Seizing the Soul's Footsteps
Their current position was far above the cave. Even with the incense burner lit, it was too distant to elicit a reaction. According to plan, the first step was activating it right at the cave entrance.
"Let's move."
Abel nodded and slowly approached the cliff edge. When the two of them peeked out just enough to see, they spotted the soul wolf pacing at the cave mouth. It looked like it was searching for something. Then, in an instant, its head snapped upward, and the students yanked their heads back.
"Hungry or something?"
"No way."
The soul wolf was a species that fed on the vengeful spirits swarming around it. No matter how starved it was, it wouldn't be active in broad daylight. Not unless stimulated by something as intense as the soul scent from the incense burner right under its nose.
Wait.
A thought flashed through Maness's mind, and he glanced at his own hand. The staff stood tall and straight, exuding presence. This item, capable of freely accessing sub-spaces, was technically a relic as well. Power attracts power. That logic applied to relics too. The beast had mutated under a relic's influence, so it wasn't smelling souls—it was tracking the scent of a relic.
Not coincidence, but inevitability. Just as Maness had come to hunt the monster, the soul wolf had come to hunt the relic's owner.
—Awoooooooo!
A thunderous howl shook the forest. The beast, which had been tentatively sniffing for the relic's aura, now had confirmation.
"All those carefully prepared tools just went to waste."
Was it a lament, or exactly what he'd hoped for? Maness quickly assessed as his senior locked eyes with him, grinning fiercely.
"It's provoking us like that. Only proper to respond."
"Damn right!"
Abel slammed his foot down hard. Simultaneously, an earth wall erupted, marching in perfect formation toward the soul wolf below the cliff.
Boom!
A massive explosion kicked up a thick cloud of dust. Without even checking the target's status, Abel climbed onto the earth wall.
"Going first!"
Utterly reckless. But worth a shot. After all, he was Snowrobe's recognized prodigy.
Maness followed suit, sliding down the earth wall toward the base. As if intended by its magic wielder, the wall's surface and slope provided a safe path to the target.
The problem came after.
A body five times the size of an ordinary wolf. A tail wrapped around a massive bracelet. Dozens of soul orbs floating around it. The soul wolf emerging from the settling dust was intimidating in its mere presence.
The previously still soul orbs began rattling noisily. It was obvious they'd soon fly at the enemy.
"Senior, wall!"
Before the words left his mouth, Abel's earth wall blocked their view. Beyond it, dozens of explosions battered their eardrums. Flying debris from the impacts grazed exposed skin harshly.
That's when Maness felt it. The wall's violent tremors. The choking dust coating his throat. The howl piercing his brain, flowing through his blood. The heat of blood trickling from shallow cuts. His heart pounding faster than ever.
"Hah!"
Abel leaped toward the crumbling wall, thrusting his arm forward with a shout. Somehow already prepared, a massive fist of earth followed his arm, surging ahead.
In the slow-motion flashback, Maness caught another glimpse of the battle maniac's grin.
So this is it.
No countermeasures at all. Unlike facing skeletons in professors' prepared lessons. Unlike chatting with Row under the headmaster's protection. Unlike wandering worlds created in the library.
Here, no one was looking out for his safety.
Crunch.
Strength gripped the hand holding the staff. He wasn't afraid. If anything, it felt like liberation from something.
A situation stripped of trivial calculations. A simple, stark goal: survive.
Depending purely on primal senses, Maness felt every part of his body twice as vividly as usual.
This is what he meant.
The young mage bone-deep understood what his senior—whom he'd dismissed as just a battle junkie—had been talking about.
His vision widened, breaths deepened. Instinctively thrusting the staff forward, Maness found his lips curling into a smile. Just like the recklessly charging third-year prodigy.
—When primal senses are heightened to the extreme, that's when talent blooms like embers.
—Like now, when death feels real.
His eyes, closed during Abel's clash with the soul wolf, snapped open sharper than ever.
Magic had no limits. Whether magic was inherently limitless, or we called limitless things magic, he didn't know. Nor was this the time to ponder origins.
That fact alone was enough—Maness decided to use everything he had.
A mana bullet coalesced. Not in front of his hand like before, nor at the staff's tip. Precisely above the target. In open air, unhindered by obstacles.
More.
Another mana bullet formed before the first could fire.
More, more.
Was it enlightenment? The staff's power? Maness's breaths grew ragged as he repeatedly manifested spells.
More, more, more.
Like stars stitching the night sky. The pure mana projectiles multiplied endlessly.
No different from levitating and controlling multiple pebbles.
With that simple realization, the young mage unleashed the mana bullets.
Kaboom!
Fierce explosions rang out in succession. Abel burst through the midst, erecting a makeshift earth wall upward while wiping sweat.
"...Nearly died."
They said the enemy within was most dangerous. The thought of even one missing and hitting sent chills down his spine—that spell's power would've left him far from unscathed.
"You sure you're a first-year?"
"No time for jokes."
I'm not joking. Before he could voice the thought, Abel braced as the orbs rippled through the fresh dust cloud.
"I'll handle the orbs, so take the main body."
"Suits me fine."
The fully formed soul orbs thrashed—that was the signal.
"Incoming."
Whoosh!
Abel charged the enemy without hesitation again. Maness pointed his staff forward, steadying his breath before focusing on the incoming soul orbs.
A technique using absorbed vengeful spirits. Anything rooted in souls obeyed the command of the one holding dominance.
Including the soul orbs—and the relic.
The surroundings shifted. To a world swarming with vengeful spirits. A murky gray realm.
The only lifeform there: Maness Pictri.
Now, he just had to seize what was before him.
Straddling life and death, Maness extended an arm that felt like it might crumble.
He wove his released mana into threads, binding dozens of soul orbs.
The true contest of strength began. Interfering with souls was taxing enough singly—doing it multiply ground his teeth.
Overwhelming, but he had to push through. Failing this stage meant no relic.
Gripping his fading consciousness, Maness's awareness snapped.
Not from hitting a limit or giving up.
He'd comprehended the realm he was in. A borderland where lives reduced to ash lurked.
Empty himself. Like the dead.
Like an entity devoid of will.
At the end of dissolving into the world, convey one intent.
"Come to me."
The brutal power struggle ended. Reclaiming his mind while holding the now-subjugated orbs with mana was grueling work. Fortunately, the borderland's ambiguous boundaries lessened the word magic's backlash.
Use this as-is...
He bound the threads linking the orbs to the staff, then dropped his consciousness back into the borderland.
"Hah... hah..."
It felt like death. Entering the borderland and wielding word magic simultaneously was beyond imagination.
Achievement alone warranted joy, but priority first.
Boom!
Maness focused beyond Abel, locked in fierce combat with the soul wolf. The relic on its tail.
He fired the dominance-seized soul orbs at Soul's Footsteps.
Exactly as before.
Impossible to rip a relic fused with a monster—especially one tied to souls—by force. It required seizing dominance through spiritual power.
Not as an attack, but a connection.
Another power struggle began via the orbs absorbed into the relic.
—Awoooooooo!
Abel's barrage hammered as the howl squeezed out its last strength. From the ground, sides, front. As the fists and earth pillars divided its focus, the relic on the tail grew larger.
"Hup!"
The students' shouts erupted together. The massive fist smashing the beast's face and the relic slipping from the tail—simultaneous.
Clang!
Soul's Footsteps hit the ground, rolling noisily. The wolf's form faded like a mirage atop it.
"......"
"......"
Silence followed. Mingled with ragged breaths.
Realizing their goal achieved, the students collapsed in place, staring at each other.
"Man, that was fun."
"...I'm half-dead. Must be nice."
Unlike Abel's innocent grin, Maness truly felt on death's door. How he survived these life-or-death scraps repeatedly was a mystery—he could never get used to it.
"Would've been easier if it went to plan?"
"Lure with incense, wear it down with electric traps. Then enter the borderland and steadily seize dominance."
"...What's a borderland?"
"It's a thing."
No energy left to explain, so Maness cut it short.
"We suffered enough—it's over, right?"
"Gotta take that. Can't risk another mishap."
His junior's chin pointed to the bracelet stripped from the soul wolf, lying plainly on the ground. Freed from external influence, it had shrunk to human wrist size.
"Just pick it up?"
"No. Something soul-related might be cursed."
Cursed. A term for items that harmed merely by contact.
"Then call a professor? But no one's coming here."
"About that..."
Maness stood and approached. Without hesitation, he picked up the relic.
"Whoa, you good? It's cursed."
"Of course."
He spun Soul's Footsteps on his finger, then snatched it.
"Just purify it."
*
Without a moment's rest, Maness packed his bag, sent Abel to the village, and entered the cave.
Spiritual relic curses. Simplest fix: comfort the owner's soul.
And monsters born from such relics rarely strayed from their birthplace.
"...Tch, figures."
Leaning against the cave wall at its end, Maness clicked his tongue unwittingly. Welcoming him: only collapsed bones.
Ragged cloth and twin curved swords hinted at the man's former self.
A sword saint who once reached that realm. From the eastern continent, he'd died lonely here, never returning home.
Makes you think strength means nothing.
Items took on relic traits from their owners. This man had more than earned it.
Pushing aside bitterness, Maness unpacked and set up.
Nothing elaborate. A basket gathering bones and rags, a stand for the two swords, a small cup of liquor.
Enough to soothe the soul.
Hummm.
As he finished arranging and prayed, a faint vibration hummed from Soul's Footsteps before him.
Opening his eyes, the relic gleamed like new.
"Thank you, benefactor."
After the greeting, slipping it on his arm, it tightened perfectly to fit.
Now, just test it.
After brief focus, slipping in and out of the borderland, satisfaction bloomed on Maness's face.
The gray world. Experiencing no faint discomfort there was reward beyond measure.