Great Wisdom (3)
"By the way… you're a rather unusual fellow."
"……Unusual how?"
"The rift between your body and soul is far too severe… almost as if the two of them don't quite line up."
At the old woman's reply, I shut my mouth.
Until now, only one person had ever seen through what I truly was.
The Agent of Mystery. The oldest magic, and the mage of the primordial age.
But there was no chance the old woman before me was the Agent of Mystery. He could not exist as a physical entity. He was not the sort to sit around watching cats in a place like this.
"You can see that kind of thing?"
Sinel, still stroking a cat, looked up at the old woman as she spoke. The old woman nodded.
"There are things you only start to see once you've lived long enough."
"Well, the boss is a pretty special person."
"Heh heh. Special, is he? You might not be wrong. He could even be the one those fake mages have been hunting for all this time."
What was this old woman's true identity?
The only real clue I had was the way she spoke.
Fake mages. A contemptuous label for Instant Mages.
In a city overrun by Instant Mages, precious few people looked down on every last one of them.
"Someone the mages are looking for…?"
"The magic an Instant Mage awakens is one spell per soul. But if a soul is misaligned the way his is… well, who can say what might be possible."
Watching Sinel and the old woman talk, I could only come to one conclusion about who she was.
Great Wisdom. Serina Edelbit.
She was the master of the massive skyscraper known as the Magic Tower — and the only true traditional mage left in this city.
Serina kept talking without pause. What she described was a wild rumor that the contents of War City itself had already proven impossible.
"They call it a dual circuit, I believe. The empire's scholars have been researching it for quite some time."
"Dual circuit… I've never heard of that."
"I don't know how far the research has gotten, but if it's ever going to work, they'd need someone like that young man over there. Heh heh."
Why the renowned Great Wisdom was here at all was beyond even me. Judging by what she'd said, though, it clearly had something to do with the cats in this place. The strangeness of these cats was almost certainly Serina's doing as well.
The one small mercy was that Blackie didn't seem to be under her influence. Living under constant surveillance every hour of every day — just imagining it was enough to make my skin crawl.
"Tower Master!"
The moment Serina finished speaking, bodyguards came sprinting up from behind her, breathing hard as they closed the distance.
Serina Edelbit. Head of the magical research institution the public simply called the Magic Tower. For all the grand name, it was nothing like the classic towers of heroic legend. The Magic Tower in District 3 was just a beautiful high-rise sheathed in floor-to-ceiling glass.
But the authority the old woman before me held over the study of magic was no illusion.
"What is it?"
"We've been looking everywhere for you! Where did you go?"
The bodyguards skidded to a halt in front of Serina. She regarded the one gasping for breath before her and asked what he wanted. Apparently she had slipped away on her own and come here without them.
For a figure of Great Wisdom's stature, security was supposed to be airtight. Their panic was only natural.
"There was an irregularity with the eyes I'd planted. I came to check on them, nothing more."
"Even so, vanishing without a word puts us in a terrible position…!"
"Tsk tsk. Do I look like someone who falls apart the moment she moves on her own?"
"If anything were to happen to you, Tower Master, the entire Magic Tower would be thrown into chaos. In the worst case, everything we've accomplished until now would come to nothing. Please keep that in mind."
The bodyguard pleaded with her, sweat pouring down his face. Even if Serina was nominally the head of the Magic Tower, the influence of those inside it was hardly trivial. Keeping disasters from happening was his job.
Whether worn down by his relentless persuasion or simply done arguing, Serina finally nodded and turned away.
"Enough. I understand. Let us return."
"Escort the Tower Master."
"You would do well to keep the rumors in check. Spread them too freely and heaven itself may decide to punish you."
The bodyguards moved out with Serina. Just as quickly as they had arrived, they vanished from sight.
Once the noisy procession was gone, only the awkward quiet of the alley remained, hanging in the air around us.
"Myaa—."
"So who was she in the end?"
In the silence, Sinel asked as she kept petting the cats. A few of them had already filled their bellies and settled into corners, nodding off where they sat.
Watching Sinel crouched among them, I gave her my answer.
"Great Wisdom. Serina Edelbit."
"Great Wisdom… That's a cool nickname."
"You've never heard of her?"
A brief silence. Then Sinel's reply came, short and simple.
"I've heard of the Dark Merchant, though."
District 3. The rooftop of a building with a clear view of the Magic Tower.
Spinel Cloverbloom, one of the Cabal's executives, leaned against the railing and looked up at the tower.
Tall. And aloof.
That was Spinel's impression as she studied the building before her.
A cold wind brushed her cheek and stirred her ash-gray hair.
"It's been a while, Spinel."
While she stood lost in thought, gazing at the Magic Tower, a masked man appeared at her side. Even though a person had simply materialized out of thin air, Spinel didn't so much as change her expression. She kept her eyes on the tower and spoke without turning her head.
"Commander."
"You don't even pretend to be startled anymore."
"Dragging that many people around with you? No matter how I look at it, it could only be you."
"You can sense them?"
The Commander leaned back against the railing. With the Magic Tower behind him, the whole rooftop spread out before his eyes. He glanced toward where his subordinates should have been hidden, but nothing registered to his sight.
Tap. Spinel's fingers drummed against the railing she held. A clear metallic note rang in their ears.
"Depends on the person. It's less that I see them and more that I feel them."
"At that level, there's hardly any point in hiding. I'll have to be careful not to end up fighting you."
"Of course you should be careful. I'm not like that coward skulking over there."
"Don't be too hard on him. Everyone has their assigned role."
Spinel snorted, and a tongue-click answered from somewhere on the rooftop. It wasn't the Commander beside her. Someone hidden out of sight had clicked their tongue loud enough for her to hear on purpose. Imagining the twisted look on that invisible face, Spinel felt the corner of her mouth lift on its own.
"How's that idiotic research of yours coming along?"
"It's sad when you dismiss someone's hard work like that."
"It is idiotic. A mage who uses two kinds of magic at once? If that's what you wanted, you should've just become a traditional mage."
Even as she said it, Spinel knew it was impossible. She was only tossing out whatever came to mind to get a rise out of him. But the Commander didn't take the bait. He answered calmly, as if none of it touched him.
"If it were possible, I don't think that would be so bad either."
"You'd just end up dead at the hands of that guy playing emperor, though."
"There are exceptions, aren't there? Like Great Wisdom."
"And what good does that do her? She's fated to die by our hands anyway."
The request Spinel had recently received from the Successor was simple: eliminate Serina Edelbit at the Magic Tower. The Successor didn't care about the method. All that mattered was that the request be carried out somehow. The reason Spinel was here today was to scout the tower in advance of the assault.
"Come to think of it, I heard something interesting not long ago."
"Something interesting?"
The Commander changed the subject so abruptly that Spinel turned to look at him. That thick mask of his always looked stifling, no matter how many times she saw it. From behind the expressionless face, a voice full of mischief drifted out.
"One of the subordinates we planted in Lesert got caught."
"Well, the other side is Lesert Industries. Hardly surprising."
"The reason, though, was a bounty hunter."
"……Why would a bounty hunter show up there?"
Lesert Industries' security was famously tight. Getting caught by their guards was understandable. Getting caught by a bounty hunter, on the other hand, made no sense no matter how she turned it over.
"When we dug into it, there was a man they call the Dark Merchant. He deals in sensitive information — and apparently takes bounty work on the side as well."
"The Dark Merchant…"
At the familiar moniker, Spinel's grip tightened. The Dark Merchant. Percival Smith. The information broker her little sister was indebted to. He had seemed useful enough that she had left him alive and put him in her debt instead. She had never imagined she would hear that name from the Commander's mouth.
"He's bound to get in His way eventually. I intend to clean him up."
"……"
"Do you know him, by any chance?"
"A little."
"Good thing I mentioned it first, then. If I'd handled him without a word, you would have torn into me for it."
As far as Spinel was concerned, Percival was a capable man. That didn't grant him a free pass for everything he did. Should she keep him alive, or leave him to his fate?
After careful thought, Spinel spoke to the Commander.
"Hold off on disposing of him. I'll prove it myself."
"Prove what, exactly?"
"I'm bringing the Dark Merchant into this operation."
"The Dark Merchant… into the operation?"
"That's right. We use the Dark Merchant's information to take that place down."
Spinel's gaze returned to the Magic Tower. Bathed in moonlight, the building shone with a brilliant light. Among the dense forest of the city's skyscrapers, the Skyscraper Mage murmured to herself.
"He's fine for now. If he stops being useful, I can always kill him then."