The black magicians I had caught and beaten already numbered over thirty. Even among the hordes of black magicians I had seen until now, they could be said to belong to a fairly large faction.
As I exterminated the swarming, breeding black magician bugs one by one, before I knew it, I had pushed all the way to the deepest part of the experimental zone.
Breaking down doors and searching the rooms one by one, I found them filled with unpleasant things that made me frown involuntarily.
Magic circles and experimental devices that felt ominous just to look at.
A torture chamber packed with all sorts of instruments designed to amplify negative emotions.
“What the—! What the hell are you!!”
A black magician with patchy white hair sprouting from his head leaped out from a corner and attempted to manipulate my mind.
But how could a single drop of foul water hope to sully the sea?
I simply took the black magician’s attack, then twisted his neck backwards with telekinesis and sent him back as nothing but a soul—the very form he so adored.
“Elder! Where are you, Elder!!”
The one who attacked me in a panic while searching for the elder or whoever had a hole put through his chest.
“Know your place, brat!!”
The fellow who flaunted swollen muscles unbefitting a black magician, swinging his sword—I stole the blade and pierced his throat.
Then, upon opening one particular room, I was at a loss for words for a brief moment.
Three magic circles. And three children, bound with chains hanging from the ceiling, their souls being drained above each one.
‘If I recalled correctly, they had said one child approximately every five days.’
Perhaps that was why. One child looked as though his soul would shatter at any moment, another was currently in the thick of having his soul defiled, and the remaining one was somewhere in between.
After cleanly separating the head from the body of a black magician who spotted me and attacked, I swung my hand to cut the chains and freed the bound children.
Judging by their souls still being trapped in their bodies, I wondered if they were alive and checked for a pulse, but there was nothing to be found.
They had been forcefully holding the souls of already dead children captive in their bodies, using them as fuel.
Two boys and one girl.
I gently brushed their souls clean, then closed the eyes of the dead children who had not even been able to shut them in death.
At the very least, doing this much was only right.
◇
Following the flow of energy harvested by the magic circles, I was able to discover a secret passage.
Descending the passage that led deeper down, I found a door decorated with lavish ornaments that screamed opulence.
Two guards by the door attacked, so I drove their heads hard into the ground to finish them off, then pushed open the door through the thick dust.
There was an old man inside, and I tried to pulverize his entire body with a shockwave, but he blocked it surprisingly well, so I only ended up blowing him back.
“How dare you...!!”
He was strong. But not strong enough to be of much interest.
More than him, what caught my eye was the experiment table laden with various devices, a magic circle that seemed to soil my eyes just by looking at it, and the girl lying atop it.
Fortunately, this time I could see her chest rising and falling, proof that she was alive, so I quickly cleared away the experimental devices and lifted the girl into my arms.
“Do not lay hands on the sacrifice, wench!! A filthy bug like you has no right to touch her!!”
A sacrifice, huh.
I looked at the hideously screaming bug and sneered.
“Why would she be your sacrifice?”
I looked down at the child in my arms.
The child the filth before my eyes had called a sacrifice.
When she had been lying on the experiment table, her eyes had been open, albeit unfocused; now they were shut, and she had lost consciousness.
She was emaciated, small, and lacked vitality, so I couldn’t be sure, but she looked perhaps two or three years younger than Cassian.
There were no visible wounds on her body, but since she seemed to have been continuously subjected to black magic, surely her soul was wounded...
‘...What? ...There isn’t?’
Black magic is a sorcery that inevitably places immense burden on the souls of both the caster and the target.
The quintessential example was sorcery that stole the surplus power accumulated in the soul to elevate one’s realm. While one’s realm might rise, scars would be carved into the soul—an idiotic act that squandered one’s talent.
Yet the girl’s soul was unscathed.
And I knew what this meant.
From my time at the Imperial Academy, I had encountered it in theory, but in all those long years had never once seen it for myself. It was unmistakably such a unique constitution.
As expected, there was a reason the black magicians, who viewed people as nothing more than objects, had kept her body so clean.
The ones locked in the cells earlier had all been haggard, regardless of whether they wore decent clothes or were barely draped in rags.
Quite apart from that, it was clear the girl’s life was now hanging by a thread.
As I supported the girl with one arm and brushed her forehead, the bug on the other side of the experiment table screamed desperately.
“A mere girl like you, daring to dirty the sacrifice for that person...!!”
The old black magician pointed his finger at me and drew a magic circle in the air.
“Atone with your death!!”
As the black magician shrieked, a black ray shot from the magic circle. Whether one could call something black a ‘ray,’ I wasn’t sure, but in any case, it was beam-like magic.
I was well aware of the magic’s effect.
It was an instant-death spell that interfered with the target’s soul, triggering immense agony, and even fooled the body into erupting with blood until death.
In short, it had no effect on me whatsoever.
To begin with, it wouldn’t even affect me, and even if it did, my body wasn’t one that could die from merely spilling a bit of blood.
I put up a barrier so the magic wouldn’t touch the girl in my arms, then simply took the instant-death spell with my body. Naturally, nothing happened at all.
“I-Impossible... A magic taught personally by that person, one close to the supreme realm...!!”
Indeed, it was a spell that would kill most mages with a single blow, since they weren’t particularly sturdy in the soul. If Cassian were hit by this, for example, he would have died instantly.
As for Morwen, whom I had met recently, one hit would be dangerous, and two would probably be fatal.
But this time, they had simply picked the wrong opponent by a wide margin.
“I-It can’t be!! No, that’s impossible...!! Why, of all times, why did you have to appear before me!!”
The bug flailed even more frantically, flinging every black magic spell he had.
The fact that even ordinary magic—fire, wind, and the like—was mixed in only laid bare how utterly panicked he was.
At his level, he must have devoted his entire life to black magic, yet here he was throwing out spells he rarely ever used—just how desperate could he be?
But of course, it had no effect on me whatsoever.
Truthfully, a wind blade had grazed my cheek, but the wound regenerated in an instant and vanished without a trace.
The pitiful old man, having flung magic for quite some time, trembled violently as his mana ran dry, then let his hands drop limply and collapsed on the spot.
As I approached, he slowly raised his head to look at me, naked terror writ large across his face—a terror that could grow no deeper.
“The... atoner...?”
It was a surprising word to hear, but I crushed the bug underfoot without hesitation.
There were still a few things crawling around outside, but for now, the extermination of the black magicians was complete.
◇
“It’s over. Come out.”
“Wh-What?”
I returned to the prison and brought out the captive children.
It might have been a bit shocking, but since they probably wouldn’t believe me otherwise, I dragged along one corpse I had killed as cleanly as possible.
The children, who hadn’t believed me at first, finally did when I tossed them another corpse using telekinesis, and they slowly followed me out.
In my arms was the unconscious girl, and about ten children followed behind me.
Along the way out, corpses I had killed lay scattered everywhere amid splattered blood.
Some children cried out in fright at the sight, but they seemed rather relieved that the black magicians who had tormented them until now were no longer moving.
Carefully treading up the rough path step by step, we soon reached the exit.
Sure enough, quite a lot of time had passed, and the sky was filled with countless stars, the Milky Way flowing overhead. I briefly thought of Cassian, whom I had left at home, but dismissed it with the thought that he would be sleeping well on his own.
“Outside... It’s really outside!”
“Sniff... sob. We really... survived....”
The children looked up at the sky, and perhaps it was only now sinking in that they had returned alive from deep underground; some laughed, some cried, and some sank to the ground.
By the way, the surroundings seemed a bit noisy. Was it because of black magicians still lurking nearby?
If that were the case, how should I put it—what I was hearing now sounded more like screams.
As I was wondering about it, suddenly a person came flying from the right, rolled across the ground, and crashed to a stop before me.
“Kuaaaack!!!”
So that’s what kind of scream it was.
Just as I was wondering what was going on with a person suddenly appearing before me, another small figure emerged from the same direction.
It was a silhouette I could recognize at a glance even without using night vision.
The figure rushed the fallen man, efficiently maneuvered his body, drove a knee into his jaw, then hauled him up by the collar and spoke.
“Tell me where he went!!”
“Gurk, gaaah... I-I don’t, I don’t know!!”
“Talk! I definitely felt it from this direction....”
Without releasing his grip on the collar, the silhouette looked around, then locked eyes with me.
I used light magic to shine a straight beam into Cassian’s eyes and asked,
“What are you doing here?”
“...M-Master?”
It seemed he had come looking for me because I hadn’t returned even though it had grown so late.
Since the person who said they’d come back hadn’t, he must have been worried despite knowing full well how strong I was.
I thought he might be beating up a random person, but looking closely, it was a black magician through and through. Well, a black magician was fair game, after all.
Anyway.
“But how did you know to come here?”
“Uh, well, I felt something similar to Master’s magic coming from this direction earlier....”
Cassian, who had been speaking like that, suddenly trailed off and began rambling incoherently.
“N-No, but I didn’t come out to look for Master! I just came out because I was bored being alone at night!”
It was an obvious lie. He had been shaking a black magician by the collar with immense anxiety, yet the moment he saw me, his expression flooded with relief.
We had rarely been apart for long, so he might have worried that I had abandoned him.
Still, seeing his face, it seemed he had genuinely been worried about me, and that made me happy enough to gently pat him.
With a slight jolt of electricity.
“Aaaack!!”
“Who’s worried about who?”
“Shit...!!”
Cassian, rubbing the top of his head with tears welling in his eyes, pointed at the child in my arms and the children behind me and spoke.
“Anyway! Who’s that kid? And who are those people back there?”
It was blatantly obvious he was changing the subject, but since I had to explain anyway, I let it slide for now.
“The ones back there are kids I rescued from down below. I was planning to leave them at the church for now.”
I’d have to find homes for the children who had somewhere to return to, but it was late now, so even if I did, the right thing was to leave them at the church and handle it tomorrow.
And.
“This one’s your junior.”
I looked down at the girl in my arms, then back at Cassian and said.
I had briefly checked while coming up from the black magicians’ den; it would be an incredible waste to let a child with this much talent rot away.
Even if I didn’t take her as a disciple, if I left her like this she wouldn’t last more than a few days, so I had to bring her with me for now.
“...Huh? Wait, what?”
Cassian put on a dumbfounded expression at the sudden news that he had gained a junior and stared at me.
He seemed happy, though.