The Wicked Igrian
Tick. Tock.
Ten. Nine. Eight…
The detonator slipped into its countdown, flashing red and shrieking like a siren gone mad.
A jolt ran through me.
In midair, Dwight’s eyes locked with mine.
First priority: stop the bomb.
If I could just strip out the equals sign that resolved the formula, it would have been simple. But the countdown had already begun — the equation was locked. Untouchable. All that remained was to throw up a barrier and catch the blast fragments before they tore everything apart.
Inside my head, countless ones began to reassemble themselves.
Dwight watched, arms folded at his leisure, then casually scanned my calculations and reached in — dismantling the numbers one by one. The incomplete formula twisted, spat errors, twisted again. My nerves stretched taut as I glared at him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Six. Five. Four…
His interference made deploying a magic circle nearly impossible.
Has this bastard lost his mind? Is he trying to suicide-bomb himself?
Hey — there are still people inside the building.
This is some villain act that doesn’t even suit you!
What is wrong with his brain?
Three. Two. One.
A thunderous roar. A violent force seized me and flung my body into the air.
When my senses returned, I found the fragments held at bay by a barrier packed tight against every wall of the control tower.
Thank god.
Dwight had stepped in after all.
But me — what about me?
A hazy fog rolled in, and consciousness slipped away again.
Watching the broadcast, Jeffbery’s face went white.
Double Crown is dead?
Thud.
It felt as though a heavy stone had dropped straight through her chest.
Jeffbery remembered Double Crown lifting her from the floor of the mansion as she wept.
You are the reason I keep living.
His final confession still rang vivid in her ears.
In the end, because of her, both Dwight and Double Crown had been ruined.
“I can’t believe this!”
Jeffbery rose to her feet and teleported straight to the Emergency Response Headquarters disaster site.
Acrid smoke. The wreckage of a building. The barrier that had held until the last person escaped had finally torn open.
In that desolate landscape, Dwight stood waiting.
Their eyes met.
“What happened?”
“As you can see.”
Dwight tipped his chin lightly toward the ruins.
“Did you really kill Double Crown?”
“Check for yourself.”
He walked ahead. Amid the tangled, formless wreckage of the control tower’s machinery, a blackened corpse lay sprawled on the ground.
“…..!”
Jeffbery froze. Dwight looked at her and smiled, bitter.
“If I say I killed Double Crown… what does that make me to you?”
Tears welled and spilled down Jeffbery’s face. Dwight’s eyes wavered. He brushed the dust from his sleeve cuff and turned away.
“I’ll leave the cleanup to you. I believe my role ends here.”
Jeffbery watched his retreating back through blurred eyes — then sank to the ground where she stood.
Everyone, calm down. I’m still alive, okay?
From among the bustling crowd, I watched Jeffbery crumpled on the ground in tears, and Dwight standing nearby.
When I can see them but they can’t see me, people usually assume you’re dead. That you’ve become a ghost.
But I knew Dwight hadn’t killed me.
Why?
Because he’d phase-changed me.
So yes — I really did turn to ash. That part’s true. But the second the bomb went off, this guy slapped a magic circle on me. Which is why my body currently looks like… this.
Ah… damn it. My magic formulas must have been ridiculously easy to read. That’s the only reason Dwight would pull a stunt this absurd.
At this point, it wouldn’t even be surprising if I died by his hand whenever he felt like it.
Well. Should I be grateful he saved me this time? At least the people got out — so maybe I should call it a win.
But Jeffbery — why the hell is she crying like that over there?
Don’t tell me she thinks that blackened lump is me?
Jeffbery. That’s not me. That’s a statue from the lobby.
I circled around her, tapping her shoulder, ruffling her hair. But she just kept dripping fat tears onto the ground, forehead pressed to her knees.
Damn it — when does this phase change wear off?!
From a distance, Dwight looked back at Jeffbery.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
A sandstorm-like swirl of dust was wrapping itself around her as she wept.
Double Crown…
Dwight bit down on his lip and teleported to his own estate.
He had discovered the bomb planted at the Emergency Response Headquarters while examining the magical formulas embedded in the Central Intelligence Agency systems and the Heil Lake detonators. At the terminal point of the calculation, he found a strangely twisted progression — and when he ran the formula to its conclusion, the result was startling. The equation was designed to pull the trigger on the Emergency Response Headquarters detonator.
To disable the command, Dwight analyzed the formula. The deeper he followed the meticulously woven equation, the clearer its nature became.
Endless addition formulas of ones, interlaced upon themselves.
This is possible?
That simple operation, tangled tens of thousands of times over, had produced a complex command structure. For a moment he studied it with something like wonder — and then he understood.
In the end, no matter how elaborate a magic circle might appear, its essence was nothing more than this elementary equation. There were no traps buried inside. If there had been, no one would go through such a laborious process just to construct the formula.
Only occasionally, when changing direction or compressing a long sequence, did a multiplication symbol appear. Everything else was pure addition.
After simplifying and dismantling the entire complex formula, Dwight was certain.
Double Crown was a monster.
With that elementary arithmetic, he had committed so many atrocities and eliminated so many witches. And more than anything — was this speed even possible? How many of these short formulas did you need to construct a coherent form? And he memorized every one of them, placed each in its proper position — in the middle of a desperate fight against a witch?
It defied comprehension.
Fine. Let’s put him to the test.
Dwight waited for Double Crown at the control tower where the explosives had been planted. He pre-set a barrier inside the booth and prepared a snare to cast over Double Crown in advance.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.
Slapping the snare onto a Double Crown mid-mental-collapse had been effortless. Watching him string out formulas to build a barrier was almost laughably simple — like a child waving around a toy sword. Dwight swatted it aside with a long blade as if brushing away a fly.
A thunderous roar.
A wet scatter.
In an instant, Double Crown crumbled into powder and dispersed.
Dwight had been curious about Jeffbery’s reaction. What would she do if she believed Double Crown was dead?
But when he actually faced her expression, he realized he hadn’t been prepared for it at all.
Step by step, he walked away, swallowing the cry rising in his throat.
Jeffbery. If you were going to leave me like this, you shouldn’t have given me such warm memories in the first place.
You only ever teach me the most vicious kinds of feeling.
A lonely smile spread across Dwight’s face.
Cruel Love
The phrase he’d drawn yesterday flickered through his mind.
“Igrian…! Igrian!”
I barely managed to drag myself back to Demarken House and shook the shoulder of Igrian, who was sitting in front of her monitor.
Smack!
Thinking I was a mosquito, she swatted me with her hand.
Ow — that stings!
Igrian, it’s me! Me!
I wrote out my name with my body right in front of her eyes. Igrian read the sliding letters and said, utterly unimpressed:
“So Dwight wiped the floor with you, huh.”
Ugh, I can’t talk and it’s killing me.
Sensing her advantage, Igrian kept needling me.
“Say it. ‘Igrian, my precious little sister.’”
“…..”
She snorted a laugh and pressed on.
“Say, ‘I’ll do whatever you tell me to!’”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Igrian, from now on I’ll call you Noona.
I prostrated myself with my whole body and offered the words. The corner of Igrian’s mouth curled upward.
Thoom!
The instant she chanted a spell, the phase change dissolved.
Looking at her big brother who had suddenly appeared before her eyes, Igrian wore a thoroughly wicked smile.
“That’s more like it!”