Time Over (2)
—Fwoosh!
The teleportation circle flared with blinding light, and Kim Ho appeared.
At the sight of him, the exact same thought flashed through Jeong Chong-myeong's and Hong Ye-hwa's minds.
He's composed.
He is really composed.
A fair stretch of the semester had passed, but Kim Ho was still a first-year. This operation had drawn in upperclassmen by the dozen, and he himself was carrying its most pivotal role—if anyone had cause to feel the crushing weight of it, it was him. Yet not a trace of it showed on his face, calm and unbothered as ever.
He even walked straight up to them, looked them square in the eye, and said his piece.
"Please send the next teleport."
"……."
Jeong Chong-myeong's gaze deepened.
For him to start rushing them the moment he arrived could only mean the situation at the temporary storage had turned desperate. What on earth had happened over there? He was curious, but that could wait—hearing it later would be no loss.
Jeong Chong-myeong traded a glance with Hong Ye-hwa, then promptly poured mana into the teleportation circle. At the same time, he reached Dang Gyu-young over the comm.
Jeong Chong-myeong:"Dang Gyu-young, we're using it again."
Dang Gyu-young:"Hey, hurry! Hurry!"
The voice that came back was tight with urgency. The two mages bent their focus all the harder, and—
—Fwooosh!
Out of the brightly glowing circle walked Dang Gyu-young.
Jeong Chong-myeong asked her, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Use it again? The teleport."
"No, we're good."
She shook her head. The Disciplinary Committee members had broken free of Choi Han-gil's severance space and were now locked in battle with the thieves ransacking the temporary storage—and somewhere in the chaos, the coordinate anchor had been destroyed.
Hong Ye-hwa asked,
"Then what about the rest?"
"……All we can do is hope they slip out on their own."
Of course, the odds of those left behind making it out of the C Exchange safely were vanishingly slim—their opponents were two third-year Disciplinary Committee members, and trap formations had been laid all over the place.
Dang Gyu-young said,
"They'll buy some time, at least. Those kids are pretty good at dodging and running."
"You'd know your kids best."
Jeong Chong-myeong nodded and moved on to the next subject.
"The book. Kim Ho has it, right?"
"Yep. Want it now?"
"After it's all over."
Taking it now would mean nothing if the Disciplinary Committee caught them with it. Leaving it in Kim Ho's and Dang Gyu-young's hands until the final moment, while the others helped cover their escape, was by far the better call.
The problem was that escape…….
Jeong Chong-myeong spoke, his gaze making a light sweep of the rooftop and beyond.
"Every decent escape route is blocked."
The original plan had been to raid the temporary storage, melt into the downtown district, and return only after the Disciplinary Committee withdrew. With Chae Da-bin feeding them vision, moving unseen would have been entirely possible.
But with their control tower seized, that plan had to be scrapped—and the Disciplinary Committee was tightening its net by the minute.
Which left exactly one approach worth trying.
Jeong Chong-myeong fed mana into the teleportation circle once more.
"No time. Both of you, go up."
Dang Gyu-young blinked at him, puzzled.
"Hold on—that thing works with two people?"
"It's not supposed to. But we're out of choices."
Teleportation was long-range spatial movement magic—the number of targets it could carry, the distance, the accuracy, all of it scaled with rank. But its training difficulty was monstrous, and even Jeong Chong-myeong, president of the White Magic Club, was only C-rank with it.
As things stood, without the magic circle and a coordinate anchor its stability cratered, and one person per cast was the limit. Right now, though, there was no room to cast it twice in a row. With no telling when the Disciplinary Committee would come crashing in, they had to send them both together, whatever the risk.
Dang Gyu-young understood that too. Doubt written all over her face, she grabbed Kim Ho's arm.
"C'mere."
Then she looped her arm through his, as if determined never to be shaken off.
At the sight, Jeong Chong-myeong's expression turned oddly complicated.
She doesn't need to cling like that.
All they had to do was stand on the circle together.
He stole a glance at Hong Ye-hwa. Her face wore a similarly strange look.
But that was hardly the pressing matter, so the two of them focused purely on driving the teleportation circle. Soon the ground beneath Kim Ho and Dang Gyu-young lit up bright—
—Fwooosh!
The next instant, the two of them had vanished without a trace.
Hoping they'd been flung as far away as possible, Jeong Chong-myeong gave his orders to the remaining mages.
"Everyone, get ready. Company's coming."
—Rrrrumble……
Sure enough, before long, a wooden door shot up from one corner of the rooftop. It swung open, and out walked Gwak Seung-jae with second- and third-year Disciplinary Committee members in tow.
Jeong Chong-myeong let out a helpless little laugh.
The world truly is unfair.
Here he was, a third-year who could barely manage to teleport two people, while some people just snapped open a door and marched dozens back and forth through it.
Of course, he had his own areas of expertise, so it wasn't as if he was green with envy. He filed the stray thoughts away there and opened his mouth, perfectly composed.
"Seung-jae. You're here."
"Good evening, senior. Apologies for calling on you at this late hour."
Gwak Seung-jae bowed with his customary courtesy, but there were thorns in his words. He might as well have said outright: I'm here at this hour because you broke academy rules, senior.
Jeong Chong-myeong didn't rise to it, his tone as level as ever.
"Yes. Hard work, being out at this hour."
"There were plenty of other ways to recover the confiscated items. Did you truly have to join hands with the Thieves Club?"
"Figured a change of pace couldn't hurt, now and then."
"I would have preferred you sought your recreation within the rules, senior."
The corner of Jeong Chong-myeong's mouth curled up slightly.
"My apologies. We're not proud of how we're doing this either, but there were reasons this time."
"I couldn't say what those reasons might be. But it doesn't strike me as a good choice. If the Thieves Club fails, all you'll earn for it is penalty points, no?"
With that, Gwak Seung-jae turned his head aside. His gaze had settled somewhere in the far distance—a forest lying between the downtown district and the academy buildings. He seemed to have caught Kim Ho's and Dang Gyu-young's trail.
—Rrrrumble……
Gwak Seung-jae shut the door he'd kept standing by and summoned a fresh wooden one. He was just about to feed the Disciplinary Committee members through it when—
—FWOOM!
The door was swallowed by roaring flames and reduced to ash in the blink of an eye.
Gwak Seung-jae's gaze dropped slightly. A crimson magic circle was glowing at his feet. He turned his eyes again, toward Hong Ye-hwa, and she flashed him a smile.
"Those don't work here."
More than that—hidden magic circles were surfacing one by one, the whole rooftop brightening by the second. They had anticipated the Disciplinary Committee's assault and fortified the entire area into a fortress.
They had walked straight into a trap, yet not a shred of alarm showed on any Disciplinary Committee face. If anything, most of them wore grins like it was festival day.
"Now this is more like it."
"Chasing down petty thieves just isn't any fun, I tell you."
Which said everything about the absolute confidence they had in their own skills.
Gwak Seung-jae spoke.
"You may buy yourselves a little time, but the outcome will not change."
"Still beats doing nothing, doesn't it?"
At Jeong Chong-myeong's glance over his shoulder, the mages brought their circles to life in unison. The downtown district at midnight blazed bright as noon.
—Fwooosh!
My vision flooded blue, then went pitch-black in an instant. My body spun round and round, as if I were stuck on an amusement park ride.
The ride quality leaves a lot to be desired.
Two people crammed onto a one-person teleport—of course it was going to be unstable. A heartbeat later I went sprawling face-first onto what turned out to be a grassy thicket, and a beat behind me, Dang Gyu-young went sprawling too.
On top of me. Not the grass.
"Aigoo. Kim Ho, you alright?"
"I'm fine."
Dang Gyu-young pushed herself upright right away—then, for some reason, froze.
"……Hm? Hold still a second?"
She eased herself back down onto me, gently. Then she started shifting her position this way and that.
I was essentially being treated as a mattress.
"Excuse me, Dang Gyu-young. Is this really the time to be lounging around?"
"Hang on. Seriously, just hang on."
"What is it now?"
"Yo, this is…… weirdly comfortable?"
So Experiment Subject No. 4, Dang Gyu-young, apparently found the Kim Ho mattress to her liking. Which meant that, aside from Experiment Subject No. 3, Hong Ye-hwa, every trial had come back positive.
But this was no time for leisurely research. Whether Dang Gyu-young was on top of me or not, I pushed myself up.
"Finish the experiment later. Let's move for now."
"Yeah. Good call."
Dang Gyu-young turned serious again, and together we started through the forest. The two-person teleport had skipped us a considerable distance, putting us well clear of the Disciplinary Committee's encirclement.
But nothing's over until it's over—there was every chance someone was waiting in this forest too. We couldn't slack on vigilance until we reached the dormitory.
And sure enough, a little further on, a familiar face came into view.
Song Cheon-hye.
She looked a touch bored at being stuck keeping watch in the middle of nowhere, but she plainly counted this as her duty, scanning the surroundings with earnest eyes. The gap in skill between her and Dang Gyu-young was wide enough that she hadn't sensed our stealth at all, yet brushing past her unnoticed didn't look easy either.
—Crackle, crackle……
Threads of electric current, gossamer-thin and barely visible, drifted through the air, filling the entire area.
Lightning Thread.
She'd used that very skill to snare Seo Ye-in's optical camouflage ghillie suit back at the placement exam. True to her mana-monster reputation, she'd spread it across an absurdly wide field—no matter how well we hid, one careless touch and we were caught.
But a long detour was out of the question, so I spoke up.
"We take her out and push through."
"Yeah, that's cleaner."
Suppressing Song Cheon-hye and moving past her was the optimal play. It would raise a bit of a ruckus, but that had to be accepted.
Before long, two black butterflies lifted off from Dang Gyu-young's palm.
The butterflies fluttered high into the sky—then dropped like stones, right above Song Cheon-hye's head.
"!!"
She jolted in shock and moved to react, but by then the shadow butterflies were already detonating.
Dang Gyu-young gave Song Cheon-hye—a prisoner trussed tight in her own ropes—a quick once-over, then said,
"Let's go."
"Let's."
We broke into a run, cutting straight across Song Cheon-hye's zone. The current-threads crackled against our bodies again and again, but shocks this weak wouldn't have fazed even Shin Byung-cheol—they weren't a spell for dealing damage or restraint to begin with.
Then, before long—
"St—op— right— there—!"
Song Cheon-hye's cry rang out from behind us. Still running, we threw each other a look.
"How did that thing come undone so fast?"
"……Beats me."
That binding should have held a good three to five minutes at the minimum. She must have gotten her hands on some high-grade artifact or trait.
—CRRACKLE-CRACK—!
Song Cheon-hye came tearing after us, lightning wreathing her entire body. Just like in the 4v4 match during the mentoring event, she looked dead set on an electrified body slam. And she was fast—the gap between us was narrowing, little by little.
Throwing glances back over her shoulder, Dang Gyu-young asked,
"We're gonna have to lay her flat out."
"I'll handle it."
Keeping my pace, I abruptly spun around and flung my hand out toward Song Cheon-hye.
—THUNK!
An ice wall reared up right before Song Cheon-hye's eyes. An Ice Wall copied off Han Gyeo-wool—a full B-rank, thick and solid as they came.
"!!"
Her face registered shock at the wall that had erupted out of nowhere, but reacting was already a lost cause. Too much momentum, too little road—no stopping, no turning.
So she did the only thing left: delivered that electric body slam, full force, straight into the ice wall.
—CRASH!
The collision thundered through the midnight forest.
Dang Gyu-young snuck another glance back.
"Ooh. That one's gotta hurt."
"I do feel a little bad about it. But we've gotta survive too."
—Shwiiiii!
At that very moment, something pale white came flying in from up ahead.