Chapter 54 (1/2)
The interior and exterior of the barrier were clearly different.
I managed to find out that much through [Understanding], but its effectiveness in the absence of any information wasn’t that great.
“…”
Even though it prohibited everyone from passing through, I easily walked into it by tearing a small part of it using my cane and was soon met by a gloomy and dark atmosphere seemingly littered with red lanterns, making it a little nauseating to look at.
“Calm down, everyone.”
Hearing a voice coming from deeper into this barrier, I tracked the source down, passing through the dormitory hallway and reaching the hall on the first floor.
The children gathered under the guidance of the housekeeper.
“Professor!” One of them yelled the moment they spotted me.
They looked like they had found their savior, but I couldn’t be friendly to them.
The dark mana inside the barrier was getting on my nerves.
“I’m safe! Professor, how—”
“Shut up.”
Their noise subsided in an instant.
I looked at the housekeeper.
She wore pointed glasses and wrinkled clothes, her shoulders covered in dust and her nails torn.
I also checked on the students’ conditions.
Their robes were in tatters, and their expressions screamed distress.
I noted down all the trivial cues.
“Is everyone here?”
“There seem to be more people upstairs.” The housekeeper said. I opened my briefcase, and ten wood steel shurikens rose and soared up the stairs to the upper floor of the dormitory, while the remaining ten descended to the basement of the building.
“…”
I closed my eyes and detected their sounds, allowing me to pinpoint their locations as if I was using a sonar device purely caused by an attribute bonus. Since I had a talent for fire, earth, and metal elements, I realized this unique ability while interacting with something I cherished.
The wood steel flew up the stairs and went through each floor, informing me whenever they found humans through resonance.
At the same time, they tore apart non-human creatures without mercy.
In the end, I detected four people in total, one on the fifth, sixth, ninth floor, and tenth floors.
I steered the wood steel to guide them.
—W-What is this? What are you?
—Are you asking me to follow you?
—I-I can’t. There’s a monster outside…
They were hesitant at first, but I soon calmed their fears down.
“Follow me.”
The wood steel vibrated, creating a “frequency” that transmitted my voice to them. Hearing my words, they went straight down the stairs along with the wood steel.
“… Woah!”
Not long after, they plopped down as they breathed heavily, finally reaching the first floor. The housekeeper pushed them aside.
She asked. “Can we go out now?”
“It’s a well-crafted barrier. It’s hard to get in but harder to get out. It’s most likely twice as sturdy as a common barrier, considering mana is applied to it.”
Deconstructing it through calculation and operation was possible, however. If I could locate its core through my [Vision], I’d be able to immediately delete it.
However, it would take a long time. The amount of mana here was swiftly overdosing the wizards. They wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.
“Then… Shhh.”
I pressed the length of my index finger on my lips, hushing them down.
Everyone in the area stopped moving. Amid the silence, I looked at every robed wizard, closely observing their condition and attire.
The barrier’s activation couldn’t have been possible through formula alone.
The ‘caster’ who operated the switch had to be hiding somewhere.
“…”
Their expressions showed no hints of them being the culprit. To disrupt the instigator’s camouflage, I activated [Psychokinesis], causing their hair to rise like waves.
“Huh.”
My lips twisted, forming a smile as I felt my contempt rising from deep within me.
I approached one of the barrier’s captives.
“In a person’s body, your own strength builds up. Hence, even if you hide your appearance and origin, you cannot hide the duration you’ve been staying in that vessel. The stronger you become, the harder it is to hide your true identity.”
I reached out and touched the housekeeper’s hair.
“Ashes… flow from you.”
Buried in her hair, traces of it reacted to my Psychokinesis.
“Did you come from a volcanic pile? You’re from the ‘Ashes,’ aren’t you?”
Everyone looked at her, startled.
“…”
Standing still, she raised her glasses without a word and took off her “mask.”
I didn’t show it, but I was surprised. The instigator of this main quest was also a Named character.
“You have amazing deduction skills, but it doesn’t change anything. Don’t you know?”
She smiled, but her stare remained sharp.
“Your kind is killing every single one of ours, calling us Ashes in the process.”
I quietly listened to her, forcibly suppressing my anger. Blue veins were running around my neck, and the inside of my mouth felt swollen with swear words.
It was a side effect of mana addiction.
“That’s why you more than deserve to die.” She muttered and activated her magic.
Whooooong…
Tremendous amounts of mana rose from the floor, but that was all she could do. I activated [Undertanding] while glaring at her magic formula.
… In an instant, my field of vision broadened, and the world around me became clear.
The magic that flowed through my brain accelerated my calculations and amplified my thought process.
Time seemed to infinitely slow down.
I grasped the magic she was about to activate in an instant and located its core circuit through [Vision]. Simultaneously, I dismantled it by using [Understanding].
Fizzzz—!
Only a tiny spark erupted from the magic she worked so hard to cast.
“Asshole!”
She immediately conjured another spell, but all it took was one glance from me to destroy it.
This time it just launched a snowball.
“Fuck.”
Of course, I was consuming crazy amounts of mana in this process, but my abilities accepted the mana around me as its power supply at a similar rate.
“…”
I broke every single attempt she executed, laughing at her mockingly as I did so.
Within the mana-filled barrier, the combination of my [Understanding] and [Vision] allowed me to directly observe and interfere with almost all magic.
In the end, she gave up on magic composition.
“It’s because of this,” I approached her as she grew silent. “that you are called Ashes.”
Sounding as if I was chewing and spitting out each word, I continued.
“You are garbage, scum that’s been rejected by society. You lack the composition to be a human, and you lack the appeal to be a beast.”
I lifted my finger and placed it on her forehead as she looked straight at me. The magical cohesiveness that was collapsing behind her was immediately cut off.
“Your only talent is to squirm. That won’t help you be relieved of your poor and dirty roots.”
“… Sigh. You’re quite an eloquent speaker, aren’t you? If you’re that good, why don’t you break up my barriers before they die? Don’t tell me you can’t do that much?” She smirked and looked up at me.
“Since you’ve gone that far, let me tell you the fault of your inferior brain.”
I didn’t avoid her gaze. I accepted it with further contempt.
“You were so infinitely stupid and dull that the barrier you created devoted itself to the building rather than the space itself.”
Ten pieces of my wood steel saved the survivors, but the other ten descended.
They attached themselves to the core support of the dormitory’s steel frames, the pillars supporting the entire building, by drilling a hole in the underground rock wall.
“That in itself evidences that your intelligence is incredibly lacking.”
My wood steel generated heat all at once.
Although a bit too late, she finally realized what I meant.
“… You want to destroy the building to break the barrier? Are you really that excited to die?”
I let out a sigh as a certain personality flaw swelled from the bottom of my chest. I bent down a little, moving my lips to her ear, and whispered.
“Arlos.”
Her shoulders trembled.
“Don’t think that I don’t know you.”
I took a step back again, finding her staring at me in shock.
“One must always be aware of who their opponent is, after all.”
… At that moment, my wood steels, finally generating enough heat, melted the columns.
As soon as a fire was ignited, I activated my [Basic Fire Control].
BOOM!
The sudden amplification of the fire’s intensity, mixed with the wood steel’s heat, caused an explosion.
The building’s collapse soon followed that blast.
Losing its core support, it sank into the ground as dust clouds rose. The barrier that encompassed broke in the process.
GGRRRGRGGGRR!
Shattered wreckage poured down like rain. In the midst of its demolition, I looked down at her calmly.
“It’s time to go back to your main body.”
“…!”
At that moment, she expressed even more surprise than when I said her name.
My wood steel pierced her neck, and the light from her pupils disappeared, turning her into a mannequin.
Puppetry.
That type of “specialized magic” was Arlos’s signature. It could only be manifested when one’s manipulation series and harmony series were high-leveled.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah—!” The wizards screamed. I tilted my head slightly and looked back. The lights were smashed, allowing darkness to cover the whole area, but their lives were intact.
I had rendered their deaths impossible by putting them under the protection of my [Psychokinesis].