The First Gate (3)
“Omnidirectional emission-type launch sorcery. Thirty-ninefold overlapping composite deployment.”
Buuuuung!!
Dozens of thorn spheres rose into the skies above the gate city and began to glow.
“Sequential detonation with a two-second incantation delay. Eight-directional chain reaction.”
Bloodshot eyes appeared between the thorn spheres, glaring at one another before exploding simultaneously.
They continuously erupted pungent violet flames across the streets of the gate city.
Kwa-gwa-gwang!!
A pure white cross surged through the blazing inferno and split apart the thorn spheres.
“Temporary route, rotate 270 degrees. Descend five meters in place while destroying thirteen spell tools.”
As the cross rotated in place and swept away the flames, the thorn spheres shattered and scattered a rain of sharp spikes across the ground.
Chwajajajak!!!
The spike fragments pouring into the middle of the streets pierced through the buildings in the commercial district, but there were almost no casualties.
Most residents had already evacuated from the battlefield as though accustomed to such disturbances.
Among them, there were even transcendents who had begun fighting each other while using the chaos of this battle as cover.
“I expected as much, but most of the residents in the gate city are transcendents of a considerable level.”
Lennok spoke while watching the outer streets of the gate city descend into chaos.
“It doesn’t seem like this city’s population exceeds a million. Surely not every resident is a mana user?”
“......”
Angel, standing behind him, could only stare blankly with his mouth hanging open.
The stream of spell information Lennok had casually spoken moments earlier.
Hints regarding what kind of sorcery would be cast, in which direction, through how many layers of overlap, and at what range.
Every one of those explanations had been flowing from Lennok’s mouth several seconds before the battle even occurred.
Unless he could see through and predict the entire battle between the Gravekeepers and the Cross Society, such a thing should have been impossible.
Lennok glanced sideways at Angel’s silent reaction.
“No answer. Are you planning to keep watching like this?”
“Sorry, but I think that’s what I should be saying.”
Angel finally snapped back to his senses and fiddled with his terminal as he answered.
“Normally I should’ve reported to headquarters long ago, but you’re the reason it’s getting delayed. And my name is Angel.”
“That dark magic. It’s a sorcery triggered by the target’s gaze.”
Ignoring Angel’s words entirely, Lennok raised the Eye of Cheonhye.
Using the artifact like a miniature telescope and enlarging the lens, Lennok spoke with interest.
“The caster isn’t the only one using triggers. Even disposable magic tools like those thorn spheres are individually assigned activation conditions.”
“The Gravekeepers’ dark magic being weird isn’t exactly new.”
“On the other hand, what the monk from the Cross Society is using isn’t sorcery.”
“......”
“It’s prayer.”
Lennok looked calmly at the radiant cross violently spinning in the middle of the street even now.
“A type of primitive faith that recites prayers based on belief and receives power and sanctified domains in return.”
“There used to be a Watcher in the Eyes of the Blue who handled power similar to that.”
“Ah......”
Angel, who had been about to say something, eventually sighed and stood up.
Stuffing the terminal back into his coat, he crouched beside Lennok and tilted his head.
“Look, I’m not completely ignorant of your circumstances. I heard you left the Eyes of the Blue recently, right? I heard a lot happened. But now isn’t the time to get lost in those feelings.”
Even now, Angel kept glancing around as though someone were chasing him.
“Places with wide-open visibility like this are dangerous. Can’t we move somewhere else first?”
“Dangerous, hm.”
Lennok laughed.
“Is that because you’re the one who provoked and triggered that fight?”
“......Well.”
Angel fell speechless, and Lennok turned his gaze away.
“If you went through the trouble of pulling me out, then naturally you would’ve needed to trigger a battle large enough to divert the Search Party’s attention.”
Buuuuung......!!
A floating thorn sphere appeared above Lennok’s head.
The bloodshot eye protruding from the sphere was glaring at Angel standing behind Lennok.
Lennok leisurely observed it and continued.
“And in the process, drawing the attention of both the Gravekeepers and the Cross Society would’ve been unavoidable.”
“......No, wait. You knew all that and still sat there doing this?”
[So there you are, you little rat.]
At the same time, a chilling voice echoed from the thorn sphere.
The gloomy man who had been fighting the Cross Society turned his head and glared at Angel.
[To think you’d inform hypocrites like the Cross Society of our existence. Give up on the idea of leaving here alive.]
Kwaaang!!
The thorn sphere above them instantly swelled and exploded.
Dozens of spikes burst outward and rained down onto the sturdy city wall.
“Uwaaaah!!”
Panicking, Angel sharply inhaled before exhaling downward beneath his feet.
The wall instantly froze over into a sheet of ice, and he slid along the icy path while grabbing Lennok by the collar.
Chwaak!!
Lennok frowned at the hurried motion but allowed himself to be dragged.
The moment Angel accelerated across the ice path and barely escaped the blast radius—
Another thorn sphere erupted right beside them and instantly obliterated the outer district streets.
Kwaaaang!!
Buildings crumbled apart, sending storms of wooden debris flying in every direction.
Angel emitted cold air over the fragments, freezing and linking them together to instantly create another icy route leading out of the street.
Sliding violently away from the battlefield, Angel crashed face-first into the dirt.
Kung!!
His shoulders trembling, Angel quickly leapt back to his feet and frantically looked around.
“Wah?! W-Where are you?!”
“You can’t even properly plan a simple escape route.”
Thud!!
Lennok emerged from the collapsed remains of a warehouse nearby and asked,
“You use ice-based powers, yet you can’t even properly control the friction coefficient of your ice paths?”
“Well, I’m not actually a mage, you know. Delicate control like that is kind of......”
Angel awkwardly scratched the back of his head.
“You can’t expect psychics to have mathematically precise control. Not everyone in the world is like you. Ah, now’s not the time for this. Let’s hurry and run!!”
Snapping back to his senses, Angel quickly dashed into the alleyways behind the commercial district and nodded toward Lennok.
“Let me properly introduce myself again. I’m Angel of the cartel. Honestly, things should’ve gone like this from the beginning!!”
A cryokinesis psychic from the Ability Awakening Brigade.
A contact who had arrived at the gate before Lennok.
One of the cartel executives dispatched to assist Evan Martinez in this operation.
“Ever since communication got cut off after entering the Central Front, I’ve been worried sick. If this mission failed, who knows what the Chairwoman would’ve said to me again, whew~”
Angel exaggeratedly wiped his chest in relief before looking back with a grin.
“Anyway, you made it to the gate safely. This is the first time since the battle at the dam, so isn’t it nice seeing each other again?”
“That’s enough nonsense.”
But Lennok coldly cut off Angel’s playful greeting.
Glancing upward above Angel’s head as he sped through the main roads atop his ice path, Lennok said,
“They’re coming.”
“So this is where you were......!!!”
A blinding pillar of a cross slammed into the middle of the street and instantly destroyed the surrounding structures.
Kwaaaang!!
Buildings and paving stones were swept away like straw from the impact, turning the area into complete ruin.
“So you were the one who informed the Cross Society about the Gravekeepers.”
A middle-aged monk in white robes stood atop the giant cross, looking down at Angel with a solemn expression.
“Thank you for your courage, but you’ll have to come with me. Can you spare the time immediately?”
“H-Haha......”
Angel broke into a cold sweat and slowly stepped back.
Kugugugu!!!
Seeing the massive swollen thorn sphere rolling toward them from behind the boulevard, Angel hurriedly said,
“Shouldn’t we first deal with the Gravekeeper dark mage over there?”
“The resistance is too fierce. It would be difficult for me to deal with him alone. I don’t believe we can continue fighting inside the city.”
The monk shook his head expressionlessly.
“Any battle that occurs inside the gate city must be accounted for before the Order Federation. You must personally testify that this incident is not the Cross Society’s responsibility.”
“If it isn’t the Cross Society’s fault, then who exactly is responsible for this......?”
“You already know the answer, so why ask foolish questions?”
The monk’s eyes gleamed coldly as he looked at Angel.
“Obviously the informer—you—must bear responsibility.”
Kugugugugu!!!
The giant cross burrowed into the ground and rotated while the thorn spheres filling the alleyways surged forward.
The abilities of the Cross Society and the Gravekeepers crashed toward the spot where Angel and Lennok stood.
Making a miserable face, Angel pulled a small vial from his coat and raised it to his lips while shouting,
“Ah, seriously!! If only time hadn’t been wasted like this.....!!”
“Stop.”
Lennok halted Angel just as he was about to drink the vial and stepped forward.
“......Evan?”
“Evan Martinez. So you’re the famous flame sorcerer.”
The monk atop the cross looked at Lennok with brightened eyes.
“I’ve heard enough about what you did in Vulcan to make my ears ring. Though I don’t understand why someone like you associates with such a lowly psychic, if you truly value loyalty to your organization, then surely you can sympathize with duty and responsibility as well.”
The monk pointed at Angel as he spoke solemnly.
“If you hand over that psychic, then in respect for you, the Cross Society will hold you responsible for nothing further.”
[......Treadburn Evan Martinez.]
Kururung!!
The gloomy-looking man emerged from the thorn vines and tilted his head while looking at Lennok.
[I heard the King of the Dead occasionally takes interest in your movements.]
[Hand over the psychic. Then I shall offer you a seat within the Main Tomb and grant you the chance to welcome the King of Hell.]
“My name’s getting called a lot today.”
Lennok smiled bitterly and turned his gaze aside.
The very fact that both the Cross Society and the Gravekeepers were showing goodwill toward him and trying to persuade him felt strangely surreal.
Even though Treadburn’s identity had never truly differed much from Bolt’s, the reputation and treatment surrounding Evan Martinez were completely different.
He was not regarded as a blood-crazed madman, but as a high-ranking mage with whom reason could be negotiated.
That was likely because the reputation and rumors surrounding Lennok had not been created by his own will, but because he had simply made use of the reputation already formed around him.
But precisely because of that, there was only one answer fitting for Evan’s identity here.
“If you’ve heard about Vulcan, then you should already know.”
Lennok raised his hand and drew up mana.
“I’m not the type to abandon people who helped me.”
“Martinez......!!!”
[Flame Sphere]
[Crimson Blaze]
Fwoooosh!!
The fireball Lennok launched exploded, instantly spreading a fierce wave of mana throughout the sky.
At that moment, a strange sound of something creaking and twisting echoed from far overhead.
The expressions of both the Gravekeeper and the monk changed simultaneously, while the vast haze above the gate city rippled violently.
Paaaaaaah!!
The moment a bizarre wave swept across the earth following the flow of the haze dominating the skies—
The monk’s cross and the Gravekeeper’s thorn spheres collapsed simultaneously as though exploding apart.
Jjeojeojeok!!
Kuuung!!
The backlash of forcibly canceled sorcery.
Pain distorted both the monk’s and the Gravekeeper’s faces.
[You dare......!!]
The two staggered, unable to endure the recoil.
Lennok immediately nodded toward Angel.
“Go.”
“I don’t really get it, but I’m moving!!”
Without hesitation, Angel gulped down the vial.
Instead of swallowing, he spat the medicine back out.
The liquid froze and explosively amplified.
Transforming into a gigantic tree of ice, it lifted Lennok and Angel high above the streets.
Jjeojeojeok!!!
Grabbing onto the rapidly sprouting branches of the ice tree, Lennok fled behind the commercial district before jumping down after Angel.
As Angel created another ice path and dashed into the alleys, he asked,
“How did you come up with something like that in that situation?”
“Throughout the entire battle, both sides refrained from using large-scale sorcery.”
Lennok replied while stepping onto the ice path behind Angel.
“They were Level 7 sorcerers, yet neither side even bluffed about deploying a domain. Instead, they kept reducing their output as time passed.”
“......”
“At first I thought it was because they didn’t want to attract the Conjoining Sorcerer’s attention, but in reality it was because of the veil hanging above the city.”
Gooooooo......!!!
The sky gradually darkened, and the haze hanging overhead became increasingly distinct.
Like an aurora spread across the night sky, a gigantic curtain rippled majestically as waves pulsed across it.
And every time it did, the mana around the gate city fluctuated violently.
“If the veil grows stronger and clearer at night, then naturally the environment inside the gate city positioned along its boundary line would undergo dramatic changes.”
Lennok’s eyes gleamed as he looked at the aurora-like waves stretching across dozens of kilometers of sky.
“The stronger the spell output, the stronger the backlash becomes.”
As day turned into night, the veil’s power intensified, and the mana conditions within the city along its boundary line changed drastically.
In that process, using sorcery with enough output to draw surrounding mana caused forced backlash and canceled the spell.
Lennok had seen that both the Cross Society and the Gravekeepers feared exactly that, so he deliberately unleashed high-output magic to trigger cancellation of all their sorcery.
“If mana usage becomes restricted at night, then that actually makes things easier for us.”
Lennok glanced behind him and muttered,
“Maybe I should’ve stayed there and fought those sorcerers a bit longer.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
Angel, who had been silently fleeing until now, practically jumped in disbelief.
“The Order Federation currently controls the gate! Don’t you realize there’s no need to provoke them?”
“At present, the connection between the Conjoining Sorcerer and the Order Federation inside the gate is extremely weak.”
Lennok’s eyes turned cold.
“I don’t know why, but it seems the Sorcerer and the Federation mages don’t share the same objective.”
“Huh?”
While running through the dark back alleys, Angel glanced back at Lennok.
“You haven’t even been in the gate city for a full day, yet you’d already figured that much out?”
“Whether I figured it out or not, from the beginning—”
Lennok’s irritated response abruptly stopped.
His cold gaze instantly locked onto Angel’s face.
“......You know what I experienced outside the gate.”
“......”
Angel knew almost exactly when Lennok had arrived at the gate city.
That was only possible because he had been receiving information about Lennok’s movements from outside the gate from the very beginning.
More importantly, the fact that he knew there was no real connection between the Conjoining Sorcerer and the Federation inside the gate—
[Ignition]
[Blazing Hand Vast Manifestation]
Kwaaaang!!
Flames wrapped around Lennok’s fingertips and transformed into a gigantic hand of fire that instantly slammed Angel into the ground.
“Kahk......!!”
“I thought it was strange that I was the only one explaining things about the veil.”
Lennok looked down at Angel, who was coughing painfully.
“So you’d been testing me from the beginning?”
“Cough...... It wasn’t hiding something......!!”
Crushed beneath the flaming hand, Angel forced a trembling smile.
“I was confirming.”
“Confirming?”
“I needed to know whether you were still the same person who fought Van back then.”
Breathing heavily, Angel spoke quickly.
“The Conjoining Sorcerer...... is a monster.”
“......”
“If we make even a single mistake in this operation, both you and I will end up dragged alive onto an operating table.”
At that moment, Angel’s eyes faintly glowed.
“You need to still possess the same strength and determination you had when you burned Vulcan to the ground...... only then can we even stand a chance.”
“A chance? Ridiculous.”
Lennok pressed Angel down harder with the flaming hand as he asked,
“Don’t talk nonsense. You were testing me because you were worried I might’ve changed since then? I don’t even understand why you’d worry about something like that, and trying to confirm it here is absurd.”
Lennok’s gaze toward Angel turned icy.
“You think a few words are enough to judge a person?”
“But you left the Eyes of the Blue.”
“......What?”
“The reason you were able to turn Vulcan into a sea of fire back then was because the safety of the Lighthouse Keeper you cherished so dearly was at stake.”
For a brief moment, Lennok was left speechless.
Angel carefully observed him as he continued.
“A sorcerer’s power is a complicated thing influenced by environment, emotions, and countless other conditions... Back then, you clearly weren’t thinking about the future at all. You were burning the present.”
“......”
“Now that the ‘binding’ created by your resolve to burn everything away has ended, and you’ve left the Eyes of the Blue, there’s no guarantee you can still display that same level of power.”
“You......”
So Angel had thought the power Treadburn unleashed back then was a geas born from the desire to save the Lighthouse Keeper, and feared Lennok might no longer wield that same strength.
A perspective only possible for a psychic who used abilities rooted in pure mental force.
And it was a remarkably sharp observation—sharp enough that even Lennok found it unexpected.
Lennok stared at Angel’s suddenly haggard face before asking,
“Is that deduction possible because you’re a psychic?”
“Who knows?”
Angel smiled bitterly.
“At the very least, I understand the dangers of geases more deeply than most people.”
“......”
Lennok silently stared at Angel before slowly withdrawing the flaming hand.
Watching Angel struggle back to his feet, Lennok asked,
“So, your conclusion?”
“I think it’ll be fine. Better than I expected, at least.”
Dusting off his clothes, Angel answered.
“If you defeated Lieutenant General Roberide, there’s no need to question your power. And seeing you now, your judgment isn’t bad either. At the very least, you don’t seem rusty. As the Chairwoman instructed, I’ll fully cooperate with you in this operation.”
So Angel had already heard about Lennok’s victory against Roberide as well.
This side of Angel differed from the one Lennok had seen before, but Lennok understood why things had developed this way.
Before becoming one of the cartel executives, Angel had been an ability user active for years in the Central Front.
If waiting in the gate city had revived the instincts he developed during his Brigade days, then it was hardly strange.
More importantly, if there was an external factor causing Angel to behave this way—
“Who exactly is feeding you information inside this gate city?”
“Before I answer that, I think I need to confirm how much you remember about the past.”
Slowly dusting off his coat, Angel stood up and grinned.
“Jindun’s Ganges Sand Labyrinth. Do you remember the Level 8 psychic we met there?”
“......A Level 8 psychic? Don’t tell me.”
Lennok’s expression changed slightly as he instantly understood.
The Level 8 gravity-manipulating psychic they had met in the labyrinth under Evan’s identity.
Lennok still vividly remembered that monstrous level of power and output.
“Balak Oedon is here?”
“Come, Sir Evan.”
Angel bowed his head slightly and took the lead.
“The Ability Awakening Brigade is waiting.”
“......”
The Ability Awakening Brigade.
One of the colossal factions currently occupying part of the Central Front, an alliance formed entirely of naturally born psychics.
Angel had already contacted them within the gate city and had been gathering the information they needed.