A low curse scattered into the silence of the ruins.
Rin’s gaze dug relentlessly through the empty wreckage. What should have been there was gone. The core they had been searching for above had evaporated in its entirety.
The hollow laugh that slipped out in disbelief soon sank coldly away.
Rin lightly flicked the blood from her fingertips and reached into the air. With a brief crack, a translucent communication panel unfolded in midair.
As if it had been waiting, a heavy silence flowed from the connected line. Rin did not bother waiting for the other party to speak first. Dropping her gaze to the floor, she opened her mouth.
“It’s gone.”
Corpses torn to shreds, collapsed debris. And the trace that had cut across between them had been abruptly severed. It had not naturally faded; it was empty, as though an entire portion of space had been gouged out. Of course, even the remnants of mana that should have remained were absent.
The corner of Rin’s mouth rose ever so slightly.
— For a report from someone who set out under the name of the family, this is quite disappointing. Are you saying you let the traitor escape?
The aged voice flowed out as if pressing down on her, but Rin let out a short laugh.
“It would be easier if it were just a traitor.”
She lightly tapped the tip of her shoe against the floor where blood had pooled.
“He wouldn’t leave traces like this.”
Her gaze slowly swept across the floor. From the debris to the wall, then her head tilted toward the vertical passage stretching far upward.
Up there. The flow did not connect physically. The middle had been emptied out entirely.
“It does seem to be mana…”
Rin’s words hovered in the air for a moment, then cut off.
“But the way it’s being handled is deformingly strange. Crude and forced.”
Exhaling briefly, she narrowed her eyes.
“And yet the result it reached is disgustingly clean.”
Rin examined the lingering traces once more. It was not a simple sign of movement.
Its structure was different from any branch of magic she knew.
— Are you saying it isn’t magic?
Rin blinked slowly.
“Who knows.”
She tilted her head slightly and propped her chin on her hand.
“If this is merely a new form of magic, I think I’ll be honestly disappointed.”
Her gaze turned once more toward the end of the vertical passage. It was a dizzying height.
“To go from this bottom level all the way up there in one move.”
She raised a finger lightly and stabbed at the air. The tension that had packed Rin’s shoulders loosened instead.
“Rather than saying I lost them…”
The corner of her mouth curled up, thin and sharp.
“There was probably no intermediate process to begin with. As if space itself had been cut out whole.”
Without waiting for the main family’s reply, Rin shut off the communication panel. With a crack, the light died away.
In the darkness that settled over the ruins, Rin stood still for a moment. Soon, her gaze fell to her feet.
Karin, sprawled in a pool of blood. A faint breath still clung to her.
Rin’s brow furrowed in the slightest, most subtle way.
“Ha…”
Letting out a breath tinged with irritation, she approached. She nudged the stiffening body with the tip of her shoe. Twitch. The bloodless muscles reacted by force.
Rin bent down and roughly seized Karin by the nape, hauling her up.
“Get up.”
The limp body rose helplessly. The stench of blood rushed over her, but Rin paid it no mind.
“This is all your fault, you know.”
Rin’s face drew close to Karin’s ear.
“You started this mess. You should see how it ends.”
Then she released her grip without a shred of hesitation.
Thud.
Karin’s body slammed back into the floor with a dull sound.
But Rin’s gaze had already left Karin on the ground. Her eyes flashed toward the pile of rubble where the core should have been, toward that empty center.
“…Interesting.”
The corner of her mouth, which had been coldly sunken, slowly traced an arc.
Turning lightly, Rin’s silver hair brushed through the dust-laden afterglow. Her steps, devoid of hesitation, melted into the darkness and vanished.
***
The moment I crossed the boundary, my senses were the first to overturn.
The clinging pressure released, and the weight pressing down from above drained away in an instant. The air brushing between my scales felt unfamiliar in its lightness. The dampness that had been sticking to me was gone as well.
I stopped for a moment and let out a long breath.
It wasn’t that my insides had been emptied. It was the sensation of a blocked airway opening and everything being released at once. My body reacted first, and thought followed after.
I raised my head. My field of vision opened wide.
It was different from what I had seen below. This was not a closed structure; instead, ruins of similar form lay collapsed and scattered at regular intervals. They were traces of where humans had lived, but now they were nothing more than skeletal remains.
When I raised my gaze further, I saw a gray sky.
Layers upon layers of artificial floors blocked the space above, allowing almost no light to fall. It felt as though my entire view was being pressed down.
But in one place, there was an enormous circular opening.
I stood within the boundary of the beam of light pouring down through it. As the artificial light fell over my scales, a strange warmth spread.
It was warm.
Not simple heat. The light seeped along my scales and flowed inward. The tension that had been sharpened to a razor’s edge loosened for the briefest instant.
I did not bother digging into the reason. I simply liked this warmth. Maybe it was because I was wearing the body of a reptile. The thought had only just passed through my mind.
Shweeeek—!
A ripping sound tore through the air. I turned my head by reflex.
They were coming. Several of them at once. Lumps of metal that had looked like dots in the distance drew straight trajectories and surged toward me in an instant. Killing intent, aimed at me without hesitation.
My body lowered to the ground first. The thinly unfurled Dao power crumpled and folded the space ahead.
Shrinking Earth.
My vision cut off and reconnected as my position changed. Without stopping, I stepped through the air in succession and widened the distance.
But the sense extending outward bounced back from somewhere strange. There were more flows ahead.
Unable to slow down, I roughly changed direction.
An encirclement? Strange. It had not even been a few minutes since I came up to the surface. And they were driving me in this perfectly at this timing? It did not add up.
Then the flow of the approaching metal masses split. The drones’ trajectories subtly diverged, and they were not all aimed at me.
I maintained my course and shifted my gaze, chasing the end of the flow.
I saw a single movement leaping between the collapsed ruins. It was tremendously fast, but the flow was broken in a complete mess. It seemed about to cling to the ground, then was pushed away; it stretched forward, then snapped sharply aside.
It certainly contained immense power. But it was not whole. It was being chased madly, twisted somewhere in a fatally wrong way.
And an old face.
A shriveled old man.
He did not simply look exhausted from battle. It was a face gnawed away by long years and madness. Within it, a red light flashed.
Not two eyes.
In one eye socket, a crude lump of metal had been forcibly embedded as a prosthetic eye.
The one giving off light was the other eye, the one still intact. A bloodshot crimson single eye, burning like mad.
Before I could fully grasp his form, an oppressive pressure burst out, weighing down the surrounding air.
It was not lofty mana. Like a broken engine on the verge of exploding, it was the killing intent of an old beast driven to the edge of a cliff.
The drones did not dare cling close to that eye, maintaining a certain distance as they drove him along.
They had been chasing a different target from the beginning, and I had simply been caught in their encirclement.
I immediately changed direction.
I could not go that way. That was something I must not touch right now. Before reason could judge, instinct coldly drew the line first.
Without hesitation, I extended my Dao power in the exact opposite direction. I was about to fold space and completely leave that dangerous trajectory.
Because all my senses had been drawn to the old man’s savage killing intent, I noticed the faint sense of wrongness beneath my feet one beat too late.
Without warning, the solid ground beneath me caved in.
Even as I was sucked down beneath the collapsing floor, my reaction was not late. The moment I twisted my waist to regain balance, something poured down from all sides.
Crack! Whoong!
A net?
It was not ordinary metal wire, but a bundle of energy shimmering with blue light. It maintained its form suspended in the air, and the instant it touched me, it crawled sickeningly over my scales. It tightened around my entire body and forcibly bound me.
Without delay, I drew my Dao power up to its limit. I folded space.
Shrinking Earth.
My vision cut off like a flicker. But it did not connect.
The space I had folded lost its elasticity and was pushed back, leaving my body trapped inside the net. The sensation of Shrinking Earth being blocked. It was a bizarre distortion I had never experienced since reincarnating.
I did not panic. I forcibly twisted my scales and struggled to escape.
At that moment, along with a loud crack, human voices erupted.
“Got it!!”
It was not just one or two people. They had surrounded me on all sides.
I lifted my head. They looked similar to the mercenaries I had seen inside the tank, but they were different in quality. Their armor was thick, and there were far more mechanical parts clearly embedded into their frames. They were perfect hunters, every single step organized.
“…What the hell.”
One of the approaching men checked my appearance and flinched.
“That’s not the mage, is it? Why is some contaminated little bastard…”
Taking advantage of that instant of agitation, I pushed my Dao power in once more. I folded space.
Shrinking Earth.
…Blocked again.
The net was not tightening as it followed along my scales. This was not a physical restraint, but a severing of space itself. The flow was cut off, and space did not connect.
I stopped struggling for an instant.
A very brief beat. I settled my vision and examined the net binding me. Each line was not moving separately. They were all entangled, bound, and connected to a single center.
There was a core.
A pattern rotated deep within my vertically slit pupils.
Ocular Art.
The unseen flow overlaid itself upon my vision. Inside the messily tangled energy, the point where it was most densely knotted rose clearly into view.
I drove my sharply honed Dao power toward that knot.
Thuk.
With a dull sensation of something snapping, the pressure constricting my scales drained away like the ebbing tide. The blockage was released.
Without delay, I kicked off the ground and twisted my body. The lines of light that had been binding me scattered into the air.
“What the hell, what just—!”
Before the panicked voice could finish, I had already burrowed into the chest of the nearest man.
A short distance. My tail, pulled taut with demonic power, was the first to cut through the air. My reinforced weight and strength loaded into it as it slammed into his chest.
A horrific crack erupted. It was the sound of thick exoskeleton crumpling and bones shattering.
His body flew like a cannonball and swept through the group behind him like dominoes.
I did not stop. I sprang toward the next one. I had never intended to run away in the first place.
I was not avoiding the encirclement. I would tear through it and break it open.