The Mage
When I climbed down the ladder, a guard looked up at me, his eyes darting between my face and the heavy sniper rifle slung across my back.
"Y-you took down the sniper up there... all by yourself?"
"Yeah. Left her breathing, so slap some cuffs on her first. Hey, mister, you don't happen to have a spare rifle sling, do you?"
I asked as my boots hit the ground from the bottom rung. Using the sniper's leather belt as a makeshift strap for the R98 meant the heavy wooden stock kept hammering into my ribs with every stride—an unbearable nuisance. The guard hurriedly unhooked a spare leather sling from his shoulder and held it out.
"H-here you go!"
"Thanks. That woman's dangerous once she comes around. Even a whole squad might get chewed up, so don't you dare untie those ropes."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
I buckled the new sling securely to the swivels on the R98 and cinched it tight against my back. Next, I checked the ammunition in the Type 91 Rifle in my hands. With two rounds left between the chamber and the magazine, I stripped three loose cartridges from my pouch and fed them into the well.
Click-clack!
I worked the bolt forward, locking it down before tallying the count in my head.
One in the chamber, four in the magazine—five rounds, fully loaded. Twenty-two spare cartridges in reserve.
Locked and loaded. Time to go collect what I'm owed.
The corridor leading to the East Maintenance Depot was utter bedlam. Overturned toolboxes, welding masks rolling across the concrete floor, and scraps of metal throwing off faint red sparks bore clear witness to workers fleeing in blind panic. Steam hissed violently from cracked overhead pipes, while from deeper inside, the dull thud of gunfire echoed against the metallic shriek of tearing steel.
Tracking where Section Chief Irina had passed was child's play.
The first heavy steel door had been sliced straight through at the hinges. Past the threshold lay one of Lentz's thugs, sprawled face down in a pool of blood. Seeing his revolver cleaved cleanly in half told me I was on the right path.
At the easternmost edge of the depot sat a colossal domed rail yard. Morning sunlight filtered at a sharp slant through the soot-stained panes of the vaulted glass ceiling, illuminating thick motes of coal dust drifting through the air. On the furthest of four rail lines, a compact iron beast huffed steady plumes of white vapor.
A steam shunter. Far too short and stubby to pass for a mainline locomotive, but engineered with enough low-end brute torque to haul hundreds of tons of freight cars across the yard like a heavy dump truck. Beneath the small cargo platform behind the cab, the Chief of Security was on his knees, hands bound behind him, trembling like a leaf.
Lentz, flanked by his two remaining men, was just about to scramble aboard. Blocking their retreat stood Section Chief Irina, the left sleeve of her ink-black longcoat torn ragged to the elbow.
The massive blade of her greatsword dripped thick and wet with crimson. With every measured step she took forward, the spearman and the gunman retreated in lockstep, their faces drained of color.
"Get on!" Lentz roared, seizing the security chief by the collar and hurling him onto the platform. Inside the cab, boiler pressure spiked, and the heavy pistons began their rhythmic churn. White, high-pressure steam burst from beneath the steel wheels as the shunter lurched forward to break away.
Like hell you are!
I rested the Type 91 across a workbench beside the tracks. Through the cab window, I caught sight of a figure reaching for the throttle. Sighting just beside the doorframe, I lined up the front post and squeezed the trigger without hesitation.
Crack—!
The heavy bullet tore straight through the cab door. The operator inside ducked down, yanking their hand back from the controls.
Screeech, crunch!
The shunter bucked violently, then ground to a shuddering halt with the agonized wail of locked brakes. White vapor vented from beneath the door seam.
"...What?!"
Lentz whipped his head around, raising his revolver in my direction. But Irina's boots were already kicking off the gravel beside the ties, moving immeasurably faster.
Her ink-black hair whipped behind her as she closed the distance in a single breath. The spear thrust out in front of her was sheared in half the instant it met her greatsword, and the silver arc that followed sheared cleanly through the spearman's neck. A crimson fountain erupted, and his head thumped onto the ballast.
The next sweep of her blade caught the second man's wrist mid-draw, sending his severed hand flopping onto the iron plating.
Now only Lentz, the security chief, and the shunter remained. Working the bolt, I chambered the next round. One in the pipe, three in the magazine.
And then.
Hiss—
The iron door of the halted shunter swung slowly outward from within. Down the narrow steps descended a man at an unhurried, leisurely pace.
A lean, middle-aged man with slicked-back grey hair. He carried neither blade nor firearm. Yet pinned to the left lapel of his immaculate, dust-free brown overcoat was a gleaming silver brooch.
The insignia: a plumb bob dropping straight down through the center of a black circle.
...The Gravity School?
It was the exact crest I had studied in the Imperial facility's anti-magic manuals. Facing an actual mage in real combat was a first—not just in Sonya's fifteen years, but in Kim Yujin's twenty-nine years on Earth.
Walking around with a giant badge announcing his trade? What, is he some sheltered academic who's never seen a real battlefield?
The sneer had barely formed in my mind when the man's hands twisted into a bizarre, interlocking mudra before his chest. His right index and middle fingers wrapped around his left thumb, locking tightly into place.
BOOOOOM—!
In that instant, an appalling weight crashed down onto my shoulders, as if an entire ten-ton steam locomotive had been dropped directly from the rafters.
"Kugh...!"
The muzzle of the Type 91 slammed into the steel plating between the rails. My knees buckled inward, groaning on the verge of snapping. When I tried to draw breath, my crushed rib cage refused to expand, starving my lungs of air.
This insane crap... is magic?!
I gritted my teeth. The stubborn, gutter-rat grit of a twenty-nine-year-old Korean deadbeat slammed headfirst into an augmented body conditioned over ten years to withstand loads up to seven hundred and forty kilograms. My joints shrieked under the strain.
"Up... get the fuck UP!"
Planting the rifle like a crutch, I forced myself upright. My knees were trembling, refusing to obey. Grinding my molars until they nearly cracked, I straightened my legs, buckling the heavy steel plating under my boots. Stand, damn you!
The mage's eyebrows shot up in sheer disbelief. His gaze flicked between the warped steel beneath my feet and my face.
"...Kasha rak! It's an augmented human!" Lentz screamed in a foreign tongue.
All semblance of leisurely calm vanished from the mage's face.
His fingers shifted with lightning speed.
His right hand cupped the left, both thumbs snapping outward.
The crushing downward pressure vanished. Just as I thought I had broken free—
The concrete wall to the depot's left suddenly became the floor.
Gravity had twisted ninety degrees sideways.
"...?!"
My boots left the ground. I squeezed the stock of the Type 91 with white-knuckled desperation, but my entire body hurtled through the empty air like an artillery shell.
The concrete wall rushed up to meet me at terrifying speed.
CRASH—!
My back and skull slammed into the masonry. Bricks shattered, and an industrial metal shelving unit toppled over. Heavy hammers and metal toolboxes rained down on top of me. I couldn't even tell what was hitting me—everything just exploded in agony.
My vision plunged into pitch darkness.
The last thing I caught before the black took me was Section Chief Irina's face, turning toward me in horrified shock.
Sonya was buried beneath the rubble. The moment Irina turned toward her, Lentz raised his pistol.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunfire erupted in rapid succession. Irina twisted her upper body with fluid grace to evade the first slug, then angled the broad flat of her greatsword to deflect the second. With a sharp ting, the squashed lead bullet skipped off the concrete, and in that split second, her boots dug in and pushed off the rail.
Her greatsword surged toward Lentz's throat. Lentz desperately kicked up the broken spear shaft from the ground, catching it with both hands to parry.
Crack!
The shaft cleaved apart like tofu. The edge slashed through the front of Lentz's coat, carving a long crimson gash across his ribs. Lentz staggered back with a guttural groan, but he was never her true target. Spinning on her heel in a half-revolution, Irina leveled the point of her sword straight at the gravity mage standing before the shunter.
The mage's ten fingers wove together in a blur.
Rumble!
The coal ash beneath Irina's path swept violently to the left all at once, dragging her lead foot along with it. The moment her balance broke, Lentz's revolver roared once more.
Bang!
The bullet grazed Irina's left shoulder, tearing through the collar of her coat. Yet she did not go down. Planting her left hand on the ground, she rolled into a recovery breakfall, sprang to her feet, and hooked her toe under a scatter of metal scraps lying along the tracks.
Clatter-clatter-clack!
The iron shards sprayed outward in a broad fan. Half a dozen of them snapped their trajectories two meters in front of the mage, snagged by empty air, before plunging violently into the ground.
She had visualized the invisible gravity field.
Carving around the bent pocket of space, Irina charged in on an oblique angle. Cold sweat trickled down the mage's brow. His hands unlocked and snapped into a fresh seal—and in that instant, the air surrounding Irina's sword arm violently condensed.
Thud!
The heavy greatsword slammed tip-first into the steel deck plating. Several hundred kilograms of crushing force weighed down upon her single arm, yet Irina never released her grip. Closing in from the flank, Lentz swung the butt of his pistol straight for her temple.
With her right arm pinned by gravity, Irina reached across with her left hand, wrenched Lentz's wrist, and drove her forehead straight into his face.
CRACK!
Lentz's nasal bone caved in with a sickening crunch, blood spraying like a fountain. Seizing the stumbling man by the scruff of his neck, Irina hurled him directly at the mage.
Forced to pull his hands apart to dodge his crashing subordinate, the mage broke the gravitational field pinning her arm.
Six meters remaining. Ripping the greatsword free from the deck, Irina sprinted full tilt. As the mage's fingers began to intertwine again, she threw the massive blade forward with terrifying conviction.
SHRIIIIEK—THUNK!
A split second before the airborne slab of steel could pierce his heart, the mage thrust both hands upward, diverting the gravitational axis against the oncoming blade.
The greatsword buried itself deep into the iron floor, but in that fleeting diversion, Irina had already crossed the gap, right under his nose.
Yet a blood-drenched Lentz threw his entire body from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist. As they tumbled across the floor, the bleeding mage staggered backward, clutching both hands to his chest.
RUUUUMBLE!
The steel plating beneath Irina's feet warped and buckled downward into a concave crater. Lentz clawed his way desperately out of the affected zone.
"Kugh...!"
Irina's knee struck the reinforced floor with a brutal slam. Her shoulders and spine compressed under horrific pressure, denting the iron beneath her. Dark, clotted blood poured freely from the mage's nose and lips, but he clenched his jaw and refused to unweave his fingers.
Crawling across the floor, Lentz snatched up his fallen pistol. Staggering upright, covered in gore, he leveled the barrel directly between Irina's eyes as she remained pinned to the deck.
Click.
"You monster of a bitch," Lentz rasped, wheezing ragged breaths. "This is the end of the line, Irina Weiss."
Snap.
The hammer struck empty air.
A dry-fire. The chamber was empty. Lentz's brow furrowed, and he reached instinctively toward the ammunition pouch at his hip—and right at that very instant.
SKRRRRIIITCH—
From beneath the mountain of collapsed brick and rubble came the harsh screech of an iron shelf scraping across concrete.
Lentz and the mage snapped their eyes toward the sound simultaneously.
Drifting up through the clouds of brick dust and mortar was a thin wisp of acrid grey smoke.
It wasn't the stink of burnt cordite. It was the sharp, bitter tang of smoldering dried leaf—Cheonghoecho smoke.
Thud.
A heavy combat boot stepped out from the debris.
It was Sonya.
Blood trailing from her scalp had soaked the collar of her shirt. Her right arm hung limp at her side, while her left hand held the Type 91 Rifle. The Cheonghoecho pinched between her lips was already burned down past the halfway mark.
And then.
Around the rims of her pale-blue irises.
Fwhoosh—
A cold, spectral blue ghost flame flared to life, flickering with vivid luminescence.
The eerie blue glow clung only to the corners of her eyes. The sight of it froze the mage in his tracks, stalling his hands.
Sonya twisted her blood-smeared lips into a savage smirk, exhaling a long, trailing plume of bitter Cheonghoecho smoke.
"That hurt like a fucking bitch, you asshole."