-X
Bullets were flying from across the alley.
They had already been fired, leaving me too little time to activate magic and block them.
I hurriedly grabbed Gil by the shoulder and tumbled down the stairs with him.
Boom! Thud, thud, thud!
The sound of the bullet smashing through the middle of the stairs and the noise of Gil and me rolling down to the bottom rang out in a deafening clamor.
There hadn’t been enough time to cast an offensive spell, but putting up a barrier was no problem. The instant I threw myself, I drew up my mana and raised a shield.
There was no need to worry about Gil getting hurt as he rolled down the steps.
“Die!”
With a rough shout, a second bullet immediately came flying. This time, I could block it easily enough.
The telekinetic magic I lightly extended diverted the bullet toward the ground. Caught in a net of telekinesis, the bullet fell to the floor without even exploding.
“Who are you?”
I shouted as I pushed myself up. It wasn’t because I didn’t know. The moment I saw the bullet, someone had come to mind.
A punk youth with blue hair. X, the enforcer of the biohacker organization.
I guessed the bullet had been fired from the mechanical device attached to his arm.
“It’s me. I’ve come to kill you bastards!”
As expected, it was him.
From the shadowed gap between the houses across the alley, X revealed himself and shouted boldly.
It seemed I had underestimated him. Seeing how he’d shown up to retaliate so soon after what happened last time, he truly was fearless. I had to give him credit for courage, at least.
Just in case, I swept the surroundings with detection magic. As expected, there was no one besides X. He had come alone.
“You really are fearless. Aren’t you afraid of mages?”
I meant it sincerely. Looking down on a mage would get you badly burned, so not being afraid wasn’t bravery—it was stupidity.
It seemed X trusted far too much in his mechanical devices.
“Hmph! You bastards think you’re the only ones who matter in this world. Back then, I got done in because I let my guard down, but this time will be different.”
X was still talking big, but some of the force had gone out of him.
He seemed flustered that his ambush attack hadn’t worked.
Of course he was. A mage was not a good opponent to face head-on.
I looked around.
It was a residential neighborhood in broad daylight. The bullet had smashed the stairs and caused a tremendous racket, but no one was peering out. Even the old landlady showed no sign of coming to check.
Today, in particular, was the day Yasin’s terror warning had been broadcast. No one would want to come running out to meddle just because there was a commotion.
Even so, I hesitated to use offensive magic against an ordinary person in broad daylight. No matter how much of a thug X was, he wasn’t a monster.
“Mage-nim, what should we do?”
Beside me, Gil asked in a small voice.
Rather than fear, a troubled expression had appeared on the child’s face.
Gil was now a proper mage and carried an enormous amount of mana within his body, but he still had a tendency to avoid combat.
As a mage, that was clearly a limitation. If he was going to prepare for the disaster to come, Gil needed training after all.
But this situation wasn’t one that required Gil to step in.
“You can feel the barrier I put up, right? Stay still inside it. I’ll take care of him myself.”
“I’ll help too.”
“I said there’s no need. What reason is there for two of us to fight a guy with no mana?”
After finishing my conversation with Gil, I walked out of the barrier. As I slowly approached X, I asked,
“How do you want to fight? Want hand-to-hand combat?”
When I said that, X, who had raised his mechanical arm and was aiming it at me, bared his teeth in a grin and replied,
“Oh? Hand-to-hand? Are you serious? You’re saying you’ll give up that precious magic of yours? Well, I guess if you use magic recklessly against a good ordinary citizen, you’ll end up behind bars, so you’ve got no choice but to crawl.”
“A good ordinary citizen? Where is there anyone like that here? You kidnap and beat people for a living. Don’t tell me you think you’re good.”
“Could I be any more evil than mages?”
“You do know that using magic against criminals is permitted, right?”
He and I traded words as we approached each other.
X deliberately stomped his feet loudly as he walked. Apparently, he wanted to show off the power of the mechanical devices attached to his legs.
Perhaps he was pushing them to maximum output, because wherever his feet landed, the asphalt caved in like tofu.
“So are you going to use magic or not? You think I’ll get scared just because you use magic? You only froze us with some little freezing spell and ran away. That’s about all the magic you know, isn’t it?”
To think he looked down on freezing magic. As expected, X clearly knew nothing about magic.
Was he too busy acting like a punk to watch the news? If he had, he would have known that I’d taken down the tentacle monster with freezing magic.
“You’re too noisy. Should I freeze that mouth again?”
“Shut up! Do you know how badly the boss beat me because of you? You filthy mage bastard. Why did you stick your nose into our territory?”
At last, X burst into anger and raised his arm high.
I thought he was about to fire a bullet, but that wasn’t it. Apparently tempted by the idea of hand-to-hand combat, he was throwing a punch.
Of course, it wasn’t just a bare fist. Instead of bullets, sharp blades had extended in every direction from the mechanical device attached to his arm.
X approached with quick steps and swung his arm wide, aiming for my face.
Whoosh!
I had already wrapped my whole body in mana like a thin film of ice, reinforcing my muscles, bones, and every other part of me.
I raised both arms and blocked X’s mechanical arm, fitted with blades, with my bare forearms.
X was probably expecting blood to spray like a fountain, but the result was very different from what he had hoped for.
The blades of the mechanical device, stopped by my forearm, shattered with a crunching sound and fell to the ground in pieces.
“What the—damn it!”
X’s eyes widened in disbelief as curses poured from his mouth.
Even so, he immediately tried to attack again. Opening up every mechanical device on his arms and legs, he charged at me.
A chain shot out from his left arm, and blades extended from both his legs.
Whir, whir!
The chain flew in to wrap around me, and the blades on both legs rose in turns to strike, but I was no longer there.
I kicked off the ground hard with both feet and leaped. The next moment, I was shooting into the air. I soared upward as if rockets had been attached to my feet.
“What? Where’d he go?”
X’s hollow cry came from below.
I was rising so fast and so high that even I was surprised. I had concentrated mana beneath my feet and activated gravity magic. I hadn’t realized it would be this astonishingly fast.
The training I had done in the magical space last time had certainly changed me.
As a result of controlling even the deep chaos of mana within my body, my mana waves had become more refined, and my magic output had grown tremendously fierce.
‘Damn! I’m going up too high.’
I was soaring so endlessly that I had to hurry and control my mana. If I didn’t turn my direction downward, I felt like I would fly all the way to the end of the sky.
It was definitely excessive magic for dealing with a single punk like X.
But what could I do? I had already activated it. Since I had come up, I had to come down, didn’t I?
When I controlled my mana and turned the direction of the gravity magic downward, I began falling again at terrifying speed.
“X! Feel what the power of magic is like. This is a mage’s hand-to-hand combat!”
When I shouted, X raised his head and looked up. His face was dumbstruck.
The chain he had sent flying at me lost its target and swayed. One leg he had thrust upward was still kicking into empty air.
I stretched both feet toward X’s mechanical leg.
Boom!!!
A tremendous impact slammed into X’s mechanical leg.
“Aaaargh!!!”
In the end, X let out a miserable scream.
I almost felt sorry for him. It must have been an incredible shock. The overwhelmingly powerful gravity magic smashed X’s mechanical leg in a single blow.
Broken blades scattered in every direction.
That had to hurt. Just because it was a mechanical device didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt. Since the nerves were connected, he would feel pain just as he would in his own body.
“Aaaagh! My leg! Do you know how much this thing costs?”
Seeing him complain about the price even while rolling on the ground in pain made me think it might be bearable after all.
“Be grateful I didn’t aim for your head.”
I said as I landed on the ground.
I had deliberately aimed for the mechanical leg. If I had kicked him in the head, he would have died.
And even if the nerves were connected, it was still a mechanical device, so the pain would be less, and he could just replace it with a new one.
“Damn it!”
Even as X screamed, he swung his left arm and tried to attack with the chain.
Perhaps because of the mechanical device embedded in his spine, the angle of his body twisted in a bizarre way.
Seeing that made me wonder whether I should really regard this man as human.
“Your posture is quite impressive.”
I honestly admired it as I grabbed the chain flying at me and wound it back around his body.
With his leg smashed, his whole body twisted, and the chain wrapped around him, X looked like the protagonist of some grotesque animation.
“Stop! You won. You won, all right! So stop!”
At last, a declaration of defeat slipped out. Even so, he continued his pitiful accusations.
“Is it okay for a mage to use violence like this against an ordinary person?”
“You’re not an ordinary person, though.”
“I’m going to report you! I’ll get you disciplined!”
“Go ahead. Let’s see who the police like more.”
“Tch! Filthy mages.”
I dusted off my hands to signal that I was done.
“Hurry up and get lost. Before I smash the rest of your mechanical devices too. And don’t even think about showing your face around here again. I’m going to imprint your DNA on this house. If you so much as come near, it’ll blow up immediately.”
When I finished speaking, X rolled across the ground several times to unwind the chain, then half-raised himself. Because of his shattered leg, he couldn’t even stand properly.
After looking around, he grabbed a piece of the railing he had broken earlier with his bullet, used it as a cane, and began limping away on one leg.
“How pitiful.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m fine. I just need a new operation, that’s all. Damn it!”
His mouth was still alive, at least. X muttered curses as he moved away.
“Mage-nim.”
Gil, who had been crouching quietly in the corner of the alley and watching until then, finally spoke.
“Let’s go home now.”
Gil stood up.
We stood side by side and looked up at the stairs that had been smashed apart.