Sol carefully dug through the black-robed mage’s belongings. Aside from his wands, he had nothing on him that would give away where he was from. But since this was a lunatic who would attack a train full of children, he decided to dig a bit deeper.

“Wouldn’t you know it? This dumbass really was part of a cult,” Sol laughed when he saw the large ‘R’ brand on the mage’s chest. “…I still haven’t gotten over calling them mages. Wizards, they are wizards now.”

The black-robed wizard had a huge ‘R’ on his chest that was cauterized. Sol shook his head, “Crazy bastards….” He took out his wand and pointed at the wizard, “Incarcerous!” Rope began to spring from the tip of the wand and slithered on the wizard; it traveled all over his body and tightened. He was now tied up exactly the way Sol wanted. He also took the wizard’s wand and broke it.

After he was done, he began to move toward the back of the train again with his wand drawn. He had a headache. “Just how can R do this? Is the Law of the World going to try and directly suppress the consequences of this attack?”

It was akin to the body raising its temperature to kill off diseases. The Law of the World has started to take drastic actions against him. But considering this world’s level of magic, he didn’t feel like he was in any sort of danger.

As he got closer and closer, a student or two would run away with some sort of injury. One of them grabbed him and said with a frightened expression, “P-Please save my friend. S-She’s trapped under one of the seats.”

Sol agreed to the student’s request dismissively, and the latter ran away. He couldn’t help but feel contempt toward the student. But he still would look for the student’s friend.

When he was going to open the door to enter the next carriage, he heard a march of footsteps from the other side. He hurriedly crouched down so that they wouldn’t see him through the glazing of the door. The footsteps had stopped in front of the door, and the doorknob started to turn. Sol quickly lifted his wand to the glazing and cast, “Bombarda!”

The air in front of his wand exploded and shattered the glazing, sending them flying forward. He heard shrieks from the other side of the door as the doorknob snapped back. He got up, took a step back, and pointed his wand at the door, “Bombarda Maxima!” With a much larger explosion than before, the door flew off its hinges and flew into the next carriage.

“Ack!” the door hit someone, and it bounced back. Sol stepped inside the carriage, and the sight in front of him stunned him. There were three black-robed wizards on the ground with shards of glass stuck to their faces while ten other black-robed wizards stared at him with a similarly stunned expressions.

He chuckled nervously, “Sorry, wrong room.” He turned around to close the door, but he remembered what he just did now. “Ah, fuck….”

“Get that muppet!” one of the black-robed wizards yelled, and all the others took their wands out.

“Stupefy!”

“Expelliarmus!”

“Petrificus Totalus!”

“Reducto!”

“Incendio!”

“Avada Kedavra!”

The wizards threw out spell after spell, each deadlier than the last. Sol kept chanting ‘Protego’ again and again to ward them off. After another volley of spells, he ducked below the last one and chanted, “Locomotor Wibbly!” The wizard at the front that got hit by the spell felt his legs unable to support his weight, and he crashed onto the ground.

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He cast ‘Langlock’ on another wizard, sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth and making him unable to cast a spell. But out of the ten wizards currently fighting, that was only two down. Eight other wizards were still throwing spells at him. The problem was, unlike his enemies, he was limited to non-lethal spells.

After blocking the last spell of another volley, he aimed at the door on the ground and chanted, “Wingardium Leviosa!” The door started levitating, and Sol whipped his wand. The door shot towards the wizards, knocking four more down.

“Oh, yeah?” One of the wizards sneered, “Do you think you’re the only one that can do that?” He went to aim at the door on top of his fallen comrades, but Sol was faster than him. A quick ‘Reducto’ disintegrated the door.

“Opportunity!” Sol’s eyes shone. He whipped his wand at the nearest wizard, “Carpe Retractum!” A string of pure magic shot out of his wand and coiled onto the wizard’s wand. Caught off-guard, the wizard couldn’t react properly as Sol pulled his wand away. Sol broke the wand in half and threw it away.

That wizard dove and took the wand of one of his fallen comrades, but a quick ‘Petrificus Totalus’ made him stiffen and fall.

“Merlin’s Beard, there’s no end to these lunatics!” Sol cursed under his breath. There were only three left, but he was still stuck in a narrow corridor with no way of dodging, and blocking wasn’t going to end this stalemate.

As he continued to block and pick off enemies at any given opportunity, there were only two remaining when he heard, “Have you imbeciles finished taking care of whatever you were doing? I’m getting bored.” The door kicked open, and a flash of orange sprayed out.

“What the fuck?” Sol hurriedly cast Protego twice before the stream of fire could hit him. All of the wizards, both conscious and unconscious, were swallowed whole as their piercing shrieks echoed throughout the carriage. As for Sol, the fire simply parted when it came into contact with his shield.

“Bastard,” Sol cursed as the fire died down. The entire corridor in front of him had been charred black. The smell of burning flesh and wood mixed together in a pungent odor. Sol ripped his gaze away from the charred bodies of the wizards and straight to see the perpetrator.

Inside the devastated carriage stepped a woman with fiery orange hair, blue eyes, sharp eyebrows, and overall sharp facial features, making her look more cold and aloof.

“Ma’am, I think you got your buddies caught in the crossfire,” he gestured at the dead wizards.

“Don’t worry, they’re happy to die for the cause,” the woman smirked.

“I don’t think so…?”

“Why? They’re smiling even now.” She smiled charmingly, which came off as creepy, given the situation.

“Really?” Sol wanted to mock her, but his eyes still went down. The wizards, as charred as they were, had an ear-to-ear grin. “…fucking cults.”

“Sol Balor, is it?” the woman asked.

Sol raised an eyebrow and asked, even though he knew the answer, “You know me?” “Fuck, they’re here for me, aren’t they?”

“Don’t see anyone else with blue eyes, black hair, and a decent face.”

“…Is that how ‘R’ profiles their targets?”

“No, the last one’s all me,” the woman exhaled, “but it’s a shame that that face will have to be ruined now.”

Sol remained silent, but the woman kept speaking, “You’re the only obstacle to our plan for immortality! So, why don’t you give me the key to the next vault, and we’ll set you free?”

Sol stared at her like she was an idiot. He pinched the bridge of his nose and asked, “So, I, a fourteen-year-old student, am the only obstacle to your plans and not the Headmaster, hailed as the strongest wizard alive?”

“Of course, you’re the only one to actually get out of the vaults alive with the key to the next! Of course, there was someone else, but as you can see from the key in your hands, he’s already dead.”

“You guys killed him?”

The woman covered her mouth and chuckled, “Oh heavens, no! If we did, then the key would’ve been in our hands, no? He died in the vaults.”

Sol nodded, his wand still aimed at her, and asked, “Okay, second question, why the hell did you think I would have the key on me? Or rather, on this train?”

“Of course, you would have such an important thing on your person otherwise-” she declared confidently, but when she looked at Sol, biting his lower lip and trying not to laugh, she faltered. Taken aback, she asked, “You… didn’t bring it with you?”

“You’re honestly stupid for thinking I did,” and this time, he really was telling the truth. He left the key with the Headmaster. But their stunt this time made him confirm his conjecture. The Will of the World was not capable of advanced strategies. Because it chose to attack him directly instead of using his family against him, either that or something was stopping it from using his family as hostages. But that ‘something’ could be many things, and now was not the time to be thinking about that.

He could see veins popping in the woman’s temples. He had successfully pissed her off.