Chapter 66
*
The four members of Freya's group had escaped from prison.
The four moved forward with muffled footsteps, relying on the faint lights hanging from the ceiling.
Carl was at the front.
Holding the folding sword low, keeping his back to the wall, and checking around corners—he was skilled at the entire sequence of movements.
As he filled his lungs with air free of opium dust, life had returned to his eyes before he knew it.
“Grrr….”
Just before turning the corner.
They came face-to-face with two ghouls in the darkness.
Before the ghouls could react, Carl's sword cut across the darkness.
The heads of both ghouls shot into the air with a single strike.
“The guards aren't all that strong.”
As he shook bodily fluids off his sword, Carl whispered.
Valeria, supporting Ellie, gave Carl a thumbs-up in praise.
Freya was guarding the rear with her pistol in hand.
Thus, they dealt with the ghouls one by one.
Before they knew it, the group had reached the surface.
At the end of the long corridor.
A door leading outside was visible.
The exit.
That hopeful word arose in all four of their minds.
“Good. Now—”
Carl was just about to step onto the stairs at the front of the group.
Thud.
At the top of the stairs leading to the second floor.
They heard someone's heavy footsteps.
All four of them stopped at once.
Thud—thud—
Someone was coming down with a slow, heavy rhythm.
Carl signaled to the others with his eyes and pressed them against the wall of the stairs.
After confirming that they were hidden in the shadow of the wall, Carl gripped his sword in reverse.
The footsteps drew closer and closer.
A shadow fell across the bend in the stairs first.
Carl held his breath.
The moment the owner of the shadow came around the corner, Carl kicked off the wall and leaped.
The battle aura-infused blade swung toward the shadow's neck.
It was a perfect trajectory, one that even Carl himself admired.
But just before the blade reached the neck, something flashed in midair.
Clang.
With a sharp, unpleasant scraping sound, Carl's sword was knocked away.
Carl belatedly identified what had deflected his sword.
‘…A bug?’
Three tiny beetles.
The three of them had formed a triangular formation in front of the brute's neck.
The beetles' shells shone dark blue under the light of the mana-stone lamps.
It was these three fingernail-sized beetles that had knocked away the sword imbued with battle aura.
It took Carl a moment to accept that fact.
“…Damn.”
“Whew. Look at this brazen little brat.”
The owner of the shadow fully revealed himself beneath the mana-stone lamp.
The brute, whose left forearm was densely covered in black markings, whistled beneath his hood.
“I thought you were a hothouse flower, but you know how to launch a sneak attack too.”
Boom!
When the head of the great hammer touched the floor, spiderweb-like cracks spread across the stone.
Freya realized that the man was the brute Carl had mentioned earlier.
The brute indifferently watched the beetles disappearing in front of his neck, then looked back up the stairs.
“Igor. Take a look at these little things. Looks like this won't be easy?”
“We don't have much time, Boris.”
A gaunt man with a robe pulled over his head slowly descended behind the brute.
The man wore a robe and had an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
Freya instantly recognized the gaunt man as a black mage.
‘They said their names were Igor and Boris. They're probably aliases.’
They were exceedingly common aliases in the mercenary world.
If someone searched for the Igor-Boris duo through the mercenary guild, hundreds of pairs with those registered names would probably turn up.
The man called Igor remained on the stairs, looking over the students.
His gaze stopped on the family crest embroidered on Freya's cape.
“Young lady.”
Igor opened his mouth.
“I'm sorry about what happened today. This wasn't supposed to happen.”
Freya looked up at Igor with her pistol in hand.
Igor came down one step.
“Let's make a deal. Today, young lady, you simply took a wrong turn for a little while. You got a bit lost while taking a walk outside the academy. That's all.”
“….”
“You can return to the dormitory, wash up, eat, and attend class tomorrow. You can return to your peaceful daily life as if nothing happened. Then all of us can be happy.”
Freya did not answer.
Instead, she returned his question with one of her own.
“Then what will happen to my seniors here?”
“Is there really any reason for a young lady to concern herself with these commoners too?”
“Just as I thought.”
Freya nodded calmly.
“I'm sorry, but I can't accept that offer.”
“Even as a noble, you don't mind going it alone.”
“There is honor I must uphold precisely because I am a noble.”
Tsk.
Boris lightly clicked his tongue and hoisted the hammer he had set down onto his shoulder.
“Igor.”
“Yes. Go, Boris.”
The moment those words fell, Boris moved.
The great hammer cleaved through the air.
The horizontally swung hammerhead charged forward with enough force to sweep across the entire corridor where the students stood.
Carl sprang forward.
The blade, imbued with battle aura, barely redirected the hammer's path.
Kaboom!
The wall grazed by the hammer was gouged out like tofu.
“Oh, battle aura? They teach this to undergrads these days? Makes tuition worth paying!”
The next strike followed immediately.
Carl realized that he did not have much battle aura left.
Even so, there was no way he could block that crude great hammer over and over with a self-defense sword.
So Carl chose evasion over defense.
“Back!”
As he shouted, Carl shoved Freya and Valeria behind him.
Then he ducked and slipped beneath the hammer's trajectory.
The hammer passed over his head, ruffling his hair in the wind.
Carl's sword rose from beneath it.
A diagonal rising slash infused with battle aura.
It was a slash aimed at Boris's side.
Boris tried to raise the shaft of the great hammer to block it.
But even that was exactly what Carl had been counting on.
‘Fortunately, his movements themselves are simple.’
Changing its trajectory, the blade passed beneath the shaft and sliced through Boris's thigh.
A stream of blood splattered across the floor.
“Oh?”
Boris's eyes widened.
“I didn't notice when you were getting beaten in prison, but you had skills like this?”
With those words, Boris swung the hammer again.
At the same time.
The gaunt mage Igor began chanting to support Boris from behind.
But the moment his lips began to move.
“Ventus.”
Wind first rose from Valeria's staff.
It was beginner wind magic.
Of course, as a beginner spell, its destructive power was negligible.
But it still carried enough force to knock out even an adult man if it struck him unguarded in the jaw.
The gaunt mage Igor tilted his head back to evade the wind.
But Valeria was not disappointed that it missed.
Her goal was not to subdue Igor.
Igor tried chanting again.
“Dra——”
“Ventus.”
Her only goal was to disrupt the black mage's incantation.
No matter how high-ranking a mage was, casting magic without an incantation would still be a considerable burden.
Valeria was simply taking advantage of that and doing everything she could.
“…Clever.”
Igor, recognizing her intention, calmly praised Valeria.
While Carl took on Boris and Valeria took on Igor.
Click.
Hidden in the shadows, Freya quietly checked the revolver's cylinder.
A sanctified silver bullet.
The bullet said to have assassinated a count-level noble in the past and defeated a second-rank black mage.
‘I have to hit him properly.’
Her target was the first-rank mage, Igor.
Once the mage was down, Freya joining in would be enough to handle the brute.
Freya steadied her breathing.
After confirming once more that Igor's gaze was focused on Valeria.
She quietly aimed at the center of his chest.
And the moment Valeria's wind cut off Igor's incantation.
Bang!
The gunshot tore through the corridor.
The silver bullet flew straight and lodged in Igor's chest.
Igor's upper body bent sharply backward after taking the bullet head-on.
“Igor!”
Boris, the brute wielding the hammer, was thrown into confusion by the fact that Igor had been hit.
Carl did not miss the opening.
Thud!
The sword pierced through the brute's abdomen.
It was over.
A look of certainty flashed through Freya's glacier-colored eyes.
At least, that was what she thought until Igor, staggering as if he were about to fall backward, slowly raised his head.
“Huh?”
“Hngh… No matter how many times I get hit, I never get used to this pain.”
Igor spat the unlit cigarette from his mouth onto the floor.
The chest where the silver bullet was lodged was perfectly clean.
Looking closely, the bullet had stopped as if something in front of his chest had blocked it.
The gaunt mage picked up the silver bullet that had stopped at his chest.
“…You use expensive bullets.”
Black things poured out from inside Igor's robe.
Bugs.
They were black beetles the size of fingernails, just like the ones that had blocked Boris's neck earlier.
The bugs densely covered Igor's chest.
Dozens of beetles that touched the silver burned away with a hissing sound.
And that was all.
Igor himself did not have a single scratch.
Igor dropped the silver bullet to the floor.
“The operation itself was excellent. For students with no combat experience, that coordination was remarkably well planned.”
Igor slowly, leisurely applauded.
“But in the end, it's still at a student's level.”
Snap.
His applause stopped.
“I don't know where a young lady got such an expensive bullet, but I suppose that's what comes of being a noble. Owning something and knowing how to use it are different things.”
Crunch.
The mage stepped down hard on the silver bullet rolling across the floor.
“How many mages do you think this bullet has killed so far? Do you really think mages wouldn't have prepared countermeasures for it, young lady?”
The moment she heard that, a fact flashed through Freya's mind.
In the past.
Back when Erica had told her about defeating a black mage with a silver bullet.
Freya had harbored one question at the time.
Why had Otto and Wangcho been made to fire the gun instead of Julian?
Why had they not pulled the trigger while the black mage was chanting?
Igor was giving her the answer.
“At the very least, you should have waited for the moment a mage had exhausted his mana or was hit by backlash immediately after casting a spell. Failing that, you could have infused the bullet with battle aura.”
A silver bullet has no effect unless it hits its target directly.
Mages who knew that naturally prepared some kind of countermeasure.
In Igor's case, he had used the bugs he controlled as sacrifices.
“You understand far too little about the bullets you use, young lady.”
Then a strange sound came from Boris's side.
Bzzzzzz.
It was coming from Boris's abdomen, which Carl had just pierced.
Freya turned her head.
Carl's battle aura-infused sword had clearly pierced Boris's belly.
The tip protruding from his back made that certain.
Yet with the blade still lodged inside him, Boris's flesh was writhing.
The flesh soon bulged upward and pushed the blade out.
The hole vanished, and the skin fused back together.
Carl regripped the sword that had been forced out and took two steps back.
“I've never heard of enhancement surgery like this.”
Boris chuckled.
Then he tapped the tattoo on his left arm with one finger.
“Enhancement surgery, brat? When did I ever say that?”
Boris's body began to change.
Scales sprouted across his skin.
His arms thickened, and his fingernails split and sharpened into claws.
A tail rose from his back.
“I wonder if you've ever heard of a chimera procedure.”
His vertically slit pupils reflected the light of the mana-stone lamp.
Valeria reacted immediately.
She pushed Ellie toward the wall and aimed her staff at the lizard brute.
“Prutinis”
The incantation was completed on her lips.
But the magic did not take shape.
Mana flowed, the formula was precise, and the conditions were met.
It even had the necessary symbolism.
Yet no miracle formed at the tip of the staff.
Why?
She had followed the conditions and symbolism, but——
While Valeria was flustered, Boris's tail swept horizontally.
Toward Valeria and Ellie.
Carl instinctively leaped in front of the two of them.
He raised his sword to block it, but the mass of the scale-covered tail was beyond what the top student in the Swordsmanship Department could handle.
Thud.
With a dull sound, Carl's body was sent flying into the air.
Carl spun once in midair and slammed back-first into the wall at the end of the corridor.
“Senior Carl!”
Freya screamed.
The hand gripping Valeria's staff trembled.
‘Why isn't it working? Why?’
A hoarse voice pierced Valeria's panic-stricken consciousness.
“Didn't I tell you? It's at a student's level.”
Valeria turned her head.
Igor was slowly waving one finger.
Slowly from side to side, like a metronome.
“To a mage, knowledge is power. At your level, you couldn't even tell what condition I changed.”
Valeria's face stiffened.
Dispel.
A technique that secretly changes conditions and symbols unknown to the opponent, rendering their magic ineffective.
She knew about it in theory.
But she had never encountered it in a student-level spar, much less experienced it in real combat.
“When facing a mage of higher rank, concealing your formula comes first. Do they not teach this in upper school anymore?”
Igor took out another unlit cigarette and put it in his mouth.
“Wind and ice are your specialties, I assume. Easy enough to tell. You flung magic around far too freely. If everything could be solved by interrupting incantations with beginner spells, why would mages bother learning intermediate magic?”
In fights between mages, one decisive blow was important.
The more spells they used, the more their favored conditions and symbols were exposed.
For mages whose weapon was the gap in knowledge, the longer a fight lasted, the more fatally their specialties were exposed.
That was why mages only brought out their true abilities when they were certain they could land a fatal blow.
Like Igor now.
“After forcing magic out that recklessly, you're probably starting to feel dizzy.”
As Igor said, Valeria staggered.
It was mana sickness.
On top of repeatedly using beginner spells that partially disrupted her earlier incantations, she had suffered the backlash from her final spell failing.
No matter how basic the spells were, she could not have any mana left after firing them off so recklessly.
“Looks like you've never been through a real battle.”
“Why explain every little thing to me, Igor? Did you finally discover a passion for teaching after being expelled?”
The lizard-man, who had been listening quietly to Igor, grumbled while picking at his ear.
Igor paused for a moment.
“…Even so, I was sincere when I was teaching.”
“I'm sure you were.”
“You wouldn't understand. The feeling when a talented student understood my lessons. You can never taste something like that in this line of work.”
“The guy who ran away because he couldn't stand watching his students surpass him sure has a lot to say.”
Crack.
Igor ground his teeth and glared at Boris.
The lizard-man smirked and raised his middle finger.
“Enough. Finish this quickly. The flames upstairs should be coming all the way down soon. What about the young lady?”
“It won't deviate far from the original plan.”
The hooded mage's gaze turned toward Freya.
“We'll deal with the rest. As for the young lady… persuasion seems impossible, so we'll erase her memories at the hideout and send her back.”
“What a nuisance.”
“If the baron pursues us to the end, it'll be troublesome.”
“No kidding.”
Boris raised the great hammer vertically.
His target was Carl, collapsed against the wall.
Carl's breathing was ragged.
Every time he inhaled, a harsh, splitting sound escaped from deep within his chest.
Beside Carl was the girl who had been crouching there until just moments ago.
“Carl! Try to breathe! What do we do?”
“Hngh… khurk….”
“His breathing… What do we do…? What did Director Shun say to do in a situation like this…?”
Ellie, who had been unable to move after being overcome by the opium dust, had somehow crawled to Carl's side.
Tapping her head, Ellie desperately tried to remember something.
Soon, her hand began moving over Carl's chest.
Then Freya stepped in front of Boris as though protecting the two of them.
“You won't get past me.”
Glacier-colored mana rose from the muzzle of Freya's pistol.
Boris frowned as if annoyed and looked back at Igor.
“Igor. Can't you dispel this too? This is getting more and more tiresome.”
Igor shook his head.
“Arcane magic.”
“So?”
“Dispelling it is impossible. It must use conditions readable only by those who can inherit that family's bloodline. Why else would it be arcane magic?”
“Fuck. Nobles are a pain in the ass wherever they go.”
Resting the great hammer on his shoulder, Boris looked down at Freya.
The lizard's vertically slit pupils met Freya's glacier-colored eyes.
“Just let me ask you one thing, young lady.”
There was no hostility in Boris's voice.
“Are they really worth risking your life to protect? I've never seen school seniors and juniors this close.”
Freya answered without hesitation.
“You don't protect someone because they're precious.”
One person flashed through her mind.
The one person she admired beyond words, the only person who spread goodwill through this dark world.
His selfless kindness had saved countless bonds, and had saved Freya too.
The girl who had grown up watching that miracle by his side said,
“You protect them, and they become precious. Bonds don't even begin unless someone reaches out first.”
She wanted to keep following in his footsteps forever.
That was why she could not retreat now.
The man she knew would surely have done the same.
“….”
Boris's eyebrows rose.
A brief silence filled the corridor.
Haa….
The lizard's deep sigh echoed through the corridor.
“As long as they're still breathing, the elders will take care of the rest.”
He raised the great hammer again.
In response, Freya placed her finger on the trigger.
Then it happened.
The voice Freya had wanted so badly to hear rang through the corridor.
“I agree with that, Miss Freya.”
“Ignus tacto.”
A low incantation cut into the familiar voice.
Whoosh!
A scarlet stream of fire came down the stairs from the second floor and engulfed Igor and Boris.
The entire corridor grew hot with the flames.
Freya's cheek grew hot.
But despite being exposed to the heat from this close, not one of the students was burned.
It was impossible to gauge the delicacy of the spellwork or the extent of the exceptions built into the flames.
“Igor!”
“I know.”
Beetles poured out of the walls and ceiling.
Hundreds of beetles formed a wall in front of Igor and Boris.
The beetles burned as they absorbed the flames.
Sizzle——
The smell of burning beetles filled the corridor.
The flames subsided.
But the price had been high.
“Tsk… I used up half of them.”
More than half of Igor's beetles had been reduced to ash.
With hollow eyes, he looked toward the end of the corridor.
“You confirmed my rank and, rather than display your own magic, used the fire that was already here. Excellent judgment.”
“Why are you impressed by every little thing, asshole?”
“Be careful, Boris. They're accustomed to combat between mages. Even if my rank is higher, we could still be caught off guard.”
By then, the door by the exit had opened.
Men in black combat uniforms were walking in.
The Ironclad crest was emblazoned on their chests.
Wearing gas masks, they spread out in perfect formation.
The sound of their military boots striking the stone floor rang out at regular intervals.
And at the head of the unit, two men walked out side by side.
One of them held a magic device connected to a huge apparatus and a nozzle, something that looked almost like a gun.
Chief Shen.
“I came after receiving word from House Nihirit, young lady.”
The chief of Ironclad lightly saluted Freya, then stepped aside.
The man standing beside him stepped forward.
A man in a suit and fedora, entirely out of place on a battlefield.
The brim of his hat covered the upper half of his face, leaving only his jawline and lips visible.
Valeria's eyes widened.
“Director Shun…?”
The man in the fedora—Shun Isa—slightly lifted the brim of his hat.
“Sorry I'm late. The fairies wouldn't say a word, so it took a while to coax them.”
Freya thought Shun Isa winked at her from beneath the brim of his deeply pulled-down hat.