Episode 1058

‘Something’s off.’

His student had a taste for dangerous bouts with strong opponents, but this persistent pursuit of unrelated evil god cults definitely felt odd.

“All done! Professor! Hurry up and go and scold them!”

“!”

Lost in thought, Professor Voladi looked up at Gainando’s shout.

And he displayed a faintly surprised expression.

At some point, Gainando had dug a side passage leading down to the underground fortress.

Looking over, Gainando’s pride and most-frequently summoned creature, the Thorn Revenant, was using an arm transformed into a bone shovel to clear away dirt.

There was no way it was always in that form—Gainando must have adapted the undead’s shape on the fly.

“You got through, didn’t you.”

“Huh? Got through what?”

Gainando tilted his head, not understanding what Professor Voladi meant.

“This passage.”

This underground fortress wasn’t easygoing.

The bandits had clearly spent quite a bit on strong, thick defenses for passageways and hideouts, yet Gainando had broken right through in such a short time.

Shapeshifting an undead alone shouldn’t have been enough…

“Oh. I used corrosive poison. I usually use it for garbage disposal, but… Wait. Please don’t tell Lee Han!”

Mid-explanation, Gainando panicked and tried to cover it up.

If he ever just dissolved the trash with poison out of laziness instead of disposing of it properly, he’d gotten soundly smacked by Lee Han.

“I really do it right, I swear? Professor? Professor?”

Trying desperately to explain himself, Gainando realized Professor Voladi had already entered the passage.

• * *

“I wonder if it’s really a good idea to summon a high spirit in an underground fortress like this.”

Lee Han commented, striding down the now-silent passage.

In truth, describing the passage as simply ‘silent’ was an insult to the bandits.

The fortress passageways had been completely laid to waste.

Perkuntra, summoned at last for a ‘proper’ reason, had unleashed jubilant violence everywhere.

He smashed the trap mechanisms, devoured all snares, and occasionally ripped out bulkheads to cram fleeing bandits into sealed rooms.

The end-of-days lightning had incinerated the underground fortress that had been built up over years, and the bandits could do nothing.

Even the scrolls, potions, and magic items they had stockpiled for battles against mages couldn’t be drawn. Perkuntra gave them no time, bringing the passage down instantly.

They had no chance to split into fallback positions for protracted or guerrilla fighting. Whenever Perkuntra sensed lurking souls, he locked them in before they had a hope of popping out.

“……”

Giselle made no reply, focusing intently.

If she engaged in banter with Wardanaz, her focus would shatter instantly.

‘Don’t let your guard down, don’t let your guard down, don’t let your guard down…’

Looking at the places the spirit king had slashed with lightning, a voice in her heart whispered, ‘Isn’t it already over?’—but Giselle ignored it.

“C-crazy mages. Why the hell did you come after us like this?”

“!”

Amazingly, her concentration paid off. At the end of the corridor, a surviving bandit appeared.

He looked like he’d just swum through dirt tunnels, hair a wild mess, once-fine clothes turned to a muddy, shredded mess.

Only his eyes burned fiercely with shock, dread, and resentment.

“See, Wardanaz! There was a bandit left!”

“…Moradi, I don’t think that’s really something to celebrate…”

Lee Han was a bit taken aback.

If a bandit appeared after Perkuntra swept through, wasn’t that a reason for alarm?

Giselle, realizing her excitement, coughed and lowered her voice.

“I just meant to make sure you didn’t drop your guard.”

‘Sure doesn’t sound like it.’

“Guess we won’t have to leave everything to him after all.”

Giselle clashed sword to sword, summoning frosty sparks.

She’d worked hard to break in, and to leave it all to the spirit king would be an insult to her pride. No matter how much she wanted to help Wardanaz, she couldn’t sit back like the foolish prince.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Ibinta.”

“Ibinta? …Ibinta? Ironcloak Ibinta?!”

Giselle was startled.

“Who’s that?”

“A wanted name from… about ten years ago, I think. I thought he was dead.”

“I’ve just been hiding out. So quietly not even the mice knew.”

Ibinta answered, grinding his teeth. Even now, the situation felt like a surreal nightmare.

One second after the ruin’s floor collapsed:

-Intruder! There’s an intruder!

-Is it those ones skulking around earlier? Get rid of them!

With the alarm, Ibinta issued commands nonchalantly.

Five seconds after the floor collapsed:

-The intruder’s stronger than we thought! It looks like a battle mage!

-Block the passage and activate the traps.

He shrugged off the next report too. No normal battle mage could break through that easily.

Ten seconds after the floor collapsed:

-We’ve shut the ways and opened the walls! We’ll trap the new ones and wear them down!

-Good. Let’s see what the newbies can do.

Ibinta chuckled, hearing his expensive dwarf-built corridors were finally paying off. Any trapped battle mages would have to contend with bandits from all sides.

…Fifteen seconds after the floor collapsed:

-The fortress is collapsing!!!

-What? What? WHAT???

In his luxurious chamber at the fortress’s lowest level, Ibinta called for subordinates, but none answered.

In their place, the only reply was the groaning sound of the fortress being shaken and torn apart.

He kept yelling into the communication tubes scattered around, but only a dreadful silence came back.

As the panic sobered him, Ibinta immediately decided: he’d leave everything behind, cast the cloak’s magic, and burrowed into the dirt.

“That cloak—so that’s how you slipped through. Moradi, that has to be an ancient artifact. The magic’s very unusual.”

Lee Han whispered.

He’d figured Ibinta got up here by swimming through the earth with the power of the cloak, avoiding Perkuntra’s sweep entirely.

The magic coating it felt like a kind not seen in the modern Empire. If possible, Lee Han wanted to analyze it firsthand.

“What’re you whispering about! A sneak attack won’t work on me!”

Ibinta growled.

He thinks the two battle mages are plotting a sneak attack.

But with that cloak, surprise attacks were useless. Ibinta glared at the mages menacingly.

‘…Better not mention Wardanaz was analyzing magic in the middle of all this.’

Giselle considered provoking, but decided against it.

Too much provocation might backfire.

And their foe was already on edge enough—he was the gang boss whose fortress had been obliterated in under a minute, after all.

“Was it because of that guy? Kitarenanum? I never should’ve taken him in…”

“What!? Kitarenanum was here?!”

Now it was Lee Han’s turn to be shocked.

He’d thought the magic criminal had died during the void monster incident, but he was alive.

‘How did he survive?’

“…You didn’t come here because of Kitarenanum?”

Ibinta was even more confused.

He’d naturally assumed all this chaos was because of Kitarenanum.

“There was some high-level magic outside, so I thought it was strange—it must’ve been Kitarenanum’s.”

“Then why the heck did you come?!”

“To check for an evil god cultist.”

“…?”

Ibinta doubted his hearing.

There were plenty of criminals hiding in this underground fortress, but not a single evil god cultist among them.

“There isn’t anyone like that here. Who are you talking about? Which cult?”

“I see. None, huh. That’s a relief.”

“……”

Ibinta felt like a chill icicle had stabbed him in the spine at the mage’s answer.

So—

…Without even knowing if one was here, he’d started all this just to check?!

Ibinta’s face went through the full color spectrum. It would have made more sense if these guys had come for his old reputation or to take down the bandits.

“That’s your excuse?!”

“I didn’t know it was such a large-scale group either. But you picked a fight, so I had no choice.”

Lee Han was matter-of-fact.

Originally, he had just planned to quickly check if there was a cultist while Professor Voladi was distracted, but the scale ballooned because the bandits had confronted him.

Blood trickled from Ibinta’s mouth. Giselle wondered if he might just collapse.

“…Then answer this: Why, with no time to spare for running, am I standing here talking to you?”

Ibinta’s voice gleamed with cunning. At that, Giselle flinched.

‘Wait… Don’t tell me…? No, it should be fine.’

From her perspective, Wardanaz wasn’t one to lose a battle of wits.

And her prediction was spot on.

Lee Han, unconcerned, replied.

“That’s because you were waiting for the cloak’s power to recover.”

Having recognized the class of magic from afar, of course he’d sense that its power was still recharging.

Ibinta was truly shocked.

“You knew?!”

“I did.”

“…And you think you can still take me down when the cloak’s ready? Arrogant bastard. I’ll—”

“No, not at all.”

As the words left Ibinta’s mouth, Perkuntra burst up through the ground below, lightning body spearing into Ibinta and dropping him instantly.

As he fell, Ibinta faintly heard the mage say,

“I was resummoning my spirit, too.”

Apologies. Got overexcited and drifted too far.

“No matter how it is, you shouldn’t wander off that far.”

‘The spirit… is still… summoned…?’

With fading consciousness, Ibinta glanced at the battle mage.

He hadn’t noticed when his fortress was being destroyed, but those features now seemed familiar.

Where had he seen him before?

-To sum up, the problem is as follows. Famine due to plague, threat from a rebel-bandit alliance, monster army pouring down the mountains due to mana surges. I can only stay two days in this dimension, so I’ll have to solve them in order. Send letters to each house for food requisition. I’ll handle the bandits and monster horde myself.

-?!!

‘I remember…!’

Back when Ibinta left -Canglea’s Prospecters-.

He had taken a commission from the rebels during the southern eruption chaos and infiltrated the Empire as a spy.

And then, for the first time, saw a great archmage in person.

How that archmage browbeat the rebellious southern houses into meekness was astonishing, but the most amazing part…

In less than half a day, he wiped out the alliance of rebels and bandits and even subjugated the monster horde.

-As for the loot, distribute it among the families as listed in the ledger. Marcio and Bicale will complain, so give them half at first and the full amount if they protest. The Laren family is desperate for Duke Gonadaltes’ praise, so send a personal letter of commendation. It’s a fake, but they’ll never notice…

Calmly returning to order the Empire’s bureaucrats about the aftermath, so chilling that Ibinta had resolved—

Never again to belong to an organization that might face off with a great archmage!

Other -Canglea’s Prospecters- adventurers laughed off “so what if it’s a great archmage,” but Ibinta’s spirit had been utterly broken.

Remembering how he fled that time, he also recalled the archmage’s background.

He was certainly the eldest son and heir of a great noble house…

‘Wardanaz house…!!’

Ibinta blacked out with this realization, muttering one last time,

“If you’re from the Wardanaz house… you could have just said so…!”

“??!”