Mission (5)
At the entrance of the Magic Tower, war cries and screams tore through the air.
Forces of every kind had tangled together there in a chaotic free-for-all.
A troll of massive build. A team of mercenaries in battered gear locked in combat. Several mages unleashing flashy spells in supporting fire. And, appearing in intermittent flashes to take their shots, the masked strangers.
But the figure who stood out most among them all was the man swinging a sword of blue light.
"That's Secondary Beat's Sword Ghost."
"He's really cutting loose."
I quietly agreed with Spinel's assessment as she watched the scene unfold.
The Sword Ghost — Deron Beltz.
He was regarded as Secondary Beat's strongest asset. True to the moniker, he fought primarily with a blade, and rumor held that his magic-imbued sword could cut through anything.
Apparently those rumors about Deron hadn't been empty talk.
A sharp gleam raced along Deron's sword and sheared off one arm of the shapeshifter who had taken troll form.
"Ghk…!"
The troll staggered back with a groan of agony, and the Ghost Army — waiting nearby — opened fire in support.
But the bullets pouring in from every direction failed to deal the Sword Ghost any meaningful damage.
Clang! Clack!
The Sword Ghost's blade swept through the air with lethal precision, batting aside a considerable volume of gunfire. The occasional shot that slipped past his sword-wall still never reached him. In an instant, a veil of blue light sheathed his body and stopped the rounds cold.
"…Isn't that magic completely broken?"
"The cost is just as steep."
"Ah, is that so?"
Magic that produced relatively powerful physical force — or dramatic magical phenomena — tended to have a narrow range and a heavy drain on mana. Usher's Blink and the Sword Ghost's technique both fell into that category.
My telepathy, by contrast, was a temporary effect with a modest cost, so mana was rarely a concern. The point was that even a powerful spell couldn't be spammed without limit. Most mages developed their own methods of deployment specifically to conserve mana.
Of course, exceptions like the Ghost Army or the Rampage Tank did exist.
"I'm not joking. That magic burns more mana the more hits it absorbs."
"Is that right."
"And look — the shapeshifter's back in the fight. We should get ready ourselves."
The troll's severed arm had already regenerated, and it charged in once more. Strength and regenerative power — it had both. As long as the Ghost Army was backing it up, the first floor wouldn't be pushed back hard anytime soon.
Our job was to slip past the uproar at the entrance and infiltrate the twelfth floor, where the Great Intelligence resided.
Spinel gave a small nod and patted me lightly on the back. A faint smile curved the lips hidden beneath her hood.
"Hang on a second."
"Hang on for what?"
"It's going to get pretty dizzy."
I was still turning her words over with a flicker of doubt when the landscape before my eyes flipped upside down in an instant.
A brief blackout. Then consciousness snapped back into place.
In the middle of everything spinning, tumbling, and shaking apart, I finally understood what had happened.
"…You've lost your mind."
"This uses the least mana."
Spinel answered from beside me, gliding along at her leisure. Instead of continuously lifting me with sustained magic, she had applied a single powerful burst and simply hurled me into the air. She'd made a few course corrections afterward, sure — but still.
Her claim about efficiency probably wasn't entirely false. The problem was that I had to bear the full side effects myself.
Nausea rose from a stomach whose contents had been thoroughly scrambled. I forced it down, steadied my warped vision, and fixed my eyes on the target.
I exhaled a short breath and stepped through the shattered window of the twelfth floor. Whether from the violent flight or not, my footing felt slightly off.
"Not an experience I'd care to repeat."
"The way down should be fine."
"That aside… it's more of a wreck than I expected."
The twelfth floor of the Magic Tower, home to Serina's office. The place that greeted us was nothing short of a disaster zone.
Rebar punched down through the floor from above. Offices gutted and torn apart, furniture smashed to pieces. Debris and casualties littered the space — a landscape that deserved to be called a vision of hell.
"Some of them are still alive. Want me to finish them off?"
A portion of the Magic Tower staff on the twelfth floor lay half-buried under rubble, gasping for breath. They'd been near the windows and taken the worst of the damage. Judging by their condition, they wouldn't last long even if left alone. There was no need for Spinel to bother dealing with them — and no reason to waste lives unnecessarily right now.
"They're dead either way. Conserve your mana where you can."
"Why? Wouldn't you rather be thorough?"
"Our opponent is the Great Intelligence. Best to go in at peak condition."
"Fine."
I wasn't bluffing. This was a woman who had raised a barrier large enough to cover an entire building. Whatever dangerous magic Serina might unleash from here on, it wouldn't be surprising in the least.
I ignored the critically wounded around us and kept walking. The injured, for their part, seemed to have no attention to spare for us — they only let out ragged, desperate moans. Now and then someone managed to raise a weapon, but every one of them went down to the gunshots I produced.
"Listening to this is starting to hurt my ears."
"You're the one who made it this way."
"Well, that's true enough."
Once we left the hellscape of mixed bodies and rubble behind, a straight corridor stretched out ahead. It was a long hallway, sections of its walls already collapsed. Walking forward and glancing through the breaches made it easy enough to see what facilities lay beyond.
One room packed tight with documents. Another fitted with sleek, sophisticated equipment. Yet another cluttered with broken tools. With each room we passed, the end of the corridor drew closer.
And then one of those rooms presented a sight that was genuinely shocking.
"Disgusting."
People were piled high in a withered, desiccated state. Judging by their frames, they looked no older than children. Unless the Magic Tower had specifically collected only children like these, something had been done to reduce them to this. And the culprit was almost certainly the tower's leader, who lived on the twelfth floor.
I remembered reading a short passage about it once — about the method by which the Great Intelligence prolonged her life.
"…What a horrific sight."
In the time I'd lived under Percival's name, I'd witnessed no shortage of bloodshed. Even to my eyes, this was hard to look at. That the city's revered sage was committing acts like this — the people who followed her must have looked like fools.
"So even you two find some things horrific?"
"At least I send people off cleanly."
"How merciful of you."
"If you know that, you should treat me well."
Well — neither I nor Spinel were in any position to condemn anyone. We were both people who had compromised with morality for our own reasons. We were simply trading a few remarks about a grotesque scene. Who would dare lecture the great sage, after all?
I let out a short snort at Spinel's joke, the corner of my mouth lifting, and kept walking.
But then I sensed a presence ahead and had no choice but to stop.
"…Enemies!"
"Open fire!"
Bang. Bang. Bang. Baaang—!
Gunshots cracked in rapid succession, rounds whistling past right beside us. Armed guards were waiting just beyond the corner — security forces stationed to protect the Great Intelligence, by the look of it.
I pressed myself flat against the wall, dodging the fire.
"So they left people on standby."
"We're almost there, so of course they'd have guards."
"Best to clear them out before we go any further."
I couldn't handle that many alone. Naturally, that fell to Spinel. I shot her a look that said as much without a word.
Spinel seemed to have planned on stepping in from this point anyway. She drew blades from their case and scattered them into the air. The moment they left her hands, every last one of them ignored gravity and rose to hover.
Levitation
The blades suspended by magic caught the moonlight and flashed. She watched them orbit around her for a moment, then swept her hand and sent them flying. At her command, the blades shot toward the enemy line in perfect unison.
The moment the storm of blades had moved, Spinel began strolling casually around the corner.
"Gahk!"
"Kh— ghk…!"
"Urgh…!"
Shashak, shashashak—.
The scattering blades buried themselves in the guards' bodies all at once. A chorus of death rattles followed, and an entire group fell silent. The corridor the blade-storm had swept through was soaked in blood.
And yet, as Spinel walked through that carnage, not a single drop touched her feet. Gliding alone through the air with lofty indifference, she had no need to step in bloodstains at all.
The Skyscraper Mage, Spinel Cloverbloom.
This was the power of an Archmage who stood as one pillar of the Cabal.