Probing the Jamming Zone
Negin drove a stake into the ground at the exact spot where her subordinate mage had reported the communication cutting off. That made five stakes now. Of course she wasn’t pounding them in out of boredom during such a hectic situation. Five stakes placed at twenty-meter intervals where the signal died—this was all to calculate the area affected by the communication-jamming spell.
Area-of-effect magic formed a spherical domain. Mark enough points where the effect manifested, connect the dots, and you could determine its full range. When she finished the calculations, the jamming field turned out to have a diameter of dozens of kilometers.
“This isn’t some organization throwing a simple tantrum…”
A spell influencing such a vast area could never be simple. Never mind the difficulty; the sheer mana cost would have been astronomical.
“The Solar Research Society? No, those lunatics are crazy but they wouldn’t attack the Alliance Leader.”
The guild obsessed with harnessing the sun’s colossal power in any way possible—the Solar Research Society. They committed plenty of insane acts, yet most were simply the aftermath of failed experiments. They weren’t the type to invest this much effort just to kill someone. If they had that kind of spare energy, they’d rather run one more test.
Then who?
Negin was still turning the question over in her mind when a huge hand pressed down on her head, hat and all, and shook it vigorously.
“Neeegh. Who the hell?!”
“Why waste time worrying? Just charge in, beat everyone except the Alliance Leader to a pulp, and the culprits will make themselves obvious.”
The hand belonged to Branch Manager Lee Hogwang. His simple-minded suggestion left Negin wanting to argue, but she couldn’t find any real counterpoint. Instead she grumbled and swatted his hand away.
“Don’t treat me like a kid. You know how old I am.”
“Of course I do. Aren’t you younger than me?”
“Tsk.”
Slow aging was a racial trait of witches. No woman hated staying young, but moments like this still stung.
Negin turned her back on Lee Hogwang and addressed the mages.
“Let’s move. It’s been long enough that the enemy should have made progress tracking the target. Our job is to locate where they’re gathering.”
She stepped forward into the communication-jamming zone. Lee Hogwang followed with a booming laugh.
…….
Bang!
A bullet flying from nowhere slammed into Negin’s barrier. Her eyes had widened at the sudden roar; once she realized it was a gunshot, she let out a hollow chuckle.
“A gun? You’re calling this an ambush?”
Personal firearms could be blocked easily by any Rank 3 mage. Bullets were simply too small to enchant effectively. Heavy weaponry might pose a threat, but this was Korea. Even in the magical underworld, smuggling in something that heavy was nearly impossible.
When the ambush failed, a group of enemies revealed themselves a short distance away. The man who had fired holstered his pistol and spoke.
“I knew it. Shouldn’t have relied on mere human weapons.”
He drew a magic wand and leveled it at Negin’s party.
“Attack! No prisoners needed!”
At his command, roughly half the group raised their wands and began chanting. The other half tore off their shirts and transformed into werewolves.
There are this many werewolves?
Negin found the numbers strange. Since the enemy was also hunting the Alliance Leader, including werewolves made sense. But the sheer quantity was excessive for a single squad. It didn’t look like they had been added for tracking purposes—the werewolves seemed to be the masterminds behind the entire plot.
“…We can figure that out later! We attack too!”
The mages had already finished their preparations before Negin even gave the order. Faster spells shot toward the enemy first. Flaming arrows, boulders the size of human heads, and air bombs that burst into shockwaves on impact flew back and forth in a chaotic storm.
And straight through that swirling maelstrom of magic, one man charged with wild enthusiasm.
“Hahahaha! It’s been so long since my blood boiled like this!”
Branch Manager Lee Hogwang. He ignored the flying spells completely as he barreled forward, and the werewolves rushed to meet him.
“Mere humans not knowing their place—urgh?!”
A werewolf swinging its elongated claws took Lee Hogwang’s fist square in the gut. A picture-perfect liver blow.
“Your movements are sloppy! Hahaha! Who’s next!”
Lee Hogwang laughed heartily and charged the next werewolf. The surreal sight of a human initiating close combat against werewolves froze the beasts for a split second. In that instant, another one went down.
While Lee Hogwang brawled with the pack, the slower, high-power spells finally activated. Dozens of stone spikes erupted from the earth. Iron chains lashed out from thin air, whipping and grabbing in every direction. A thunderous roar accompanied a horizontal sweep of lightning. Several of the spells flew toward Lee Hogwang himself. They detonated spectacularly, catching even the werewolves grappling with him in the blast.
Yet the only ones left tattered and collapsed on the ground were the werewolves. Lee Hogwang’s clothes were ruined, but his body remained perfectly intact.
“My, my. Don’t you fellows have any camaraderie? I can’t praise that.”
Lee Hogwang’s specialty magic was “Muscle.” His rigorously trained body produced power equal to magic through a simple yet overwhelmingly effective principle. The spell itself didn’t actually enhance muscle growth, so even at his white-haired age he still spent hours at the gym every day—but to him, that was pure enjoyment.
“You just tank all that with your body?”
“A mere human… is that thing even human?”
His toughness was enough to make the enemy flinch. Facing a familiar sight after so long, Lee Hogwang burst into laughter once more and charged again.
“There he goes, getting all excited by himself again.”
Negin, who had been watching his back, shifted her gaze. She hadn’t been idle either. The spells not aimed at Lee Hogwang were all flying toward her and the other mages.
"Stir it, stir it. So it doesn't stick."
"Stir it, stir it. So the frog mucus and cat whiskers mix together."
⟨ Rotation ⟩
Boom. Boom!
The incoming spells veered off in random directions and detonated in harmless places. Some even rotated a full 180 degrees and flew straight back at the casters. Every kind of projectile, even formless magic, was twisted and redirected. The gravity-compression spell spun according to Negin’s power and scattered the innocent clouds overhead.
Naturally, her magic didn’t stop at defense.
“Kyaaaagh!”
“Aaaagh!”
Screams erupted from enemy mages whose elbows, knees, and shoulders had spun several full rotations. They were the lucky ones. One mage who tried to dodge awkwardly had his neck twist around with a sickening crunch and died on the spot.
In front, Lee Hogwang rampaged like a storm. Behind him, Negin disabled one foe after another. The other mages’ offensive spells were nothing to sneeze at either. The battle ended surprisingly quickly.
Negin began interrogating the captured prisoners.
“The Alliance Leader’s location has been narrowed down? You were heading that way?”
“Y-yes! Thirty minutes ago we received orders to tighten the search radius!”
“Orders? With communication jamming in place, how—”
The question answered itself immediately.
It was a crude, straightforward method, but undeniably effective. The downside was that even ordinary civilians could hear it clearly. Before worrying about stealth, it might as well have been advertising that something suspicious was happening here. The sheer arrogance of not caring if they were exposed told Negin everything she needed to know about their identity.
“It’s the Liberation faction.”
The Alliance Leader’s determination to keep magic hidden had been absolute. For the faction that demanded the liberation of magic to achieve their goal, the Alliance Leader had to disappear. Actually carrying out that goal, however, was an entirely different matter.
The captured mage thrashed desperately and begged.
“Y-you heard that, right? They’re communicating openly! I told you everything! I told you everything, so you’ll spare me, won’t you?!”
“Yes. I’ll spare you.”
“Really… Aaaargh!”
The mage’s limbs spun like propellers, joints shattering with sickening pops. A scream tore from his throat as the pain overwhelmed him. At least he was still alive.
“Toss him in the rear. We’ll need witnesses later, so don’t kill him.”
“Should we heal him first?”
“No. Leave him. There are plenty of other prisoners. At least one of them should survive.”
After giving instructions to her subordinate, Negin walked over to Lee Hogwang. He had been interrogating a prisoner in his own way.
“This side’s done. How about you?”
“This side is finished as well. We’ve squeezed out all the immediate information. Let’s move.”
Cross-verification was important. They hadn’t been able to learn much in such a time-sensitive situation, but they had clearly identified the search radius the enemy had narrowed so far. They advanced in that direction.
The closer they got, the more frequent the enemy encounters became. Battles chained into one another. Roughly half the mages they had brought retired from mana exhaustion. And then—
They finally located the place where the Alliance Leader was fighting.
Once they drew near, it became harder not to notice. A rock golem several meters tall rose up and slammed down, carving a massive crater into the earth. Explosions ripped across the golem’s torso, shockwaves ripping outward. Fire rained from the sky like a blazing curtain. The flaming arrows that struck the ground spread flames in every direction, turning the battlefield into a sea of fire in seconds. Immediately afterward, a tidal wave several meters high surged from completely dry ground and swallowed every flame.
Scenes straight out of a blockbuster movie kept unfolding one after another.
Negin and Lee Hogwang hurried forward, leaping straight into the heart of the spectacle.