Life Is Cruel (3)
Mages who could perceive essence at a glance, without relying on tools, were rare. That was why he had come out to look for himself.
And sure enough, something caught his eye. Surging Cheongsanho's eyes narrowed at the enormous concealment magic wrapped around a merchant-guild building that had no business bearing such a thing.
"I ought to report this."
"Did you find something, sir?"
"Most likely."
If the point had been to protect goods, they should have cast a shielding spell. Who cast concealment?
Both were magic that covered and hid, but shielding existed to protect, while concealment existed to hide. No mage failed to understand that decisive difference. A trading house of Grdana's caliber could not afford to be ignorant of it either. If they were the sort to promote someone who could not even tell shielding from concealment, they never would have become a great trading house in the first place.
"I'll look into this a little further. You go and—"
He was about to use his escort as a messenger, his suspicion growing firmer by the second.
Clang.
Then, with a hallucination like something shattering, what had been hidden until that moment revealed itself.
In other words: a being that wore silk robes and leather shoes without a single seam or needle mark, and that tried to stuff every fortune in the world into a pouch made of burning ice. Yet the inside of that pouch was a bottomless abyss, never satisfied no matter how much it was filled, and the hands that searched for precious things never knew how to make their own owner precious—only more and more wretched. That was the kind of existence it was.
That was its essence.
"…We're finished."
To "see" essence was to dare to perceive an abstract concept with one's own eyes. Nothing was more intuitive, and nothing left less room for doubt.
So Cheongsanho pressed a hand to his forehead at the most absolute greed he had ever witnessed. The Demon Energy wreathed around it left even less to be said.
"A demon."
That was a Demon of Greed.
"Sir?"
"Prepare for battle. A demon is preparing a ritual inside."
Really, why did the world never go the way one intended?
"That is…"
Combat was hardly his specialty. But there were times when a person had to do work outside their field.
Cheongsanho let his escort's words wash over him and fired a signal flare.
Fwoooosh— crack-crack-crack-crack!
A flare that announced a crisis to the surroundings with an excessively loud report, marked the subject as a demon appearance by its color, and left a vivid trail of its flight path so that reinforcements would know the location.
"What was that?"
"H-hey! That thing!"
"A demon! A demon has appeared!"
"W-where…!"
"Get out of there and run this way! Now!"
All that remained was to wait for reinforcements. Evacuating people was just a bonus.
"W-where am I supposed to—!"
"…! Get down!"
"Ye— khurk!"
Then, for a brief moment, one of the porters who had been following his guidance out of the guild had a hole punched through his stomach and died.
The people a step ahead of him scrambled outside in horror.
"…I was wondering how we'd been found out. Why are you here?"
And the one who had skewered a man through the gut with her bare hand was a blood-soaked woman.
By her hair color and massive frame, Cheongsanho just barely recognized her. She held the title of secretary to the Grdana guildmaster.
"Is the world trying to block every path before me?"
In that moment, the guildmaster's secretary gathered mana in her hand. No—Cheongsanho's eyes saw its essence. That was Demon Energy.
"There's no other reason you would show up here…!"
Demon Energy overlaid her, and a hand swollen grotesque and enormous raised its razor-sharp nails.
When they had crossed paths two days ago, there had been no brand of contract on her. She must have sealed one in the meantime. Of course, she had almost certainly been following demons long before that.
"I never tried to block your path."
Well. Thinking back, even among merchants, hers had been an unusually greedy and filthy essence. Rare, yes, but not unheard of in the world—he simply hadn't paid it much mind while dealing with her. That was the problem.
So next time he would weigh even that when he… weigh… wait. How many people in the world even had a clean essence—especially in the merchant world—that he was supposed to pick and choose his associates by it?
Cheongsanho started to self-reflect, then immediately gave up, deciding only to remember the blind spot of the "eyes that see essence"—that there was no way to detect someone who merely followed without forming a contract. Sshk. The warrior assigned as his escort stepped in front of him, ready to protect him.
"You blocked your own path."
Most of the people had evacuated by now. Without further concern for onlookers, Cheongsanho threw an item charged with explosive magic. BOOM! The blast announced the start of the fight.
I had thought this was the first time mana-eating mermen had ever appeared.
After checking the walls, which had grown noisy for an entirely different reason, I drew up even more mana—hoping to kill even a few more of them.
Against the total numbers it probably wouldn't even show, but still.
"There's a filthy lot of them, you rotten fish…!"
Ah, please don't yell. My head hurts.
I clutched a skull that felt ready to split. Mana spears only landed on time if you identified the target, predicted its next move, and fired where it would be. There was no getting around that.
And right now the number of enemies I was aiming at was huge, so the amount I had to think about was doubled.
Honestly, at this point I wanted to dive into the sea and just fire a horizontal Chamgyeok. If I got the height right, I could clear them in one go. High risk and pretty brutal—but if it worked, it would be efficient and fast.
…Very brutal and dangerous, though.
"Incoming!"
With senses stretched razor-thin, I snagged one of the flying attacks. I'd been late last time; not this time.
BOOM!
An explosion bloomed in midair. The sound reached us from the turrets as well, but it wasn't enough to shake the structure the way it had before.
"You're the best!"
"You're a mage? You look like that and you're a mage?"
Hey, hey, hey. Don't slap my back. You're breaking my concentration. I just missed two mana spears!
Ah!
I dodged the adventurer who was so excited he tried to pound my back. Even in that moment the mermen kept pouring in, so I had to keep attacking without pause.
Splash!
Then, outside the range I was covering, mermen launched an attack. Their target was the bridge.
CRASH!
Wow… until now I'd never gotten a proper look with the naked eye, so I hadn't known how they attacked. Turns out the legless mermen just body-slammed with a tail strike.
Crazy bastards.
"They're going for the bridge!"
"Leave it! Just kill what's in front of you!"
I watched the merman that had slammed the bridge with its tail fall back into the sea and couldn't even finish my thought.
They did that knowing their own tails would be crushed and broken? From what I could tell they had intelligence on par with humans. Was it because they were demonic that they felt less fear?
"Still, good that it's no different from usual. It was so late this time I thought we might get a tsunami along with them."
Beside me—well, a few seats over—an adventurer muttered that.
S… T… AY! Flag, stop…!
That tsunami-flagging line, stop…!
KA-BOOM!
"…!"
See?! Something just exploded the second you finished talking!
I lifted my head at a faint, strange sound. I'd been told not to leave my post, but I had to check this much.
I tensed my legs and jumped, passed through the ladder hatch, and climbed to the upper floor. One more level and I'd be on the roof.
"Wait, where do you think you're going! That's insubordi—!"
Thud!
My body leapt once more and finally reached the top of the turret. The sparsely lit night sea filled my vision.
"Get down! No matter how capable you are…!"
Thump, thump, thump.
The soldier who had guided me here and been directing things from this post finally climbed up after me. He looked furious, but I couldn't spare him any attention.
"I told you not to move on your own! Right now—"
"You don't see that?"
"…What?"
Anyone who took in what was floating on the night sea would react the same way.
"…What is that."
The far side of the sea I'd seen by day had been nothing but horizon. Now, faintly, land had been added.
A somewhat round, enormous mass of land.
Growing larger, looking for all the world as if it were approaching.
"What kind of island…?"
Then the waves grew rougher. Of course they did. Whatever that thing was, if it truly was drawing closer, the water it displaced turning into waves and rolling toward us wouldn't be strange at all.
"This is no time to—!"
The soldier suddenly shouted. Was he still going to order me back down even after seeing that? If so, that was outstanding professional spirit.
The moment I thought that, he grabbed a device nearby.
Click, clack-click, click, clack-clack-click.
A searchlight. Quite similar to the modern kind, only a little more primitive—you raised and lowered a front cover.
And the way he opened and closed the lid to send light in various patterns reminded me of Earth's Morse code.
Other cities still used beacon fires. Why was this place so advanced?
"Hah."
Anyway, I couldn't just stand around while the soldier worked.
I wanted to keep observing that thing, so I couldn't bring myself to go back down… and the truth was, when it came to killing mermen, position didn't matter much.
Watching the landmass grow ever larger, I formed mana spears in bundles. The spears fell like rain, cutting down dozens, hundreds of mermen without regard for which turret's sector they were in.
That brought the number of mermen I'd killed to roughly three or four hundred, give or take. I was definitely getting MVP for this raid. Not that I'd asked for it, and not that it was useful. Hngh.
"Fall back!"
While I was cracking jokes to ease the tension, a signal came from the walls. A good call.
The sense of distance was so vague that whatever that thing was had to be enormous—and if something that size reached us, the turrets would basically turn into a Jenga tower.
In other words, it wouldn't even need a full-body slam. One hard shove and the whole thing would come crashing down.
"Bottom floor first! Everyone else, covering fire!"
The soldier left me behind as if he'd forgotten I existed and headed down. At his shout the interior stirred, then began to move.
The bridge was looking pretty precarious after the mermen had battered it a few times, but no one complained.
Of course not. In the time you'd spend complaining, taking even one more step would do more for your own survival.
All right, so what I needed to figure out now was how to kill that thing. With the darkness and the limited visibility, its identity was unclear, which made planning hard.
Still, something that flat and huge would have plenty of places to stand on, so fighting it might not be that bad. The thought of the walls collapsing when it rammed them already made my head swim, though.
"It's coming!"
"Run…!"
I crushed the skull of a merman that had leapt up to bring down the bridge, then dealt with the ones climbing the tower as well.
Those things had a devil's instinct for timing. The second they realized we were retreating, they swarmed.
"Go. I'll cover you."
"…Damn it. People like you are the worst. You wreck discipline!"
But people live, don't they?
I sent them off under a scolding that wasn't really a scolding—his expression, for all the words, was worried about me. Mana spears kept forming and rained down onto the sea like a downpour. A rain that stole lives instead of warmth.
"Aaaagh!"
I kept an eye on the nearby turret while I was at it. They must have gotten the retreat signal too; people were pulling back over there as well.
"Cross over!"
Fortunately, getting everyone back didn't take long.
I took the signal from the far side and prepared to leave the turret myself. My mana had dropped below half anyway; I needed to get across and restock.
"Wha—!"
"Look out!"
KA-BOOM!
The problem was… well. Everyone had already crossed, several of them had been charging at once for a while, my head was killing me, and I was pissed off enough that I'd switched off for a second—and a few of them finally smashed the bridge.
Crrrrack-crash. Just like I'd been told before, a bridge went down faster than you'd think.
"…!"
Before my body could reach the other side, the bridge I was supposed to step on collapsed.