The Lightning Mage
A mage of the Lightning Academy.
His hair scattered a golden radiance through the air around him, the color of lightning itself. The sheer mass of mana rolling off his body made the truth obvious. This was no apprentice. This was a proper mage, one a Neophyte like me could not begin to compare himself to.
My Third Eye took him in.
The vast mana nested inside him spilled outward of its own accord, throwing off faint sparks. I could see it clearly — the seed in his inner world had already sprouted, its head pushing up through the soil. From that alone I could roughly gauge his rank.
A Theoricus. Third tier of the Assiah realm.
A mage two full stages above me. For a mage, a difference in rank was a difference in existence itself. The odds of my beating him as a mage converged on zero.
"Haa. Of course they dump all the grunt work on me."
A thoroughly fed-up reaction spilled out of him.
"I step a little out of line with the academy and this is how they jerk me around?"
He lifted a finger, irritation plain on his face. Lightning sparked at the tip and gathered into a round sphere. The sphere rotated slowly, surveying the surroundings, then stopped dead, pointing in a single direction.
"This way, is it?"
He started walking at a leisurely pace.
"Those damned half-baked Dawn Constellation bastards. I'll make them pay for being such a pain in my ass."
My face went rigid at those next words.
The name that had left his mouth. Dawn Constellation. There was no way I wouldn't recognize it.
Mages who hunt mages.
The organization Dreygan had joined in his bid to become a mage was the Dawn Constellation. In that instant I felt the puzzle pieces in my head click into place, one after another — including why Wolfgar had been found here.
Dreygan was here.
Wolfgar had taken what happened with Dreygan, and what happened with Maria, as his own responsibility. It wasn't anything he could have done a thing about, but it had sat in his chest all this time, knotted and festering. Then, in the middle of all that, he had happened to see Dreygan. Wolfgar could never have just let him walk away.
He came out of the Monster Front and chased him all the way here?
But he must have been discovered during the pursuit. Wolfgar's skill was excellent, but his opponents were the Dawn Constellation — mages. He would never have stood a chance against them.
Dreygan recognized Wolfgar, so he stopped it there and left him behind.
The Dawn Constellation had no reason to leave Wolfgar alive. But if Dreygan had held them back, that was a different story. They couldn't afford to have their activities exposed, so they had simply knocked Wolfgar's mind out of him and gone. It was even possible Wolfgar would come back to himself naturally, given enough time. No matter how much Dreygan had changed because of Maria, he was not a man who would cross that line with a disciple he had trained himself. Instead, the memories of Dreygan would have been wiped clean — a precaution, so Wolfgar couldn't go around talking.
Once my thoughts reached that point, everything made sense. Understanding it and leaving Wolfgar alone, however, were two different things. Everything I had just pieced together was only a hypothesis. There was every chance Wolfgar would never recover his mind at all.
I have to follow them.
From the looks of it, the Lightning Academy mage intended to hunt the Dawn Constellation. If I tailed him, I would learn something about them as well.
The moment that thought took shape—
"So."
The mage walking ahead of me opened his mouth. Between the dense old trees, his head cocked at a crooked angle and tipped toward me.
"What are you?"
Caught.
A chill raced from my gut to the crown of my skull — the alarm of danger, screaming. It was a sensation that proved every opponent I had faced until now had been meaningless. A proper mage. A Theoricus. I understood, all over again, what a mage who had reached that rank truly was.
I had suppressed my presence with mana down to the absolute limit. And he had still found me. That meant the gap in mana detection alone was already that wide.
I stopped hiding, pushed slowly through the brush, and stepped forward. The mage's eyes met mine. He raised an eyebrow and looked me up and down.
"A mage, huh?"
"...A pleasure to meet you, senior. I'm an apprentice mage. Haron."
I deliberately didn't give my real name. There was no reason he would know it, but there was nothing to gain by handing him something to connect the dots with.
At my manner, the mage planted a hand on his hip and cocked himself at a slant.
"An apprentice. A Neophyte, is it? Strange. Judging by the amount of mana you're carrying, you seem like more than a Neophyte."
This mage had a sharp eye. So he hadn't reached Theoricus by accident. Sweat beaded on the inside of my palms. Sernida hadn't been in her right state, so she didn't count. This was the first time I was facing a real mage who wasn't an ally.
"It's my constitution."
"Constitution, huh. I see."
He didn't find it particularly strange once I called it a constitution. Meaning people like me weren't entirely unheard of.
"Right. So what were you doing out here?"
His eyes, though, never stopped radiating suspicion. A gaze mixed with pressure, as if asking what the hell I really was. The aura of mana flowing from those eyes squeezed my body — the sensation of being crushed by nothing but the gap between mages. The pressure of being told, as a living thing, that you were a different class of existence. I had felt this before, from Zorbanof.
"I'm an independent mage, pursuing the Dawn Constellation for personal reasons. I arrived here and was waiting, and then you showed up, senior. I thought you were with the Dawn Constellation and hid on instinct."
The mage stared at me steadily. Eyes trying to judge whether I was telling the truth. But I hadn't lied. I really was pursuing the Dawn Constellation that Dreygan belonged to.
After watching me for a long while, the mage lifted a hand and scratched vigorously at his hair.
"Right, I see. Well, those bastards are the public enemy of every mage."
And then the harshness in his face eased. Had he actually bought it?
"An independent mage, you said?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Must've been rough on your own. Training alone without joining an academy isn't easy. Impressive."
Before I knew it, the mage was wearing a good-natured smile. Mages generally tried to avoid clashing with other mages. I was starting to understand a little of what Zorbanof had told me. Mages tried to resolve matters between themselves as amicably as possible. Which was why a question occurred to me.
"Did it not occur to you that I might be a member of the Dawn Constellation myself?"
"Those half-wits?"
The mage snorted at my words.
"No chance. Not a chance. Those guys are half-baked. They're an embarrassment to even call mages. Closer to the pathetic flailing of monkeys, if anything."
The Dawn Constellation's reputation among mages was even worse than I had thought.
"You, on the other hand, manifested a complete world. Unlike those half-baked bastards, you're a mage like me. You're a mage, so you know, don't you? How hollow a half-formed world really is."
A half-formed world was a world that would collapse in the end. No matter how much you piled onto it to keep it standing, it would only crumble — a meaningless world. I couldn't say I didn't understand why he put it that way.
"But something's off."
The mage smiled with his eyes even as he watched me carefully.
"Someone who's been hunting the Dawn Constellation would know perfectly well that I'd never mistake them for one of those people."
He hit the nail on the head. This was my mistake — I hadn't known the Dawn Constellation well enough. Tension climbed up my body, but I forced it back down.
"Aside from the master who taught me, I've never met a proper mage senior before. I thought my own level was so lacking that you might mistake me, senior."
"Ah, right. I didn't account for how an independent mage would've lived. Well, if you've never seen a mage other than half-wits like the Dawn Constellation, I suppose you might think that."
The mage waved a hand dismissively, saying he'd almost misunderstood. Every one of those gestures felt like he was testing me. But that went both ways. Just as he was watching me carefully, I was watching him just as carefully.
If this man had been the one who did that to Wolfgar, I might not have held back. But...
The one who had done that to Wolfgar was Dreygan, a member of the Dawn Constellation. This man had nothing to do with it. Showing hostility to someone uninvolved would be a breach of principle. Of course, if he crossed a line, I wouldn't hold back. For now, we were only suspicious of each other, only wary. Neither side had a reason to make the first move.
"Do you intend to pursue the Dawn Constellation, senior?"
"Looks like it. Originally our academy wouldn't have paid them much mind. But a problem came up around yesterday."
"A problem?"
"The Mage of Ruin appeared."
That was about me. I felt a guilty twinge, but I didn't let it show.
"Ah, an independent mage might not know?"
"Yes. I'm a bit out of touch with how the world is turning."
"Zorbanof, the Mage of Ruin. A terrifying old man who wiped out who knows how many academies. Word got out that he'd shown up again, and the elders — those heavy-assed old men — completely lost it."
The mage rolled his shoulders, complaining that it had become a nuisance. For me, though, this was good news. That had been the whole point of disguising myself as Zorbanof. To put the fear of him into the mages. That purpose had landed perfectly.
"So they sent me out to resolve anything even remotely suspicious, just like that. And I don't even have enough time to train as it is."
"Sounds like you've had a rough time of it."
"That's exactly it. They sent me to beat down even the Dawn Constellation, who we've ignored our whole lives. Those Dawn Constellation bastards were poking around and hiding here and there, and once they found out, they started running in a hurry."
So the Dawn Constellation's sudden movement had been because of me? I could see just how massive the impact of Zorbanof's appearance really was. Just how far had our master gone in his heyday, destroying things? There was no telling.
"But you know. The way I see it, there's no way the Mage of Ruin actually showed up."
In that moment, the mage offered a different opinion. His eyes were clearly smiling, bright and cheerful. But his body radiated a bloodthirst he couldn't hide.
"He's a crazy old man, sure, but there's no reason he'd come back now just to mess with the academies again. Back then he destroyed those schools because he had a grudge. The Fire School and the Thunder School don't have much to do with that."
He said this as he slowly approached me.
"So I thought this: what if some mage out there is impersonating the Mage of Ruin?"
The mage arrived in front of me. He faced me and raised a finger, pointing it straight at my chest.
"Say, an independent mage nobody's ever seen, who just happens to show up at this exact moment."
I see. This mage had intended to suspect me and drag me in from the very beginning. Everything he had said before was just probing. There hadn't been a shred of sincerity in any of it.
"Senior. May I ask your name?"
"Anon Urdra. Why do you want to know my name?"
"You're the first mage I'll be facing as an opponent."
A crimson current of killing intent whipped around him — the result of the bloodlust flowing from me colliding with his.
"I ought to at least know your name, don't you think?"
"Haha."
Anon looked at me and laughed, as if he found it entertaining. Then in an instant he dropped the laugh and his face went cold.
Don't worry. Those teeth will be buried in that throat soon enough.