The Breach
At the same time.
Gwak Seung-jae was cutting his way through the midnight forest. Furtive footsteps, faint enough to be almost imagined, ghosted along on either side of him, telling him everything he needed to know: he was not alone.
'I did think something was off.'
The first prickle of unease had come at the Black Market. The Thief Club's patterns of behavior were simply too different from the year before. For the most part they never showed themselves at all, and even when someone was flushed out, they would slip away like a loach and vanish into hiding. It was as if they were moving with a clear, unobstructed view of the Disciplinary Committee's every move.
Then what on earth were they using to watch?
'...The crystal balls.'
Were they tapping into the security crystal balls? Once he framed the hypothesis and looked back over the evidence, a great many pieces snapped neatly into place. This year, Dang Gyu-young had begun placing heavy trust in Chae Da-bin — and with genius-level skill in magical engineering, the scheme was entirely feasible.
And from the Disciplinary Committee's standpoint, that was a very serious problem indeed.
'If we fail to solve it, we'll spend the rest of this war being led around by the nose.'
The presence or absence of eyes meant a monstrous gap in information. Whatever the Thief Club chose to do, the Committee would move a step late — and even that belated response would be read straight through. Neutralizing Chae Da-bin was therefore one of the operation's core objectives, and in some respects its priority rivaled even the defense of the Temporary Confiscation Storage itself.
The Committee, for its part, counted several members skilled in information warfare among its ranks. Setting every one of them on the back-trace had pinned down Chae Da-bin's whereabouts at least roughly — which was why they were now pushing through the brush.
'Is that it?'
Before long, a shabby three-story building entered Gwak Seung-jae's field of view. Its windows were shattered from end to end and ivy smothered its walls — an abandoned building beyond all doubt. Yet Gwak Seung-jae and his Committee members were certain they had found the right place, because Thief Club operatives stood watch around the structure and out on its rooftop. Some were in stealth, but none of it could fool Gwak Seung-jae's eyes.
Then one of the thieves spotted the Committee, and his eyes flew wide. Just as he opened his mouth to shout—
"Discip—!"
—a Committee member shot forward like a bolt of lightning and took him down. Another sent a crossbow bolt streaking toward the rooftop,
- Kzzt-crack!
and the thief who had been scanning the roof went rigid as if electrocuted and toppled where he stood. At Gwak Seung-jae's signal, the rest of the Committee began silently putting the thieves down, one by one.
"Ghk."
"Ugh."
The Student Disciplinary Committee was an organization assembled from the very strongest students enrolled at Dragon Slayer Academy — and the personnel on this operation were the finest of the fine, selected from even those ranks. The thieves dropped like flies, never granted so much as a single scream.
Before long, one of the Committee members approached Gwak Seung-jae and reported.
"All of them subdued. Do we move in?"
Gwak Seung-jae answered with the slightest affirmative dip of his chin, then stared hard at the abandoned building.
"Using the security crystal balls for private gain is a grave breach of academy regulations and an illegal act. The same holds for every accomplice. Escort them all in — not one left behind."
The Committee members bounded up to the second and third floors in single leaps, smashed through the half-broken windows, and poured inside.
- Craaash—!
- I think we've been made.
"What? Who's there?"
- ......
Dang Gyu-young asked in alarm, but no answer came back from Chae Da-bin. Presumably the line had been severed for good. Dang Gyu-young's expression turned bitter.
"Ugh... they got us good."
'They're no pushovers after all.'
The Disciplinary Committee was a gathering of hand-picked talent, after all. Someone must have grown suspicious of the crystal balls, worked the trail step by step from there, and finally bagged the tail. And given that Gwak Seung-jae hadn't shown his face until now, this was almost certainly a plan of his own making.
'Sharp thrust. Right for the throat.'
Dang Gyu-young knew perfectly well how vital the control tower was, which was why she had stationed two graduates there and nowhere else back during the Black Market. But she couldn't call on them tonight, so if the Disciplinary Committee pushed in on her, she would be utterly helpless. And yet abandoning the control tower would drag the operation's odds down in its own way — for Dang Gyu-young, there had never been a real choice. Flimsy or not, she'd had to use it. And Gwak Seung-jae had driven into that flimsiness with merciless precision.
Grim news or not, it still had to be shared with her allies, so Dang Gyu-young opened a channel to Jeong Chong-myeong.
"They got Da-bin. Looks like it was Gwak Seung-jae."
- ...That explains it. We have to assume our eyes are gone now.
"Yeah."
- So what's the call?
Jeong Chong-myeong left the choice to her. Press on without their eyes, or pull out now while there was still time. Of course, the answer had been settled long ago. The corners of Dang Gyu-young's mouth curled upward.
"Even if we can't have it, we're not giving an inch. If only for Da-bin's sake, we're seeing this through to the end."
- Knew it. Get ready, then.
That was the end of the call.
While they waited, Dang Gyu-young ran one last check. She pointed at the rope strung from the window of the building where we stood to the C Exchange.
"Rope's solid, right?"
"Aw, c'mon, obviously. That thing will never snap."
Shin Byung-cheol stomped on it for show, and truly it did not so much as tremble. When it came to rigging and tearing down equipment, the man certainly earned his keep.
Before Dang Gyu-young could throw out her next question, the wand-carrying boy answered first.
"All the spells have been dispelled as well. The area around us, at least, is clean."
"Good. The moment they make their move over there, we go in."
Sure enough, before long a violent surge of mana rolled out. The White Magic Club had made its play. If the spellwork was this vivid even from that considerable distance, one had to wonder what devastation it was doing up close.
Several enormous magic circles rose above the C Exchange and began raining down their inscribed spells in sequence.
- KWAAAAAAH—!
The entire building drowned in violet, then blazed yellow, then took on a murky green — until at last it froze over, solid through. The intent was plain: incapacitate the Committee members lying in wait inside, and failing that, stack debuffs on them until they couldn't function. Had they unleashed lethal force instead, building and all would have been wiped from the map without a trace — but they had surely held back on purpose. Anyone injured would needlessly blow the whole affair wide open, and if the structure collapsed and the banned items spilled loose, everything would have been for nothing.
"We're under attack—!"
someone who could only be a Committee member howled. Well, after a cascade of magic on that scale, anyone short of blind would have caught on. But that was not the only card the White Magic Club had readied. Fissures split open around the C Exchange, and spirits of every element — flame, frost, lightning — came boiling out to fall upon the Committee members. In the blink of an eye, the entire block had turned into a war zone.
Naturally, the situation was bound to flip before long. Once the Committee finished mopping up the control tower, their main force would come flooding straight this way. And Gwak Seung-jae had that absurdly overpowered mode of travel — his wooden doors. Every way she looked at it, there was no time to waste, so Dang Gyu-young said just one word.
"Gather up."
Shadow Passage
Shadow burst up from the ground beneath our feet and swallowed the whole party like spilled ink.
"Go."
In that state we stepped onto the rope one after another, sprinted across it like acrobats on a wire, reached the C Exchange's window, carved the entire pane out of its frame, and slipped inside.
"......"
"......"
Dang Gyu-young and the all-rounder mages swept their surroundings at a hair-trigger level of alert. Only once they confirmed that no breath of the Disciplinary Committee reached their senses did she make a hand sign.
"Moving."
Jeong Chong-myeong's scan magic had already verified it beforehand: the interior layout was identical to the Black Market days. Apparently the building hadn't been gutted after all. The one thing that mattered — the Temporary Confiscation Storage — sat on the topmost floor, the fourth. We had come over from the second story of the neighboring building, so to climb any higher we naturally had to make for the stairs.
So we were moving along at a brisk clip when Dang Gyu-young, out in front, checked her stride and called back to me.
"Kim Ho."
"Yes?"
"Formation's up."
Sure enough, an indescribable wrongness pressed in from somewhere ahead. If we marched straight in, we would end up wandering this way and that while our clock ran dry. Which meant that, exactly as we'd agreed beforehand, this part fell to me. I stepped forward.
"Please tie us together."
"Mm."
Dang Gyu-young's shadow braided itself into cords and lashed the party together in a single line, like cars of a train. Then she gave her instructions.
"Ignore everything else. Just follow wherever the line pulls you."
"Understood."
"Yes'm, Boss lady!"
Choi Han-gil and Shin Byung-cheol replied. I took a few steps forward, and the corridor wavered before splitting cleanly in two.
Of course, by a certain veteran's instincts, both branches were wrong answers — the correct one was straight ahead. I ignored the fork and kept walking, and just as the wall was about to meet my face, the corridor folded back together on its own. A few strides later the passage stretched itself long and whipped around hard to the left. I simply planted my feet and stopped dead, and after a few seconds the corridor reverted to its original shape, as if it had finally conceded that this route led nowhere.
'Just watch closely and walk on. Simple.'
Leaning on that veteran's sense, I threaded every trap without a hitch, and in no time at all we had broken through the Confusion Formation.
Shin Byung-cheol then carried on in a pitch-perfect impression of Go Hyeon-woo.
"Ho ho, Brother Kim's keen eye never ceases to astound, verily it does not. To cut through so formidable a formation with such effortless grace!"
"Hey, Shin Byung-cheol. You're cracking jokes right now?"
Though Dang Gyu-young raked him over the coals, I just laughed it off.
"Why not? It airs the place out. I'd call that a service."
"Back me up here."
"Byung-cheol. You think we're out on a picnic?"
"Pheheheh."
But our chatter died all at once, because the stairs were close now. We crept toward them with our wariness dialed to its maximum, and still the Disciplinary Committee showed not so much as the tip of a nose. Dang Gyu-young looked a touch deflated.
"Seriously — how do we come all this way without running into a single one of them?"
Jeong Chong-myeong's scan had confirmed the garrison inside was very thin, and even those few should have been rattled by the White Magic Club's mass-scale spellwork. Even so, by this point we should have crossed paths with at least one.
'Which is not good news.'
Because if they weren't here, then with overwhelming probability they were standing right beside the Temporary Confiscation Storage. The others must have followed the thought to the same conclusion, because the air grew heavier still.
Choi Han-gil, on the other hand, set his foot on the stairs as though it were none of his concern.
"What good would worrying do? We're hardly turning back at this point."
"Fair enough."
Dang Gyu-young nodded without hesitation, and the rest of us began to climb. But the moment we cleared the third floor and set foot on the flight leading to the fourth, we looked up — and froze solid.
A girl stood there in perfect stillness, gazing down at us.
A Disciplinary Committee armband on her forearm, and a gold tiepin. A third-year Committee member.
'Right on cue. I had a feeling someone would be up here.'
The stairs were the sole route to the top floor, so posting a single guard here had been only sensible.
"......"
A slender straight sword slid from its sheath at the girl's hip. She raised the blade before her chest, folded her other hand behind her back, and settled into her stance with the poise of a white swan.
Then she came charging down the stairs at a truly frightening speed.
- SHRIIEEEK!