Chapter 44
Chapter 44
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 44
Chapter Title: Stepping on Convection
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‘I shouldn’t associate with them.’
That wasn’t my intention from the beginning.
Before forming the party, I’d even considered that traveling with outsiders would be a good way to see the mercenaries' skills and broaden my horizons.
But seeing my companions up close made me change my mind.
‘For now, the goal is just to get inside…’
A considerable number of soldiers were stationed outside the entrance to the quarantined zone.
Their menacing glares were fixed on those passing by.
The leader held up his registration slip and said,
"Four of us. We just barely made the count."
They seemed to recognize each other.
The guard jerked his chin toward the inside of the zone. The other team members and Loan also showed their registration slips and entered one by one.
Loan had been inwardly nervous, but once inside, the area didn't look much different from an ordinary marketplace.
The clamor was so intense it almost felt peaceful.
This area, being the closest to the outside, naturally had the most foot traffic. In other words, it was either the safest place or the one with the most opportunities to make money.
It was no surprise that it seemed to be filled with vagrants and residents.
‘Then I have no more business with them.’
While his temporary companions were briefly distracted by the swarming vagrants.
After using Convection to draw the surrounding stench toward them, dulling their senses a little more, Loan naturally blended into the crowd.
His first concern was that associating with such low-class individuals might dull his character.
And he judged that, given his estimation of their skills, there wasn't much to be gained.
‘Going alone will be better for reconnaissance anyway.’
But a moment later, Loan quickly realized he wasn't alone.
He had widely expanded his third eye, the one that saw mana, to gather information.
In a space scattered with murky mana, an unusually dense concentration of it was watching him steadily from a slightly elevated area a few alleys away.
‘Sienna, too…’
She had left her team and was acting independently.
She had said her top priority was reconnaissance and intelligence, but now it seemed she was most concerned with the safety of her juniors.
Loan bowed his head slightly and smiled.
While feeling a sense of reassurance, he also felt the desire to show off his skills while she was watching.
Whether it was his first mission or his hundredth, the need to achieve merits was the same.
‘First, I need to find traces of the ghouls.’
Ghouls are humanoid monsters created using living humans as material.
They are created by dark priests or black mages, specifically those who specialize in necromancy.
Physical abilities enhanced to the point of monstrous strength, sharp and long-grown teeth and claws. A tongue that extends and writhes like a snake.
‘They say they eat human flesh.’
They possess reason, but their desire for cannibalism is so beyond imagination that they cannot control their own actions.
This was all information he had learned from books.
So, he would have to meet one in person to know just how dangerous they were.
Loan wandered through the alleys, familiarizing himself with the quarantined zone.
Buildings erected haphazardly, without any planning. Shops flourishing without permits. People living chaotically within them. A quarantined zone that confined all of it inside.
A place where no one would care if someone suddenly died or disappeared—
Perhaps it was the adult version, the socialized version, of the Danton Shelter.
The thought was a bitter one.
‘Since it's a place like this… Le Tell must have extended its evil clutches here as well.’
That filthy man vomiting, that woman staggering, drunk on alcohol or high on drugs—to Le Tell, they would all look like sacrifices.
At the shelter, they would have become human trees and fruits; here, they could become ghouls.
Loan looked at the vagrants and pitied them.
They may have ended up in this pit, but he was sure they hadn't wanted this from the beginning.
‘Besides, I'm with the Union now.’
From a member's perspective, this situation was clearly not conducive to peace and the public's welfare. It would be even worse if they became ghouls.
Therefore, to prevent the worst-case scenario, Le Tell itself had to be eliminated.
It was time to put into action the decision he made the day he met Mother Pauline again.
Loan moved deeper into the quarantined zone.
"……."
"……."
Although he was revealing his identity as a mage with the Schwerin muffler, there were still some who eyed him with predatory gazes or made light attempts to threaten him.
Loan gauged his opponents' strength in advance and intimidated them with Sheville.
A sword blade floating in the air. Its ominous glare was enough to make them come to their senses.
‘I've come quite a way from the entrance.’
Just as he thought that.
He saw a tangle of halos of light a block away.
Some were humans wielding mana, and.
‘A form I've never seen before…’
Instead of drawing on and wielding concentrated mana, it felt as if murky mana was directly infused into their muscles and bones.
He approached cautiously.
As expected, three mercenaries were fighting against ghouls there.
‘Perhaps because they were beings created by black magic, it feels like mana was forcibly injected into their bodies.’
Loan decided not to think about what they had been when they were human.
As he meticulously examined the ghouls inside and out, Loan also took in the combat style of the subjugation team.
One of them, someone Loan and Sienna knew well, was overwhelming the ghouls with explosive offensive power.
‘He said it was reconnaissance…’
Loan clicked his tongue softly.
Lucas seemed to have forgotten the mission. He appeared to be doing his best in his current position as a member of the subjugation team.
However, his posture was incredibly awkward.
The sight of him swinging his sword in a wide-legged horse stance was, frankly, ridiculous.
‘Did the chafing hurt that much?’
Loan felt a pang of pity for Lucas.
But on closer inspection, Lucas's rampage wasn't entirely ineffective for gathering information.
After all, ghouls were beings with reason.
Seeing Lucas slaughtering their comrades with such immense destructive power, it seemed they couldn't just charge in recklessly.
One or two of them, who had been watching the situation from a distance, were seen slipping away to the rear.
Either to escape or to call for reinforcements.
It meant that Lucas was a more terrifying presence than their own desires.
Loan felt proud of Lucas, who was more monstrous than the monsters, and followed the ghouls.
‘They're fast.’
Loan was slightly taken aback by the ghouls' speed.
Even circulating mana rapidly throughout his body, he struggled to keep up.
Their basic physical abilities had been elevated to a monstrous level from the moment of their creation.
‘I'm going to lose them.’
A sense of failure welled up inside him.
‘I can't run any faster than this.’
The limits of his body and his mana.
He had long felt it while training his body and channeling his mana.
As he grew, his physical abilities improved and his athletic skills rose with them, but the amount of mana he could use hadn't changed, so there was no significant overall change.
Many of the peers Loan had initially surpassed had eventually outpaced him.
‘Mr. Diego said it would be better to learn movement techniques after joining the Union, but…’
He hadn't expected to feel its lack so soon. Then again, he had been deployed on a mission rather quickly.
In his haste, Loan sent a Sheville flying, nicking the leg of a lagging ghoul.
Just enough to leave a trail without hindering its escape.
He checked and saw that a trail of bloodstains led sporadically through the dark alley.
Since he could no longer see their mana, he was grateful for even this.
Loan slowly followed the trail.
His thoughts, however, remained on solving his deficiency, on that deliberation.
‘A Faith Division movement technique must be stealthy and swift.’
In that respect, Blake's old movement technique—a method that increased speed by explosively releasing mana from the soles of his feet—was unsuitable.
‘I don't have that much mana either. I need a movement technique that suits me and is fitting for the Faith Division. Like Sienna's…’
Suddenly, Loan thought of Sienna and observed her.
She was still following him stealthily, maintaining her distance.
Sienna was the same as when he first met her.
If he had to put it into words.
‘Elusive, perhaps.’
She always appeared suddenly, but it was less of a "ta-da" and more of a silent glide.
It suited the Faith Division's missions perfectly.
‘Ah… is that why the Commander paired me with Sienna?’
The speculation suddenly hit him.
There had been some consideration.
‘To understand the characteristics of the Faith Division, and to gain an epiphany about the movement techniques essential for tracking and intelligence. Perhaps that is the greatest significance of this mission.’
Now that I've learned to walk, is he telling me to run?
It didn't matter if it was a misunderstanding.
The faster he learned the movement technique, the more it would help him accomplish missions and earn merits, that much was certain.
If he had been given a clue, gaining the insight was up to him.
Instead, Loan tried to decipher the secret of Sienna's movement technique as she trailed him.
Elusiveness. Abruptness.
It meant her steps were unpredictable.
‘The movement of mana. How it's released into the body, how it affects the muscles, joints, and bones—that part isn't different.’
That aspect could be considered the same for everyone. The difference appeared after that.
‘She's using the repulsive force of mana. The footwork itself was the key.’
It wasn't a method that gained propulsion from the recoil of an external explosion, but a movement technique where one glided by stepping on and pushing off the emitted mana.
If so, didn't he already have a more than sufficient current of Convection outside his body, one he didn't even need to emit?
‘Stepping on Convection?’
He hadn't thought of that before.
The knack of using his body for its implementation, the necessary magic formula—neither readily came to mind nor combined in his head.
Perhaps it was because there were things ahead of him that were distracting him.
‘For now, I'll focus on what's ahead.’
His epiphany was still shallow, but for now, he had to deal with the matter at hand.
The place where the wounded ghoul had fled to was unusual.
‘It wasn't just running away, was it?’
It had lured him into a trap.
If Loan couldn't see mana, he might have rushed in recklessly, and the situation could have turned out very differently.
But even knowing, he couldn't back down.
‘It wasn't just swarming with ghouls… eh… ghouls are crawling…’
Loan thought he could make a funny joke out of it as he observed the living humans in the creatures' lair.
The captives were either already mutilated and hanging limp, or were just about to be.
Still, there was no need to rush in recklessly.
After all, Loan was a mage.
W-w-woooong—
Ten Shevilles rose into the air simultaneously.
As if calling each one by name, a Sheville shot toward its destination every time Loan's softly murmuring lips closed.
With blinding speed and unpredictable movements, they bathed the area in light.
Through the space where bodily fluids and blood sprayed from where the ghouls' heads had been—
Loan walked serenely.
The invisible Convection swirling around him mixed with the crimson blood.
Loan stood in the middle of the ghouls' den, a mystical figure as if shrouded in a red mist.
At the same time, three ghouls rushed toward him in a torrent.
Their sharp teeth and claws were no less deadly than Sheville.
Kwoong—
Loan condensed the flow of [Convection] around his feet, establishing his [Domain].
Fire and ice began to blossom on the bodies of the ghouls that slowly stepped inside.