Dark Moon
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
The armored vehicle rolled toward the mission zone. They called it a next-generation model, and aside from the noise, the ride was decent enough.
Six of us sat in the passenger bay, myself included. Everyone except Belhaga, our close-combat instructor, was rigid with tension.
In a few hours we would face the bandits in real combat. A fight to the death waited for us.
I was tense, but I wasn't afraid. Facing humans instead of monsters would be a first even as a Hunter — but it was something I'd steeled myself for long before I ever became one.
"Don't freeze up, brats. You're all 1-Class. The Neros Bandit Group, on the other hand — everyone except their boss is Rankless. Civilians with a bit of real combat experience, nothing more. You've got an overwhelming advantage."
Rankless. Ordinary people who couldn't use mana, couldn't even sense it. Still, they weren't to be completely dismissed. The guns in their hands were weapons that treated every man as equal.
"You know how to cast Barrier magic, right? Even a 1-Class Barrier will shrug off a few dozen ordinary bullets without breaking a sweat. But don't put blind faith in it. Every now and then you'll run into bastards packing magic rounds instead of regular ammo."
Belhaga's words did nothing to change the atmosphere.
Barrier. A non-elemental spell. The formula itself wasn't complicated, so every mage learned and used it without much trouble. It was one of the first spells you picked up when you started learning magic.
Ironically, though, it was also one of the spells most affected by the quality of its formula. The more complex and refined the casting, the stronger the Barrier. And being non-elemental, it took a heavy hit from the state of your Astral. Put simply — if your mind was unstable, the Barrier's strength dropped.
"...Hah. Looking at the lot of you, I don't trust a damn thing. I'll brief you one more time."
Belhaga pulled something that looked like a camera from his coat, pointed it at the floor, and switched it on. A hologram of the mission area bloomed into view.
"Razman City. A ruin left over from the war seventy years ago. Ninety-five percent of the city was wiped out by bombing. What's left is maybe five percent — basically a large village."
The buildings the hologram showed were two- and three-story structures. There were a few that looked like they'd once been proper towers, but their upper floors had been smashed flat or simply gone.
"Your mission is extermination. Don't leave a single one alive. Especially Neros — kill him no matter what."
Belhaga spoke like a beast snarling through its teeth. The kids swallowed hard at the murderous edge in his voice.
He went on to brief us on Neros himself.
"This bastard had the balls to hijack a Dragon's Factor that was being transported to the capital. No sign he sold it on the black market, so he probably used it himself. Stay sharp. That said, the adaptation won't be finished yet — at best he's around 2-Class."
Belhaga said it casually, but for 1-Class mages like us, a 2-Class opponent was nothing to shrug off. If Neros really was 2-Class, we'd need at least three of us hitting him together. Ideally all five.
Belhaga finished the briefing — the sixth time he'd run through it — and looked at us.
"Check your gear. If I hear a single whine about equipment failure mid-mission, I'll kill you myself."
The kids and I inspected our equipment. Mine was a little different from theirs. Same uniform, different weapon. They carried assault rifles. I carried a sniper rifle.
As the best shot among us, I'd been assigned as sniper. I had already thrown out any notion that hanging back and providing fire support meant I'd be safe. I knew exactly how dangerous this world was. Complacency had no place here.
And I need to prove my worth here.
Only then would I get proper treatment once I got back.
Gear checked, I steadied my breathing and looked over the kids who'd been thrown into this mission with me. Around my age — all of them looked fifteen to seventeen. Five boys, every one of them. We all knew each other by face, at least.
"We've arrived. Mission starts now. I won't intervene until you're all dead. Keep that in mind and get it done."
A low hydraulic whine filled the cabin as the armored vehicle's door slowly opened.
"And just so we're clear — don't get any stupid ideas just because you're outside. You will never escape us."
My eyes flicked instinctively to my right forearm. Beneath the uniform, the slave brand sat against my skin, vivid in my mind.
Being outside doesn't mean there's a chance to run. To escape this hellhole, the first thing I'd have to deal with is the slave brand itself.
Escape was a distant dream for now. I shelved any lingering thoughts of freedom and climbed out of the vehicle with the others.
Even after seventy years, the scars of war still clung to the land. The ochre earth was baked hard, and every gust of wind kicked up clouds of sand and dust.
"We stick to the plan. No. 211 — good shooting."
No. 14 said.
"I'll do my best."
I gave the formal answer. After that, we split. Nos. 72, 54, 105, and 14 headed straight for the ruined city. I moved at a hard clip toward the sniper point.
The sniper point was the top of a pillar. Completely exposed on all sides — the kind of spot that invited return fire — but the Neros Bandit Group had no snipers of their own.
I crouched on top of the pillar and raised the rifle. There wasn't enough surface to go prone.
I set my right eye to the scope. The telescopic enchantment painted the ruined city a full kilometer away in crisp, vivid detail. The first thing I did was find my four teammates. I already knew their routes, so it wasn't hard.
I tapped the radio.
"This is No. 211. I've reached the sniper point."
"This is No. 14. Hostiles?"
"Checking now."
Scouting enemy movements through the scope was part of my job too.
"...No. 14. Building at your one o'clock — at least three hostiles waiting inside. They're goofing off, playing cards. No sign they've noticed us at all."
"At least three. Can you take the shot?"
"Angle's only clean on one of them."
"Got it. We'll handle it. Keep mapping the rest."
No. 14's team slipped into the building in silence.
"Silence."
No. 14's voice came through the radio.
Silence. A 1-Class non-elemental spell that erased sound from the surrounding space. Along with Barrier, it was one of the most efficient spells at the 1-Class level.
The downside was that once it was up, not even a connected radio would carry a single sound. I shifted the scope to track the situation. The hostiles went down with bullets through them, dead before they hit the floor. The fight lasted maybe six seconds.
"Clear. Next?"
"From your position, seven o'clock. Two on watch near a building entrance."
"Confirmed. Bad angle for us. No. 211 — can you take them?"
"On it."
I held my breath and pulled my focus tight. The tiny tremor in the rifle vanished. The moment I was ready, I squeezed the trigger, shifted the muzzle a fraction, and fired again. Two casings hit the ground. Blood and brain matter bloomed from the heads of both sentries.
"……."
It was the first time I'd ever killed anyone — across both my life on Earth and my life as No. 211.
My fingertips trembled, just slightly. I let out a small breath and shook the tremor off. That was it. I was surprised by how little it actually hit me.
I killed the stray thoughts and locked back onto the operation.
No. 14 and his team stomped over the fallen bodies and charged into the building.
Up through the first ten kills, the operation ran almost perfectly.
"...We've been made. Engaging now. No. 211 — cover us."
"Understood."
I'd planned for this scenario. Ammo wasn't a problem. I pulled the trigger not to rack up kills, but to keep my allies alive. If we were going to take down Neros, No. 14 and the rest all needed to stay breathing.
I swept the scope back and forth, covering the team — then felt a strange presence and tilted the glass upward. A man stood on a rooftop, looking down at my allies.
Nearly two meters tall, lean build. His clothes were black rags more than anything, and from the mess of white hair jutting out at odd angles, a pair of jade-green horns like tree branches thrust into the open air.
Exactly as Instructor Belhaga had said. Neros had absorbed a Dragon's Factor and become a Dragon-kin.
"...Neros confirmed. Beginning sniper engagement."
"We've got eyes on him too. The presence is completely different — must be the Dragon-kin. Can you take the shot?"
"Only one way to find out."
This world had Factors. Dragon Factors, Monster Factors, Hero Factors, Animal Factors, and more. Sometimes a special ancestor left a mark that you were born with. Sometimes you injected a Factor into your body and awakened the power after the fact.
Neros was the latter. And among Factors, a Dragon's Factor sat at the absolute top tier.
The one silver lining was how little time he'd had to adapt after injecting it. If we'd arrived even a week later, the odds of success would have been zero.
I have to end this in one shot.
I stopped breathing.
Not enough. For a perfect shot, I bound my heart with mana. The heartbeat froze. Every last tremor vanished.
Then, without warning, Neros lifted his head. Both eyes locked dead on me. I crushed the surge of unease under pure concentration and put the crosshair on the space between his brows. My stiffened index finger pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The bullet tore free. In that instant the shot felt perfect. I was certain it would punch straight through his forehead.
That certainty shattered like a dropped glass bottle.
Blue lightning flickered across Neros's branch-like jade horns — and the bullet stopped dead in front of his brow, then came screaming back at me. The round crackled with current as it flew.
I ditched the sniper rifle and rolled sideways. The reaction was clean and fast. But the bullet he'd reflected was faster than I'd expected. It smashed the rifle to pieces and grazed my shoulder on the way past. I fell off the pillar.
A tenth of a second slower and that shoulder would be gone.
Cold sweat ran down my back as I pushed myself up.
"No. 211! What the hell happened?!"
"...The bullet was reflected. He locked onto me perfectly from a full kilometer and bounced the shot. Don't get careless. Sniper rifle's wrecked — sniping is off the table. I'm moving to your position."
I drew my sidearm and ran for the combat zone.
Running away out of fear was worse than joining No. 14's team and fighting.
Combat noise poured through the radio. Boom. Boom. Explosions kept rolling — grenades, maybe.
"Aaaargh!"
"They said 2-Class! This bastard's at least 3-Class!"
"H-help me — my arm, my arm's gone!"
"Guhhh…"
Desperate screams cut through the static.
But No. 14's team was still fighting. After five hundred meters at a full sprint, I was gasping. This damned body had been trained hard, and its stamina was still pitifully low.
Static. Crackling.
Noise flooded the radio. Odds were good that No. 14's unit — or someone else's — had been smashed. Either that, or Neros was screwing with the signal.
KRA-KOOM!
From a cloudless sky, a bolt of blue lightning slammed down into the battlefield.
"……."
My legs stopped.
The thought hit hard: charging into that fight right now was pure stupidity. Dishonorable mission failure beat dying. When you stripped it down, Neros was not an opponent greenhorns like us were meant to face.
"Damn it. Already 3-Class? Compatibility rate of at least seventy percent. No. 211, No. 14 — grab any survivors and prepare to fall back. I'll handle the bastard myself."
Instructor Belhaga's order came through. My plan to hang back and watch the situation went up in dust on the spot.
Disobeying orders is serious… no choice.
I started running again.