Artifact
Thenic, the most seasoned of the crew, had become a headless corpse. His instincts had been the sharpest, so he'd found the mage first — and died the most gruesomely for it.
Marvin's gaze shifted from Thenic's body to Joseph. The man who had taken the staff from that trembling fake mage was looking down at them with a gaze as cold as ice.
He's different.
The air around him was nothing like the vain, pretentious mages Marvin had seen in the past.
That's a Combat Mage...?
Thenic's warnings flashed through his mind — those monsters who could tear a man apart in the blink of an eye. No. This mage was something else entirely. He wasn't a cannon that incinerated every enemy in sight with overwhelming firepower. He had laid traps across the entire village, and then more traps beyond those, like a hunter driving beasts into a snare. He'd set the board, then sat behind it and waited, barely even breathing.
Joseph crushed a few more of them with a massive slab of ice, his expression utterly unbothered. So much for being a fire mage.
At that icy voice, Marvin held his breath without even realizing it. The other survivors did the same.
A metallic clink.
Not a single one of them had the nerve to tighten their grip on a sword hilt after that.
When it was over, three bandits remained. One with a swollen, snake-like face. A small one sniffling beneath a fallen corpse. And one scowling fiercely, a broken arm dangling at his side.
Refn argued they should be beheaded on the spot, but the villagers were against it.
"Mage. You mustn't simply kill them."
"Leave them to us. We'll handle it."
The bandits had been camped near the village for a long time, and the residents had suffered for it. They had no intention of letting this go. Even so, their manner was extremely cautious.
"I-if the mage would permit it, of course..."
They'd just watched a man's head explode in front of them. If they rubbed him the wrong way, there was no guarantee they wouldn't be next. Even saying that much had taken courage.
Joseph didn't particularly care what happened to the bandits, so he told them to do as they pleased. The three were stripped naked and bound in front of the village chief's house. Even the children and the women came out to stomp on them.
Looks like they'll be executed at first light.
It was a bit brutal, but they'd come here intending to kill people. They had it coming.
"What's the damage among the villagers?"
"Three dead, and a few more with sword wounds."
The three who'd died had ignored Joseph's plan and charged in on their own. Joseph nodded. For an assault by a bandit crew of over ten, the casualties weren't bad. No houses had burned, so the villagers could handle the rest themselves.
More importantly...
Joseph looked at the men bound in front of the chief's house. There had been quite a few bandits in the attack. That meant they'd gathered people on purpose. It was overkill for a raid on a village as small as Kutna.
They were after me from the start.
When the bandits had fallen into chaos, the sharp-eyed one had gone looking for Joseph first. That meant they'd known a mage was here beforehand. He'd been wiping out every bandit he came across on the way south. Word must have spread, and they'd learned of his presence.
If they'd succeeded, they could've looted our wagon and the village in one go.
Joseph's staff alone was something you wouldn't find just anywhere. Even a rough estimate would put it at a fortune. A chance to turn your life around in one score, rather than through honest labor. People losing their minds over a gamble — that was the same in any world.
Revenge for their dead? There was no way it was anything that grand. Anyone with that kind of sentiment wouldn't have taken up banditry in the first place.
Joseph let out a small sigh.
I got lucky.
He'd realized that wiping out bandits wasn't as easy as he'd thought. After hunting northern demonic beasts and beating an old mage, he'd started taking them a little too lightly. But these were humans — a group of humans. Even in an era without proper education, when people gathered, there were always a few with decent brains. Just as Joseph had lured the sharp-eyed one, they'd been planning to kill Joseph first.
They were more cunning than I expected.
If Refn hadn't spotted those footprints, it would have been Joseph caught off-guard by a midnight raid. He wouldn't have died, but the damage would have been severe. And there wasn't even a priest here. A single badly treated cut could fester and kill you. The image of himself coughing up blood and dying in the street made him shudder.
The disguise won't work anymore.
Word of a mage going around wiping out bandits wouldn't have stayed with just this crew. Pretending to be a traveler and striking first, the way he had before, would be hard to pull off now. That meant from here on, he'd have to go looking for them himself. Raise the banner of the Lord of Valois and hunt them down in the open.
But...
Joseph's gaze shifted to the soldiers. They were collecting the stolen goods that had been distributed to the villagers, carefully checking every scratch. Those goods had originally been items Joseph had handed over to them, after all.
Too few men.
Just five soldiers. In any real fight, they'd all have to put their lives on the line. Were the castle soldiers actually prepared to die for this bandit hunt? Not a chance. They were doing it because the pay was decent and they needed to eat. They were following orders from above, nothing more. They'd be itching to head back at the first opportunity.
This isn't even their home. They're not going to risk their lives for it.
And more than anything, Joseph felt the same way. He'd taken a considerable sum of gold coins and the Book of Wind in exchange for hunting bandits. But that didn't mean he'd signed up to throw his life away. Joseph had no sense of duty toward the Valois Territory. He wasn't from this village, wasn't even from this region. Viscount Folmers probably wasn't expecting that much of him anyway.
Well. I'll just do what I was paid for.
Exactly as much as he'd received. That was how a deal worked. Do more than that, and you're just a sucker.
He'd already taken down this many bandits, and word of a mage had spread. Most of them wouldn't dare set up shop along the roads for a while.
I just need to wrap up the Malešov business.
Meet up with Auger, deal with the bandits supposedly gathering nearby, and then leave the territory. That was the plan.
Dawn came, and the remaining bandits were executed at the villagers' hands. As expected, the method wasn't particularly clean. They beat them with clubs until they were minced meat. When one passed out, they threw water on him to wake him up. Among those holding clubs was a man whose wife hadn't come home the night before. He hit them the most.
The stolen goods the bandits had been carrying were loaded onto Joseph's wagon. A few of the villagers looked disappointed, but they all shrank back at a glance from the village chief. Once the rain stopped, Joseph headed straight north of the village to check the bandits' camp. After collecting everything they'd left behind as well, the wagon was packed to bursting.
At that point, the soldiers started watching Joseph's face again. They couldn't not. He'd said they could take the loot, but there was just so much of it. A powerful man's generosity was something you accepted in moderation. Gobble it all down without reading the room, and you might get beaten and thrown out. Joseph knew this, so he decided to take half. No reason to refuse when they were offering it themselves.
The wagon left the village and headed south again. Unlike before, the number of bandits had dropped off noticeably. Not even a shadow of a person in sight. Word about Joseph had spread faster than any of them had imagined. Thanks to that, Joseph spent most of the day sitting in the wagon, researching magic.
The rain had stopped, so he couldn't study wind magic. Instead, he went through Zallier's Grimoire. He'd just acquired a new artifact that halted the flow of mana, and he wanted to find a way to control that rope that activated on its own. If he could also find a method to repair the mana recovery artifact while he was at it, even better.
When manufacturing an artifact, it is essential to understand the nature inherent to each object.
The direction, intensity, and strength of the mana's flow will differ according to an object's properties.
Only by imbuing the desired spell into a properly combined object can a more perfect artifact be completed.
What the fuck is this supposed to mean?
Reading more carefully, artifacts seemed closer to alchemy than magic. A mage combined materials like assembling a puzzle, then inscribed a spell on top. That was how you created a special object capable of using a particular spell. If you inscribed Fire onto a perfectly combined stone, theoretically, other people would be able to use Fire at range the same way Joseph did. In theory, at least.
So that rope was a failed combination?
They'd managed to complete the spell that halted the flow of mana, but they hadn't found a material that could hold the inscription perfectly. That was why it reacted on its own to the slightest stimulus. It couldn't be controlled.
Then what about the gem...?
Joseph pulled the mana recovery artifact from his coat. There was a crack across the gem's surface, and it no longer glittered the way it used to, even when he touched it.
The object itself is broken.
If he could just make an identical gem, in the identical shape...
No. I don't even know a mana recovery spell.
Even with the perfect material, he didn't know the spell to inscribe. Not for the rope, not for the gem. There was no solution for now.
Joseph clicked his tongue and flipped to another page. A little further in, he found the actual method for inscribing magic onto objects.
To inscribe a spell upon an artifact, one must be able to manifest magic from the fingertips, even if only for a moment.
It may appear simple at a glance, but this requires countless hours of practice, and in some cases decades.
For a mage, by nature, completes magic only within the body.
Joseph's eyebrow twitched at those words.
This...
Joseph could draw mana out of his body and shape it into a sphere. He could even convert it into a different spell from that state. And that was something Rophen had clearly said other mages found difficult.
Joseph immediately produced a Mana Orb. Then he grabbed a random piece of loot from nearby — an old key the bandits had been carrying.
"Fire."
"Imbue."
⟨ Enchant ⟩
He recited the words exactly as written in the grimoire, then cast the imbuing spell without hesitation.
A thin, hissing rush of air — and the Mana Orb vanished, sucked into the key in an instant.
"..."
A moment later, heat rose from the key's surface, and it began to glow cherry-red.
"Huh?"
Joseph leaped out the back of the wagon and flung the key. It flashed in midair, burst into flame, and dropped to the ground.
"Gah!"
"What's going on?!"
A soldier passing nearby startled and ducked. Refn, who'd been a bit farther off, also jumped and came running toward the wagon. Joseph stared blankly at the key lying on the ground.
If I can just find the right spells, this might actually be solvable pretty fast.