The Mage Hunters (4)
The mage hunters.
At the mention of that name, Oscar narrowed his eyes and asked, "I heard those men only ever target mages traveling alone."
"…That's what we believed, too. The Tower even issued a notice telling mages journeying through the northern territories to move in pairs at all times, saying it would keep them safe."
But the rule the mage hunters had set for themselves had been broken this time.
The reason, most likely, was that their confidence had swollen beyond its limits. After all, unless they were certain they could beat two mages at once, there would have been no reason to take the risk.
"Walk me through exactly what happened."
"After we parted ways with you, we took a cab toward Moske. Somewhere along the way, the driver said someone was approaching from ahead. We had a bad feeling about it, so we asked him to stop and got out."
Bern's face drained white as he recalled the moment.
"He closed the distance in the blink of an eye and just started swinging his sword at us. He never asked us a single thing."
"What did he look like?"
"A man taller than Jonathan. He loomed over me with those sunken eyes, and he looked like a monster."
"And his swordsmanship? What did it look like to you?"
"There's no need to even say it. It was magnificent."
In that case, the outcome of the fight was obvious.
"…Jonathan drove a spear of lightning into the man's heart, but he didn't die. He endured it, and then he cut off Jonathan's left arm instead. The moment Jonathan passed out, it was my turn."
By the time the two of them regained consciousness, they were in the cellar of some shack, in the middle of nowhere.
Bern trembled violently at the memory.
"It was unbearably cold. The only thing that looked even remotely warm was a branding iron, glowing red. I don't know if you've heard the rumors, but they say that man tortures mages horribly before he kills them. That would have been our fate too, I imagine."
"Then how did you get out of there?"
"The mage hunter wasn't in great shape either. He came to torture us, but he kept breaking out in a cold sweat and gasping for breath before finally leaving. Jonathan saw it, and the moment he was gone, he clamped the iron's handle in his mouth and melted the mana cuffs binding my arms and legs."
Clank. Clank.
Bern held up his wrists, showing the evidence plainly.
"I was trying to free Jonathan next when I heard the mage hunter coming back. Jonathan told me to run — to call for reinforcements and come rescue him. I… I ran. I didn't even look back."
He buried his face in his trembling hands, and an emotion no words could describe rose across it.
"Please — please, save Jonathan. I swear to you, the mage hunter is in no condition to fight."
"…"
Having heard the whole story, Kilian turned his head toward Oscar. Meeting that questioning gaze — so what do we do? — Oscar glanced subtly at the air around Bern.
Once again, it didn't stir so much as a hair's breadth. Confirmed, Oscar spoke.
"Take us to the shack."
* * *
No light leaked from the abandoned shack halfway up the mountain.
Kilian, watching it from behind a boulder, said, "I don't sense a soul in there. They may have already left."
"Ah…"
The instant Bern bit down hard on his lip, despair written across his face —
A scream tore through the air from deep inside the shack.
Bern's face lit up. "Th-that's Jonathan's voice!"
"Are you certain?"
"Yes! Absolutely certain!"
"…Then at least we know he's still alive."
Oscar and Kilian exchanged a look and quietly moved toward the shack's outer wall. Bern followed behind them, fear plain on his face but his steps unflinching.
"Oscar, do you have a good plan?"
"First we go inside, meet the bastard, and then we knock him down."
"…"
Kilian considered this for a moment, then nodded. "An undeniably sound strategy."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
The moment Bern's face twisted in confusion, the two of them kicked the door off its hinges and plunged inside together.
"W-wait, just a moment, both of you!"
Leaving his voice behind, they arrived at the cellar where the scream had come from. Just as Bern had described, it was a place where only a blood-red branding iron held any warmth — and there, bound to a chair with his head hanging low, sat a man.
"…He's dead."
Cruel traces of torture were visible all over the body.
But the man was wearing a cab driver's uniform. It wasn't Jonathan.
Just as Kilian's brow furrowed, Bern belatedly came down into the cellar.
"Hoo, hah. What do you expect, barging in like that with no plan at all? And why are you both so fast at running?"
"What is the meaning of this?"
Kilian turned on him. "You never said the driver had been taken along with Jonathan."
"Well, you know… people do forget things when they're talking."
The terror he'd worn so vividly was gone without a trace, and even a subtle confidence now threaded through his voice.
Kilian's eyes went ice-cold. "It was a trap. You deceived us."
"Aw, no need to put it so harshly. To borrow your way of putting it…"
"An invitation, you'd call it."
BOOM! The heavy iron door of the cellar slammed shut, and Jonathan came down the stairs carrying a torch. The arm that was supposed to have been severed hung whole and unharmed at his side.
"…Absurd."
Kilian let out a hollow laugh and rolled his neck from side to side. He looked genuinely furious that these men had exploited their good faith.
"Luring us all the way here — did you actually think that meant you could win?"
"Of course we did."
"It's how we've always done it. Inviting two at once is a first, mind you."
They grinned.
Two mere 4th-level mages — where does that confidence come from?
Arms crossed, Oscar watched the scene unfold with easy composure. "Careful. It looks like they're counting on something."
"Don't worry."
Kilian's red eyes blazed like fire.
"I wasn't tempered so halfheartedly as to lose to pyramid punks like those."
With those words, he double-stacked the activation of his Acceleration tattoo. In an instant the air in the cellar shuddered, and the color drained from Jonathan's and Bern's faces.
"…So this is the White Tower's prodigy. The sheer presence of him is no joke."
"All the better, isn't it? Imagine how many spells we could torture out of him and steal."
The moment Oscar grasped, through their revolting banter, what the mage hunters were truly after —
SHRAAAK!
With a sound like the air itself tearing, Kilian crossed the cellar like a bolt of lightning.
"Wh-whoa… hah, holy hell, that's insane."
Jonathan stared at the fist that had stopped an inch from his face and wiped his brow in relief. "What an impossible speed. I nearly died just now."
"Good thing I pre-activated it."
"…Kilian?"
Oscar called out to the retreating figure, but no answer came back. The man had frozen like a statue, his whole body trembling in fine, ceaseless shudders.
"Heh heh."
Jonathan surveyed the sight with obvious satisfaction, tapping Kilian's cheek lightly with his left hand. "Curious? Why your friend is acting like that."
"…Hm."
There was no need to listen to an enemy's words. It could be a trick, and even at best they would never tell the whole truth.
Oscar ran back through Kilian's recent behavior, picking out anything that could account for the variable before him.
"They were business cards."
"Ho! Now that's genuinely impressive?"
"You're the first person to catch on that fast. Most people take the hit without ever realizing it."
Jonathan and Bern wore expressions of pure, unfeigned admiration. And with that, the last pieces of the puzzle seemed to fall into place.
"…Handing those out in the black market — that was where it all began. Naturally, you two were never actual Yellow Tower mages."
"Of course not. The robes and badges we're wearing belong to the mages we've hunted."
"The cards were how we scouted for prey."
From the very start, the two had chosen only easy marks — mages weak enough for them to kill — and hunted accordingly. The spell laid on those cards, in all likelihood, had been location tracking and paralysis.
"…"
Tremble, tremble.
Kilian's body would not stop shaking. From this angle his face was hidden, but the rage of this situation must be beyond bearing. Those already-red eyes would be bloodshot to the brim by now.
"…Even I didn't see the business cards coming. My mistake."
Oscar had first noticed something was off back when Bern tearfully explained the situation. The air around him hadn't stirred — not even slightly.
Normally, when a comrade is captured and you weep for them, there's no helping the anger or the injustice bleeding through.
Yet even in that moment, Bern had kept his emotions perfectly reined in. That was impossible unless the entire performance was an act.
"I'll have to be more careful next time."
"Hm?"
Bern tilted his head at the murmur. "Next time? You think there's a next time for you? Sounds like someone's dreaming a little too big."
"Dream as big as you like. Without hope like that, a man couldn't endure a situation like this one."
"…Fair point, actually."
Licking his lips, Bern sauntered forward, chattering away. "Ooh, this is a little exciting, isn't it? We've never once hunted a mage of the White Tower. Always wondered about them, haven't we?"
"Haven't we just. The White Tower may still be called one of the Four Great Magic Towers, but its record ranks dead last. We even made a bet about how pathetic a mage from a place like that would be."
FWHOOSH!
Above Bern's index finger bloomed Fireball, an intermediate spell of the Red Tower.
"I bet you wouldn't survive three of my attacks. Jonathan, generous soul, said you'd manage five, seeing as you were nominally a mage of one of the Four Great Towers. Now then… time to see who won the bet!"
Bern flicked his finger, and the sphere of flame hurtled toward Oscar.
The searing ball of fire swallowed the mage whole as he stood there, staring straight into it.
KWAAAANG! FWHOOSH!
"What the—? He didn't even move. Froze stiff as a statue."
Bern could muster no reaction at all, only blinking stupidly at the figure engulfed in his flames. He held out a hand toward Jonathan.
"I win the bet. Pay up."
"…I can't believe he was this weak."
Jonathan was smacking his lips and digging through his pocket when, abruptly, his eyes narrowed.
"Wait. Why is it so quiet in there?"
Scorching pain ranks, without question, first among every agony a human being can feel. And yet, wrapped in flames that enormous, the man let out not even the smallest whimper.
Huh? He's right — something is…
The instant Bern turned his head, sensing that something was wrong, the black silhouette wreathed in flame — its interior hidden from view — began to murmur, low and quiet.
"…The mages of the Red Tower live with fire at their side from the moment they open their eyes until the moment they fall asleep. They repeat that practice endlessly, year after year, until they reach 4th level, all in an effort to befriend the flame."
It was a dry, matter-of-fact voice, with no hint of endured suffering about it at all.
"And the reason they work so desperately hard to befriend fire comes down to one thing."
FSSSHHHHOOO!
The great blaze that had enveloped Oscar scattered in a violent gust of wind, then gathered itself together onto his open palm.
The man revealed beneath it bore not a single burn — there wasn't even the familiar soot on his hair or his clothes.
"It's so that their fire can never be stolen by a Harmony Sphere mage of the White Tower. Someone like me."
A pair of blue eyes fixed upon the two men with imperious contempt.