Magic User

A crisp shattering sound.

The glass in a door was smashed by a figure crashing through it.

Lillian, dressed in a thin silk nightgown and holding a candlestick, stared in surprise at the figure who had tumbled in from outside.

He was a rather handsome man with short blond hair, wearing a star-blue—Vigilant Hall uniform?

Would someone from the Vigilant Hall break into a private residence through a third-floor window at—Lillian glanced at the clock above—4:50 in the morning?

Calling it a private residence was not quite right. After all, Laiya Club was one of the most famous "clubs" on Red Quarter, situated between the prime areas of Red Quarter and Riverside Street, the famed commercial street of West Ring District. Lillian herself was a renowned beauty at the club. Even count-level nobles or high-ranking court officials had to pay a starting rate of twenty gold coins an hour for her company.

That was why Lillian, awakened in bed, had come to investigate with a candlestick when the young and promising Captain Cohen Karabiyen of the West City Vigilance Hall plunged into a private bedroom at Laiya Club from the third floor.

"Miss, please accept my sincerest apologies for disturbing your rest."

Cohen scrambled up from the floor in embarrassment, hid the sword in his hand behind his back, and bowed to the seductive Lillian. But when he reached up to remove his hat in salute, he realized that his officer's cap had fallen off during the fight just now.

"Damn it," Cohen muttered.

It was all because the Old Man had thrown away my night outfit. I couldn't even go out and buy one in the middle of the night.

Lillian boldly examined this polite and handsome—very important, or she would have smashed him with the candlestick—Alert Officer. Her beautiful eyes shifted slightly as she raised a hand to sweep back her silky black hair, her fingers brushing vaguely across her impressive chest. Then she let out a tinkling laugh.

"Dear officer, we are not open tonight."

Of course Cohen knew what sort of place this was. Normally, this would have been the busiest hour at Laiya Club.

Yet facing the beauty before him, he merely smiled faintly, entirely unaffected by Lillian's alluring charm.

"So someone has taken care of you, and you're closed for the night?"

"Of course. The Blood Bottle Gang greased the right palms and promised to compensate us for our losses. Otherwise, do you know how much one night of closure on Red Quarter would cost all those lords who labor tirelessly for the Kingdom? If they become too weary from work, too exhausted in body, and too bored in spirit to contribute to the normal operation of the Western Continent's second-largest nation, what will happen to the more than ten million people of Starfall Kingdom?"

Lillian blinked and gave him a sly smile.

Cohen looked at the mature, tempting beauty, his brow tightening slightly.

It seemed the intelligence he had received through his informant had been incomplete. He had originally thought that the Black Street Brotherhood had launched an attack on the Blood Bottle Gang's Red Quarter branch, but now it appeared that the Blood Bottle Gang had laid a trap in Red Quarter beforehand and turned the tables.

That meant tonight's probing of the two gangs had to shift its focus from the Brotherhood to the Blood Bottle Gang.

After all, the Blood Bottle Gang had stood for nearly a century.

"Hey, you blond Green Skin dog!" A woman's voice outside interrupted them.

"Get down here and die! By the rules, we can't enter any buildings!"

Curious, Lillian walked to the broken window and saw a blood-covered woman in leather armor below, furiously snapping the whip in her hand at the upper floor.

Cohen bowed to Lillian again.

"Thank you for informing me, beautiful lady. Please forgive me, but I must now go keep another lady's appointment."

The blond Alert Officer and Security Captain turned around and lightly leaped down onto the street.

"Dear Miss Bernice, there is no need to be so impatient."

Cohen's smile suddenly turned icy, murderous intent flashing from his eyes.

"By the King's name, and in the name of the Sacred Starfall Covenant, as a Second-Class Vigilant Officer, I have the authority to execute suspects who may endanger the Kingdom's interests and its citizens' lives on the spot. Don't rush. I'll send you to reunite with your Brother shortly."

Upstairs, Lillian covered her mouth. She recognized the woman as Bernice Layton, the "Scorpion Whip" among the infamous Layton Siblings, two of the Blood Bottle Gang's Twelve Supremes.

Her Brother, Primo Layton, known as "Poison Sting," had visited Laiya Club just yesterday. With his peculiar tastes, he had nearly scalded a newly arrived girl to death with oil from an Eternal Lamp.

Judging by that officer's words, "Poison Sting" seemed to have already died by his hand?

"Green Skin dog! Even your superiors wouldn't dare refuse the Blood Bottle Gang respect! You—you dare—" Bernice raged. One of the more unconventional members of the Twelve Supremes, she had shaved the left side of her head and combed the remaining hair over to the right, making her features look much harder.

"I'll whip every scrap of flesh off your body!"

Before her words had even faded, Bernice's whip traced a circle through the air as it lashed toward Cohen. The barbs along its length seemed to come alive, shooting out and striking at him all at once!

"So that's how it is!"

Cohen's figure suddenly blurred. Only an expert could tell that he was shifting positions at a speed too fast for ordinary eyes to follow.

Clang! Clang-clang—clang!

The phantom of his sword flashed rapidly, cutting down the whip barbs that came close!

"If your Brother were still alive, the two of you might have caused some trouble by working together, given his ability to control those barbs."

But Bernice's whip was as agile and unpredictable as a snake. The whip tip and its flying barbs formed an attack without blind spots, pressing forward relentlessly.

"If I had arrived ten seconds earlier, Primo would not have died," Bernice said hatefully.

"And you, Green Skin dog, would have been torn apart by the two of us!"

Cohen's expression did not change as he slashed down five whip barbs like lightning, but the whip had already reached his face!

At that moment, Cohen's expression sharpened. He rushed forward, not even looking at the whip striking toward him!

"You suicidal idiot!"

Rip!

Bernice watched Cohen charge at her with a vicious grin as her whip mercilessly tore open his right shoulder! At the same time, three more barbs shot out!

My whip barbs are coated in poison that amplifies pain, and they have plenty of hooks, with spikes on those hooks too. Once they even graze someone, the pain is—huh?

Cohen did something Bernice had not expected.

The Alert Officer lunged forward without slowing despite the three incoming barbs. He raised his left hand and forcibly blocked them!

The barbs pierced deeply into the Alert Officer's arm, one even punching through his palm, yet his expression did not change in the slightest, as though he had merely been bitten by an ant.

Bernice stared at Cohen in shock. Many enemies had been twisted out of shape by those poisoned whip barbs, their faces distorted as they screamed and writhed beneath her.

But he—why did he have no reaction at all?

Could he not feel pain?

"Your street performance ends here," Cohen said coldly.

Bernice watched Cohen rush toward her with thunderous speed and hastily reacted, snapping her whip to form a defensive barrier before herself.

But an overwhelming force erupted from Cohen's sword in an instant!

Bernice's face changed at once.

This is—no!

In an instant, Cohen's sword seemed to become countless times sharper. Starlight flickered as it cut the incoming whip into several pieces!

Cohen's cold face and sword rapidly loomed larger before Bernice's eyes.

The next moment, that plain yet keen sword viciously pierced through her left breast, its tip bursting from her back!

Only then did her words emerge from her mouth with difficulty.

"Ending Power! You're Transcendent—"

But she could not finish.

"Sentence carried out."

Cohen gently pushed the stunned Bernice off his sword as though he had done something utterly trivial.

"Here's some advice: next time, use whatever trump cards you have from the beginning."

He casually pulled the whip barbs from his hand. That overwhelming power surged into his palm again, forcing out several drops of green fluid.

"If I had been wearing armor, even light armor, you would have died ten thousand times over already."

"To those who have lived through war, even Transcendent Rank Strong Ones look as childish as street brawlers. And you people are nothing more than children playing games."

Bernice closed her lifeless eyes and fell to the ground forever. Not far ahead, her Brother leaned half against a wall, his throat pierced by a single sword thrust.

Cohen bowed to the utterly shocked Lillian upstairs, then headed deeper into Red Quarter.

That man looked like such a polite gentleman, Lillian thought, covering her mouth.

But he truly showed no mercy to women.

In another alley of Red Quarter.

Yala coldly pulled the Wolf Leg Knife from the abdomen of the last Red Scarves thug before her and flicked the blood from its blade in disgust.

Tales did his best not to think about Yala's killing. It always reminded him of Quade's wide-open eyes before his death.

Those people had made their peace with it. They had joined gangs and clearly understood the consequences.

Thinking that way made him feel a little better.

Tales tightly pressed the black cloth over his nose and mouth. After Yala had just slaughtered a squad of roughly seven or eight Blood Bottle Gang thugs, he skillfully and silently crawled out from hiding and climbed onto her back.

"How did you overcome it?"

"Hm?"

"That sickening feeling and guilt of taking lives?"

Yala sighed.

"I was taught from childhood," she said, carrying Tales as she moved lightly, her voice icy, "that anyone I can kill is not my kind."

"It's like stepping on an ant."

Tales said nothing more, only wrapped his arms more tightly around Yala's neck.

Ever since they had passed Spinn, Red Quarter had been littered with corpses and wounded people, with blades flashing everywhere. From several places came the force of battles so intense that even Yala's scalp went numb.

The two proceeded cautiously, but amid the chaos, even with Yala's ability to conceal herself, it was immensely difficult.

With corpses everywhere and killing cries all around, they could not avoid running directly into two teams of thugs despite their efforts to hide: one team from the Brotherhood and one from the Blood Bottle Gang.

Yala had struck with full force each time, showing no mercy.

Then she had left swiftly.

For some reason, Tales was beginning to grow used to such bloody scenes.

That was not a good thing, he reminded himself. Emotional numbness would almost certainly lead to deviations in behavior.

"This is the fifth intersection, and we still can't get through." Yala stopped, frowning as she felt the air ahead.

Tales climbed down and reached his hand forward.

There was clearly nothing there, yet his hand met an invisible, solid barrier.

"Is this a psychic ability?" Tales asked in surprise.

Tales had not met many Psions so far, but neither had he met only a few. Morris, who handled human trafficking for the Brotherhood, was one of them. Back then, he had once suffocated a fleeing Beggar Child to death with nothing but a look.

"No. Psions do not possess such powerful abilities. Blocking five or six connecting streets across such a large area at once—I suspect the other intersections are much the same. Even Psychic Warriors would find that difficult."

Yala pushed up the goggles on her face and carefully "observed" the transparent barrier before her.

She recalled the terrifying legends told to her by the Old Man and that man—when Yala thought of him, her thoughts involuntarily paused.

"As far as I know," the Barmaid said gravely, "this is most likely the work of a Magic User."

Tales's eyes widened.

Magic User.

In fact, during his four or five years on the streets, Tales had heard that word more than once from drinkers at Sunset Tavern, clients on Red Quarter, gamblers at Black Gold Casino, and Brotherhood thugs.

At first, Tales had assumed they were something like the "mages" and "wizards" in the fantasy novels he remembered from his previous life, but he later discovered that was not the case.

No one would teach common knowledge of the world to Tales, a lowly Beggar Child. Even if they did, what he could access was mostly hearsay and horror stories from ignorant common folk.

Yet drawing on the experience he had recovered from his former life as a professional field researcher, Tales had still learned quite a bit through observation. Below were his notes on the term "Magic User":

First, nearly everyone who spoke of Magic Users did so with negative emotions such as fear, hatred, and curses. Words that appeared alongside the term included "powerful," "terrifying," "damned," "hell," and "illegal."

Second, Magic Users were quite rare in this world. By rare, he did not mean the sort of "rare" found in novels from his former life, where something was supposedly rare but wandered the streets everywhere. Tales judged that among the countless people who had discussed Magic Users over five years, only one drinker and one client had said things carrying some degree of truth. Clearly, they had obtained information about Magic Users either directly or indirectly.

Third, he had never heard of any organizations, factions, or even gatherings of Magic Users. Yet rumors said that two of the Blood Bottle Gang's highest leaders were Magic Users.

Fourth, the weapons carried by the Patrol Team members responsible for defending West Gate were called Anti-Magic Armament.

Fifth, Magic Users were entirely different from the Psions, Psychic Warriors, Terminus Swordsmen, and Termination Knights everyone loved to discuss. The latter might possess abilities they were born with or developed through training. As for Magic Users, Tales had never heard how they acquired their fearsome powers.

Sixth, aside from Magic Users, there was another weapon with a suspicious name: the Magic Energy Gun. It was permitted only for use by the Kingdom's military, and anyone found possessing one illegally would be convicted of a serious crime.

That was all the information Tales had on Magic Users.

"Magic Users?" Tales asked tentatively.

Yala glared at Tales and put her goggles back on. "Rumor says they are the hidden hands behind the Blood Bottle Gang. They have never appeared in all these years."

"The Blood Bottle Gang?"

So they were gang bosses? Tales frowned slightly. "What exactly do Magic Users do?"

Unexpectedly, Yala shook her head coldly.

"Don't ask."

The Barmaid unhesitatingly cut off his attempt to continue. "That is not something you should know."

Seeing Yala's expression, Tales awkwardly scratched his head.

What exactly were Magic Users? Long-range troops who threw fireballs and performed tricks?

Were they exceptionally powerful people? Or beings with special abilities, like Psions?

Tales had imagined countless situations in which he might encounter a Magic User. Unfortunately, based on what he knew, none of them seemed likely to end well.

Like now.

Tales stuffed the black cloth into his pocket and climbed back onto Yala's back.

"From now on, we need to be even more careful and avoid every possible fight, so we don't expose ourselves."

The Barmaid lifted her head heavily.

"Let's hope our luck has not become bad enough for us to run headlong into a Magic User."

Several moments earlier.

In an underground storeroom beneath a Chess and Card Room in central Red Quarter.

A handsome Blue-Clad Man with long, dark-brown curly hair cascading loosely around his shoulders sat quietly beside a table bearing an ancient campaign board. A map lay upon the board, along with several game pieces in black and red: Knights, swordsmen, ballistae, shield warriors, guards, chancellors, and kings.

This was The Rise and Fall of Empires, the most popular board game among nobles at present. It had spread from Elenbian Kingdom and drew on historical allusions and common military knowledge, simulating battles between the armies of human kings and the Ancient Empire before and after its era. For pampered, high-status nobles, it was naturally the finest pastime for displaying masculine vigor, attracting women's attention, and avoiding personal danger.

Of course, a small number of great nobles with peculiar tastes were rumored to enjoy using real people as game pieces.

Under the light of an Eternal Lamp, a closer look would reveal that the map in the middle of the campaign board was a street map of Red Quarter.

The handsome man in blue casually moved the pieces with his right hand. Black and red pieces were removed from the map one after another, but among the removed pieces, the scattered black pieces vastly outnumbered the concentrated red ones.

Two black chancellors stood on the map, surrounded by many black guards and swordsmen, while several red Knights held them in check. Further outward, many black Knights and shield warriors were being defeated one by one by two red chancellors with superior numbers, leading swordsmen and guards.

At the very center of the map stood a dark-red king, towering conspicuously above the others, with a red guard beside it.

The handsome Blue-Clad Man was happily playing his game. A closer look would reveal a pale-blue sphere of energy gathering in his idle left hand, breathing slowly as though alive, with a storm seemingly brewing within it.

From time to time, the Blue-Clad Man opened his mouth and said something. At his lips, the rippling trails of vibrating air could be seen clearly as they dispersed through the air.

Yet strangely, not a single sound emerged.

In the dark, lonely silence, the sight seemed all the more bizarre.

Just then, the Blue-Clad Man suddenly frowned.

Without changing expression, he reached out and removed a Red Ballista from the edge of the map.

But a few minutes later, the Blue-Clad Man frowned again. Slowly reaching out, he removed the sole remaining red swordsman from that position.

The Blue Energy Orb in the Blue-Clad Man's left hand flickered, and the storm within showed signs of instability.

He drew several deep breaths, then spoke aloud for the first time.

"Who is responsible for surveillance and interception in the Lower City District?"

It was as though he were asking the air.

From the frightening darkness came a strange yet certain reply. "Shapeshifter Dolno and Undying Spin."

The Blue-Clad Man closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he moved two Red Swordsmen from elsewhere into the two captured positions, placing one of them farther in, as though trying to catch whatever had devoured Dolno and Spin.

Ripples spread through the air by his lips as they moved silently for a while.

Only then did he gradually speak aloud to the void.

"The Taren Brothers and Moria were already taken by us an hour ago, weren't they?"

"So they're reinforcements," he murmured.

After hesitating, he moved one of the map's only two Red Chancellors over as well.

"That should do it."

But the next moment, as if sensing something, the Blue-Clad Man's expression changed again.

He moved his right hand to the far edge of the map and removed two Red Swordsmen almost simultaneously.

The Blue-Clad Man's face darkened.

"Who is responsible for surveillance in the Inner West Ring District?"

"The Layton Siblings, Poison Sting, and Scorpion Whip."

This time, the voice in the darkness seemed somewhat more cautious.

The Blue-Clad Man said nothing. His gaze roamed back and forth between the two ends of the map, his face showing confusion and displeasure.

"Were they pieces that entered from outside? What a headache. Didn't we already arrange with Vigilant Hall to impose a curfew?"

In the end, he let out a helpless sigh.

Had he gone too long without playing these human games? Was that why his skills had declined?

Sigh.

The Blue-Clad Man gently raised his head, his expression complicated.

"Gulaton, do you know?"

"The purpose of traps and mazes is to seal off the entrances and exits and trap the rats that walk into the net."

"But if both the entrance and exit of the trap have been breached—"

"Then what the hell are you catching rats for?"

Then the Blue-Clad Man's expression turned cold. Decisively, he moved the guard beside the Red King at the center of the map to where the two Red Swordsmen had been taken out.

A rush of wind sounded in the darkness.

After that, no more sound came.

Only the energy storm in the Blue-Clad Man's hand gradually stabilized.