The Hidden Dragon of the Woods (3)
What... what was that thing just now?
Hugo's hands trembled violently as he struggled to suppress the fear that still clung to his skin. That blue-haired girl had felt nothing like a human being. Her warning had prodded at some terror sleeping deep within the abyss itself.
Could that even be real?
Becoming a black mage had brought hallucinations with it, on more than one occasion. Hugo couldn't tell anymore whether the fox he had seen moments ago belonged to reality or to his own unraveling mind.
"...I knew what I was signing up for."
Black mages were creatures who spared no expense—moral or otherwise—in their hunger for power. Every proper mage loathed them, and rightfully so; there was nothing noble about what they were. Hugo was no exception. But having chosen this path, he had no choice but to see it through.
He opened the door to the basement.
A damp, rancid stench stung his nostrils. Inside, countless magic circles layered across the floor bathed the room in a pale glow. At their center, a black sphere pulsed and rippled like something alive.
That was it—the great mass of mana Hugo had harvested from every child he'd kidnapped.
"If I could just absorb all of that mana..."
A faraway look settled into his eyes as the past rose up around him.
Seventy-eight years old this year, and he had reached the 8th Tier. It was a remarkable achievement. One more step and he would touch the 9th Tier—become a Great Magician.
But—
As a Tower Master, it was a pitifully low ceiling to hit. The Tower Master of Truth, who currently led the entire academic world, stood at the 11th Tier. It was little wonder that the Tower of Pisa, once the mainstream of magical scholarship, had crumbled. Hugo had inherited everything the tower possessed, and yet he had never come close to matching his predecessor's footsteps.
He had worked himself half to death. A mage's aging curve began its cruel descent in the seventies—memory faltered first, and memory was everything. To fight it, Hugo had written everything down, buried himself in a back-alley room, and devoted his days to research. Seventy-eight years old, and he had spent more of his life sealed away in that hovel than he had ever spent beneath the open sky.
Reaching a new height of power at his age was the fruit of relentless effort. He had emerged from the alley convinced of one thing: he might not be a Great Magician himself, but he was more than capable of raising a talented student into one. He would rebuild the tower he had so shamefully neglected, take on disciples, and name a successor.
That would be enough. Then, at last, he could offer some small apology to his predecessor—the man who had believed in a mediocrity like him, steadily and without mockery, to the very end.
And yet.
"..."
The tower was empty.
Not a single soul remained. Everyone had fled. No one—not one person—had believed in the Tower of Pisa's future. Worse, as they ran, they had stripped the tower of everything of value and carried it off.
Hugo despaired.
He knew how gravely he had erred—neglecting the tower's affairs to rot in his back-alley room. But the Tower of Pisa was different from every other tower. Its standard for accepting disciples had always been the common people. Most of its children had been brought in from orphanages and raised there.
Chasing profit and advantage was only natural for a mage. But it had been the Tower of Pisa that rescued those children from the gutters in the first place.
...It should never have come to this.
At the very least, a few of them should have stayed. He could still see their faces, bright and vivid, swearing they would serve him as their benefactor until the day he died.
Every word of it had been a lie.
At first he tried to gather new disciples, one by one—but in a situation where he could barely scrape together his next meal, it was a hopeless endeavor.
Hugo went half-mad. And then, one day, a knight wreathed in black smoke came to him.
A helm pulled low over an androgynous voice, a figure whose very existence was questionable. The being spoke in a voice like iron being scraped raw.
How many mages, offered that, could possibly have refused? Hugo, who had already lost everything, had nothing left to fear. Even if the world reviled black mages—perhaps because the world did—a desperate longing took root in him: he would borrow even that forbidden power and reach the summit, no matter what. Once he became a Great Magician, his vanished disciples would return, he told himself. And when they did, he would scold them within an inch of their lives, then forgive them, pretending reluctance all the while.
The Tower of Pisa would reclaim its former glory and soar higher than ever before.
"It ends today. I have finally...!"
Hugo swept his staff through the air. The magic circle flared to life, and the black sphere shuddered. The immense mana sealed within it flooded into his body.
"Ooohhh—"
His pupils dilated. He shuddered with euphoria, like a man on the strongest of drugs.
"Th-this power...!"
Hugo spread both arms wide, a grin splitting his face. Power surged through him—the overwhelming strength he had never once been able to grasp in his entire life.
"So the gifted are simply born like this from the very start? How unjust. Unjust, I say!"
A strangled, suppressed laugh wheezed out of him.
"Done with your little tantrum?"
"...?"
A young voice tickled at his ear. Hugo whipped his head around.
A blond boy was staring at him, chin propped lazily on one hand, the very picture of boredom.
"By the way—so you kidnapped children under ten for a reason like that? Thirty of them?"
"Wh-who are you?"
Hugo narrowed his eyes and jabbed a finger at Luid. Then it clicked.
"I know what you are. You're a hallucination!"
"I'm not a hallucination."
"The Tower of Pisa's barrier is absolute! No one can breach it!"
"I poked it and it broke."
Luid rose from his seat.
"Whatever your circumstances, making my sister lose sleep is going to cost you. Dearly."
"You wretch!"
Hallucination or reality—it made no difference anymore. Nothing in this world could stand against him now. Hugo swung his staff, and a blade of potent black magic tore through the air toward Luid.
With a languid expression, Luid raised his hand. Between index and middle finger, he caught the blade of mana.
"...That's far too weak."
Crack—!
A flick of pressure, and the blade shattered into fragments. Hugo's eyes went wide.
"Well, with skills as pathetic as yours, I suppose it makes sense you'd go looking elsewhere for power."
"Y-you insolent...!"
Furious, Hugo cast something far greater. A black sphere coalesced in his palm, and he thrust his hand toward Luid. The orb shot forward at blistering speed and engulfed him in a devastating blast.
KWAAAM!
Thunder shook the chamber, and Hugo's mouth curled into a vicious sneer.
"You brought this on yourself!"
"For what, exactly?"
The dust parted in an instant—and there stood Luid, utterly unharmed.
"—!"
"How pitiful."
Luid regarded him with eyes full of pity.
"People who stare at heights they were never meant to reach... they suffer, in the end."
Hugo's face went rigid. Then it twisted without restraint, raw fury flooding through him. Luid paid it no mind and kept talking.
"Look at yourself. All that betrayal of basic human decency, and this is all the power you got for it. With mana as puny as that, you couldn't beat my fox."
"SILENCE—!"
Hugo shrieked and flailed his staff wildly, spell after spell lashing out at random. The sight of it was less a mage dueling than a toddler throwing a tantrum.
"What would you know of effort—nothing, you who were handed everything overnight without lifting a finger!"
"I hate your kind! It makes me sick—someone spends a lifetime clawing their way to a single achievement, and you take it all from birth on nothing but luck, and then you preen!"
"Die! Just die!"
Hugo unleashed magic like a madman. Deafening roars thundered as the room threatened to collapse, and Luid vanished beneath the wreckage of spell after spell.
Hugo panted, heaving for breath, his gaze still locked on where Luid had stood.
"Mm."
The flat, indifferent voice made Hugo flinch from head to toe.
H-how in the world—?
"I got this power without a shred of effort. Unjust, right?"
Hugo squeezed his eyes shut and spat out words in an unknown tongue. It was the mightiest spell recorded in the grimoire Chiron had tossed his way.
"But, you see..."
Hugo screamed with a voice tearing itself apart.
"SILENCE!"
A low, seething drone filled the air—
the darkness of the abyss lifted its head.
Twenty hands, their very sight an omen of dread, shot toward Luid.
Luid frowned, jammed his hands into his pockets, and waved one of them dismissively, as if swatting away a fly.
"If it bothers you that much, be reborn."
Every last drop of Hugo's power—his entire being poured into that spell—was destroyed by that one irritated flick of Luid's hand.
"And not everyone makes a garbage choice like you did. I don't care about the rest of it, but kids are off limits."
Luid extended a hand toward Hugo and closed it into a fist. The empty air rippled, and dozens of chain-spears punched through his body.
Luid studied the Hugo bound completely in place. There was no soul within. A decoy, then—the real one had slipped away by some means. He felt no urge to give chase. If anything, it had spared him the trouble.
"Pay for your sins, Hugo."
"Hahh—hah."
Clutching a deep wound in his shoulder, Hugo staggered through the underground passage of the tower as fast as his legs would carry him.
The spell he had cast at the end was Invisible Darkness—the pinnacle of black magic. Though it could serve as a weapon, it was, at its heart, a field spell: as long as it held, he could move through any shadow in the world.
Instinct had told him he was no match for Luid, and so he had chosen to run. But the spell lasted barely five minutes. Once it faded, Luid would realize the bound body was a decoy—so his plan was to put as much distance between them as possible before then.
Hugo surfaced through a sewer drain, the clammy mud dragging at his feet like iron weights.
I made it. I'm alive.
Just as that relief began to settle over him, he heard footsteps.
A blonde, blue-eyed girl was walking toward him, her face carved from ice.
"I am Amelia Windsor, Captain of the Imperial Academy's Swordsmanship Club."
With a sharp ring of steel, she drew her sword.
Hugo flinched and fumbled for his staff.
"L-let me go. Just let me go."
Amelia answered only by leveling her blade, point steady and true. Hugo began to back away, step by halting step.
"The children are alive. Unharmed. I confirmed it myself."
"I know."
"I-I only took a small measure of mana. I meant to release them all, truly."
Those blue eyes, gleaming even in the darkness, made it unbearable to look at him—the man who had embraced the power of the dark. He found himself unable to meet her gaze.
"I've harmed no one. I intend to emigrate to the Kingdom of Delphia. So, so if you would just—"
His eyes darted frantically, rolling in his head—and there it was. A black hand, creeping closer through Amelia's blind spot.
Perfect!
Hugo was certain of his victory.
But—
"A cheap trick."
Swish!
Amelia's sword cut through empty air—and the unseen hand creeping toward her was severed in two. Hugo vomited black blood and crumpled to his knees.
In a blink she closed the distance and drove a blow into his solar plexus, then smashed her elbow into the back of his neck.
CRACK—!
Hugo's spine snapped. His face slammed into the mud.
"Sp-spare me, I beg you!"
His voice boiled over like a kettle. He groveled in the filth, rubbing his useless, unresponsive hands together in desperate supplication.
"Please. Please, spare me! I'll—I'll pay for my crimes! So let me stand trial! Just let me face trial!"
"That is the Empire's law. This is Windsor's."
Amelia held her sword horizontal, and without a single flicker of hesitation, drove it through his throat.
Shluk!
She stared down at Hugo with cold, unblinking eyes, then flicked the blood from her blade into the air. And afterward, she lifted her gaze toward something in the distance—the tower, on the verge of collapse.
"...Luid."
Amelia closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them again.
"You and I are going to have a talk when you get home."
Exactly what punishment one administered to a little brother who refused to listen—Amelia grit her teeth, and thought hard about it.