30. The Korokoro Tribe’s Settlement (3)
Stella’s First Main Tower, vice-principal’s office.
Vice-Principal Akihayden gazed silently out the window.
At a glance, he looked calm, as though waiting for something in composure, but the way the fingers of his clasped hands behind his back wandered restlessly suggested he could not fully conceal a certain unease.
And yet his expression remained perfectly composed.
As if he were trying to accept the situation with humility.
After waiting a while, someone knocked on the vice-principal’s office door.
“Come in.”
He did not even bother checking who it was, but he already knew who would be coming.
Professor Raidin of New Moon Studies.
He walked in with practiced calm and bowed his head toward Akihayden.
“Professor Raidin. You’ve come.”
“Yes. The Bishop had a message, so I came in his place to deliver it.”
“…I see.”
The moment Akihayden nodded impassively, dark mana suddenly poured out from Raidin’s body, dyeing the vice-principal’s office in blackness in an instant.
Creeeak—clunk!
The office door shut, and everything outside the window was swallowed entirely by darkness.
‘An isolated space.’
At this moment, the vice-principal’s office no longer belonged to Stella Academy, but to a fourth dimension altogether.
A higher-tier dimensional magic that not even Eltman Eltwin, who handled spatial magic, could detect.
“…Akihayden.”
“Ghk…!!”
Calling his name in a bleak voice, Raidin seized Akihayden by the throat with his right hand.
The power of a sub-dimension seeped from his fingertips and slowly constricted Akihayden’s breathing.
“I told you not to do anything unnecessary. How many times do I have to say it before you understand?”
Raidin, his eyes dyed red, looked like an entirely different person from before.
And not just in appearance.
In truth, his body was currently possessed by ‘a Bishop of the Moon Shadow Church.’
“You actually put your hands on the heir to the Full Moon Tower Master, and even the descendant of the Dark Mage King…. What exactly were you thinking?”
“Th-those… bastards… are dangerous…”
“You’ve lost your mind. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest. The Full Moon Tower Master has secluded himself for training, and the Dark Mage King entered a long period of rest after suffering a mortal wound from Eltman fifty years ago. If left alone, neither of them moves! Do you have any idea how idiotic the thing you just did was?!”
“Before… they grow… stronger in the future… we had to… kill them…!”
Thud! Boom!
When Akihayden tried to force the words out anyway, the Bishop hurled him against the wall.
“You stirred up a hornet’s nest because you were scared of a few little brats? Akihayden. Is what I heard really true? Unbelievable.”
“Cough! Haa…. They possess… monstrous potential…. Within ten years… without fail… they will become… a fatal… threat… to the Moon Shadow Church….”
“Ha, seriously… Akihayden. Haven’t you grown soft in the head after mingling with humans for too long?”
Crush!
The Bishop ground Akihayden’s right arm beneath his foot again and again, shaking his head in disgust.
But Akihayden did not reply.
If the Bishop refused to believe him, then there was nothing to be done.
The thing had already been set in motion, regardless.
‘My own position may waver for now, and there is even a risk that the Moon Shadow Church’s location will be exposed, but…’
Hae Wonryang, heir to the Full Moon Tower.
Ma Yuseong, descendant of the Dark Mage King.
And… even Baek Yuseol.
If those three figures—each certain to become obstacles in the future of the Moon Shadow Church—were all going out together, how could he possibly refrain from making a move?
‘This will, without fail, help the future of the Moon Shadow Church.’
Thinking that, Akihayden steeled himself to endure the pain of the present.
But then—
“…And yet.”
Clicking his tongue as though it were regrettable, the Bishop said,
“Is there any guarantee that this mission will actually succeed?”
“…What do you mean?”
“You said those little brats would become a threat in the future. So you decided to eliminate the problem in advance…. But why, exactly, do you think this mission is guaranteed to succeed?”
“It will… succeed without fail. I assigned the mission to Azmick of the Costalin clan and Kalraban, the ‘Mage Gourmet.’”
Azmick and Kalraban were names with considerable notoriety even among dark mages.
Naturally so, considering just how many mages they had slaughtered up to now.
On top of that, they had even killed several magic warriors from the Crescent Moon Tower.
There was no way people like them could fail to assassinate a few Stella first-years.
“You fool. The one overestimating those brats is you, Akihayden. And yet somehow, you still haven’t realized it?”
“That’s…”
“Those brats are each bundles of variables. One of them, in particular, cannot be read at all by even the Cult Leader’s insight. And now those three are gathered together…. Tell me—do you really think things will go exactly as you want?”
At those words, Akihayden belatedly realized his own mistake.
But by then, it was already too late.
“You’ve shoved a hornet’s nest into the nostril of a sleeping tiger. Tch. If you weren’t the vice-principal of Stella, this blunder would’ve been so grave that you’d already have been offered up as a sacrifice.”
With a small, dry laugh, the Bishop turned away.
“Well, just sit quietly and pray to our god. Pray that no variables arise.”
The ‘Bishop’ wearing Raidin’s appearance vanished along with a brief laugh.
Akihayden lowered his head.
‘I only hope the three of them die cleanly and without incident…’
There wasn’t much to do after boarding the last car of the Tozmic.
If we simply waited quietly, we would reach the dungeon entrance on our own.
Leaning my head against the window and letting my body go limp, I absentmindedly organized the dungeon strategy in my mind.
With only three people, there were bound to be some difficult parts, but if we spent two full days on it, we should still be able to squeeze out a clear somehow.
Silence fell.
It wasn’t like we were the sort to chat idly, so each of us ended up spending time in our own way.
But even that private time couldn’t be spent comfortably.
Prickle!
From both ahead and behind, my sixth sense kept tingling sharply, irritating our nerves.
Apparently it wasn’t just me feeling it, because Ma Yuseong and Hae Wonryang also looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Most likely…
the paparazzi Lee Hanwol had warned us about had latched on.
“Hey, students. Isn’t this my seat?”
“Huh?”
While we were doing our best to ignore everything and stay quietly seated, someone approached and spoke to us.
“Yeah, it is. My seat. Move.”
I was bewildered and was about to check the ticket, but Hae Wonryang stopped me.
“He’s just talking nonsense. Ignore him.”
“Oh…?”
“Nonsense? You little bastard, your manners are pretty messed up. Hey, you—come out here. Hm? Not coming?!”
The man started shouting furiously, but neither Hae Wonryang nor Ma Yuseong reacted at all.
Hae Wonryang even opened a book and started reading it, while Ma Yuseong simply closed his eyes.
“You little shits, you’re ignoring me when an adult is talking to you? Hey, I said come out here! Get out!”
The man shouted his lungs out, but when no one responded, he finally ground his teeth and went back by himself.
As I quietly watched him leave, Hae Wonryang spoke without taking his eyes off the book.
“They’re trying to provoke us into getting angry so they can take pictures. But for all that, they’re cowards. They know we’re from Stella, so they don’t even dare lay a finger on us.”
“Ah… so that’s what it was?”
Come to think of it, I had heard about cases like that on Earth too.
Vicious paparazzi who would deliberately insult a movie star’s parents or do something similar to provoke violence, then film it and leak it.
Now that I was actually experiencing it, it was certainly novel in one sense, though not exactly a good experience in any other.
“Even if you’re some country bumpkin, you’re still part of Stella’s S-Class now. Don’t react to trashy little tricks like that one by one. It lowers Stella’s dignity.”
“…Yes, of course, I’m sure it does.”
Seriously, the way he talks.
After that man left, no one else came over looking for a fight.
They’d probably looked at us, assumed we were easy targets because we were students, then realized tactics like that wouldn’t work and were now thinking up another method.
Or maybe they were trying to catch us off guard the normal way, waiting for a gap.
‘Hmm…’
Paparazzi hide their special cameras in bags, collars, and similar places.
They even spread mana-concealing devices around them so thoroughly that they’re almost impossible to notice under ordinary circumstances.
But my sixth sense could detect even those mana-concealment devices, so it wasn’t hard to figure out where the paparazzi were hiding or how many there were.
Just sitting there and taking it also pissed me off, so I was thinking about how to get back at them when—
A chill ran straight through my entire body, and all the hair I had stood on end.
It was only after I instinctively sprang up from my seat that I realized it had already happened.
‘What the hell is this…?’
I somehow forced my stiff neck to turn with a creak, trying to say something to Hae Wonryang and Ma Yuseong…
but they too seemed to have realized something, because both of them had already gone rigid and were pulling out their staves.
Gulp.
My throat bobbed, and I too brought my hand toward my waist.
It felt like a massive wave—one that resembled a mountain itself—was coming straight toward us.
My instincts were telling me.
‘We die.’
Do not fight them head-on.
The aura I felt was even more intense than when I had encountered Meizen Tiren’s dark-magic corruption before.
And there were two of them.
Creeeeak…!!
From the door connecting to the front car came a horrible noise, like nails scraping across a blackboard.
Then, with a clunk, the door fell forward.
A man and a woman appeared from beyond it.
“Oh my, so our cute little Stella friends were here?”
They did not even bother hiding the red glow in their eyes as they released their terrifying killing intent.
[Azmick Costalin]
[Kalraban]
Through the Bulbul Glasses, their names rose before me.
Even I had at least heard their names before.
They weren’t main characters, but they did show up much later as mid-tier boss monsters.
‘Of all people, those bastards…’
At this point, my actions had already strayed so far beyond the ‘original work’ that something happening differently from the original didn’t shock me much.
The problem was only that these opponents were troublesome.
Azmick Costalin.
Her specialty was Crosspell, a bloodline magic that used spells woven into her fingernails.
She was even more famous as the last surviving member of the Costalin line.
After becoming a dark mage, it was fair to say that line of magic had been severed entirely—
but once combined with the superior physical ability of a dark mage, the power of Crosspell achieved tremendous synergy.
Kalraban.
Nothing especially distinctive about him.
He was simply an utterly vicious dark mage who nullified all magic through bestial combat sense and raw stats alone, and who delighted in cannibalism.
In a way, because he was so straightforwardly physical, he was the most troublesome and dangerous kind of enemy for a magic warrior to face.
Without exchanging any signal, Ma Yuseong, Hae Wonryang, and I all subtly took a step backward.
‘H-hiik…!’
‘W-what the…?!’
The paparazzi secretly hiding and filming us were so terrified that they couldn’t even stick their heads out anymore.
…Well, there was one exception.
‘T-th-this is a scoop!’
There actually was one lunatic paparazzo openly filming Azmick and Kalraban as they stood there, revealing their red eyes and broadcasting their murderous aura as dark mages.
That was because they were among the rare few dark mages whose faces were publicly known even in magical society, and whose notoriety was already widespread.
At that point, honestly…
I had to admit that was professional dedication.
“So then, Baek Yuseol…. I hear you’re supposed to be very clever, right? Well? Is there some way for your clever little head to get you out of this situation too?”
Azmick said that to me and raised her fingernails.
One of those black nails flashed—
Slice!
Kkagagagak!!
“Aaah?!”
The ceiling of the train was torn apart, and a paparazzo lying nearby let out a shriek.
That power could tear even steel like paper.
As expected of Crosspell.
“Hm? Is there a way for you to slip out of my grasp? I’m curious, you know. With that brain of yours, how exactly are you planning to deal with an overwhelming gap in power? Come on, tell me!”
Even while she shouted like that, the only thing we could do was keep taking one step backward at a time.
“What, are you scared? Ahaha! So in the end, even you’re nothing special, huh? What a shame~ That head of yours is about to become today’s food for our Kalraban.”
“…Was it Baek Yuseol? You’ve got an unusual constitution.”
Kalraban, who could smell mana itself, seemed to be experiencing my mana leakage constitution for the first time, because he kept sniffing and twitching his nose.
“I didn’t expect much from this meal… but you’ll be quite the delicacy. If you behave quietly, I’ll eat you without making it hurt.”
That bastard was even crazier than Azmick.
Thud.
As we backed away, we were finally stopped by the wall at the end.
I could clearly feel the emergency exit handle against my back.
Even so, Azmick and Kalraban kept approaching at leisure.
Because now there was nowhere left for us to run.
Because to them, we were prey already caught.
But—
I had not been backing up for no reason.
Using the Bulbul Glasses to check the time, I finally let the corners of my mouth rise.
“Hey. You trust me, right?”
I whispered to Hae Wonryang and Ma Yuseong, and one of them looked at me as if I were insane while the other looked at me in startled confusion.
But whatever reaction they gave, it didn’t matter.
“Then shut up and trust me.”
Shouting that, I threw the rear door of the train wide open with all my strength—
and then,
grabbed Ma Yuseong and Hae Wonryang each by the arm,
and leapt backward.
“Ugh! Y-you lunatic—!”
“W-wha—?!”
Now falling together with me, the two of them tried to shout something, but it was already too late.
“Ha, he’s completely insane!”
“This is absurd! Are you trying to fight in midair?!”
Azmick and Kalraban leapt from the train in a belated rush and charged at us with terrifying force, but—
[You have discovered the entrance leading to an unknown dungeon.]
it was already too late.
We had already thrown ourselves into the space created within the third gap.
No matter how superior those bastards were as dark mages, they could not pursue us in here.
Waver…!
“W-wha…?! What is this?!”
“Damn it, what the hell did you do—?!”
Azmick and Kalraban shouted in confusion as they watched us vanish into distorted space.
Toward their shocked faces, I raised my middle finger.
‘Get fucked.’
And then, at last, the crack in space closed completely.
[You have entered the dungeon, ‘The Korokoro Tribe’s Settlement’!]
Just as planned,
we successfully entered the dungeon according to my perfect plan.
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