Ribelt Territory (5)
The traces of demonic energy ran thin as silk threads, stretching off into the distance.
Follow them, and I would find the New World Group.
“They’re being careful about it, but the trail’s unbroken.”
“Yes. Faint as it is, the demonic energy continues in a straight line.”
If I cleaned this up properly, Ribelt might actually owe me something useful. A problem only a mage could solve, after all.
“Which means this residual energy could be leftover from spatial transfer.”
Residue left behind after teleportation.
And that brought us right back to the question that had been nagging me earlier.
“So they’re idiots who don’t even know how to clean up after themselves?”
“I’d love for that to be true. They might have left it on purpose, though. Even if Ribelt noticed, it wouldn’t mean anything to them.”
“True. Their mages aren’t exactly high-level.”
Ribelt’s magic cavalry would never sense something this subtle, and their actual mages were too weak to track a thread-thin flow of demonic energy in the first place.
Without me they would have written the whole thing off as some bizarre natural phenomenon, or blamed it on demonic energy leaking over the mountains from the Demon Realm.
Either way, I was about to put Ribelt deeply in my debt.
I carefully fed mana into the traces, and the light grew sharper.
We followed the path for some time until we came upon something that looked like a giant snowman.
More precisely, a door shaped like a snowman.
From a distance it was just another lump in the snowfield. Clever bastards.
That snowman shape was almost certainly the entrance. There would be a space hidden inside.
Still, finding it was no reason to relax.
“Yeah. Touch this wrong and the whole mountain comes down.”
Above the snowman, pure white. A steep slope that would dump every last flake of snow straight onto Ribelt territory the moment we disturbed it.
They’d planned for the possibility of discovery. An avalanche would hurt the territory—not catastrophically, but enough.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m already annoyed, so I’m melting the whole damn thing in one go.”
That much snow had to be gone before it ever reached Ribelt.
Worst case, the New World Group could trigger it the moment war broke out, just to keep Ribelt from mobilizing cleanly. The damage wouldn’t be total, but the livestock-rich lands right below us meant their cavalry would take a hit.
So I would remove the threat first, and show these New World bastards what a real new world looked like.
“Won’t they notice? You’ll need a fair amount of mana.”
“There’s risk, yes. That’s why… Chains of Sealing.”
Chains of Sealing
Ancient Eastern sealing art. Confines demonic energy within its bounds.
Light poured from my hand and wrapped the mountain. Thick. Unyielding. The chains locked tight around the mid-slope and sealed everything inside.
An ancient Eastern sealing art passed down since antiquity.
Any black mage trapped within would be unable to wield demonic energy.
I had originally prepared it just in case. Then these bastards went and rigged an avalanche, leaving me no choice.
“Oh. That’s ancient Eastern magic.”
Celia barely had time to sound impressed before I began the next spell.
Time to melt that ocean of snow.
“Nothing inside is getting out unless they’re my level. Fire Wall.”
Fire Wall
A massive wall of flame rose and began slowly devouring the snow above the snowman from bottom to top.
By the time we finished, only a bald mountain would remain.
I had no intention of burning all the way to the peak. Scorch the summit and Ribelt’s lord would throw a fit. Melt just to the upper edge, then go in.
The wall of fire roared. Snow began to melt.
“Won’t the water be dangerous once it melts?”
“I’ll evaporate it in midair.”
I looked up in answer to Celia’s question.
The melting snow tried to become an avalanche, but the Fire Wall held it back and boiled every drop into steam before it could fall.
We kept evaporating and clearing until the threat was gone. Celia sent her teddy bears to shove the snowman aside.
And behind it, of course, was a small entrance.
It looked like a cave mouth, yet the interior was neatly lined with glowing stones that cast a steady light.
“Wow. The inside is exactly as damp and shady as you’d expect from these people.”
We moved deeper and found humans in black robes.
Properly shady bastards. The hero idiot should call these shady, not me.
I was already cloaked in stealth. Did I even need to bother?
Just kill them all? The idea that those things were mages like me made my skin crawl. Even black mages were still mages, and the thought filled me with pure revulsion.
“What should we do?”
“What else? Kill them.”
“You really never cut mages any slack.”
“Forgiveness has nothing to do with it. Leaving those degenerates alive just doesn’t sit right with me.”
“True. That’s our Lady Olivia for you.”
I’d killed plenty of people before; there was no reason to start taking prisoners now.
They wouldn’t talk even if we caught them. Black mages never opened their mouths. Better to kill them outright.
Some of them even felt fear, which made it cleaner.
“Shouldn’t we capture at least a few? The Empire seems pretty focused on rounding up the New World Group lately.”
There had been noise about hunting them down after the attacks, sure.
Just noise. I preferred corpses over prisoners. Wasting effort on the unnecessary was the most annoying thing of all.
“Capture is priority in theory, but it’s impossible right now, isn’t it? So we kill them. No need to report, but even if the Imperial family finds out we can just say the enemy resisted to the end and we had no choice.”
Bang! Bang-bang!
“Ghk!” “Khuk!”
I put mana bullets through the nearest few in an instant.
Trash that wouldn’t help even if left alive. People who ate, slept, shit, denied reality, and decided the world was garbage so they needed a god to remake it according to their own standards. A club for losers. Death was the only mercy they deserved.
“Isn’t that a little loud?”
“They’ll think it’s strange, but that’s all. They’ll assume someone triggered the avalanche.”
At most the low-ranking black mages on guard duty would wonder what the hell was going on.
Then the ones who hated noise from the rank-and-file would come up to scold them.
And that would be the end of their thinking. At their level, that was the entire chain of logic.
“Ah, that makes sense. Then…”
“They’ll come up thinking the grunts on watch are making a racket and need a talking-to.”
“You think so?”
Footsteps approached from below.
There was a downward path after all. Connected all the way down. I could flood the place with water or cook them with heat. Still… keeping one or two alive for the coming war might be useful.
Fine. Leave one or two breathing.
“What kind of idiots are making this much noise?”
“Right? Of all times to screw around?”
Exactly as predicted. Shady figures were climbing toward us from below.
Kill these too and the ones further down would finally realize something had gone wrong upstairs and come running.
That would be more work, but fighting people who actually fought back was more satisfying, so I preferred it that way.
Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
Several more mages died on their way up. Judging by their level, even the ones higher up wouldn’t be that strong.
Better to wipe them out now before they could make trouble for Ribelt later.
“Capture if you can, but the goal is killing. If a few of the higher-ups happen to survive by luck, we can squeeze them for information.”
“I left the teddy bears outside, so… we’re a little short on numbers.”
“Fight as a Battle Mage. They can’t escape from here anyway. And with your skill you wouldn’t let anyone get away.”
“If Lady Olivia says so.”
For the first time in a while, Celia gathered mana into her fists. Battle Mage mode. Ready to crush them.
First time since she landed the finishing blow on Berna.
Voices kept rising from below.
“Something’s happening up top, isn’t it?”
“What? Enemies?”
“Surely those barbarians from Ribelt didn’t find this place? There should have been an avalanche!”
Amazing. Even these shady bastards were trash-talking Ribelt.
Just as I expected. Stupid and ignorant enough to leave demonic traces behind because they looked down on Ribelt as uneducated.
Pathetic. Ribelt was crude, I would give them that, but they weren’t village idiots.
And the ones who had risen above that level had come to me to deal with these shady bastards, so the real fools were the ones below us.
“Honestly, I’m not even sure who the idiots are anymore.”
They were the ones who had grown complacent. If we were ranking stupidity, that put them on top.
I might look like this, but I treat allies decently. And since they were offering to become loyal dogs that actually listened, I fully intended to help Ribelt with everything I had.
“They never even considered mages might come.”
“That’s what you get for having nothing between the ears.”
This time we went down ourselves.
The stone path widened as we descended, eventually opening into a vast circular chamber.
In the center of that chamber, figures sat around a round table. The moment they saw us they shot to their feet.
“Wh-who are you?!”
“Idiots. You never imagined mages would show up here, did you?”
“Who are you people?!”
Who else would we be? Just mages passing by.
“Just mages passing through, you damp little failures of humanity.”
“Hmph. Foolish women who know nothing of His will.”
Oh my. Foolish women, was it?
How sad. We had become foolish women.
“My, calling us foolish. That’s a bit harsh. So this is why you all huddle in a damp hole like this—plotting treason?”
“Women who bow to a rotten empire like this could never understand our cause. You will die here!”
Some old man started spouting nonsense.
Submission to the Empire? I didn’t submit to anyone. But an imperial citizen living under imperial protection and benefits had every right to look out for their country.
“Choose your words carefully. An imperial citizen being loyal to their own country is the most natural thing in the world. Traitors and degenerates like you wouldn’t understand.”
“Loyalty to a rotting empire? You must be nobles. That’s exactly why nobles are the problem! You never think of the common people—”
“Common people’s thoughts? Why would I need to know those? Especially the thoughts of social failures who can’t adapt to real life and start worshipping some weird god?”
I snorted.
No, really. Losers’ opinions weren’t worth knowing.