Chapter 9 (continued)

True to his word, the guards stared curiously at Mel and me, as though we were some kind of priceless artifacts on display for a limited time. Those looks followed us all the way down the corridor and through several security doors, until we were brought to a deeply hidden but spacious cell... Considering Mel's "fearsome reputation," I guessed the cells had corresponding security levels. Was this one custom-built for a legendary archmage?

"Don't worry," the captain said. "You probably won't be here long. Frankly, damaging the Great Library is a public order offense at most, even if..."

He glanced at Mel. I guessed he meant that even if Mel was a dark mage, his punishment wouldn't be increased on that account.

On the contrary, I thought the comments online would be unanimous in saying how cool Mel was.

Hmm... A popular dark mage really could be considered a rare animal.

"...But we'll have to wait until we've finished the assessment. You know how it is: damage caused by high-risk Black Magic has to be reported, no matter how much or how little... Hmm, but at a glance, I'd say the worst you can expect is a few days in detention and a fine. The spell may have been dangerous, but all it did was destroy a table and the floor. Compared with Archmage Madsen's past... uh, glorious exploits, it's nothing at all. All right, we're here. After you." The captain spread his hands and gestured for us to enter.

The guards opened the cell door—and what a complicated process that was. They went through at least three layers of security protocols, scanned the biometric data of four people, and finally scanned the captain's iris before the door opened and they locked us inside. Once we were in, there was another series of clicks as the door locked, followed by an electrical barrier that sprang up around the cell.

Mel looked around with interest. "These security measures are really cumbersome," he said to me.

"Holy Light City is the capital of the Osland Federation. The prison here has a zero escape rate," I said. "The news is always boasting about it."

"But honestly..."

Mel trailed off and tilted his head. I understood exactly what he meant-

Once we were inside, we found that those complex security locks were a complete waste of taxpayers' money. For us, getting out of this cell would be effortless.

The members of the Shield of the New Star thought the magic-sealing runes on our hands were foolproof, but in reality, their level was... a little low. They couldn't stop me from casting spells at all. The same spell in the hands of an archmage was worlds apart from one cast by an apprentice, and the same was true of runes. The runes on these handcuffs weren't powerful enough to cut off the flow of my magic, so the Magitech electric-shock device was meaningless too. Because the runes weren't strong enough, I didn't need to try to break through them; I could cast spells while wearing them. And those supposedly intelligent nanobots would only follow their programming. As long as I didn't try to take the cuffs off, the programmed punishment wouldn't be triggered. Even if I razed the capital to the ground while wearing them, the cute little nanobots still wouldn't budge.

So no matter how advanced technology became, it still took a person at the controls to make it reliable.

As for those ridiculous finger caps, they did nothing except physically torment our fingers. I'd already told Moli and the others this: mages didn't need to wave their arms around or twist their fingers into fancy shapes to cast spells. Gestures and incantations weren't indispensable; a mage could even do without both. With thought alone, a mage who was both quadriplegic and mute could still cast advanced spells.

"They're too heavy," Mel said, casting Levitation on his heavy handcuffs.

The members of the Shield of the New Star had gone far enough away anyway, so I immediately cast an anti-gravity spell. The weight on my wrists, which had felt like that of a giant dragon, instantly became as light as a goose feather.

"This place is really nice," Mel said. "Look, a fully enclosed room, clean and tidy, very quiet and comfortable."

"The lighting is good too," I said. "There are beds and chairs, and plenty of space."

Mel's voice grew cheerful. "And the building materials are high quality. There's even an anti-magic coating on the surface of the walls."

"They provide free food and water too. It's the perfect place to practice magic!" He looked around and spotted a dedicated chute for delivering meals and drinks.

"The floor and walls are made of soft material... That's to stop prisoners from killing themselves, right? It's comfortable to walk on, and you can rest anywhere, anytime! The only drawback is that the wall facing the corridor is transparent... Huh, where are the guards? Hmm, they don't keep watch here twenty-four hours a day? That's wonderful! We can overlook that little drawback."

Tsk, I hadn't known until now that the prison in Holy Light City was such a

cozy

pleasant place to study magic! Judging by the friendly attitude of those military guards, I guessed they had great respect for Mel, so there wasn't anyone guarding this corridor, and we didn't need to worry about being watched.

"Yeah! It's wonderful here." Mel nodded at me. "It reminds me of my teacher's mage tower. His tower had a similar safe room for apprentices to practice high-risk spells. In my teacher's safe room, a fireball would produce only a single spark, and even if the most dangerous instant-death Black Magic accidentally hit someone, it would cause an ulcer at worst!"

"That sounds like a truly wonderful mage tower!" I said longingly. He was an archmage's teacher; I guessed I wouldn't even need to go inside his tower. Just seeing it from a distance would leave me too excited to speak.

"But that caused problems too." Mel shrugged. "After practicing so much in a safe room that suppressed my magic, I would always forget to control it when I first went out on my own years ago, and end up using too much power."

"Like that spell that controlled all the orcs' shadows at once?" I asked. "That really was spectacular. It was an amazing spell."

Mel looked a little embarrassed. "That was almost ten years ago. You still remember it, Xipei?"

"You must not go online much," I said. "Videos of that battle of yours are still the most watched on all the major video sites. I've seen them too. You really looked charming when you cast that spell. My student is your die-hard fan—and yes, that's what she calls herself."

A distinct blush spread across Mel's cheeks, and he smiled at me. "You looked wonderful casting that spell just now too... Hmm, ah, I mean, my student always calls me the 'bane of electronics.' After I broke the third smart computer she bought me, she stopped wasting her efforts."

"Hmm, likewise. My student even said I 'transmigrated from the legendary era.'"

"What's transmigration? Does it mean traveling through the Astral Plane?"

"Something like that, I suppose," I replied. "But young people my student's age are talking about the kind of transmigration in web novels. It's very imprecise and has no theoretical basis. Things like going to sleep and waking up back in ancient times... It's all made up purely for literary effect. Although ancient mages confirmed long ago that a realm beyond the world—the Astral Plane-existed, there's still no reliable record proving that anyone has actually managed to cross the planes, break free of the laws binding the world, and enter the Astral Plane."

"Ancient mages also called the Astral Plane the 'Void' or 'Nothingness.' Some spatial spells really have reached a bottleneck."

"Like the Void Transfer spell?"

Mel nodded. "Yes. When a mage casts Void Transfer on himself, it can transfer all damage he takes for the duration of the spell into the Void."

"But the mage himself remains on the Prime Material Plane," I said. "Apart from that, wasn't there a gossip story a while ago about a former emperor of the Holy Dragon Empire who accidentally traveled through the Astral Plane to another world as a child and didn't return until he was an adult?"

"Oh, some of the giant dragons who knew that former emperor are still alive. They really do firmly believe that he crossed the Astral Plane and visited another world. However, there hasn't been a second case since then, so scholars have been arguing about it endlessly, and no view has won the acceptance of the majority to this day," Mel replied. "If there really were a way to 'transmigrate'-ah, I mean the kind of transmigration from web novels you just mentioned—I'd definitely go to the legendary era and see the legendary spellcasters of those days for myself!"

"Then you absolutely have to take me with you!"

We laughed together again. For mages living in modern society, nothing could have been more natural than longing for that fabled, colorful age of magic. Back then, the Diana Continent was wild yet prosperous, and all its races lived together on that beautiful, fertile land. Humans built a temple in service of the God of Light in the heart of the continent, while deep in the snowy mountains of the far north, beneath a sky where the black moon rose, lay the guardians in the darkness, the Shadow Moon Temple; mages wielding powerful spells traveled alongside brave, steadfast knights, pursuing knowledge and virtue and leaving legendary deeds in their wake for bards to sing of; even among the legendary assassins who lurked in the shadows, many held to a creed of not killing the righteous...