Anton
Anton
The room hung thick with stale humidity. The piled materials seemed to hold their breath, waiting for a chance to see daylight, when an old man stepped inside.
In one hand he carried a carving knife; in the other, something like the shell of an enormous insect. He looked shabby.
His lank white hair hung brittle and unkempt to the nape of his neck, and his face brimmed with an irrepressible belligerence and madness.
The deeply lined face seemed old at a glance, yet a strange youthfulness clung to it—perhaps because of a fervor that defied any other description.
A large frame, a well-trained build, a cat perched on his shoulder.
Beneath it all, suppressed madness and fastidiousness coexisted. The old man was, in every sense, an eccentric.
And those who knew him would unanimously say that the madness he displayed was actually the mild part of him.
His true nature, they would insist, lay in his obsession.
They would add, as testimony, to watch his work closely.
True to those words, there was something uncanny about the old man's labors.
Slanted sunlight seeped in. In the blue glow filtered through the blue-stained glass, the old man lifted his head slightly, bared a twisted grin, and dragged a chair out with a scrape.
"Heh."
He let out the sneer he had been holding as he fashioned a scroll from the carving knife and the bug shell.
Grotesque materials—human skin and insect carapace fused together into a single hideous mass.
With them, the old man was crafting a kind of scroll.
He shaved the shell with a carving knife forged of blue iron, a mana-conductive metal, and shaped a scroll.
A scroll's quality was normally determined by the parchment—the vellum—and the intricacy of the inscribed formula.
Superior materials yielded more potent effects; more finely detailed formulas acted with greater precision.
By that measure, the scrolls the old man made were the finest anyone in the world could find.
For he inscribed them upon the shells of Warrior Monks—those who had embodied divinity in their flesh and wielded their bodies as tools of martial art—and carved into them spells mastered through an obsession verging on madness.
That was why the old man's magic could not help but be formidable.
He concealed his true capabilities by using only a bare minimum of the magic he could cast himself, and for magic in which he lacked talent, he pushed its theory to the absolute limit and deployed it through scrolls.
A combat style born from inspiration he had drawn from a warrior who had reached the pinnacle of mastery.
It had allowed the old man, even in an age teeming with mages, to remain a Master of Magic—and to remain prey that the God of War coveted.
The old man's name was Anton.
He had no surname. He was a man who had turned his back even on his homeland and thrown himself into magic for the sake of vengeance.
Jingle.
The magic tower where the old man lived was a giant trap in its own right.
A trap for hunting the God of War's lackeys, a place as dark as the space beneath a lamp.
Under that darkness waited hundreds of deaths.
Deadly and powerful spells lay scattered throughout the tower as traps, and dozens of surveillance magics unfolded against anyone who approached.
The old man was so focused on finding and annihilating enemies—ranging freely across every school of magic—that his killing radius was vast indeed.
And even if someone breached that surveillance, there was no way to infiltrate the tower without being noticed by him.
Jingle. Jingle.
Even now, even if someone slipped past every watchful spell, the old man still had a way to sense them.
A magical manifestation that blended the Illusion School and the Transmutation School, audible only to him. A bell-sound.
At the oddly nostalgic chime, the old man set down the half-finished scroll.
With an expressionlessness that bordered on surly, he looked toward the direction the sound had come from.
Nothing but a dark corner of the tower.
The old man stared into the empty air, then gestured to the cat on his shoulder.
Without a single cry, the cat settled down, and the old man rose to pick something up.
A strange crossbow that somehow looked ornate yet crude.
The last gift his son had made for him the day before he died—his son's keepsake.
The old man recalibrated the crossbow, inscribed fresh formulas, and slipped a few bolts between his fingers.
After countless modifications, the weapon retained none of its original form, but the old man's vengefulness and mania paid that no mind.
And so the old man left the tower, his presence vanishing as if it had never been there.
*
Aslan's party moved swiftly.
With Olpasbet so close to Count Warpol's domain—and with that domain effectively already fallen into the War God's grasp—there was no time to hesitate.
The party borrowed a sled in the Barony of Olpasbet's territory, traveled north, entered the Conwi Forest, and pushed farther north. By skirting the forest in a wide arc, they avoided any pursuers or spies.
What lay beyond the Conwi Forest, in the empty land between Count Warpol's and Count Sholukund's domains—a place barren not just of people but of any trace of human life—was a wasteland.
A desolate expanse where gray and white mingled in a way that felt bleak rather than pure. A snowfield with not a single village nearby.
They crossed that nameless snowfield and headed westward.
Anton's tower, the nameless wastes they passed through now—the land around here was so sterile that no one wanted to claim it.
Everyone who had ever tried to cultivate this region had ended up as fertilizer for the hopelessly infertile soil beneath it. This was abandoned ground.
A plain forever stained gray. Land buried under snow yet unable to conceal the filth beneath.
If you pressed just a little farther north, you would reach the permafrost where no living thing was permitted to survive.
On such land, the old man lived.
At the very edge of civilization, the old man dreamed of revenge.
Confronted with that desolation again after two years, Aslan let out a sigh despite himself.
Only the jostling rumble of the sled gliding over the snow and the faint tremor of the reins in his hand comforted him.
"C-c-cold...."
Amid that, a certain dragon-kin was curled up in a huddle.
"Kill... me...."
"Later!"
The exchange was oddly idiotic. Aslan turned his head belatedly, and the sight of his companions met his eyes.
The most striking among them was Tiyamal.
Clad from head to toe in clothes with not a single gap, and with a pair of warm elven feet planted right in front of his hunched form, Tiyamal was suffering from cold and motion sickness, tears streaming down his face.
"Lizard breath is disgusting!"
"This elder is not a lizard...."
"Lizard!"
Tiyamal clamped his mouth shut, too miserable to argue. Aslan regarded him with a measure of pity before scanning the rest of the group.
Ereta.
Whether because she had acquired regeneration, or because she had acquired divinity, her attire was no different from what she had worn in Olpasbet.
Even if she felt the cold, she could simply grab her axe, channel divinity into it, and kindle a fire—so she would never truly suffer from it.
In a similar vein, Angie's clothing was also relatively light.
She had thrown a fit about wanting new clothes and so was indeed wearing new ones, but she showed no sign of feeling the cold. Instead, she stared blankly, with a vacant expression, at the endlessly stretching wastes.
She had been quite excited when they first boarded the sled, but after hours of the same unchanging scenery, she had grown bored.
Fay was an elf and therefore did not feel the cold. Aslan had both a cloak and armor wrapped around him. The only one who needed to worry about clothing was Rumel.
And that Rumel was, at the moment, having a rough time.
A sneeze that sounded somewhere between a chii and a choo. Every gaze instantly converged on her, and Rumel's brown eyes went round.
"...I'm just, er, a little cold."
She gave an awkward laugh, using her braided hair to shield her face. The party's gaze drifted naturally to her attire, and Rumel hastily covered her chest with her other hand.
At the same time, understanding dawned in the group's eyes.
There was no grand reason Rumel felt the cold.
In the course of fighting the priests, Rumel's shirt had been torn, and there had been no cold-weather gear or spare shirt that fit her.
That was the only reason. Right now Rumel was wearing a shirt with a hole torn at the chest, her cleavage explicitly visible.
It wasn't that they had done nothing about it in the city.
She had tried to find a replacement and, failing that, had attempted to purchase cold-weather clothing.
If the length fit, the chest didn't; if the chest fit, the length was absurdly oversized and would hinder her in a fight.
In the end, when the young lord had said he would try to find a tailor before they departed, Rumel had no choice but to stop him, telling him the party was in a hurry and it was fine.
The result was the present situation.
On a sled moving at speed, she felt the cold, and even while ridden with embarrassment, Rumel could only do so much to cover her chest.
Because no one had spare clothes to lend her.
Most of the spare clothes were wrapped around Tiyamal, whose cold-blooded body suffered the freezing temperatures most severely.
As the heavy air of understanding and shame settled around them, Angie glanced at the cleavage Rumel was desperately trying to conceal and clicked her tongue.
"It's because your chest is too big. Should've kept it to a reasonable size."
At Angie's scolding, an aggrieved look and deeper shame colored Rumel's face, dyeing her ears red.
"It's not like I decided to make them big on purpose...."
"Then share some with me."
"How could I possibly share...."
Rumel murmured, her face flushed crimson. The one who answered her instead was Tiyamal.
"This elder is cold too.... Share some of that flesh... yow!"
Tiyamal, lying on his back, had spoken something disgraceful. Rumel's boot drove into the small of his back, and Tiyamal curled up with a pitiful moan.
Aslan merely turned his head to watch the scene, then smiled faintly as he pulled back on the reins.
The deer hauling the sled stamped to a halt, and the gazes that had been focused on Rumel now all shifted to Aslan.
"We're here. Everyone off."
He stepped down from the sled first. As he brushed the snow from the Wings of Stymphalos on his shoulder and surveyed their surroundings, the party's baffled eyes swept the area.
"Here...? This is it?"
There was nothing but an endless gray snowfield. No houses or villages, no towers or ruins in that desolation.
"Are you sure we've arrived? There's really nothing here...."
Only Fay, poking her head out, tilted her head with an odd expression. The rest of the party couldn't even begin to guess.
Under their puzzled stares, Aslan plucked a single feather from the Wings of Stymphalos and held it in his hand.
Then he tossed it lightly—as casually as tossing a half-finished bottle of water to a friend.
The thrown dagger traced a black arc, and the party followed it with their eyes—
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
—and the moment the dagger dissolved into thin air, a deluge of spikes shot forth, and their eyes flew wide open.
Dozens of spikes hammered the dagger. Each of them resembled the ribs of some bizarre, giant creature.
Their trajectories were so dense that they could turn a human being into gore in an instant.
But they were effective only against flesh; they could not bite into the superior durability of the Wings of Stymphalos.
Aslan caught the dagger as it bounced away from the pounding spikes and turned a gentle smile toward his companions.
"To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure either, but seeing the traps, I'd say we're in the right place."
The party wore dazed expressions. Aslan led them forward, parting the traps as they went.
Along the way, they encountered what must have been dozens upon dozens of snares.
Spikes rained down like a storm, the ground split, fire spewed forth, rocks fell, ice crystallized, chains shot out and tried to tear their targets apart in opposite directions.
At times monsters appeared and attacked. At times phantoms of scores of Warrior Monks surged at them. Before long, the group was looking at the tower now visible ahead and, as one, sharing the same thought.
"This is... a Master of Magic?"
If anything, he was closer to a Master of Traps.
Even Angie found herself thinking that much, so otherworldly were the events unfolding around them.
"Aslan, is this man really going to be helpful?"
Ereta voiced her concern.
"This elder thinks similarly. Would not Anna Heleminus be more fitting of the title of Master, I wonder."
Tiyamal agreed even while shivering from the cold.
And Aslan, as though concurring with their impressions, shook his head after a brief silence.
He added that the only reason they were detecting these traps so easily was thanks to his Luck and mana sense; in reality, these traps were immensely powerful.
"They might look simple, but they're not. Every single one of these traps is a composite spell blending at least two or three different magics."
To the eyes of a party largely ignorant of magic, it might look like nothing more than an array of snares, but there was only one person who could deploy traps of such complex, elaborate, and lethal nature in such variety.
The party still looked mystified, but Aslan understood Anton's strength.
He needed that cunning.
The cunning of Anton, who could wield magic without being shackled by form.
Aslan halted in front of the tower and let out a sigh that seemed to carry something close to old memories.
"Been two years, has it."
Anton's magic tower, visited for the first time in two years.
Just as Aslan stood in that familiar place—familiar yet barely evoking any true nostalgia—and tried to sift through his recollections—
Thwip.
A muffled something came flying, and Aslan's Luck ran hot along his spine.
A crossbow bolt, aimed precisely at the nape of his neck. Aslan snatched it out of the air and slowly turned his head toward the direction it had come from.
A tall old man stood there.
He wore a mask reminiscent of a plague doctor's on his face and a long coat draped over his frame.
White hair billowing, the old man pointed a finger at Aslan and intoned:
"INCENDENT."
The bolt Aslan had caught glowed red-hot.
Boom!
It exploded.
"...Huh?"
The sudden detonation swallowed the surroundings in a blaze. Staring at the roaring flames, the party's eyes went wide.
"Son of a—!"
Even as confusion surged through them at the abrupt change, they swiftly decided on their next moves.
Tiyamal drew his bow and nocked an arrow. Ereta angled her axe wreathed in fire behind her back. Rumel pulled out her spear. Fay rolled her foot, about to leap—
"Anton. Have you forgotten?"
Aslan stepped out of the inferno as if nothing had happened, casually brushing flames from his shoulder the way one might brush off snow.
Not a patch of skin showed any sign of scorching. Clear proof of flame resistance.
Belatedly, the old man realized that Aslan could have dodged at the moment of the incantation but had chosen not to.
And the instant he realized it, he leveled the crossbow squarely at the ground in front of Aslan's feet.
Aslan grimaced at the sight of the crossbow.
A crossbow aimed at the ground. He could guess the magic it was meant to unleash. Probably a manifestation spell that pushed the target away, or a transformation spell that bound his feet.
The old man intended to cripple his mobility and settle things from a distance. Seeing that, Aslan could tell that Anton remembered him very well.
So Aslan spoke with a sigh.
"Anton, I know everything you're aware of. Must you play the doddering old fool every time we meet?"
The old man called Anton responded with a cackle. It resembled Tiyamal's laugh, but with an undercurrent of peevishness.
"And what guarantee is there that you haven't betrayed me? Isn't that exactly why?"
Another sigh spread, this one tinged with deep exhaustion.
The Master of Magic, Anton.
A mage who had deeply studied and mastered both the Transmutation School and the Manifestation School; a figure whose crossbow marksmanship and magic-tool crafting bordered on the level of an artisan.
And his single most defining trait was, without a doubt, his mental illness.
He was a severe paranoid and a sufferer of persecutory delusions.
"Dammit...."
Only then did Aslan register the absence of a cat on Anton's shoulder or anywhere nearby. He pressed a hand to his brow and heaved an exasperated sigh.
He had already realized what the old man was thinking and what he was about to attempt, and he shot him an irritated glare.
Well aware that the expression would not stop Anton.
Just as Aslan had expected, Anton did not stop.
Anton raised his right hand. He slowly folded his open palm until only his thumb stood upright.
Then he bent that thumb, assuming the hand-shape of someone holding the detonator of a demolition device.
And he spoke.
"From now on, you're going to tell me everything—starting with your names and ending with what you last ate."
He waved the raised hand as if to say, Watch it well, and laughed from behind his mask, his voice ringing hollow.
"If any answer displeases me even a little, I'll blow this entire area to kingdom come with all of you in it."
Ordinarily, words like that would sound like nothing more than a bluff, an empty threat.
But Aslan knew that the old man meant it with every fiber of his being.
And that he truly could do it.
The Master of Magic, Anton. His specialty was a self-destructive attack of immense lethality that turned his own body into fragmentation.
Anton's cackling laughter rolled on, and Aslan massaged his throbbing temples and sighed as if the world were crashing down.