Chapter 9
Chapter 9
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 009
Chapter Title: Curse Magic
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Just 30 minutes ago.
The command center was in utter chaos due to the sudden loss of signal from 2nd Squad.
"What about the body cams?! Still no connection?!"
"We're trying!!"
The screens in the command center were filled with nothing but noise.
The officers attempted to reestablish communication with 2nd Squad, but it was still dead air.
"Team Leader. That thing just now..."
"Yeah."
Joseph Howard nodded at Inspector Lyn Yenitz's words.
"It was definitely a curse."
The last image captured by the body cam showed the ground crumbling into dust under the curse's power.
"So it wasn't just some ordinary gang after all."
"What about the possibility that the gang hired a curse mage?"
"Why hire a curse mage just to take over a single shopping arcade?"
It was way too inefficient.
Joseph Howard let out a groan.
"There's some other objective here."
Right then, one of the officers shot up from his seat.
"Team Leader! Body cam connected!"
"...! Whose?!"
"Prisoner number 43471!"
Lyn Yenitz's eyes widened at the number she'd now memorized.
"Kyle Clark...!"
"Put it on the main screen, now!"
Kyle's body cam feed appeared on the central monitor.
Lyn Yenitz opened her mouth as she watched.
"...What the hell is that guy doing?"
"......"
Since the body cam was mounted on the chest, the feed only showed Kyle's point of view.
And in that view, he was talking to some kind of mannequin.
"Why's the audio all messed up?!"
"Looks like the mic's busted!"
That's when it happened.
The mannequin suddenly started moving on its own.
"?!"
Lyn Yenitz swallowed hard at the eerie sight of it gesturing like a human.
"That's... puppetry?"
And it wasn't just that.
The feed showed the prisoner keep talking to the mannequin.
"No way..."
Joseph's eyes widened as he watched.
"Hallucination curse...!"
His face hardened as he shouted to a nearby officer.
"What about 1st Squad?!"
"1st Squad is on standby!"
"Tell Alpha Team to prep for suppression with 1st Squad right now! The target's a curse mage! A top-priority wanted criminal!"
T-top priority, sir?"
"Yes!"
Mannequin, puppetry, hallucination curse.
Those telltale signs clicked immediately in his mind.
"It's the Witch of Delusion, Ellis Garner...!"
"!!"
The officers in the command center flinched at the name.
Lyn Yenitz was no exception.
"Ellis Garner... you mean the curse mage who supposedly devoured hundreds of people in a single night?"
Joseph nodded at her question.
"Yes. It's her, no doubt."
She was infamous not just for her stunning beauty, but for turning a three-block stretch into hell in one go four years ago.
Joseph's eyes narrowed.
'Well, it's been four years. She must be hungry again.'
The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.
He spoke up.
"That shopping arcade wasn't occupied by the gang from the start."
The gang members were nothing more than puppets controlled by her puppetry.
In truth, it was all the curse mage's doing—she'd devoured the humans inside to sate her hunger a bit and likely set up the 'anchor point' for a barrier here.
"Barrier..."
Lyn Yenitz's face grew serious.
"...She used one four years ago for that mass slaughter, right?"
The death toll had been around 300.
In just one night, that many civilians mummified.
And among them, a rare few had been citizens.
Joseph curled his lip.
"She vanished completely after that... and now she walks right back into our hands."
This was a stroke of luck.
He shouted.
"Anti-mage gear status?!"
"Alpha Team fully equipped!"
"Transfer execution authority for 1st Squad to Alpha Team! Tell them to move in now!"
A wanted criminal of that level meant massive credit for taking her down on sight.
Lyn Yenitz muttered under her breath.
"What a shame."
"Pardon?"
"Oh, I mean... 43471."
She glanced at Kyle's body cam feed, where he was walking alongside the mannequin.
"He seemed like a pretty capable prisoner."
"......"
Joseph let out a small sigh.
"No helping it."
Anyone caught by the Witch of Delusion was done for.
"Even breaking free of her hallucinations would be impossible..."
That's what he was about to say.
[BANG-!]
The mannequin's head exploded in a hail of bullets.
"?!"
"What...?"
And it didn't stop there—Kyle unleashed a burst from his rifle, completely shredding the mannequin. The officers watching were left slack-jawed.
"No way..."
"He saw through the hallucination?"
As everyone held their breath amid the sudden turn, the curse mage stepped into view on the feed.
"T-Team Leader!"
"Just as I thought."
Joseph nodded upon confirming her face.
"It's Ellis Garner."
"Alerting all chicks. Suspect confirmed as Ellis Garner. I repeat, suspect..."
One of the monitoring officers reported amid the chatter.
"43471! He's started talking to the suspect!"
Joseph yelled over the constant static tears.
"Can't you clean up that noise?!"
"W-We're working on it!"
The officers frowned at the choppy audio.
"What are they even talking about...?"
"No idea. Sounds like he's saying the corpses aren't a hallucination?"
The pile of bodies on screen looked real enough.
'What the...?'
Joseph furrowed his brow.
'It's almost like hallucinations don't work on Kyle Clark...'
That's when it happened.
Kyle staggered with coughing.
"Damn."
Someone muttered.
"The curse..."
It was clear as day—the curse was starting to eat away at his body.
Lucky to spot the hallucination or not, that was the end of it.
The moment he stepped into that space, his death was sealed.
"...Looks like the curse was already spread throughout the entire hall."
"Maybe the whole underground arcade."
"We need to warn Alpha Team."
The body cam feed dipped, as if Kyle had collapsed halfway.
"...No surprises, then."
Just as Joseph was about to order the channel cut, convinced Kyle was done...
His voice cut through the static, clear as day across the command center.
"!!"
The startled officers looked back at the screen.
He stood there, rifle at the ready as if nothing had happened, and pulled the trigger on the witch.
[BANG-!]
[Aaaagh!!]
"What?!"
The officers' eyes bulged.
The witch on screen looked just as shocked by the unbelievable turn.
But he gave her no chance to speak—a one-sided barrage poured down.
She flung black curses in resistance, but it was futile.
As if such things meant nothing to him, he just kept firing.
And that was it.
The infamous witch who'd massacred hundreds met an anticlimactically pathetic end.
"......"
"......"
"......"
Silence blanketed the command center.
Kyle's voice echoed again.
Whether relaying info to Alpha Team, monitoring, Inspector Lyn Yenitz, or Team Leader Joseph Howard...
No one could speak easily after that twist.
A prisoner they'd thought cursed suddenly rises and drops the witch?
The officers snapped out of it and started murmuring in confusion.
"That witch... goes down that easy?"
"No way."
"Why didn't the curse work on him?"
"I-I don't know either."
"What the hell is that prisoner's deal?"
Joseph couldn't make sense of it either.
'What is this...'
He frowned.
'Immune to curses or something?'
But he shook his head soon after.
'No. The hallucination curse definitely hit him at first.'
That's how it'd looked to him, at least.
That's when it hit him.
'Wait.'
He paused at the sudden realization.
'What if... he deliberately let the curse hit him?'
Say, to avoid suspicion from the witch and reach the barrier's anchor point.
'And once he got there...'
He dispelled the curse and blew the mannequin away.
'But how?'
That was the question.
No magic artifacts for dispelling curses on hand, either.
As far as he knew, there was only one way.
'Reverse-engineering the curse right there and dispelling it... nothing else.'
Curse magic was still magic proper.
So it had fixed forms and systems, which meant those spells could be nullified by reverse calculation.
Basically a form of hacking.
Theoretically, no magic was immune to that flaw.
'The witch thought he just had a knack for spotting the hallucination.'
What if that wasn't it?
What if he could've dispelled it from the start?
'Ridiculous.'
Ridiculous... but.
Kyle's words flashed through his mind.
-Interesting.
-...You're... static, the real deal...
The tone knew the witch in front of him wasn't fake.
Mocking her for thinking she'd fooled him, all bravado.
Joseph's expression hardened.
'Wait, then.'
He stared at the monitor.
'Did Kyle Clark know from the first encounter that she was real, not a hallucination?'
The thought sent chills down his spine.
Everything fit perfectly.
He rubbed his forehead.
'No, but reverse-engineering magic? That's not something anyone can do.'
'...Except one place.'
His eyes narrowed.
'The Magic Tower.'
The organization formed by mage families over centuries to monopolize their spells.
Their level was worlds apart from outsider heretics.
They could reverse even a witch's curses with ease.
Joseph let out an involuntary chuckle.
'Ha, a mere prisoner from the Magic Tower?'
Ridiculous. Blasphemous, even.
But if true, it terrifyingly explained everything.
And not just this incident.
'...Even that factory business fits.'
If Kyle was Magic Tower, overwhelming that fire mage without a scratch was trivial.
No need for a magic duel.
Heretic spells were crude by nature—easy 'hacks' for Tower mages.
Just like this curse mage crumbling so pointlessly.
As if those flames meant nothing.
'Ha...'
Joseph wiped his mouth.
'If that guy's really from the Tower...'
This was a golden opportunity.
The Tower was so insular they never meddled in worldly affairs despite their power.
One stepping into the fray would stir winds in 141, big or small.
And that power to neutralize heretic mages? Endless uses.
'...Gotta pamper Kyle Clark to keep him motivated like this.'
More perks than now, of course.
Maybe even citizenship and cleared charges to push him further.
He stroked his chin.
'But one thing doesn't add up.'
If his theory held, how did such an elite Tower mage end up in the 8th Special District's cesspool?
'...He mentioned a sister.'
Joseph frowned.
'Might need to look into that.'
Meanwhile.
Inspector Lyn Yenitz was reeling for entirely different reasons.
'No way, right?'
She shuddered.
'Anti-magic constitution... it can't be real, can it?!'
The inspector had her own bizarre headache brewing.
I tapped the body cam and muttered.
"Hope that got through."
Power was back on, so they'd send backup if needed.
"Wonder what happened to the others."
Walter, Jackson, and the rest hadn't even shown up as corpses.
Which meant the witch likely used them as sacrifices...
I passed the mound of mummified bodies and headed deeper into the hall.
A putrid stench assaulted my nose.
"What the hell is this?"
Shining the rifle light ahead revealed a massive magic circle.
Like an inverted pentagram, tangled lines extended outward in red.
Following one led right where I expected.
"...All the gang's holed up here."
The gangsters—used up and sacrificed?—hung from the walls like Vienna sausages.
Not just them. Civilians, too, strung up as offerings.
Looks like she drained their blood to draw this pentagram.
Scanning slowly with the light, I froze at a familiar sight.
"Uncle Jackson?"
There they were—Jackson and 2nd Squad, strung up with the gang.
I rushed over and checked for signs of life first.
"Damn..."
But I quickly realized it was pointless.
Think about it.
The witch wanted my corpse, not me alive as a sacrifice.
Hanging here meant they were already dead.
Shaking my head, that's when—
"Cough!"
Jackson, who I'd thought dead, suddenly hacked up a lung.
"...! Uncle!"
I bolted to him and slapped his face hard.
Slap!
"Uncle! You with me?!"
"Urk... uurk..."
Half-chimera body saved him?
I hurriedly cut him down from the wall.
"...!!"