Four specks of light drifted down through the night.
One pale green, one dusty yellow, one blood red, and one vermilion.
They looked like four firefly bugs huddled together, or four stars falling from the distant depths of space. They seemed to descend slowly, yet in the blink of an eye they had dropped from above the clouds to the skies over the Crowley Family's old estate.
An old Wizard Family estate like this had powerful Guardian Magic, even after decades of abandonment. Yet as the four lights fell, those defenses might as well not have existed. The lights passed through barrier after barrier and appeared deep within the estate.
They alerted no one inside.
Not even the ancient wizard with disheveled hair, worn teeth, white hair, and wrinkled skin. He alone, however, felt a sudden premonition as the lights descended and glanced out the window.
Then he saw a splendor unlike anything he had seen in his life.
"—Shit."
Those were the old wizard's last words.
The Pale Green Incantation Light flared first. Like a sphere of light swelling countless times over, it enveloped the entire Crowley Family estate: from the Mage Tower that rose dozens of meters above the Magic Node to the level-four laboratory dozens of meters underground. It did not miss a single ant tucked into a corner.
Beneath the night sky, the sphere trembled faintly, as though taking a breath. Then it vanished.
The old castle vanished with it. A moment ago, it had crouched in the wilderness like a silent beast.
There was no astonishing celestial display, no explosive sound, no violent surge of Magic Power. The entire estate disappeared so completely on a conceptual level that it might never have existed. More than ten kilometers away, a shepherd rubbed his eyes, pulled his