Echoes of Magi
Erika's suggestion that we go find Kyle right then and there was not accepted.
"But he knew about the tower."
"That alone doesn't prove he smashed the communication device."
The professor in charge of mana control nodded as well.
"The faculty will look into Student Kyle separately. No one is to approach him on their own."
Lydia took my hand.
"What if he approaches Miss Cheongha?"
"It hasn't been determined that Student Kyle is dangerous yet."
"It hasn't been confirmed that he isn't, either."
She wasn't wrong.
Erika cracked her knuckles.
"If he comes near, tell me. I'll check him out."
"How do you plan to check?"
"Directly."
In the physical sense, of course.
One of Noel's familiars edged toward the exit.
Selene caught the familiar by the tail.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"For a walk."
"Not to go keep an eye on Kyle?"
"Kyle might happen to be along the walking route."
"No."
The familiar's wings drooped.
Getting these people to keep a secret and wait at the same time might be impossible.
I looked at the shattered communication device.
Had Kyle really been here first?
If so, why smash only the core of the device?
If the goal was to erase traces of the demons, it would have been more natural to wreck the crystal plate and the movement records too.
The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed.
"Wait."
Noel's voice dropped.
The familiar examining the device flipped a small fragment over with a front paw.
From beneath the blackened metal, a faint purple smoke rose.
Lydia immediately pulled me behind her.
"Is it poison?"
"No. Magi."
Noel's other familiars gathered around the device as well.
Their purple eyes lit up at once.
"This isn't old residual mana. It clung to the device when it was destroyed."
The mana control professor laid a gloved hand over the fragment.
A thin film of gray mana spread across it.
"Confirmed. It hasn't fully dispersed yet."
He looked toward the hidden door.
The same purple traces lingered in a thin line beneath it.
"Whoever destroyed the device escaped that way."
Erika turned as if she had been waiting for this.
"Then we just catch them."
"Don't go alone."
Before Selene could finish, Erika was already opening the door.
This time I couldn't stop her either.
A demon might still be inside the academy.
The professor pulled out a red crystal and sent a request for support.
"We check before the trail vanishes. Erika takes point. Noel, track the residual. Selene and Lydia, do not leave Student Cheongha's side."
Why was only that last order so specifically detailed?
There was no time to argue.
We went through the hidden door.
Behind the door was a narrow maintenance stairway that followed the outer wall of the tower downward.
It was barely wide enough for one person.
Erika folded her wings and led the way.
Two of Noel's familiars flew low behind her.
I went down the stairs sandwiched between Lydia and Selene.
It was a perfect protective formation.
My opinion had not been factored in.
"What if the demon is still down there?"
When I asked, Erika answered over her shoulder.
"Perfect."
"What is?"
"Means they haven't gone far."
We were not speaking the same language.
Black smudges dotted the stairwell walls here and there.
They looked like marks left by someone slamming into the wall in a hurry or bracing with a hand.
One of Noel's familiars brought its nose close to a smudge.
"Magi."
Lydia reached toward a stain as well.
Gold light bloomed from her fingertips and lightly skimmed the black mark.
"It feels the same as what was left on the magic circle at the lake."
Whoever fled had not even had time to wipe their trail.
The stairs led into the maintenance area beneath the tower.
Old pipes and unused magic lamps tangled together in a mess.
The problem was that the passages were just as tangled.
At the first fork, Noel's familiars stopped.
Left.
Right.
And a stairway leading farther down.
The purple residual had spread faintly in all three directions.
"It's scattered."
Noel said shortly.
The professor surveyed the area.
"Looks like they deliberately spread the magi to throw off pursuit."
Erika raised a fist.
"Wouldn't it be faster if we just smashed all the walls?"
"No."
Selene and the professor spoke at the same time.
Erika lowered her fist with a disappointed look.
I looked back and forth among the three passages.
I couldn't sense the magi.
But the air was different.
Dust in the left passage lay evenly across the floor.
On the downward stairs, even the spiderwebs were intact.
Only from the right passage did a faint chill of air flow out.
The dust on the floor there had been pushed into a long streak to one side.
It was the mark of someone hurrying past.
"I think it's the right one."
When I spoke, everyone looked at me.
That look again.
"This isn't foresight."
"No one said it was."
Selene answered.
Not yet, anyway.
"The wind is coming from the right. And only the dust over there has been disturbed."
One of Noel's familiars flew into the right-hand passage.
A moment later its purple eyes flared brightly.
"Found it."
We moved right at once.
The farther we followed the passage, the stronger the wind grew.
But the residual magi thinned in the opposite direction.
Noel's familiars stopped several times.
"It's dispersing more."
At this rate we might lose the trail.
I took the Yeouiju from my clothes.
"I'll try gathering the wind a little."
"If you move it too hard, the magi will blow away too."
Noel warned.
"I won't do it hard."
This was different from lifting all the water in the lake.
What I needed was to slowly draw the scattered air inside the passage into one place.
I cupped the Yeouiju and steadied my breath.
The grain of the wind moving through the passage caught on my fingertips.
I did not push.
I did not whip it into a gale.
I simply caught the currents that wanted to scatter and drew them toward the center.
Dust rose in a fine haze from the floor.
A single thread of purple light mixed into the dust.
Noel's familiars all turned their heads at once.
"That way."
The purple residual led to a low iron door at the end of the passage.
This time I had found it properly.
It wasn't luck.
I squared my shoulders just a little.
Erika grabbed the iron door's handle.
"Opening it."
"Wait, check for traps first—"
Bang!
The iron door toppled inward.
Selene never finished her sentence.
"Opened."
That was not opening. That was smashing.
Beyond the iron door lay a drainage passage that had been sealed off long ago.
No water ran through it.
Only dry mud and broken stone fragments piled on the floor.
The passage sloped gently downward toward the academy's western outer wall.
The black stains grew clearer as we went.
There was no doubt the demon had used this route.
We picked up the pace.
Before long, sunlight showed ahead.
Erika burst outside first.
Selene and Noel's familiars followed right after.
By the time Lydia and I stepped out, everyone was already scanning the surroundings.
There was no demon.
Below the academy's western outer wall, a drainage outlet half-hidden by weeds gaped blackly open.
The iron cover had been torn free with its edges melted, and fine cracks spidered across the nearby Barrier Stones.
One of Noel's familiars examined the rim of the outlet.
"There's old magi and new magi together."
The professor arrived late and checked the cracked Barrier Stone.
"They used the same path coming in and going out."
The demon had been entering the academy through this drainage passage for a long time.
It had gradually widened the gap in the aging barrier and moved along unused passages all the way to the tower.
Then, right before we found the hidden room, it had smashed the device and fled back here.
"Where did they go?"
Erika glared beyond the outer wall.
Low forest and rocky ground stretched wide in that direction.
Noel's familiars scattered in all directions and returned a short while later.
"Can't find anything outside. The wind's too strong."
"Can't I try gathering it again?"
"It's different from the passage. Out here it's already mixed with the air from every direction."
Even the residual magi that had remained inside the academy cut off completely here.
Catching a demon that had fled hours ahead of us was impossible now.
Erika clenched her teeth.
"If we'd just found it a little sooner, we could have caught them."
"Confirming the infiltration route is enough."
Selene looked at the cracked Barrier Stone.
A short while later, faculty and security who had seen the red signal arrived at the western wall.
They immediately expanded the search beyond the wall, but the reports that came back were the same.
No further traces of the demon remained.
The mana control professor recorded the wall's position with a red crystal as well.
"We seal every closed passage along the western outer wall. Re-inspect the drainage and maintenance tunnels installed in the same period, and reinforce the outer barrier from the ground up."
"Can we keep them from getting in again?"
Lydia asked.
"At the very least, they won't be able to use the same method."
It was not a perfect answer.
Still, it was better than moments ago, when we had not even known how they were getting in.
We had not caught the demon.
We had not learned its identity either.
But we had found the route by which the ones who set the lake's magic circle and the tower's communication device had been coming and going from the academy.
The faculty would reinforce this place and continue investigating the remaining traces with security.
As students, our part ended here.
The professor looked my way.
"If Student Cheongha had not caught the flow of the air, we would have lost the trail halfway."
"Senior Noel is the one who found the magi."
"Without either one of you, we never would have made it this far."
One of Noel's familiars nodded beside me.
"Tracking-type Magical Dragon."
"I am not that."
Selene's pen moved.
"Route tracking using residual magi and atmospheric flow."
"Hold on. Don't combine them into a new ability."
"You actually did it."
This time it was hard to argue.
I really had gathered the wind of my own will and found the scattering trail.
It was a moment I was allowed to feel a little proud of.
Except the second it went into Selene's notebook, I started feeling strangely uneasy.
We had lost the demon.
We had found the infiltration route.
And my list of accomplishments had grown by one more.
That last part was the most ominous of all.