Closing the Back Alley Operation
"Did you say it's possible to close it?"
My instinctive question slipped out before I could stop it.
Seir answered with her usual gentleness, whispering once more.
[Yes. It's not difficult at all.]
She already knew I understood that she was using her spatial authority.
Blink had been the first thing I learned about it.
Yet closing the short-range teleport and sealing the back alley felt like entirely different domains, right?
Seir clearly saw it differently.
[Just a little application of La Traviata would do.]
A… You still haven't given up on that?
Now that I thought about it, she'd given the same absurd name to Smite too.
What was it again?
La Vida Breve?
Apparently it meant “short life,” and she'd once fiercely opposed that title because it was so ironic and layered.
In the end it was a hollow victory, crushed by a 2-to-1 majority.
Still, Seir kept explaining the simple mechanism behind sealing the back alley.
Blink, which she called Traviata, the wandering woman.
This short-distance spatial magic pinpoints coordinates based on my own senses.
Normally a true spatial mage would calculate the exact coordinates through mana formulas.
I simply relied on the magical framework Seir had carved into my brain.
In other words, while other mages grind out their own recipes until the dish is perfect, I just grab the pre-made retort and slap a lid on it.
Formalized magic is basically a recipe the mage invented.
So Blink depends entirely on my senses.
Before I expanded my spatial awareness with Axis, I could only teleport to places my eyes had actually seen.
Right now I was amplifying mana detection through Axis and widening the horizon of my spatial perception, but that still didn't mean I could seal the back alley—my head tilted in confusion at the very idea.
And more than anything, I wondered why we hadn't said a word when we first discovered the back alley.
[That was because the information I could sense was limited to the level of my contract.]
So because my perception stayed within that cap, we never fully understood what exactly the back alley was?
Just that my naked eyes couldn't see it, or that Viola had covered it with her aura, or that Hernan had figured out the structure of the barrier she was trying to raise to block it?
[Exactly. But you learn fast, Contractor.]
Was that a compliment?
It felt like the kind of physical is trash but brain is useful line I sometimes hear.
[This back alley is basically a coordinate link.]
“Coordinate link?”
Hernan, who had been working on the barrier, stopped and looked my way when he heard my murmur.
“Did you study? You seem to not know much about it. Interested in barrier magic?”
“No, I’m not.”
While I waved my hand to dismiss Hernan’s interest, Seir kept talking.
[It’s different from a gate. A gate is literally a crossing of space, so the transfer point is random. But this one has fixed coordinates.]
‘It’s similar to Blink.’
[Please call it Traviata.]
Seir almost sounded like she was an opera demon.
“Yes, Traviata.”
[Hmph. Good. Now, if you flip the coordinates on that back alley, it gets neutralized. The very framework that built the path collapses and the alley closes instantly.]
“…Can that really happen?”
I could twist the coordinates, sure.
But then how did I even give that power to the back alley?
[Like this.]
Seir spoke only with her voice, but it felt like I saw her illusion actively working right now inside Hernan’s half-finished barrier.
That finally explained why we could only close it now.
Because of the precedent Viola and Hernan had set.
How they had interfered with the back alley using their own power.
“Roman? Are you all right?”
“Huh?”
“Ah, you look dazed.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Then what is it?”
“That….”
I raised two fingers just enough for Ray and Leaf to see and pointed at the back alley.
“I think I can close it.”
“Wha—”
“R-Ray! Talk! Talk!”
Sorry, but your voice is actually higher than mine, Leaf.
Because Leaf had overreacted at the sudden shout, all eyes turned our way, but I waved it off as just us three chatting and pulled the two of them into the corner.
Viola’s glare had been pretty sharp. She probably hadn’t heard anything.
Voice-distorting mana fields were now automatic, but monsters like Viola could ignore even that.
‘True barrier experts need to study this.’
Barrier magic fell under universal magic, yet the difficulty of being treated as its own class was enormous.
Among my classmates, only Holsen had been decent at it.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Um… what if we just wait until everything’s over and secretly close it? Leaving something we can close untouched feels weird too.”
That was a fair point.
“But they’ll probably notice. The brat might not, but Viola definitely will.”
I agreed.
We’d hidden our spatial magic the whole time, and Arthur had even helped seal our lips to our teacher. Suddenly acting like we know space magic now felt wrong.
“Just leave it. What’s the difference between letting the ceiling collapse with a barrier and actually closing it?”
Thinking coldly, that was the answer.
But this wasn’t something logic alone controlled.
I hated not doing what I could.
I wasn’t seeking praise or worship.
Still, I was a mage after all.
I didn’t want to waste the fresh growth opportunity in front of me.
Closing the back alley wouldn’t give explosive growth right now, but these accumulated experiences would definitely become stepping stones to higher realms later.
“Hey, hoods.”
While I weighed internal conflict and wondered if there was a better way, Viola’s call cut through my ear.
The three of us—Hoodies, our temporary team name—slowly approached, eyes rolling like marbles.
Viola looked like she had a lot on her mind too.
‘Did I mishear?’
Twenty years in the Abyss.
At fifteen she got her official explorer license, at sixteen she became a star after rescuing her companions from the cannibalistic forest at the top of Floor 1, and by twenty she was a Master.
Even before thirty, she reached the pinnacle of the Pioneer, and she had never once doubted her own senses.
Even in the cannibalistic forest that lured and killed with every sense, Viola’s senses were as sharp as blades.
She didn’t cover herself in protective artifacts or magic; she fought bare-handed even in the depths that paralyzed thought itself.
She was fine with it.
Viola called it Silent Hearing.
A born ability she possessed from the moment she was born.
That special sense was almost a mystery in itself.
Roman’s voice-distorting was surprisingly clean.
For a Novice explorer who had only just started learning magic, it was good enough to earn applause.
If we only looked at her mana manipulation, she’d easily pass Regulars and sit in the top tier of Seniors.
But Viola’s Silent Hearing always caught when a Master explorer deliberately hid something.
It was just that the content was so absurd that she’d wondered, for the first time, whether she’d really heard it right.
‘I should confirm it.’
Using her superior 190 cm height, she looked down at the three people standing in front of her like cattle being led to slaughter and opened her mouth.
“Go ahead.”
“…What the—”
“Hey, Crawler.”
Viola cut Roman off and called for Hernan.
“Why the disturbance? I’m concentrating, so—”
“That’s enough. Stop and get out. The ceiling is collapsing, so take the kids with you.”
“Hah! It’s really rusted. If this is the case, the barrier will collapse along with you while you’re buried.”
“Fine.”
After sending Arthur and Diana out in one go, Viola looked at Roman as if to ask if that was it.
“All of it was heard. I’m helpless, but in front of Masters you have to be careful.”
“…Yes.”
“Don’t worry about where you’ll go to talk. I have no intention of repaying the kindness of the guy who saved my student as an enemy.”
“Did you know?”
“Of course I knew. Without that pride I’d be a corpse, but they’re all huddled around you. I don’t know the exact story, but I can guess you were the core.”
Probably not just Viola—everyone with a brain in the relationship had roughly figured it out.
‘They were all tight-lipped even about the Grand Duke’s training center, the city, and the League. I thought maybe they were hiding something big, but it turns out they knew nothing either.’
If they knew the true identity, they wouldn’t have left it alone like this.
“I didn’t know it was spatial magic.”
Who could have guessed?
A brand-new Novice explorer acquiring one of the three impossible elements.
“Then shall I?”
“Mm.”
Surprisingly, the situation cleared up without the worries I’d expected, and Roman felt a little uneasy as he walked up to the back alley.
[Seir-nim, support me.]
[Think of applying Traviata only outside. Let’s use the barrier I laid earlier.]
[Put my mana into the barrier side. With the touch of Exhaustion.]
Since I couldn’t use true barrier magic right now, Hernan’s half-finished barrier was what we used.
Seir’s mana shifted the coordinates, and Leraje’s mana eroded those tainted values.
A low, trembling sound—whump!
The back alley twisted, the surrounding space rippled like heat haze, and suddenly the traces vanished.
It was closed.
The first time since the Abyss appeared.
The moment someone deliberately sealed a back alley.
“…I’m crazy.”
Watching Roman stare blankly like he was trying to recall whether his own action had truly happened, Viola muttered in her mind.
‘If they find out, they’ll make me the permanent target to be erased.’
The Eradication Cult.
Those who had used the back alley to create artificial ones for all their evil deeds.
But once they learned that their strongest weapon could be neutralized, what would they do?
It was obvious, yet it didn’t suit Viola’s temperament at all.
“Roman, let’s see if we can trace that back alley next.”
§
“Huh?”
The man furrowed his brow at an odd feeling.
An important moment, yet it was being interrupted.
“Why are you doing this?”
The student’s question made the man wave his hand.
The sharp wind that rose from his touch sliced across the student’s lips.
Useless question.
Punishment for an unauthorized question.
Even though it violated common sense, both the man who acted and the student whose lips were cut accepted it as normal.
“…Done. Viola, you weren’t just playing around, huh. You’ve become more cautious lately.”
It didn’t matter; we could check later.
But the immediate matter came first.
“Use it well. It’s a hard-to-obtain resource.”
“Yes, Professor.”
The student resumed the work he had been doing before the man spoke.
In front of the two was a single corpse.
The body of Grant Dexker, the explorer they had called.
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