The Labyrinth of Heaven (2)
This world is filled with conflict. The reasons were complex. First came the existence of supernatural powers. The sheer scale of strength one person could wield was overwhelming, yet only a tiny fraction of people could ever obtain such abilities. If it were guns, anyone could answer with a gun of their own, but magic didn’t work that way. When your opponent cast a spell, there was no basic self-defense option of simply learning magic yourself. A third-circle mage alone was a walking disaster for ordinary people. No—a second-circle mage was already a catastrophe. And as everyone knows, even in a world drowning in firearms, people still picked fights. They hurled abuse without bothering to check whether the other party was a calamity or not, and the inevitable result was that the calamities who had no reason to hold back unleashed their power without restraint. That was the first reason this world brimmed with strife.
The second reason was simpler: public authority was weak. Killing a noble could usually be swept under the rug if you did it discreetly on some back road; ordinary civilians were even less of a problem. Of course, doing it openly in a city would cause issues, but the world was vast. There were more than enough places to make someone disappear. The same thing was happening right now. Someone walking the road had lost their patience and thrown a party.
“A battle between mercenaries? What a rare spectacle.”
“Ruina, that tone makes it sound like you’re watching two thieves steal each other’s belongings.”
“Because it is fascinating.”
Mercenaries… oops, I mean bandits—mercenaries do rob their fellow mercenaries. Let me write that down.
The two mercenary bands were locked in a bloody brawl, but the momentum had already tilted decisively to one side. The reason was obvious: a mage. Simply having a second-circle mage was enough to guarantee victory. This was exactly why mages received such respect. They were strong.
While I watched the fight, I slowly moved my lips.
“Shall we just move on?”
Intervening felt awkward, and interfering felt even more awkward. They had decided to settle their grudge with a fight to the death. A third party stepping in to lecture them would only be a nuisance. In short, quietly disappearing was the best choice here.
I turned around, intending to head back to our campsite.
“Hey, travelers over there!”
“Shit. Kill them!”
They must have concluded they couldn’t leave any witnesses. The mercenaries who spotted us immediately joined forces and charged. It wasn’t even a hesitant “temporary alliance for now!”—they combined their strength so naturally that it left me stunned.
I briefly wondered why they were acting this way. The answer came quickly.
Surprisingly, mercenaries truly operated on credit.
One might think, Those bastards who are basically thieves, bandits, or robbers run on credit? But the Mercenary Guild actually managed credibility with strict severity. The fact that people like this kept appearing anyway was a separate issue.
A mercenary who attacked and killed another without cause? From the guild’s perspective, that was a heavy deduction to one’s credit score. Therefore, unless they planned to quit being a mercenary entirely, leaving a witness alive created far too many variables.
If that was the case, they should have avoided actions that would damage their credit from the start—but I suppose they simply couldn’t hold back. Let’s be understanding.
I lightly blocked the wind skewer flying toward my head and murmured.
“Jerry.”
Right after, a flaming bullet tore through the air. A single projectile split into twenty-two fragments, and the blazing shards flew toward every mercenary.
I slowly walked toward them. All the mercenaries lay paralyzed, limbs twitching. The bizarre sight made me blink.
“Jerry.”
“What is it?”
“Just what kind of unique magic did you obtain?”
With one unique magic, he was healing, paralyzing, and doing whatever he pleased. Jerry smiled.
“It’s a secret.”
“A secret? For something called a secret, your magic lacks any trace of concealment. If we’re going by the keyword ‘secret,’ it should be the type that prevents enemies from detecting it, or perhaps something that twists causality—”
“The name of the unique magic isn’t Secret. I mean I’m not telling you.”
“How can that be?”
Why? Why wouldn’t he tell me? As I stood there with my mouth agape in shock, Chris tapped my shoulder.
“Ruina.”
“Speak.”
“Think about your usual behavior.”
Was she saying I was a magic-obsessed lunatic who even coveted her companions’ spells? That was a terribly unfair assessment.
“Master.”
“Speak.”
“What is that lightning in your hand?”
“It’s Lightning Bolt.”
“Whose is it?”
“Mine?”
Hand it over. Hand everything over. Chris, you give me your magic too. Right now!
“Ruina’s eyes have gone completely mad. It’s magic withdrawal.”
“We should offer some magic quickly. Fortunately, we have plenty of sacrifices.”
Chris and Leon whispered to each other. Leaving them behind, I approached the person lying on the ground.
It was the mage who had thrown the wind skewer. I asked him quietly.
“Would you be willing to transfer your magic?”
“Wh-what are you?”
“I’m Ruina.”
If you tried to kill someone, you had to be prepared to die yourself. In other words, if you wanted to live after attempting to kill me, you had to pay an appropriate price.
“Give you my magic?”
“Yes.”
“Why the hell should I?”
The man shouted. It seemed he still hadn’t grasped the situation.
“If you don’t, I can’t let you live.”
“Magic is my everything. I absolutely cannot give it away.”
“I sympathize with that sentiment, but you’re going to die, you know?”
“I absolutely cannot give it!”
The man’s eyes rolled with frenzy. It looked like he had suffered some intense trauma related to magic, but I couldn’t guess what it was. I didn’t particularly want to know, either.
After all, there was only one thing I wanted from him. If he refused to trade, my course of action was already set.
I extended my hand. At the same time, a strange dagger—its blade a swirling mix of gold and black—appeared in my grasp.
As I leaned down with the dagger, the man thrashed wildly.
“Wh-what are you—!”
Thud.
The man’s neck was pierced. His body shuddered violently, then went still.
And then.
Something flowed into me through the dagger.
Following that bizarre sensation, I moved my mana. Soon, a wind skewer materialized in the empty air.
Success.
I had created the magic using the Greed element. If I had to name it, perhaps “Dagger of Rescue.”
I already possessed Balance. Through Balance I could receive magic by mutual consent. Therefore, if I truly couldn’t hold back and resorted to using Greed-element magic, there was only one possible reason.
It had to be against someone like this.
And people like this usually refused to listen to reason.
So I had created a magic perfectly suited for exactly these kinds of people. A spell that let me take one magic by stabbing and killing the target.
It couldn’t be just any magic—only ones I had personally witnessed—but the conditions were still quite lenient. Of course, it required completely overpowering the opponent to the point I could leisurely use a dagger, but that was far preferable to a spell riddled with complicated restrictions.
I examined the wind skewer carefully.
Not impressive.
Now I understood after stealing it. Magic taken this way could not grow. It would remain frozen in this state forever.
Magic traded through Balance could grow on its own and even be modified. It became wholly mine.
But magic seized through the Greed element was different. It remained exactly as it was, as though preserved through Taxidermy. It didn’t even feel completely mine.
If I had to put it into words, it felt more like I was sharing the magic with the Greed element itself.
This was only a guess, but taking magic through Greed probably wouldn’t trigger the awakening of new elements the way Balance did.
I had said it before: if you forcibly steal magic, the child becomes frightened and refuses to grow.
But what could I do? In this situation, Rescue was the only answer.
Still, it was a shame it couldn’t grow.
Hmm.
“Maybe once it gets used to the situation, the magic will find mental stability and start growing?”
“Ruina. What on earth is that deranged nonsense?”
“I’m speaking completely seriously.”
“Which is exactly why I called it deranged.”
Well, whatever. Let’s be satisfied with the successful rescue. Cheongya is growing vigorously anyway. Hurry and complete your first awakening, Cheongya.
I stood up and lightly shook the lantern. Immediately afterward, a red line descended onto the ground.
In the now-silent forest, I spoke to my companions.
“Shall we go?”
“Your bright voice is in stark contrast to the fact that you just burned every single mercenary.”
What else could I do? It’s not like I could cry about it. Seriously, why did they try to kill people so recklessly?
*
The road to the Holy Kingdom was incredibly long. We had to stop at several villages along the way. As the weather grew steadily warmer, I asked Chris a question.
“Chris. What do you plan to sell in the south?”
“Me? Hmm. Unless you’re running ships, making serious money in the south is difficult.”
“So it really is a battlefield of commerce where ordinary merchants drop like flies.”
“Pretty much.”
Even for Chris, the god of commerce, it was a difficult battlefield. That was the southern continent, with its long coastline.
And the Holy Kingdom held even greater influence there than the Empire. When it came to the south, it was a nation even the Empire yielded to. One could easily imagine how much wealth the Holy Kingdom earned through trade.
I gave the wooden soldier driving the carriage an additional gentle order to drive more smoothly, then looked up at the sky.
The weather was clear. On a day like this, a picnic would be perfect. Should we have a picnic?
“Ruina.”
At Chris’s call, I lowered my gaze.
Something had come into view ahead.
Chris shouted.
“It’s a village!”
“Finally, I can sleep comfortably in a real bed.”
Seeing the smoke rising from the chimneys, I let out a long, lazy yawn.
Picnic? Forget the picnic. After so long, let’s just sleep deeply for once.