What?”
“It’s licking mana. It's forcibly consuming the spent mana left in the polluted ground, even though its body won't be able to withstand it.”
At that moment, another magical beast charged toward the wall.
It had a shape somewhere between a dog and a wolf. The moment it reached the base of the wall, it began scratching at the metal surface with its claws.
Screeech.
The horrifying sound reached us through the window.
Soon, one of the metal devices atop the wall smoothly turned to face it.
Like an eyeball turning toward its prey.
A blue light gathered at its tip.
I couldn't tell what it was.
But I sensed it instinctively.
Dangerous.
The next moment, the light flashed briefly.
There was no sound.
The body of the magical beast beneath the wall exploded in an instant.
Flesh and black blood sprayed across the wall.
I narrowed my eyes.
‘A ray-type magitech weapon.’
Its power was sufficient.
Its activation speed was fast, too.
No incantation.
No caster in sight.
In other words, an automatically operating defensive device.
I could infer that much.
And yet, the other magical beasts didn't retreat.
Instead, they swarmed toward the corpse of the one that had just died. They bit, shoved, and trampled one another. Several of them trembled after swallowing pieces of the dead beast, and new spikes sprouted from their backs.
A monster domain.
The man jerked his chin toward the window.
“That’s the outskirts.”
“A spent-mana contamination zone.”
I spoke first.
The man's words paused for a moment.
I didn't take my eyes off the window.
“If you go outside the wall, your circuits will break down first. Then your skin. Then your nervous system. If you're lucky, a magical beast will eat you before that.”
The man gave me a strange look.
“And if you’re unlucky?”
I gazed beyond the purple haze.
Something stood like a person atop a broken hill.
It stood on two legs, with something resembling tattered scraps of clothing hanging from its body. But its arms dangled below its knees, and black horns had grown from the back of its head.
“You’ll survive.”
I added,
“Just not in human form.”
The man was silent for a moment, then looked at me with a baffled expression.
“What did you used to do?”
“A mage.”
“A mage?”
“Though I don't seem to be one now.”
Soon, the metal weapon atop the wall lit up again.
The thing standing like a person vanished.
All that remained was a black smear.
The man lowered the blinds again.
Shrrrk.
The shadows of the polluted land and the magical beasts disappeared.
Only the white light of the notice remained in the room.
[If you refuse the contract, the procedure for expulsion to the outskirts will begin.]
I rapidly turned over the information and deductions I had gathered so far.
Then I signed the contract.
Because I had survived somehow.
That was who I was, and.
..
..
Thus, I ended up in the underground levels as an illegal resident.
Magitera's underground levels were another world beneath the city.
There was no sunlight, of course, and not even a sky. All I could see were rock walls.
Instead, things discarded from above occasionally fell down.
Waste discarded from the upper levels.
Broken magitech devices, damaged prosthetic bodies, and chemical containers whose contents were unknown.
Sometimes, even corpses.
Whenever a massive transport pipe opened, trash poured down like a waterfall.
Ruuuumble.
When that sound echoed, the people underground first looked up. Then they ran. The reason was simple. If they were late, they would be beaten to death.
I wandered there for several days.
I searched through the garbage heaps as well.
Using magic would have made things easy.
Even a single small search formula would have made finding something useful a simple matter.
But I couldn't do that. My circuits were still damaged.
Then something caught on the tip of my foot.
It was a piece of magitech slightly larger than my palm.
A cracked crystal plate was embedded inside a black metal frame, and several severed circuit wires jutted out from its side.
At first, I thought it was simply a broken device, but I knew the moment I picked it up.
There was still mana inside.
Very faintly.
I looked around, then slipped the device into my robes.
That evening, I headed to the scrap market on Underground Level 19.
I set the device down in front of a street stall.
“How much?”
The stall owner was an old man with a magnifying lens over one eye. He glanced at my item, then scoffed.
“Dead circuit. It isn't even worth scrap.”
“There’s still mana inside.”
“So what if there is? It doesn't flow.”
He tapped the device with his finger.
“The input section is burned out, the conversion circuit is severed, and the crystal plate is cracked. This can't be fixed.”
I looked down at the device.
Can't be fixed, huh.
I looked at the circuit again.
The specifications were unfamiliar. The thickness of the lines, the shape of the junctions, and the way it cut off and connected mana flow were all different from the formulas I knew.
Yet it wasn't completely unfamiliar. In the end, all methods of manipulating mana converged on the same principles.
Even if the language was different, rivers still flowed downhill.
I pressed the severed circuit wire with my fingertip.
“This isn't the problem.”
“What?”
“The conversion circuit isn't broken. The flow is backing up here.”
The old man's expression crumpled.
“What do you know?”
“Be quiet and watch.”
Don't push mana into it.
Just touch it lightly.
Zap.
One of the severed circuits inside the device glowed faintly.
The old man's eyes widened.
“What did you just do?”
“I found the blockage.”
I picked up a thin piece of metal lying nearby.
Using its tip, I scraped the soot off the circuit board. Then I very thinly connected the two broken points.
It was a fairly crude method, but the flow was restored as a result.
Vrrrrm.
A blue light came on inside the cracked crystal plate.
The area fell silent.
The stall owner stared at the device with his mouth hanging open.
“Why is it turning on?”
“Because the circuit wasn't dead.”
I set the device down.
“How much?”
“How much?”