Somewhere out in the far northern reaches of the Vizwel Empire, bright orange flames and hordes of monsters rushed out from the distant plains, hoarding over towards the ramshackle village of helpless villagers.
“Help, help!” a young man shouted loudly, running away from a hobgoblin wielding a spear with a tip made out of sharp iron. Hobgoblin archers drew their arrows from the back, and with their release, a rain of sharp wood befell the young man, piercing him from the back and legs.
He fell down to the ground with a painful grunt as blood was drained out of his body. He looked up in fear, to the burning village ahead of him, with teary eyes and gritted teeth.
“Why… Why did you have to do this to us?” he asked, not to the monstrous brutes killing everyone in sight, but to them, the cloaked men in the distance that had clearly instigated this attack.
One of the cloaked men seemed to have heard his aggrieved shout and stared at him, with their face covered in the dark shadows of their hood. He turned to approach the dying young man, and on their wrist, he saw a strange golden sigil in the form of a four-leafed clover glowing dimly with flickering lights.
The cloaked figure stopped and stood right in front of the young man before they crouched down and stared right at him in the eye.
“Defective product…,” the cloaked man mumbled, shaking his head in disappointment. In the next moment, he waved his hand and a goblin came into view wielding a crude stone dagger.
“Here, stab him there,” the man ordered, pointing at his right eye.
“W-Wait, who are you guys?! Why are you doing this to us?!” the man shouted, with blood flowing out of his crooked mouth.
The cloaked man ignored him, standing up silently as the goblin approached him closer with a malicious gaze. It shrieked and grunted, letting out a wretched moan, “Kekekeke!”
With a sadistic smile, the goblin stabbed the stone dagger deep into the man’s eye, piercing it through his brain, but the man remained at the border of death, screaming loudly in this torturous living hell.
The cloaked figure that inspected the dying man walked up to his fellow cloaked men who were dragging people into one large cage subdivided into different containers, either by knocking them unconscious or paralyzing them.
“How many did we gather?” he asked one of the cloaked men guarding the large cage.
“About fifty, while around seventy died,” they answered.
“Sigh, sometimes I think the boss is just too paranoid with his plans, but oh well, if we were as smart as him, we wouldn’t be just mere grunts now, aren’t we?” the man laughed and patted the guard on the back.
“True,” they sighed.
“Oh well, once his experiments are done, we’ll probably move on to more daring tasks!” he exclaimed. “The boss really is amazing. With just a couple of weeks, our organization has expanded over a hundred members!”
“Of course he’s amazing!” said the guard proudly. “He’s the boss!”
“Right, right,” said the man. “Enough bootlicking now, we still have a few other villages to ransack so the boss can finally finish his little project.”
The guard nodded his head and talked to the other guards. As the cloaked men gathered into one big circle, the golden clover on their wrists glowed brightly, and in a flash of bright golden light, they disappeared in the blink of an eye.
What was left of the peaceful village was a burning disaster, with monsters roaming around the open streets, munching on human flesh or destroying remnant buildings.
…
Anna sat down on the ground with crossed legs. In front of her, water spirits swirled on top of a bowl of water as they looked curiously at her.
“Nghh!” she groaned. The water on the bowl shook for a moment before rising to the air, swirling and transforming into an almost-perfect sphere of liquid. Next, she waved her arms apart, splitting the sphere into two orbs of water.
“How crude,” Noel hummed. He stood right beside her, with a solar system of water spheres floating ahead of him, displaying his skilled control of water magic, and mana in general.
“Shut up, you friggin genius!” Anna grunted. She squinted her eyes, splitting the two spheres into four, and the difficulty exponentially rose. As the four spheres rotated in a circle, beads of sweat dripped down her forehead in a struggle to control them and keep them as spherical as they could be.
“How do you even struggle with such a simple control exercise?” Noel murmured in disappointment.
Anna inwardly shouted in anger. Controlling four spheres of water was as easy as breathing for her, especially with spirit magic, but this doofus beside her wanted it to be exemplary, and now, she was stuck in an endless loop of refining her very basics of mana control. She couldn’t just half-ass her attempt and create a not-so-perfect sphere of water, it needed to actually be a perfect sphere!
In the end, she relented as she lost control over the four orbs of water, and the spirits around her skillfully controlled the falling water to land inside the bowl.
“Why am I even doing this in the first place?!” Anna shouted in a helpless tone.
“It’s because you’re my assistant,” Noel answered blandly. “Your spirit magic is also quite unique, so I want to see how having greater mana control would affect your ability to use your spirit magic. Would your control over the elements marginally increase, or would it explosively rise with a greater foundation?”
“Magic is the exploration of the arcane secrets, my dear Auburn, and it is my purpose to unveil its mysteries,” said Noel, his rainbow-colored eyes gleaming brightly under the illumination of the sun, along with his dazzling smile, even Anna’s heart skipped a beat by the majestic sight.
But she quickly controlled her feelings as she remembered who the man was. If she wasn’t careful, she might just die because of Noel!
“We’ll continue with your practice after a while,” Noel added, waving his hand to form an illusory timer placed on the wall nearby.
“Ugh, fine,” Anna sighed.
She then ignored Noel entirely and instead prompted herself to focus on the surprisingly large and decent laboratory they were in. She’d expect that with his commoner decent, he wouldn’t be able to afford something nicer, but she had underestimated the Archmage of Miracles once again.
Of course, he’s also good at making money. What is he not even good at at this point? Anna thought with an envious frown. Talented bastards, all of them! Noel, Rob, when would they stop haunting me?!
“Oh, I’ve almost forgotten,” said Noel as he came to a pause.
“What did you almost forget?” asked Anna, waving her arms around in the air to interact with the invisible spirits floating around her.
“We’re going to Barem,” Noel declared.
“Barem?” Anna hummed, scratching her chin over that familiar name. “Wait, you mean that Barem? The one close to the Northern Wilderness?!”
The Northern Wilderness, the Great Northern Woods, the Great Northern Forest, or whatever other name it had, is a famous landmark for the citizens of the Vizwel Empire since it’s a large, large plot of land free for the taking.
But, because that place is full of dangerous beasts, with no lack of S Rank monsters like the Shadow Specter or Mountain Crawler, the empire had been unable to access that lush land full of resources.
One of the villages that lived close to the Northern Woods is Barem, a small little village with a quaint atmosphere. Even with its close proximity to the dangerous place, it surprisingly hadn’t faced much problems and was just overall peaceful in general.
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The only reason Anna knew such a random village was that one of her classmates lived there in her childhood before her family moved to the royal capital for greater prospects.
“Yes, that Barem,” Noel said and nodded his head. “As for why? We’re heading there for a little… harvest.”
That node of mana crystals must have grown greatly after hundreds of years. The array that I had set up back then should still be working as long as the crystals exist to power them, so no one else should have gotten to that place yet. Noel thought with a grin. With that, I’ll be able to drastically increase my mana reserves and fund more of my experiments.
“How are we even going there? Even if the capital is quite close to the northern front, we should still expect-“
“I can teleport,” Noel answered flatly.
“Oh, ah,” Anna hummed. I almost forgot about that part. So who cares if it’s such a long distance away, he’s the goddamn Archmage here!
“Fine, let’s go then. I want some fresh air anyway,” Anna mumbled and stood up with a groan.
She approached Noel, who in return stomped his foot to the ground a complex circle of dense formulas appeared beneath their feet. It rapidly expanded and enveloped them in a cylinder of light, before the light then blinded her completely and caused her to close her eyes.
…
The moment Anna opened her eyes, she expected to find herself in a serene village surrounded by lush grass and tall trees, with children frolicking around while the seniors tended to the cats wandering the streets.
Instead, she saw something way out of her expectations.
Flames burst into the air, dying the blue sky with a reddish hue. Monsters roamed the streets, chowing down on human corpses or destroying the houses of the villagers. Not even a single human scream could be heard, and only the shriek of monsters echoed in the quaint village.
Anna covered her mouth, holding back the bile and puke that was about to erupt from her mouth. Her mind turned dizzy as her heartbeat rose. Her pupils dilated as she looked at the mess ahead, with pools of blood and flesh splattered everywhere.
Noel stared at the burning village with an impassive face and silently cast a spell on Anna, covering her in a dim pink glow. She instantly felt a lot calmer and relieved, while the urge to puke disappeared.
“T-Thanks,” she mumbled and wiped her lips. She still remained shaken though even with Noel’s magical assistance shown by her trembling legs and quivering eyes.
Noel glanced at her with squinted eyes and released a sigh containing mixed emotions between understanding and displeasure. He raised his arm and multiple glacial spears formed in the air around him, releasing frosty ice energy into the surrounding area.
“Let’s deal with the monsters for now. As for the investigations, we’ll do that later once we're done,” he ordered with a calm tone and the glacial spears flew forward at breakneck speeds, impaling various monsters and exploding into a burst of cold air and falling snowflakes which then caused the fire to die down.
Anna was wakened up by his actions and she quickly acted as well.
She pressed her hands forward and swung them to the sides. The air in the surrounding village rapidly dispersed as one flame to another died down with the lack of oxygen, while monsters were pushed alongside the gusts of wind into the outer periphery of the burnt land.
A long while later, Anna found herself panting heavily, with her clothes covered in sweat and her mana reserves nearly empty. Monster corpses, burned and charred, chopped and sliced, surrounded the two humans who looked around the empty and lifeless village.
“Tch, no bodies to reanimate, or souls to question,” said Noel, clicking his tongue in slight annoyance as they wandered through the city with charred corpses. “If I had a relatively intact corpse with a functioning brain, we’d have a zombie already.”
Anna normally would have teased Noel about his apparent knowledge of necromancy, but right now, she didn’t even have the mood to joke. She looked at the corpses all around her, their missing limbs, half-eaten bellies, and wide, fear-stricken eyes.
“Why did the monsters attack-“
“It’s not just monsters,” Noel interjected. “It’s too thorough, there’s not even a single slightly intact corpse here. And there are missing bodies, I’ve counted.”
“Missing bodies?!” Anna widened her eyes. She could remember a few villains in the game that dabbled in necromancy, but as far as she knew and remembered, nothing had happened to Barem.
“It shouldn’t be for necromancy,” added Noel as he scratched his chin. “If it was for necromancy, they wouldn’t have wasted these bodies like this. As for who did this, or which group, no clue.”
“They must have had some powerful anti-divination because no results are popping up,” said Noel. As he said so, he turned to look back at Anna and squinted his eyes. “Why don’t you try using your spirit magic to ask the spirits for what they’ve seen?”
“O-Oh, right! I can do that!” she exclaimed and quickly got to action. All around her, spirits of different elements gathered, and after a short while, the two watched as an illusory screen appeared in front of them.
The screen displayed a video full of magical interference, with static and blurred colors here and there, but overall, their defense against the spirits wasn’t so great, and the two managed to get a general idea of what had happened.
Out of nowhere, at the break of dawn, shadowy, blurry figures (because of the interference) suddenly barged into the city and started to kill everyone. From the various cuts and skips in the video, they could see near the end that the shadowy humanoid creatures gathered living humans, based on what they could visibly see, and disappeared in a burst of light that further corrupted the video.
“They can even interfere with the spirits,” Anna mumbled in slight worry.
“It’s not that hard if you know what you’re doing,” Noel corrected her worry. “But still an impressive feat nonetheless. They’ve blocked almost everything about them from leaking out. We don’t even know what they look like, what they sound like, or anything, really.”
“This shows that they’re not some disorganized group like bandits plundering for loot… They must be an organized organization, with an unknown number of members and great anti-tracking and anti-divination methods,” said Noe. He then took one last look at the destroyed village with slight pity in his indifferent eyes and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I guess that’s that.”
He looked away from the village and gazed at the surrounding wilderness.
Just as he was about to take a step forward, Anna shouted, “What do you mean that’s that?!”
“Huh?” Noel moved his gaze back at Anna as if he was looking at a fool. “What are you waiting for? We went here for my harvest, remember?”
“Are you really planning on leaving this place already?!” Anna looked at Noel, her eyes furious and laced with shock. “Didn’t you see what happened here?! They massacred over a hundred people! They burnt down a village! And you’re planning on just ignoring that entirely as if it’s none of your business?!”
“It is none of my business,” Noel responded blandly. “In fact, we’ve done more than what we needed to do so. We helped them get rid of the fire, killed the monsters that killed them, and allowed the remaining corpses to remain barely human rather than smoldering ashes.”
“The one who’s strange is you,” said Noel. “I’ve never taken you as a selfless woman who’d put their life at risk for helping others. You should remember that we’re dealing with an organized group here, not a single, evil individual.”
“We have no clues, no leads, and doing so would just cause us unnecessary harm.” Noel’s gaze turned cold and frosty, sending shivers down Anna’s spine, but it was as if a voice urged her from the back of her mind, telling her that she should help and bring justice.
“But… but! They-“
“You’re not the protagonist here, Anna,” said Noel flatly, his voice like a droplet of water that pierced straight through her heart and causing the voice at the back of her head to disappear. “Not me, not you. No one on this world can be considered the protagonist. If you want to change the world, then I’m not stopping you, but if you think can do so right now, then you’re sorely mistaken.”
“You’re pitifully weak, it’s that simple. Heroes of old and champions that had blazed forth like shining stars were like mountains among ant hills. They were strong and stood at the peak,” advised Noel. “I’m weak, you’re weak, so you better stop your heroic thoughts and return back to reality.”
“I…” Anna bit her lips as she clutched her rapidly beating heart. “You’re right.”
“I was being stupid for thinking that way,” she murmured underneath her breath.
“Good.” Noel smiled, but then paused and said with eyes shining with curiosity, “Although I am quite curious about the people behind this slaughter. If we gain clues later, and we’re sufficiently strong, I wouldn’t mind playing detective for a little while.”
Unknowingly, Anna’s clear mind felt that tingle return, and a smile bloomed on her face, “Really?”
“I’m not promising anything,” warned Noel.
“Besides that, let’s get going already. I still have a lot of research to do later,” murmured Noel.
With their new agreement, Anna followed Noel from the back while taking one last look at the charred corpses and burnt village around her, and silently swore in her heart, This is the best I can do for now. If fate permits, then you guys will hopefully receive the justice you deserve…
…
Upon arriving at the entrance of the cave, Noel came to a halt as he stared at the broken seal that had hidden and locked away this cave for centuries. From the weird ambient mana, he could decipher that this seal had been recently broken, and a bad feeling rose up in his heart.
He unknowingly hastened his step as he entered the cave with cold eyes. When he saw an empty cave with no signs of mana crystals in sight, he felt his stomach drop.
Anna gasped upon arriving inside the cave, but just as she was about to say something, a floating message appeared abruptly in the air in the form of a written letter made with illusion magic and a simple array.
“Ohohoho, looks like someone was a little greedy here and waited a little too long to harvest their mana crystals! It seems like the luck of Mammon Heist is truly unparalleled to find this small fortune!”
“Side note, those invaders were really scary. I was just wandering around the place when I saw them massacring those people. Like, damn bro, so much blood and gore!”
“Anyways, that’s that. Losers lose and winners win, am I right?”
As the message flickered to nothingness, Anna looked at Noel’s face and was met with his chilly gaze. Quickly turning to look away, she felt her heart skip a beat as Noel’s bloodlust came to an all-time high.
“Mammon Heist, huh?” he said through gritted teeth and clenched his fists tightly with his knuckles turning white. “I’ll let you receive the achievement of having your name personally remembered by me.”
…
“Let’s hope Mammon Heist wouldn’t be associated with those dubious men anytime soon with that big brain scheme of mine,” a man with pitch black skin, a faceless head, wearing a white lab coat and white lab gown murmured silently as a fresh human corpse was dissected right in front of him, with their skin sprouting a strange form of a metallic black object.