Six Fireballs
I adjusted my grip on the sword and checked on Kaya first.
"Kaya, is your hand okay?"
Kaya glanced down at her fingertips for a moment. The ends of her fingers, which had caught the axe behind a film of Holy Power, were a little red.
"Yeah. There was some impact, but I'm not hurt."
"You're not pushing yourself?"
"No, I'm not pushing myself. And right now the request comes before me."
Saying that, Kaya pointed into the forest with her chin.
It was the direction the messenger orc had vanished.
Mari scanned the surroundings while catching her breath. Roy never took his eyes off the direction the messenger orc had fled.
There was no time to collect Mana Stones from the fallen orcs or to search the corpses.
Roy asked shortly.
"Everyone's status?"
"I'm fine."
"No problems here."
"I'm okay too."
Roy gave a short nod.
"Then let's move. We're not going to fight. Confirming the location of the orc base comes first."
At those words I shut my mouth.
Confirming the location.
That had been the core of the original request. Deal with the orc scouting party, check whether a larger force was present, then return to Bresen and report.
We carefully followed in the messenger orc's wake.
We didn't stick too close. Instead we tracked the blood trail it left behind.
The messenger orc kept bleeding from the outer edge of its shoulder. Dark red blood stained the tips of the grass and dotted the dirt at irregular intervals.
It looked back several times. Each time we lowered ourselves behind trees or beneath low rises.
At the edge of our vision, a dull brown back appeared tiny for a moment before vanishing again.
Too close and we would be spotted. Too far and we would lose it.
At that razor-thin distance Roy kept signaling us with his hands—stop, crouch, move again.
I followed in silence, lightly clenching my molars.
The words the orcs had spat earlier kept circling inside my head.
Human meat.
Arms and legs.
Screams.
Village.
If I hadn't known the meaning, it might have been nothing more than filthy howling that scraped the throat.
But I had understood it. The Dimensional Archive had taken those beast-like sounds, turned them into words, and driven them into my skull.
It was revolting.
It meant they had already eaten humans.
It meant they knew which parts tasted good, how to draw out screams, how to drag someone so they would last longer.
Speaking meant thinking. And they were saying those things while thinking them.
Haa... fucking orc bastards.
After following for a long while, the forest suddenly opened up.
In the middle of the woods lay a clearing that looked as if it had been forcibly emptied.
Trees had been ripped out here and there, and bare earth showed in the center. The traces were not of clean cutting but of raw force tearing them free.
Trees that had toppled root and all lay scattered everywhere, and broken branches had been trampled any which way. Between dry thickets, animal bones, beast carcasses, and crude leather tents were strewn about without care.
Orcs filled that clearing.
Even at a rough count there were more than twenty.
On one side of the clearing large ones holding shields and axes stood in a group, while near the tents on the opposite side an orc with a horn sat perched on a rock.
On both sides of the clearing, narrow paths led deeper into the forest.
That was when it happened.
The messenger orc staggered and burst into the clearing.
"Humans are here! It's an ambush!"
Those words too drove themselves into my head.
"Weak ones."
"There'll be lots of humans. Lots of meat."
"We go down to the village."
"Prey below has dwindled. The humans took them."
"The big one ate everything up top."
"The forest is empty."
"Then we just eat the humans."
My teeth clenched tight on their own.
Among those words, the claim that the surrounding beasts had decreased caught strangely in my mind.
The way we had madly swept the area around Bresen these past few days was clearly one of the causes.
Goblins, Ironfangs, thicket spiders, black wolves.
What we had reduced was real enough. But that wasn't everything.
The other pressure the orcs spoke of as if avoiding it.
The big one that had eaten the upper reaches.
An ogre?
That thing was shaking the food chain of this forest.
"We withdraw."
Roy spoke low.
"Confirming the location is enough for now. That number isn't something we can take head-on."
He was right.
Roy's judgment was not wrong.
But on one side of the clearing an orc was already lifting the horn. On the other side several were already grabbing their weapons.
And that direction... was toward Bresen.
"Human village."
"We go before night."
"We're going to eat human meat."
"The small ones are mine."
"We take the ones that scream first."
"The ones that run, we cut their legs first."
Something inside me settled cold and hard.
"......Hyung."
"No."
"I, uh, haven't said anything yet."
"It's written all over your face. No."
I closed my mouth for a moment, then spoke again.
"......What if there's a way to bring them down in one go?"
It was an absurd stretch, honestly.
Even so, I had no choice but to say it.
Mari's gaze locked onto me.
"How?"
Roy didn't answer at once.
It was a short silence. Yet it felt strangely long.
Roy's eyes moved from my face to the clearing to my hands.
He would know it was an impossible judgment. At the same time, he also knew I had actually pulled off impossible things these past few days.
Roy asked low.
"Are you certain."
"...Not certain."
"Then no."
"...If we pull back now, some of them will move toward Bresen."
I looked at the clearing.
"And with that number, they could scatter while we're on our way back."
Mari lightly bit her lip. Kaya stepped closer to my side without a word.
Roy was silent for a short while. Then he let out a low breath.
"Once. That's it."
I nodded without speaking.
Roy immediately looked at Kaya and Mari.
"Kaya, Mari. Support Siyun."
"Yeah."
"...Got it."
I drew a slow breath in.
The first thing that came to mind was an explosion.
A large, simple, stupid explosion.
But I erased that thought at once.
If I only blew out the center, the ones on the edges would scatter immediately. If the one with the horn survived, it would become an even bigger problem in that instant.
What I needed was not a single explosion.
Fire falling on separate positions.
Fire that blocked the escape routes.
Fire that shattered the center, sealed the outside, and cut off the rear.
Ballistics.
Guidance.
Impact.
Detonation.
In that moment, a single scene flashed through my mind.
High-power ballistic missiles...
Modern violence that climbed high into the sky, then bent its trajectory at impossible speeds to drive down toward the target.
If I could make that with magic...
The thought cut off there.
Impossible.
The me of right now could not create something like that.
Trajectory calculation, course correction, target tracking, detonation conditions right before impact.
It was too much to seize all of that at once.
It wasn't that I lacked mana.
The vessel to hold it.
The channels to let it flow.
The control to seize it.
Those were what fell short.
Damn it...... what do I—
In that instant the Heavenly Core inside my chest began to spin faster and faster, as if answering my will.
Wooooom—!
The current surging from the Heavenly Core grew larger.
The flow spread outward, drawing a new circle, and in an instant closed into a single ring.
The moment the third circle fully closed, I felt the space inside me expand by another layer.
[User will confirmed]
[Magic structure expansion]
[Heavenly Core-based 3-Circle formation complete]
[Circle stabilization complete]
In that moment the grain of the air changed.
Beside me, Mari's breath caught short.
Being a mage, she seemed to have felt my change more clearly.
"......That's impossible."
Instead of answering I lifted one corner of my mouth just a little.
You're the best, Dimensional Archive...!
At the very moment I needed it, the path I wanted opened.
It really was an absurd power. And right now, I needed it.
I slowly raised my left hand toward the sky.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
And six.
Whoosh!
Between the slanting sunlight, six enormous fireballs rose into the air.
They were too large to call fire orbs, too rough to call suns. To call them shells felt strangely like they were alive.
They slowly turned, following my gaze.
They were not perfect missiles.
Just simply burning shells.
Far short of the image I had drawn in my head. Even so, for now they were enough.
Kaya's Holy Power thinly covered the space in front of us.
Mari's eyes were still shaking. Even so her hands moved in short, precise gestures.
Wind settled low. Magic meant to hold down the heat and smoke.
Roy held his sword low. If anything came out alive, he would finish it.
I drew in a breath.
...End this.
And I lowered my hand.
The six fireballs moved as one.
The center of the clearing.
The place where the heavily armed orcs had gathered.
The rock where the horn orc had sat.
Both escape routes.
In front of the ones trying belatedly to flee.
The fireballs dropped as one toward their separate targets.
───────KRAAAAAAASH!!!
The ground shook, and the blast tore through the forest.
The fire did not spread. It simply detonated. It literally smashed the clearing to pieces.
A searing heatwave rushed straight at us.
Whoosh—!
Kaya's Holy Power barrier flared briefly and trembled. Mari's wind pressed down the flames and heat.
Hot air slapped my face, but it did not cross the barrier.
The orcs' screams were almost inaudible. The blast had swallowed everything.
A few that barely survived the explosion burst out beyond the flames.
Roy's sword passed in a short arc, and Mari's wind twisted.
That was the end of it.
I swept my gaze once over the entire clearing, then released the magic.
I looked down at my left hand.
It did not tremble. It did not hurt either. The mana that had left me was already filling back in.
"...Baek Siyun."
It was Mari.
When I turned, Mari was looking at me.
It was not the gaze one gives a mage, nor the gaze one gives a monster.
It was the gaze that looks at something standing outside the common sense of magic she had always believed in.
"You... really..."
Mari never managed to finish the sentence.
Roy too was silent for a long while.
Kaya studied my face for a long time, as if checking my body.
"Siyun, are you okay?"
"Yeah. Perfectly fine."
"...Really?"
At that a laugh slipped out of me for no reason.
"Yeah, really. Thanks for worrying, Kaya. I'm truly okay."
Kaya let out a low breath, as if she still found it hard to believe.
We entered the clearing while keeping our guard up.
Most of the flames had already died down.
Blackened earth.
Collapsed tents.
Orc corpses crumbling black with a soft sizzle.
This was the result I had made.
"..."
But there was one strange thing.
The barricade at the rear of the clearing.
This had not been burned. It had been smashed from the outside inward.
Thick logs were broken, and stakes had been yanked out of the ground entire.
Under that collapsed barricade, one orc corpse lay crushed.
It was not a corpse burned black.
Its entire body had been flattened and pulverized.
As if a giant stone pillar had stepped on it once and moved on.
Without a word I turned my gaze to the side.
On the wet mud a single footprint remained.
It was absurdly large.
Not my foot—my entire body looked like it could fit inside it.
Roy crouched in front of it and measured the depth of the print. After checking the surrounding soil as well, he rose very slowly.
Roy's face had hardened.
"...It's an ogre."
In that moment the forest seemed to fall quiet.
Only then did everything lock into place.
The orcs had not come down toward Bresen.
They had been driven out.