Inside an abandoned warehouse, everything was pitch-black, and a faint musty smell lingered in the air.
Click. A metal lighter opened, and a small flame dispelled some of the darkness, illuminating a man's face.
He lit a cigarette, and the smell of tobacco gradually spread through the warehouse.
"Stiyl, smoking is bad for your health. Take care of yourself. You're still young."
A woman's voice came from the darkness.
"So what? Before I die of lung disease, I may already have died in battle. Maybe soon."
Stiyl let out a self-mocking laugh. He had lit the cigarette to cover the smell of blood in the warehouse—and the feeling that his heart had been pierced by a dagger. He faintly sensed that something was wrong. It wasn't the enemy. It was something on their own side.
The man and woman in the warehouse fell silent again. The place was so quiet they could hear a pin drop.
Sisi~
The sound of some creature crawling approached. Hearing it, Stiyl snapped his fingers, and a ball of flame rose before him. This was Stiyl's ability. He was proficient in fire magic, and with the aid of runes, he could cast extremely powerful fire spells.
Mages in the Magical Index world were different from most mages. Most mages used mana as their foundation and communicated with the elements as an auxiliary means of casting spells.
Mages in the Magical Index world, however, used runes as their foundation and mana as an auxiliary. They basically did not communicate with the elements, and a medium was indispensable. The advantage was that it consumed very little of their own energy, reducing their mana consumption. Once they lost their runes, these mages became useless. Forget powerful magic—even ordinary spells required them to set up a magic array on