Before the Seal Broke

And yet, in the very next instant, a small ball of fire lifted from Woojin's palm.

The system's warning rose again.

The flame burned on regardless, steady as if the warning had never existed.

The Minotaur kicked off the ground. Its enormous body launched into a charge with a thunderous crash, two thick horns and a heavy axe leveled straight at Woojin. Every time those hooves slammed the floor, stone dust burst upward as though the stone itself were exploding.

Woojin thrust out his palm. The Fireball shot ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠forth and detonated against the Minotaur's face.

The huge head rocked, just slightly—but the beast had no thought of stopping. If anything, it shouldered the flames aside with its whole body and came on harder still.

"One shot doesn't seem to satisfy you."

Fire roared up. To Woojin's left and right, at his back, even overhead, dozens of Fireballs rose all at once.

He lowered his hand, and the fireballs launched from every direction. Some raced in head-on. Some skimmed the floor. Some swept past the Minotaur's flanks and bent back in a wide arc. They had only one destination.

The first blast hammered its temple. Flames burst from both shoulders and its chest, and the massive body staggered—yet the hooves had no intention of stopping. The Minotaur kept driving itself off the ground, and Fireballs poured in to halt the enraged bull. Explosions erupted across its entire body. Before the afterimage of one blast could fade, the next crashed over it. Countless detonations shook the arena, and dozens of red flashes struck the beast from every angle without mercy. Armor crumpled. Iron plates tore free and spun away through the air.

And still the charging Minotaur was nothing but a fighting bull that ran with its eyes fixed forward. Shoved sideways, it stamped the floor and found its stance again. When its head jerked up, it lowered both horns once more. It showed no intention of blocking, and even less of dodging. It simply took the explosions with its whole body and sprinted straight at Woojin.

A continuous chain of blasts swallowed the giant completely. From within flames where not even its outline could be seen, a hoofbeat rang out. Then another. The thing was still running.

The Minotaur tore through the fire and burst free. Its mane was charred black, and most of its armor was gone. Scorched skin had split and burned away, and dark crimson blood poured from its mouth. Even so, both eyes were locked precisely on Woojin.

The great axe rose high. In that instant the Fireballs swarmed in again. The arm holding the axe burst apart and flew; the masterless weapon slipped from its grip and slammed into the floor. Flames erupted from its chest and its knee. Its stride broke, and the speed that had refused to die shrank a little with every blast.

The Minotaur staggered, and still it tried to kick off the ground. The charge that had brimmed with fighting spirit had, before anyone noticed, become a lurching walk. Black smoke kept boiling off its white-hot body.

The remaining Fireballs struck all at once. The entire arena flashed red, and the shockwave hurled shards of stone and dust in every direction. When the flames parted, the Minotaur stood revealed—its whole body burned pitch-black, embers glowing red in every gap of the crushed armor. The one arm it had left hung limp, and its legs were a wretched ruin, as if they might snap at any moment.

The Minotaur wrung out every last scrap of strength and shoved the ground with its hooves. Horns lowered, the giant pitched forward and fell upon Woojin like a toppling wall.

"Stop."

Woojin's finger pointed down. Frost crackled outward beneath the Minotaur's feet, and in that same split second an Ice Spear born from the ground shot straight up. The sharp point punched through the underside of the jaw and drove all the way through the skull. A pure white spear of ice jutted long between the two horns.

The massive body jerked to a halt. The tips of the horns were an instant from touching Woojin, but it could go no farther. The Ice Spear that had risen from the ground held the Minotaur fixed, as if time itself had stopped. Blackened by fire, horns still thrust forward, the huge monster was preserved in the very posture of its death, inches from his face.

The tenth S-Rank. His gold now stood at 42,000. He could buy the next skill book.

Woojin looked toward the gate to Floor 11, then turned his gaze away. He had climbed five floors in a row. Better to go back, buy the skill book, and at least put something in his stomach. He walked toward the exit that led out of the Tower.

Another notification shook the Tower Management Bureau Situation Room.

The first thing the staff checked was the Grace Period. The number on the screen climbed again.

"Three hundred days."

"......Three hundred what?"

"The time Dekaron has bought us."

The additional Grace Period earned from Floor 1 through Floor 10 came to exactly three hundred days. When the vanguard was crushed on the 65th floor, little more than three months had remained. Now it had passed a year again.

Someone sank back into a chair. Someone else checked the renewed date over and over. Plans that had been on the verge of being scrapped could be pulled out again. They no longer had to rush the next assault team into a death trap. There was time to train, to prepare, and to find the cause of the failure.

"Now we can prepare again."

Even as he spoke, the Bureau Director could not take his eyes off the screen.

Then a staff member reviewing the records narrowed his brow.

"One moment."

The entry time and the clear time for Floor 10 were enlarged. The moment battle began, the Minotaur used Roar of Mana Seal—an ability that sealed the activation of every magic-type skill within range for thirty seconds. Dekaron's clear, however, had been logged before those thirty seconds were up.

"He brought it down before the seal even lifted."

"He must have used some other weapon."

"Every trace so far is nothing but magic."

A weapon. An offensive scroll. An item that broke seals. An unknown trait. Possibilities were still spilling out when the on-site reconstruction arrived, and the central screen changed.

Traces of dozens of flame bursts were scattered all across the arena. The Minotaur's entire body was covered in blast marks as well, as if the explosions had gone off from every direction at once. And at the center, an ice spear had risen vertically out of the ground. The Minotaur was preserved where it stood, run through from jaw to skull.

"Any trace of another weapon?"

"None at all."

"Scrolls, or an item that releases a seal?"

"No traces of those either."

The reconstruction specialist hesitated.

"All that remains are traces of fire magic and cold magic."

"Can you confirm exactly which spells?"

"......Best estimate is Fireball and Ice Spear."

The situation room went quiet.

The records officer checked the time again. No matter how he looked at it, the magic seal had not yet lifted. He glanced back and forth between the reconstruction images and the log, then spoke as if he could not believe his own words.

"No—the seal hadn't broken. So how in the world......"

The dozens of blast marks on the screen, and the ice spear driven through the skull, were far too clear. There was no chance he had misread them.

"Then how, exactly, were those spells cast?"

No one answered.

Fireball and Ice Spear. Both were textbook examples of basic magic. But the traces they had left were anything but basic, no matter who looked. Dozens of Fireballs had flown on separate trajectories and struck a single target from every direction. The Ice Spear had risen not in front of the caster, but out of the ground. They were skills everyone knew. Not one of them had been used in a way anyone knew.

One staff member offered an opinion, careful with it.

"It could be a trait that grants immunity to seals."

"Has a trait like that ever been confirmed?"

"......Not once. Not until now."

A trait. A scroll. A piece of equipment. Or an item no one had ever catalogued. Whichever way they leaned, the evidence was too thin to hold.

The Bureau Director stared at the screen for a long time before he spoke.

"Send the materials to Han Seorin."

The finest mage in South Korea. Where modern magic was concerned, no one could offer a better opinion than she.

"All of it. The Floor 10 records and every piece of the reconstruction."

Han Seorin, now in possession of the data, paged through the tablet without a word—the entry time for Floor 10, the clear record, the dozens of blast marks. Her finger stopped.

"You're telling me all of this is Fireball?"

"That is the reconstruction team's assessment."

"That's impossible."

With scrolls and equipment, casting Fireball several times in succession was possible. Dozens of casts were another matter entirely—but even if she bent over backward and granted that it could be done, a different problem remained. The explosions in the images had not come from the front alone. From the flanks, from behind, from every direction at once, they had hammered the Minotaur.

"What about equipment with a homing function?"

"None confirmed."

"Offensive scrolls?"

"No traces."

"......"

Han Seorin swiped to the next image. An ice spear risen from the ground had run the Minotaur through where it still stood.

"Ice Spear is a skill that forms horizontally, in front of the caster."

"We're aware."

"It is not a skill that erupts from the floor."

She said the last of it without room for argument.

"This is not Ice Spear."

But no other skill name came to mind. The shape of the spear, the traces of the piercing, even the frost left behind—if it was not Ice Spear, the scene became harder to explain, not easier.

"Could it be a hidden skill book?"

"Nothing of the kind was confirmed."

"......Then it might be a trait."

A trait that triggered a skill in a form different from the standard one. It was absurd. But if she assumed, just for a moment, that such a trait existed, then the colossal pillar of ice on the sixth floor could be explained as well.

"Then did a trait let him ignore the magic seal, too?"

Han Seorin was silent for a moment.

"There could be a separate immunity-type trait."

"Cases of anyone holding two traits are extremely rare."

"It's not as if there are none!"

She did not want to concede the skill of some unidentified mage on the strength of a few photographs. The moment she realized how sharp her own voice had become, regret caught her short.

Traits, and equipment. Skills or items not yet brought to light. There were still any number of ways to explain it. Han Seorin went back to the beginning and combed through the records with care—the Minotaur's magic-sealing roar, the dozens of explosions that had erupted before the seal ended, and, last of all, the Ice Spear that finished it.

The contradiction in the record was unmistakable. And yet, strangely, it did not feel unfamiliar.

A being who had used magic even while magic was sealed. Han Seorin had already witnessed a moment like it. Her finger stopped.

The 65th floor. The figure who had waited alone for the vanguard, draped in a black robe. She had definitely used a skill-seal scroll.

If the scroll had not been used, the activation message could never have appeared. And there had certainly been no message of resistance, nor of the seal being lifted. Even so, the opponent had raised a staff and cast magic as if nothing at all had happened. The barrier shielding the vanguard tore like paper. South Korea's finest hunters went down one after another, screaming, with no way to fight back.

A moment in which none of her common sense had held.

The mage of the 65th floor was an enemy who had driven South Korea to the brink of annihilation. Dekaron was the hero holding a collapsing nation up alone. There was no possibility the two were the same being. The magic they had used, and the results that followed, were entirely different. And yet one thing was the same. Both had cast magic, untroubled, while magic itself was sealed.

Han Seorin looked at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the name on the screen. Dekaron possessed something she did not know—just as that being on the 65th floor had, the one that had torn down every certainty she owned.

Perhaps.

If it was Dekaron, he might know a way ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to face that mage.

Han Seorin set the tablet down.

"Please let me meet Dekaron."