Quite the Atmosphere
BOOM! CRASH! THUUUD!
Leon’s eyes bulged as he hammered at the chamber door. His prized Halito Forge dagger carved countless arcs through the air. Explosions erupted with every strike, blue sparks flashing and scattering in every direction.
What the hell is this thing made of?
The sheer hardness caught him off guard. It was only a dagger, sure — but it was wreathed in sword qi. Dragon mana had saturated the blade, making the qi at least twice as powerful as before. And yet the solid alloy door was absurdly tough. Thick gouges appeared, the metal dented inward, but it refused to break in any meaningful way.
Or maybe the bastards who locked me in reinforced it somehow.
Muttering to himself, Leon swung the dagger even harder.
BOOOOOOM—!!
By now the other students had figured out the situation. They were trapped. No one outside was coming to help. And they needed to escape — fast.
BANG! CRASH! THUD-THUD-THUD!!
The doors of the Dragon Heart Chambers holding the martial arts students shook violently. Everyone poured mana into their strikes, pounding the doors with everything they had. The magic department students, meanwhile, could do little more than hop from foot to foot in frustration. They could still raise their mana, but no spells would form.
Aria was in the same boat. Combat mage or not, she couldn’t cast physical enhancement magic under these conditions.
Shit.
Realizing this, Leon’s movements grew even more frantic.
“Magic department, hang on just a little longer! We’ll get these open and come help you!”
Carotin’s shout rang out between the explosions. The magic students held the toxic dust at bay by releasing bursts of mana pressure — every one of them was at least skilled enough for that.
BOOM!
At last Leon managed to cave in the area around the door handle, prying open a narrow gap. Three finger-widths of warped iron plate bent outward. He jammed the tip of his dagger into the crack and shoved with everything he had.
“Hrrrngh!”
The muscles in his arms swelled. Veins stood out along his neck. His newly reborn body and freshly replenished energy produced terrifying raw strength.
SKREEEEEEECH—!!
With a rending screech, the sliding door slowly forced open. A narrow gap was all he needed. Why bother opening the whole thing? Leon turned sideways, flattened himself, and slipped cleanly through.
Outside, the scene in the Dragon Heart Chamber corridor filled his eyes. The mages who managed this place, the warriors assigned as guards — all of them were gone without a trace.
They took them all out?
The question rose in Leon’s mind. Those people had been fairly skilled. But there was no time to dwell on it.
KRA-KOOM!
One of the chamber doors two rooms over blew open with a massive explosion. What burst through from the other side was a blade wrapped in threads of blue mana.
Sword Thread?
Billy emerged from inside in a stance nearly identical to Leon’s.
When the hell did he reach upper Expert…?
Leon was inwardly stunned, but he still shouted at Billy.
“Billy! Get the magic students out first!”
“Understood.”
Billy sprinted off with a calm expression and began slicing through chamber doors with his Sword Thread. Leon, for his part, ran straight to Aria’s room. Freeing her first was the most efficient move.
The chambers were enormous cages of solid steel. Strange characters and magic circles had been carved into the outer walls, drinking in mana and glowing with a dark light. Every room was the same.
So this is the anti-magic formula? Looks like black magic.
There was no way these engravings had been here originally. The attackers who orchestrated this must have put them in place. Since the doors had been locked from the outside, Leon had hoped he might be able to mess with the locking mechanism —
Nothing.
It wasn’t visible. They’d sealed the doors with magic as well. In the end, Leon went back to his dagger.
“Just hang on a second!”
And then —
SKREEEEECH—!
He forced the door open even faster than before.
“Hm.”
Need to push it a little wider.
He had to make the gap broader than the one he’d used. Difference in body structure — Aria’s upper body was catching on the edges.
“Master!”
Aria squeezed herself through, wriggling and straining until she popped free.
“You…?”
Leon’s eyes went wide as he looked at the area around her heart.
“Yes, that’s right! I’ll explain later!”
Able to use magic again, Aria coiled blue lightning around both hands as she spoke. Leon nodded and sprinted toward the other rooms — the ones holding magic department students. Celia, Carotin, and Esabel looked like they’d break free on their own soon enough even without help; their doors were already creaking and falling to pieces.
“Step back from the door a bit!”
Leon called a warning to the student inside.
“O-okay…!”
The terrified, high-pitched voice told him exactly who it was.
Liana, was it?
Good thing he’d warned her.
BANG! CRUNCH! BOOM!
“Hup!”
SKREEEEEEECH—!!
“Come on out.”
“Thank you…!”
Liana emerged as well. In the meantime Billy had rescued two more magic students, and Aria had pulled out one more. The martial arts students came out in order — Esabel, then Celia, then Carotin. Together they hauled out the last remaining magic student.
All ten students, successfully escaped, gathered in the central common area.
“How bad is it?”
Leon asked, looking at Diel from the magic department. Diel had been a little slow to react at the start and had gotten the toxic dust on his shoulder.
“It hurts like hell.”
Diel grimaced and pulled the fabric away from his shoulder. Liana’s face twisted the moment she saw the wound.
“Hmm.”
Leon rummaged through his subspace pouch for a potion. Not just the clothes — the flesh itself had completely melted away. That much damage from less than a second of contact. If someone’s entire body had been engulfed in that dust, death would have been certain.
“How could something like this happen in the First District…?”
Esabel bit down on her lip, looking lost. Never mind how the attackers had even infiltrated this deep — going by her words alone, this was an outrageously bold assassination attempt.
Leon turned.
“Aria, how’s it looking?”
Aria, who had been standing with her eyes closed and both hands sweeping through the empty air, murmured,
“Teleportation magic is blocked again. The range seems to cover the entire Dragon Heart Palace.”
“Figures.”
That meant all spatial magic — Blink, Teleport, and the like — had been sealed off. If it hadn’t been, additional forces would have poured in the instant something went wrong at the palace.
“Your Highness. From the looks of it, everyone inside the Dragon Heart Palace was taken out a while ago. How long do you think it’ll take for reinforcements to reach us?”
The Dragon Heart Palace sat on the outer edge even within the First District.
“Around fifteen minutes, I’d say. Ten if we’re lucky. They’d need to mobilize at least a knight order, after all.”
“Plenty of time for whoever did this to finish the job and disappear.”
“……True.”
“So you’re thinking of catching the culprits?”
Carotin asked. Leon nodded.
“Yeah. I at least want a look at their faces. These are the bastards who tried to kill me.”
“Th-that… isn’t that too dangerous?”
“Dunno.”
Leon shrugged at Liana’s concern. The warriors stationed at the Dragon Heart Palace had been skilled, sure — but not on the level of the students standing here. Five martial arts students plus Aria made for a formidable force.
“If these killers were really confident in a straight fight, they would’ve just opened the doors and done it by hand. No reason to go through all the trouble of laying down magic and spraying poison.”
“That’s…… a fair point.”
Everyone agreed with that assessment.
“The way I see it, they’re still underground.”
“Underground?”
“Yeah. Where the Dragon Heart is.”
“Ah…!”
Below lay the control room that managed the entire Dragon Heart Palace — and the Dragon Heart itself. The assassination attempt looked secondary. Seizing the Dragon Heart seemed to be the attackers’ real objective. And to dump toxic powder into the pipes connected to the Dragon Heart Chambers, they would have needed to seize the control room first.
Leon drew up the surplus energy surging through him. Vitality roared through every inch of his body.
“I’m going on ahead.”
“Wait, together—”
Fwt—!
His form blurred like a phantom and vanished.
Leon tore through the wide corridors. He was running at arrow-like speed, yet not even the faintest whisper of displaced air escaped him. Between the Karaz Breathing Technique and the Heavenly Escape Steps, he had erased every trace of his presence.
Wonder what kind of bastards these are.
He kicked off a wall to take a sharp right-angle corner and kept thinking. Infiltrating the capital’s inner citadel, deploying high-level magic, and silently slaughtering Expert-class warriors without making a sound — organizations with that kind of guts and skill weren’t common.
Leon clicked his tongue and searched for a staircase leading down. He didn’t know the layout well, but he knew the Dragon Heart was kept on the lowest level.
The further down he went, the thicker the scent of blood became. There were also traces of people moving hurriedly in one direction. Those traces served as his guideposts.
This is it.
At last the entrance to the control room appeared. The pure white double doors stood slightly ajar. Red liquid speckled the floor beneath them in scattered droplets. Through the gap, a strangely settled darkness waited. Not a single sound of living movement came from within. The heavy stench of death drifted out in waves.
Quite the atmosphere.
Leon grinned.
He reversed his grip on both daggers, smothered his presence even further, and stepped inside.