Magic, Murder, Forbidden
Halo City
"Where the hell are you hiding, you little rat bitch?! Just show yourself! I'll tear you to shreds!"
As I slipped into the back alley and reached the scene, a raucous bellow cut through the air. It was a man's voice, thick with murderous intent.
I muffled my footsteps as best I could and peeked around the corner. What I found was a ruined open lot, walls and floor half-collapsed into rubble as if a bomb had gone off.
And right in the middle of that lot stood a man covered head to toe in tattoos, bloodshot eyes sweeping the surroundings. One look was enough to know he was the one who'd caused the mess.
A mage... is he?
Faint mana was leaking from his body.
The air here held almost no mana at all, so it prickled against my senses the way moisture does in dry air—sharper, more sensitive.
Yet something felt off. This was mana coming from a person, so why did it feel as flat and flavorless as the stuff that leaked from televisions or cars?
Thinking back, I'd run into the same thing a few times out on the streets. People who, for some strange reason, reeked of that same bland mana.
I'd shrugged it off, figuring they just had smartphones on them. But maybe those people had been mages like this man after all.
"Still not coming out, huh? Fine by you if this bitch ends up in pieces, right? Hah?!"
"Kyaa! Ugh, uuugh...!"
"If you don't show yourself by the time I count to ten, this girl's face is gonna burst open like a watermelon!"
"E-Ellie! Don't come out! Stay hidden! Kyaaugh!"
"Shut your damn mouth!"
I was still turning over the faces of those people I'd seen earlier when the rough-looking man suddenly grabbed a fistful of hair from someone collapsed on the ground.
The person he hauled up by force was a mature woman. Her clothes hung half-torn from her body, and her skin—pale and translucent, a stark contrast to the tattoo-covered man—looked almost provocatively pure.
More than that, yanking her hair like that had to hurt. I narrowed my eyes and locked gazes with Cheshire, who was also peeking around the corner.
Looks like a hostage situation.
Doesn't feel like the good guy threatening the villain for revenge, though, does it?
No matter the incident, you could never grasp the whole story from a single fragment. Sometimes a good person got mistaken for a bad one; sometimes a bad one got mistaken for kind.
That was why, whenever I stepped into someone else's business, I always tried to watch first and piece together the full context.
I'd once cracked a guy over the head thinking he was the villain, only to find out it was all a misunderstanding. I did my best to keep emotion out of it.
But after watching everything unfold up to this point, there was nothing left to misunderstand.
He was openly wielding lethal magic, and he had yanked a defenseless person up by the hair and threatened to cave her skull in if the other didn't come out. Even the ancients didn't stoop to threats like that.
I settled on the spell that would put him down and was about to leap out from the corner and fire when the situation suddenly shifted.
"Stop it! I'll come out, okay?!"
A thin, young voice rang out, and someone burst from the rubble of a building.
The rough man's face lit up with triumph. The woman's expression, which hadn't broken even when her hair was yanked, crumpled into pure despair.
"That's it! You were hiding there, you filthy little rat!"
The one who stepped into the open was a small child who looked about middle-school age.
Her uncombed, messy hair hung past her shoulders, and large glasses peeked out from behind the bangs that half-hid her face.
She was in rough shape. Her clothes were filthy with dust and torn in places, and the exposed skin showed scrapes that looked painful.
She was breathing hard, clearly exhausted, yet her stance was full of resolve not to run.
"No... Ellie, why didn't you run...?"
"I'm sorry, Madam... I couldn't just stand by and watch you die."
I still didn't know the details, but from the way they spoke, the two of them were clearly close. Even without knowing a thing about their circumstances, something in my chest gave a tight little squeeze.
The sudden damp feeling made me suck in a breath and look up at the sky. That was when the man barked a twisted laugh at them.
"Ha! A couple of thief bitches with some real deep friendship! If you didn't want to die, you shouldn't have stolen my stuff!"
...What. So that was the situation. For a second I froze, blinking in confusion—until the girl shouted back, voice thick with rage.
"Why is this yours?! It belonged to my dad! You killed him and stole it!"
"Aaaah? What kind of joke is that...? I paid good money and bought the rights fair and square. It's mine, pure and simple! Ah, forget it. Arguing with a brat is a pain. Hand it over already! My pendulum!"
"Kya—kyaugh!"
"O-okay! Okay, so stop!"
W-wait, this is complicated... So did they steal it, or does he actually have the rights, or what?
I hesitated for a moment, then watched the girl start toward the man, ready to hand over whatever she was holding. That decided it for me.
Whatever the truth was, anyone willing to kill with magic was definitely a problem. Only then did I step out from the corner and raise my voice.
"Wait. Hold on."
"Hah?"
My speech came out a little stiff. Listening and reading were fine by now, but speaking the way people did in this era still hadn't settled on my tongue.
To keep anyone from misunderstanding, I had no choice but to speak calmly, sticking to the key words. I needed their attention, so maybe the stiffness was actually useful.
The man looked startled by the sudden appearance of a robed weirdo covering everything from head to toe, but I spoke before he could recover.
"Magic. Murder. Forbidden."
"What the...! You from the Security Bureau?!"
"..."
Instead of answering, I drew my wand from inside the robe. I didn't know what the Security Bureau was, but it sounded like something similar to the police.
Whatever it was, he must have had plenty to feel guilty about. The flustered man flung the woman aside and yanked something from his coat.
A gun? My guard went up and I readied a defensive spell, but what he pulled out looked more like an elongated electric razor.
"Damn it! They said you bastards wouldn't come around here for a while!"
"No. Intention. To fight."
"Who the hell would believe that! Boom!"
He leveled the rod at me and shouted something. Mana rippled near him.
I carefully read the flow and realized this was the same murderous magic I'd sensed from a distance earlier.
Invisible mana shot from the tip of the rod and flew straight at me. If it hit, who knew what would happen.
Defend first.
It was a curious form of magic—something I'd never seen before.
Curiosity sparked, I flicked my magic wand as if brushing something away and murmured the incantation under my breath.
"Murus Aeris."
A spell that raises a wall of air. The moment the words left my lips, an explosion bloomed against the transparent barrier that had formed in the empty air.
The boom itself wasn't huge, but the force and the dust cloud that followed were thick enough to blot out the world in front of me.
Whatever that smoke was, I didn't want to breathe it. I held the barrier steady. From the other side came the man's voice.
"Ha, hahaha! Couldn't even cast a spell! What a goddamn loser! You get hit because you let your guard down!"
Hm? What did he mean by that? I'd clearly used magic to block it. Why would he say that?
A flicker of puzzlement passed through me, but for some reason the man's swagger rubbed me the wrong way.
So I casually stirred up a breeze, scattered the dust, and showed him I was perfectly unharmed.
"W-what... There was no magic at all...!"
"Is that. All. Boring. Ugly. Face."
"Kh, you little shit!"
I tossed out the insult that had just popped into my head. The man clenched his teeth so hard I thought they might crack and aimed the rod again.
This time he fired the explosions in a relentless stream. Ooh, impressive. How did he manage to rapid-fire magic like that?
Anyone without calculation speed on my level would need at least a tiny cooldown between spells. Was there some trick to it?
Curiosity piqued, I kept the barrier up and walked toward him one step at a time. His face went pale the moment he realized the defense wasn't so much as trembling.
Then the barrage suddenly stopped. Already over? I looked at him questioningly, but there was no sign of more magic coming.
"F-fuck...! What kind of magic tool are you wearing?!"
Looking closer, he was fiddling with the end of the rod, swapping something out—exactly like changing a magazine in a pistol... Ah. Of course.
A magic tool that fires offensive spells?
No, thinking about it, it made perfect sense.
Even the giant advertising boards on the building walls and the cars racing down the streets ran on applied magic.
It would have been stranger if no one had made a magic tool for something as simple as an attack spell.
So was the bland mana I'd been sensing just a misunderstanding? No... there had to be some reason for it too...
Forget it. First I'll put this guy down, then think.
He'd attacked first with clear intent to kill. Self-defense, right?
I leisurely pointed my wand at the man scrambling to swap out parts.
"Sagitta Stella."
"Uwaaaagh?!"
A spell that launches star mana shaped like an arrow.
I scooped up a handful of the star mana inside me, and an arrow the size of a man's forearm shot toward him.
In the ancient era that kind of force could casually smash through a wooden door. Hit bare-bodied by it, the man went flying far into the distance.
No sign of getting up... Knocked out in one shot, huh.
Just to be sure, I walked over to the man lying face-down and motionless and flipped him over with my toe.
His eyes had rolled back; he was completely out cold. His explosion magic packed a punch, yet he hadn't bothered protecting his own body at all.
I looked around, recovered the rod rolling on the ground, and met two pairs of eyes staring at me like startled rabbits.
"Amazing! You took Malek down in one hit...!"
"Who... are you?"
Fortunately, neither of them seemed inclined to run from the person who had just saved them from the threat.
They just stood there, still not fully understanding what had happened. After a brief pause I walked over and held out my hand with complete confidence.
"Reward. Give."
After all the help I'd just given them, the least they could do was tell me where the library was.
As I smiled with absolute self-assurance, Cheshire hopped lightly onto my shoulder. Heavy.