-At Will
“Ah, this is nice.”
As I stepped into my magical space, the mansion made for me alone, I felt a comfort different from that of my studio apartment.
It felt as though the space were wholly enveloping me.
It was an incomparable ease, unlike anything I could feel anywhere else.
This was it. The one and only thing I wanted at this very moment.
So much so that I felt myself become one with the space and melt into it.
First, I went out into the garden. A beautifully tended little ecosystem.
I walked into the forest and made my way to the mansion’s boundary. From there, I gazed with all my heart at the vast scenery beyond.
‘This is truly excellent spatial magic. They made this magical space as close to reality as possible, to the point that there’s no sense of incongruity at all.’
Whoever created this magical space had to be an extraordinary mage.
The divine mage Bruno. I had a feeling he was the one who had made this space.
This place was not simply a space connected to Bruno.
The secret administrator was likely Bruno, and the one who created this space in the first place was probably Bruno as well.
Last time, I had been somewhat confused by the memories that surfaced out of nowhere, but now those memories were calmly telling me the truth.
‘Bruno. Where is he now?’
The memories could not reveal the present.
But they told me that he was not dead.
I returned inside the mansion and immediately began my magic training.
Rather than cling to secrets I could not uncover right away, I decided to start with what I could do now.
Unlike last time, my focus came quickly.
It felt as though the waves of mana that made up this magical space were rushing toward me all at once, gently wrapping around me.
I breathed quietly and accepted those waves of mana into myself.
Then I observed the waves coursing through my body, controlled them, and sent them flowing into every corner of me. Gentle yet heavy and powerful waves of mana accumulated within me, again and again.
How long had I been watching like that?
Suddenly, I felt dizzy, as though the space surrounding me were spinning round and round.
The next moment, a distant stupor washed over me, as if space itself were expanding infinitely.
I firmly held my center and raised my intent.
I extended the waves of mana in ripples and activated spatial magic.
‘Maintain your center as you originally were!’
The waves of mana extending from me seized hold of the space.
I controlled the space that had been moving this way and that after losing its balance, placing it under my magical control.
Then a strange sensation took hold of me.
As if I had become a god, space moved according to my will; and at the same time, it flowed as one with me, as though I myself had become space.
This was more than high-level spatial magic.
‘……So this was what it was.’
In an instant, pure white light poured in as if exploding, piercing through the spot between my brows. Though my eyes were clearly closed, the world before me became bright as if a lamp had been lit.
Through the golden vision of my right eye, kaleidoscopic scenes flashed past rapidly. Memories in full color flooded in like a torrent.
‘Ah……!’
Now I had become one with the pure white light as well.
The outside world curled into a single point of space, and information and memories became entangled like a Möbius strip.
And in the moment when inside and outside turned inside out, I finally realized.
“Father Bruno. No, the divine mage Bruno.”
The pure white light was him.
Bruno’s divine magic was the pure white light.
In other words, I had already met the divine mage Bruno before.
The pure white light I had encountered in Neo Forest. And the pure white light that appeared afterward when the upheaval occurred in Danyang.
The one who had driven away the gray energy and cultivated a magical forest filled with ferns and flowers was none other than the divine mage Bruno.
Even if I had not seen him face-to-face, I had encountered him twice.
Come to think of it, in the magical forest, he had even spoken to me.
[When the time comes, we will meet.]
Just as he had not revealed himself before my eyes, the words had not been conveyed through sound either, but they were undoubtedly words addressed to me.
Once I realized that had been Bruno, I came to understand the entire flow of the mana waves composing this magical space.
The circuits of spatial magic were drawn, and I could shape space with my intent.
Space moved as I moved.
Now I had become able to create and erase space freely at will.
* * *
I returned to the rooftop room.
It felt as though an eternity had passed, but contrary to my expectations, not much time had gone by.
Outside the window, it was dark and evening had come, but days had not passed. Only a few hours had gone by.
When I took out my phone and checked it, I saw that Yu Jaeseon had contacted me.
It was time to meet him now.
Yu Jaeseon said he would come to Itaewon, so I told him to come straight to my place.
The conversation we were about to have was not something to be discussed carelessly in a café or the like.
It was a small rooftop room, but not so small that two people could not sit facing each other and talk.
Of course, the size of space was no longer an issue for me.
Because I had come to see even the infinite spaces existing in layers beyond the materialized space.
As I waited with the front door wide open, I saw Yu Jaeseon coming up the rooftop stairs.
“Welcome. It’s a humble place, but I thought it would be more comfortable to talk here, so I asked you to come.”
“Yes. I prefer this as well. There should be no listening ears. And it seems you’ve set up security quite thoroughly too.”
Yu Jaeseon said, pointing toward the stairs.
It seemed he had noticed the layers of barriers and security magic I had set up.
As expected, he was a mage exceptional at detection and analysis.
“Come in.”
I guided Yu Jaeseon into the room.
Since it was evening, sitting on the rooftop and talking might have been cool and pleasant, but then I would have had to put up an additional soundproof barrier.
Sound travels surprisingly far. Besides, there was no need for anyone to see the two of us together.
“Please sit in that chair. Have you eaten?”
“I ate before the Bureau meeting. What about you, Mage?”
“I’ve eaten too.”
Before getting into the real conversation, all we did was exchange a few words about whether we had eaten. That’s just how Koreans are.
And perhaps because Yu Jaeseon had a dry personality, I had never seen him talk about anything other than work. I didn’t mind that.
I went straight to the point.
“Did the Bureau meeting go well? Did any information come out?”
“Not much useful information came out. Aside from what you uncovered, Mage, nothing new was revealed.”
Yu Jaeseon’s expression was not bright.
It seemed not only that the Bureau meeting had gone poorly, but also that something was weighing on his mind.
“Did you learn nothing about Vanaheim’s black mage?”
“Not yet. Mage Han Dosu reported that they were uncooperative from the building entrance onward. They were stalling for time. By the time he went up, the black mage had already vanished.”
“Who was there?”
“The 100th floor has the chairman’s office and the Strategy Research Lab, and apparently Kim Seonho, along with all the employees, were only the people originally assigned there.”
“Is the 100th floor the top floor?”
“No. It goes up to the 102nd floor, but the 101st and 102nd floors are Chairman Kim Seonho’s private spaces. They checked those as well, but there was no one there.”
“What about the rooftop?”
“Of course, they said they went up to the rooftop too. Since it was highly likely the remote-control magic had been cast from there. They say traces were left there as expected. But there was no one hiding. There’s no record of the elevator operating downward, and the black mage vanished without a trace.”
“Then there’s a high chance it was one of the people on the 100th floor.”
I did not say that I already knew who Vanaheim’s black mage was. I was putting that off for a moment.
I decided to hear a little more of Yu Jaeseon’s story.
“That would be the case. In the chairman’s office, Chairman Kim Seonho and all the secretarial staff are not mages, but most of the researchers belonging to the Strategy Research Lab are mages. It was probably one of them.”
“Mage Han Dosu must have questioned Chairman Kim Seonho, right? What did Kim Seonho say?”
“They say he flatly denied knowing anything at all. He claimed no one knew something like that was happening on the rooftop.”
“Well, that’s exactly as expected.”
“Yes. It’s ridiculous, though. Any mage who knows how solidly Vanaheim Building is covered in protective barriers would snort at the idea.”
Yu Jaeseon gave a faint, bitter smile.
But he did not seem disappointed because of the results of the Vanaheim Building investigation. He must have expected that much as well.
Han Dosu had rushed over immediately, but I had not expected him to return dragging the black mage by the collar either.
Even a ten-year-old child could have guessed that Kim Seonho and Vanaheim would deny everything.
The problem was likely within the Bureau meeting itself.
Just as I had guessed, Yu Jaeseon continued.
“I fully expected Vanaheim to be uncooperative. Naturally. If it were revealed that Vanaheim had a black mage inside the company, it would cause serious damage to their business. The problem is that there are people in both the Bureau and the Hall who have colluded with Vanaheim and are actively shielding them.”
The words I had been waiting for finally came out.
This was the true starting point of the conversation we needed to have.
“To be precise, it wouldn’t be just that they colluded with Vanaheim. They must have joined hands with the black mage as well.”
“That’s right. That would be the more accurate way to put it.”
“As expected, Mage Yu Jaeseon, you knew about this.”
“I had suspected it for some time. Occasionally, incomprehensible orders would come down, and absurd strategies would be proposed. It also seemed as though internal information was leaking out.”
“The terror response kept moving in a stranger and stranger direction.”
“Yes. It was frustrating. The claim that the dwarves carried out the terror attacks is truly absurd, isn’t it? They even went so far as to say the dwarves destroyed Namsan Dwarf Village themselves. I was dumbfounded.”
For the first time, Yu Jaeseon was speaking with emotion. That felt refreshing.
Especially seeing him bring up the Namsan Dwarf Village incident as an example, it seemed that case had displeased him considerably.
Then again, as a magic analyst, he could not have accepted it.
“It’s an outrageous story.”
“I think they tried to divert people’s attention by turning it into a different-race issue, but instead they only deepened the chaos in society. And then, in today’s meeting, several mages defended Vanaheim. Even though Mage Oudin clearly showed that the black mage was in Vanaheim, they denied it. They asked whether the black mage might have simply intruded onto Vanaheim’s rooftop, just as Chairman Kim Seonho said.”
By now, a trace of anger had even seeped into Yu Jaeseon’s tone.
It seemed I could bring up what I wanted to say now.