Chapter 42
-You're here.
-Who is it?
Bang!
At the same time as the pistol fired, there was a sound of something being struck, and then...
Krrrzzzt.
The surveillance camera watching them was suddenly covered in static.
….
Raul Kesk raised his head in the darkness.
He was currently in an abandoned communications relay room two blocks from Graveblock Block.
It was a place where the maintenance staff had left long ago.
To some, this space would have been nothing more than an abandoned facility, but to Raul, it made a fairly good hideout.
“…How did he know?”
Until just moments ago, several screens had been floating before him.
He had been watching Silas through surveillance cameras scattered around the area, focusing on his movements.
But then.
“How.”
Raul stared at the screen filled with nothing but static for a long while.
The young man had not merely looked at the camera; it seemed he had fired at Raul himself on the other side of it.
Nor could it be brushed off as a simple ‘coincidence.’ Raul had seen the young man’s eyes.
When Raul tried to adjust the angle between the wall panel and the ceiling camera, the lights flickered briefly as a result.
It was such a minor incident that an ordinary person would have regarded it as nothing more than a little mishap.
Even a mercenary with exceptionally sharp senses would, at most, have felt that something was strange.
Who would look straight at the camera in that brief moment, draw a gun without hesitation, and fire at the lens?
From a third party’s perspective, it was undoubtedly the act of a madman, utterly impossible to understand.
And he had done it with a calm expression, as though it were nothing.
Raul’s multiple lenses shifted focus simultaneously, and his fingers began moving rapidly across the relay room console.
Magitera’s data network immediately poured into his ACU.
Kael.
Raul began weaving together the lines that gathered around that name.
From trivial details like his citizen registration and rank information in the freelancer registration network to his connections with Seraph Industries.
All those threads appeared across Raul’s screens.
[Name: Kael]
[Registration Type: Full Citizen]
[Guarantor: Seraph Industries]
[Guarantee Level: Special Endorsement]
[Freelancer Registration Rank: F]
[Tier: 5]
[Registered Equipment: Vesper V-9C]
Raul slowly exhaled as he looked at the screen.
On paper, he was nothing more than an unremarkable human with an F-rank freelancer license and Tier 5.
However, the fact that Seraph Industries had specially guaranteed him bothered Raul.
Moreover, what Raul found when he broke through Seraph’s security network and investigated was interesting.
The recent attack on Seraph by unidentified assailants. The report could be summarized as follows.
[Most of the hyenas who took the bait were eliminated by a single person]
If someone possessed that level of combat power, he should certainly have left traces.
Yet the data on this young man named Kael was strange.
There were no records of his prior history, as if it had been wiped perfectly clean by something.
He had no record of working for any corporation, let alone a PMC contract history or a background at a formal magic academy, nor were there any medical records from an illegal ACU clinic.
And yet Seraph had guaranteed a man like that, and he was now living in a building Seraph Industries had purchased.
Raul had dug through and seen all kinds of filthy records. Even now, Kael’s existence looked rather suspicious.
“Hmm.”
Raul called up the recorded footage again.
It was the mere few seconds of footage from before the camera was destroyed.
Black hair, a lean build, and no particularly heavy cyberware in sight.
There was no noticeable combat-support equipment, either.
‘Does he have a hidden card beyond what can be seen on the surface?’
The corner of Raul’s mouth lifted.
“He definitely saw me.”
Raul’s method of hunting his prey had always been similar, but most of his prey never saw him.
The target’s terminal, of course, as well as the locks on their home, their vehicle’s autonomous-driving system, and so on.
Most of Magitera’s devices operated by connecting to the city.
Raul cut them off one by one, slowly.
From that moment, every target began to fear Raul, and the expressions on their faces were more than enough to satisfy him.
That was how he hunted. Because it was his way, he almost never charged in head-on with a gun.
However.
This time, something was different.
Silas Volt was an ordinary target no matter how he looked at it.
It really would not be difficult to catch him.
Raul intended to isolate Silas completely, erase the hideouts he believed were safe one by one, and give him a taste of fear.
But Silas had gone to Kael, and it was clear that there was something unusual about this man named Kael. A variable had appeared—the very thing Raul hated most.
Raul skimmed through Kael’s records again, but found nothing special.
‘Should I take a step back this time….’
That was what he was thinking, but he soon opened a new window.
Silas Volt’s voice file began playing again.
-Mr. Raul, if you’re listening, let me offer you a piece of advice. Every time you send a death threat, the audio quality is so terrible that no one can understand what you’re saying. Change your microphone.
Raul listened in silence.
-Change your microphone.
Click.
-Change your microphone.
Click.
-Change your micro….
Crash!
When Raul struck the desk, it shattered with a splintering crunch.
“No, there are no exceptions.”
***
Kael stared at the shattered surveillance camera for a moment, then put his pistol back inside his coat.
Even after seeing the wreckage, Silas could not speak for a while.
His face showed that he was only now realizing Raul had been watching them through the surveillance camera.
Kael slowly looked around the office.
The wall panel, the door’s locking mechanism, the communications relay in the corner….
There were far too many things here that would make good toys for Raul.
Kael fell into thought for a moment.
What could Raul already know?
For one thing, that Silas had come here and contacted him.
He would also know that Kael was not an ordinary mercenary.
Kael retraced the cards he had revealed so far, one by one.
If the bastard was moving through the city’s network, there was a high chance he had already looked through Kael’s official records.
Then, how would Raul move based on this information?
Kael narrowed his eyes.
At the very least, he would not come straight at them. In Kael’s experience, Raul was not that type of person. He was the kind who laid traps and lured enemies into his own territory, like a spider. A ranger, perhaps—except one of the worst of the worst, the sort who played with his prey like toys before killing them.
If such a cautious man encountered a new variable, he would not rush out immediately.
‘If I were him.’
Kael thought of the area outside the office.
The equipment used here operated around a local network, and controlling it required a central hub.
Even if he controlled it from far away, he needed a nearby point of contact close enough to look into this building and observe Silas.
Somewhere with lax surveillance, old communications equipment, and devices capable of connecting to the local network.
“Is there a place like that nearby?”
At Kael’s question, Silas stared blankly for a moment before belatedly coming to his senses.
“A place like that… You mean somewhere related to communications?”
“Yes. Like an old relay facility.”
Having spent so long working at a broadcasting station, Silas was not slow at putting his mind to work.
“A few places near Graveblock come to mind.”
“Tell me where they are.”
“The first is a communications relay room to the east. It’s officially out of use now, but I don’t know whether people still come and go there.”
Silas folded down one finger and continued.
“The second is a billboard warehouse to the south. Old outdoor billboards are stored there… I hear it’s old and poorly maintained.”
“Next.”
“To the west, there’s an old cable maintenance room. I hear it’s used like a warehouse now, but it probably isn’t completely abandoned. And underground to the north, there’s a ventilation control room. It was originally part of the city’s infrastructure, but there’s a rumor that someone was caught operating an illegal relay there in the past.”
Kael pointed at the wall panel.
“Mark them.”
“What?”
“The places you mentioned. Mark all of them on the panel now.”
At that, Silas hurried over to the panel and began marking red points centered on their current location.
Kael silently scanned the marks.
Fortunately, they were not very far away.
The city structures blocked his view, but it was a manageable range if he swept it with magic.
Kael’s mana circuits had not fully recovered yet, so it would not be easy.
Expanding the detection spell over a wide area would certainly bring backlash, but he had no other choice now.
Kael walked to the center of the office and sat down on the floor.
Silas asked in a flustered voice.
“What are you trying to do?”
“I’m going to find him from here.”
“Huh?”
Kael answered briefly and closed his eyes.
Pushing away everything unnecessary, Kael let his consciousness sink inward.
Then he chanted.
Revela
[Detection]
In an instant, countless flames rose in the darkness. Flames of life flickered in the dark.
There was far too much information to process, and Kael clenched his teeth for a moment.
It felt as though sparks were flying inside his brain.
His fingertips trembled, and the taste of blood rose in the back of his throat.
He recalled the first location Silas had marked.
The underground ventilation control room to the north.
When he directed his consciousness there, he sensed only a small reaction, perhaps a rat. There were no people.
The second.
The billboard warehouse to the south.
There were only two flames nearby that seemed to belong to homeless people crouching there. Raul was not here, either.
The third.
The old cable maintenance room to the west.
There was one person, but he was not a mage.
“Hoo….”
Kael exhaled very slowly.
His vision wavered, and the detection spell itself began to shake.
Just maintaining the detection range made a little blood seep from the corners of his mouth and his nose.
Silas stood some distance away and said nothing.
He probably could not understand what the young man in front of him was seeing.
Finally, Kael focused his consciousness on the communications relay room to the east.
At first, he saw nothing.
Deeper.
There, a single blue flame was burning fiercely.
Kael immediately cut off the detection.
“….”
When he opened his eyes, the office lights looked slightly blurred.
Kael braced one hand against the floor.
Silas asked cautiously.
“How… did it go?”
Kael slowly raised his head.
“Found him.”