"Last thing — whatever you do, don't kill the telekinetic. Understood?"
"Why?"
The day of the operation, on the ground floor of Trier Guild's building. Ran and Moor were drinking coffee amid guild members hurrying back and forth.
Moor had been laying the Benediction Arts on the weapons of every person going into the operation since morning, and it had left him thoroughly drained.
Even in that state, he was giving Ran his final instructions.
"He has to be in reasonably good shape to make his way back to the main camp. He needs to rampage a bit to stir things up — and that's what will make it easier to find the alchemist Sage behind all this. Isn't it?"
"Ah! Is that it? Wouldn't it be better if we all just looked together? He could slip away in the confusion."
"Not this time. We have to find him first."
"Huh?"
Ran's face said he truly didn't follow.
"Well... it's your plan, so I'm sure there's a reason. But won't that mean heavier losses?"
"Does that matter?"
"Hmm. Not in the slightest."
Ran answered with a small smile. It reminded him again that Moor, more humane than himself in general, was every bit as hard a line on the subject of Sages.
Ran liked that about him a great deal.
"Besides, the telekinetic being gone is no guarantee at all that the main force wins. Same goes for the other side."
"Hm? What are you talking about? You've been like this a while now."
"Put simply, the operation looks plausible but it's far too flimsy. Strangely so."
From Ran's point of view, Moor was making an unusual amount of no sense today.
The busy hours passed, the preparations were finished, and everyone moved to their assigned positions. Ran and Moor went to the operation headquarters to follow the situation.
Overall, things went smoothly. The guild's adventurers formed parties and struck their assigned sectors. Scattered raids. Caught off guard, the enemy couldn't respond, and Trier's adventurers looked to be locking in the advantage.
The party leaders relayed all of this over the communication devices.
But the favorable mood lasted only a moment; reports began coming in of the kind no one had heard yet.
The common thread: a small group armed with rare metal had appeared from somewhere, and their overwhelming ability was cutting the guild members down.
And yet the center only listened to the scream-filled reports — offering no answer, and taking no action.
"Why are you doing nothing?"
In that situation, Russell alone spoke up urgently. But neither the Imperial Army nor the Laican retainers reacted at all.
"That esper hasn't appeared yet, has he?"
"What did you say?"
With guild members he thought of as his own children in danger, Russell looked shaken by the captain's words. But only for a moment; he read the situation fast and began issuing orders to every guild member he could still move. In the end he went out of the headquarters tent to give orders to the people outside as well.
A little time passed, and among the many sounds ringing out from the communication devices around them, one struck every ear in the tent.
"Looks like it's time."
The situation was plainly bad. And yet the Imperial Army captain spoke drily, as though every other disturbance had nothing to do with her.
At her hand signal, several soldiers ran out.
Then the captain rose slowly from her seat. After a short pause she too went outside, and the Laican Domain's retainers followed her.
Moor and Ran made to follow as well.
"We ask that the two of you wait here for now. The sorcerers here will assist you with the teleport."
The Laican retainer stopped Ran and Moor from following. At the same time he gave instructions to three sorcerers.
"Don't push yourselves too far, either of you."
And so, leaving Ran and Moor behind, the rest of them went out of the headquarters. Not long after, a great roar of voices began.
The three sorcerers who had just received the retainer's instructions led Ran and Moor to the opposite side.
"You remember everything we talked about, yes?"
"Hm?"
"Never mind. Forget it."
The three sorcerers stood outside a circular formula, with Moor and Ran inside it.
On the teleport array, Moor put the question to Ran as a last check — and Ran looked back at him with an expression of total incomprehension.
"We'll send you now. May fortune go with you."
One of the three sorcerers gave Ran and Moor a parting greeting. Then he fed mana into the formula at once.
Space seemed to crumple, their sight blurred for a moment, and then it cleared.
A moment ago they had stood in a warm room; the view before them now was savage beyond description.
A rocky canyon of mingled black and brown. Beside the jagged upthrust boulders, people lay bleeding.
"And what are you two supposed to be?"
Ran and Moor turned their heads upward toward the voice at the same moment.
There, a man with long black hair was looking down at them from the sky.
"Going by the description, that would be... hm? Doesn't quite fit."
Moor spoke as he studied the man hanging in the air.
He looked remarkably young. And the vast mana that did not match that face registered as wrong.
"Have you come to help?"
A man lying bleeding nearby spoke with difficulty at the sight of Ran and Moor. His gear marked him as one of the adventurers who had arrived earlier.
"Ah! Something like that, yes."
Moor checked the fallen man's condition by feel and cast the Benediction Arts on him. Even so, his eyes never left the enemy in front of him.
"I could almost believe this one's a Sage."
Moor regarded the man with open interest, while Ran didn't answer at all, his face full of discontent.
"Be careful. Nearly everyone here was taken down by that one man..."
Steadier now, the man warned Ran and Moor.
"Another dud. What's going on?"
Ran looked at Moor, dissatisfaction written all over him.
The quantity and quality of the mana fell hopelessly short of a Sage's — and above all, the scent of remains that only Ran could perceive was absent. Which meant their opponent was an ordinary sorcerer, without so much as a piece of remains.
"I told you in advance what we're really after... oh, damn!"
CRASH—!
"What are you two muttering about! Huh?"
Their opponent had no intention of waiting for Moor and Ran to finish talking. He fired a telekinetic cannon at them with clear intent to kill. Neither of them so much as flinched.
Moor had formed a defensive ward the instant the mana flow around the telekinetic shifted.
"You said just buy time, right?"
"That part you remember."
Moor nodded as he answered. The moment he had Moor's confirmation, Ran leaped straight at the telekinetic.
Startled, the man climbed higher. Ran stretched out a hand to grab him, missed by a hair, and landed back on the ground.
"Die!"
The telekinetic began pouring telekinetic cannon fire down at Ran. Bombardment powerful beyond anything one person's output should produce began sweeping the earth.
Moor backed away fast to avoid being caught in the blasts.
Silver energy — deploy.
The continuous mana bombardment began, at a certain moment, to crystallize as though freezing over.
Around Ran, the landscape became rubble and crystallized mana intermingled.
"What is this?"
Ran settled into his stance again. And immediately launched himself at the telekinetic.
This time the telekinetic chose not to climb, but to intercept Ran in flight. It was a serious mistake.
The silver energy pouring off Ran crystallized the bombardment he fired and stripped it of force.
"Got you!"
In the end Ran succeeded in seizing the telekinetic's leg where he hung in the air. And slammed him straight into the ground.
"Aaagh!"
The telekinetic tried to cushion the impact with a mana defense before he hit — but Ran's silver energy left it insufficient, and he took no small amount of the shock.
Landing, Ran grabbed him by the collar before he could move and drove a fist into his face. What followed was a thoroughly one-sided beating.
"Ran! That's enough!"
"Ah!"
At Moor's restraining shout, Ran seemed to come back to himself and paused his fists.
The enemy didn't waste the opening; he immediately made a short-range teleport.
"Cough, cough! Pah!"
He had tried to put as much distance between them as he could, but the silver energy left him struggling to work his mana.
The telekinetic coughed over and over, then spat blood.
"I said just buy time."
"I didn't think he'd be this feeble."
Moor had appeared at his side to needle him, and Ran answered irritably.
"You little—!"
Whether or not he had heard that exchange, the telekinetic drew his mana up again. His long hair began to stream with the rising mana, and around him the mana churned as though a hard wind had risen.
Ran was still releasing his silver energy, so the mana whipping around him crystallized silver. It looked as if a frost wind were blowing around him alone.
The telekinetic compressed the mana he had gathered and shaped it into an attack. Then he poured it down on Ran and Moor.
But almost all of it stopped and crystallized before it could reach Ran.
The moment the enemy's continuous bombardment ended, Ran broke into a run straight at him.
At a speed near to teleportation. The telekinetic couldn't react at all.
In the end Ran's fist struck home — THUD — into the man's stomach.
The impact sent the telekinetic flying until he struck a rock pillar behind him.
"This is insane."
He writhed in pain. But the aggression in his eyes was still very much alive.
'There it is. That's why he got so strong so young.'
Moor watched the telekinetic struggle to his feet and pull a drug from his coat. It told him that the telekinetic, like the ordinary members up northeast, had been enhanced by a drug.
'So it doesn't only raise physical strength? I ought to recover a few and study... hm?!'
Mid-thought, Moor saw the enemy in front of him collapse again the instant he took the drug.
"Moor! What's suddenly wrong with him? I didn't do anything!"
"Ran... it isn't that you did nothing."