"Thanks to you, we're getting some rather unfriendly looks."
"Hm? Are we?"
Yusillad, city of mingled peaks great and small — and because of that terrain, night falls early here. In the early evening, Ran and Moor were walking through the city.
There were streetlamps, but the dark still narrowed their sight, making faces that much harder to make out. And yet the hostility carried through the darkness all the same.
Moor could feel it plainly: the people of this city resented them. Ran, on the other hand, didn't seem to give it a thought.
"What do you mean, 'are we'? This is all your fault."
Worn out by Ran's easy calm, Moor shook his head and drew a cigarette from his coat.
"Really? Nobody's charged at us like those mages did, so I hadn't noticed."
Ran shrugged as he answered and took a look around.
"Right — and that's entirely thanks to these clothes we're wearing. See? Aren't you glad you joined the Church?"
Moor said it with a smile, watching him. Ran didn't bother to answer. Each time they passed beneath a streetlamp, Moor's cigarette smoke and the lamplight seemed to blend into one and wrap around the two of them.
How far had they walked from their hotel? Moor and Ran arrived before an enormous mansion.
"This it?"
When Moor, walking a step ahead, came to a stop, Ran looked at him for a moment — then turned his eyes back to the mansion.
The mansion had a great gate of thick iron bars, and its stone walls stood high. Beyond the gate lay a yard done up as a garden, where even in the dark, red roses stood out vivid to the eye. The mansion itself was a very large three-story building.
"Probably — according to what the informants gave us, anyway."
CRASH—!
The words had barely left his mouth when a tremendous sound erupted from the plaza some distance behind them, and dense, concentrated mana surged skyward. Both of them spun around by reflex.
The first thing to fill their eyes was a gigantic summoned beast rampaging through the city plaza. The dark blurred its outline, but every time its massive body moved, buildings crumbled and debris came flying.
"Mass like that... whoever owns it must hold a staggering amount of mana."
"It's a Sage!"
Moor rolled up his left sleeve; Ran drew his sword. Moor's face was grave — and in perfect contrast, Ran's was positively glowing.
The summoned beast heaved its bulk along, as if trying to catch something — though in the dark, there was no telling what.
In mere moments, its violent thrashing was smashing the city's buildings to pieces.
Ran bounced in place like a ball once or twice, and then, unable to contain his excitement, took off toward the giant summoned beast. 'Running' was hardly the word — he was bounding across rooftops at something closer to flight.
"Hah... how many times do I have to tell him not to just bolt off like that."
Moor sighed, and was about to fly after Ran when he sensed a presence at his side.
"Oh?! You?"
Where Moor turned stood the girl mage who had lashed out at them that afternoon.
"Why are you here? And is that out there your people's doing too?"
Her voice was low, and the hostility in it was bare.
"As you can see, not remotely... Going to attack us again, like before? If not, I'd quite like to go investigate that thing."
Moor jerked a thumb at the summoned beast in the plaza behind him. Ran's headlong charge worried him, but he wasn't about to turn his back on someone who had attacked him only hours ago.
"If that's your worry, don't be. He will surely take care of it."
"'He'?"
The words had scarcely left her mouth when an alien mana appeared — on an entirely different order from before.
His firm resolve about never turning his back on a recent attacker utterly forgotten, Moor swung his gaze toward the source of it.
'This feeling — no question about it!'
Ignoring the girl mage, Moor went straight after Ran.
CRASH—!
With a roar like space itself tearing, a beam of light fell from the sky — and punched clean through the summoned beast's head. The creature that moments before had raged as if it could level mountains was subdued in an instant, and just like that, it ceased to exist.
"Aaargh!"
A lone scream rang out with the enormous blast.
Where the summoned beast had vanished, four mages lay sprawled. Three looked to be out cold; only one still kept his feet, and barely.
"Arrest them!"
Imperial soldiers — appeared from who knew where — were already subduing the fallen mages.
'Subduing' was a generous word. They were simply tying up men already past all resistance.
"Sage, are you unharmed?"
"Yes. Not a scratch."
The Sage who had broken the summoned beast in a single stroke descended from the sky at a leisurely pace. The Imperial Army lieutenant responsible for the city's order hurried to his side to ask after him.
"Thank you, Sage!"
The commotion had been loud enough to draw a crowd within moments — and all of them were cheering, each in their own way, for the man who had ended it.
For someone called a Sage, he looked young. He wore a golden robe much the color of his own hair, and in his left hand he carried a wooden staff.
"Let go of me! It's not me you should be arresting — it's that piece of garbage! You're all being deceived!!"
Only the one mage still conscious struggled, thrashing in their grip. He seemed to be wringing the last of his strength into that scream — but no one lent his words an ear.
"Found you!"
With that cry, Ran leaped over the crowd and the soldiers alike, and brought his sword down like a falling axe on the golden-haired man at their center.
CLANG—!
Ran had put his full weight behind the blade, but the Sage blocked it lightly with his staff.
And it was no simple block — some other sorcery must have been woven in, because Ran's body was flung far beyond what the motion should have thrown, and he landed hard.
"Oh! Silver hair, silver eyes — so you're the one the children spoke of?"
"You know me?"
The Sage's air of knowing him threw Ran for half a beat — but only half, and then he was charging the man again.
But before Ran's sword could reach the Sage, binding spells came flying at him from every direction.
Unlike last time, though, he batted the incoming spells away with his blade or slipped around them.
The price was that the distance between him and the Sage opened up again.
"Outsider! Your rampage ends here. Arrest him as well!"
At the shout of the imperial officer in charge of the city's order, dozens of soldiers ringed Ran with drawn swords. Some rushed him at once — and went sprawling from a few casual kicks.
"Why is the Imperial Army covering for that damn Sage?"
"That's my question! I'd love to know why a paladin has come to our city to run wild."
As he spoke, the officer flicked a small hand signal to his men.
The moment it fell, soldiers charged and spells flew. As tactics went, it looked recklessly dangerous, but not one soldier flinched as they bore down on Ran.
"Stay out of my way!"
Ran shifted his two-handed grip on his sword and snapped it up across his shoulder.
Then he swung it in one great arc across the space before him.
'Marcel-Style Glacier Cleave.'
From the path of the blade, a slash of silver light rippled out in every direction. Spells that touched that silver froze solid where they were, and the wind pressure of the swing bowled the imperial soldiers over backward.
"Hey! You know I'm a paladin and you're attacking me anyway?"
"From where I stand, you just struck my men."
"Are you kidding me?! That was self-defense!"
"After your little rampage this afternoon, we checked with the Church of Radiant Light. They say they never dispatched any paladin to this city. As for what you really are — we'll hear the details at the station."
The soldiers at the rear, untouched by Ran's strike, rushed him again.
"You... enough already!"
Ran gritted his teeth, and in the instant before he could swing again, black mana flooded the whole space like a fog, blanketing everyone's sight.
"Hey, Ran... I don't care how desperate things get, you don't cut people."
"Don't worry! I used the flat!"
Moor clapped Ran on the shoulder and drew part of the black fog of mana back into himself.
Their sight briefly walled off by Moor's mana, the soldiers faltered.
"Ah — first things first. My apologies for the scare, our boy charging in out of nowhere like that."
Moor took a moment to survey the scene he had landed in. Then his eyes met the Sage's.
"You'd be this city's Sage, yes? The one who put down that giant summoned beast just now."
"And if I am?"
The Sage stepped forward as he answered.
"As you can see, we're paladins of the Church. The timing's a bit late for this, I'll admit — but if you're willing, could we move somewhere else and talk?"
"Hey! Moor! Talk? What are you talking about?"
"My thought exactly. What talk could we possibly have, standing here? And are you two even truly paladins?"
The Sage answered Moor as if he could scarcely believe the request.
"Yeah! What talk! Let's just beat him down and drag him off!"
"Gahahaha! A fiery one, this young friend! Well then — have you the skill to match?"
The Sage answered Ran with a laugh, entirely at his ease. But in utter contrast to his tone, his mana was raging.
In an instant, the rubble of the ruined buildings rose over the heads of the crowd. In another, it was ground fine as powder and packed into a cone — and then it shot straight at Moor and Ran.
"That much mass — with no incantation, no gesture..."
Moor threw up his left hand and formed a magic barrier. The letters on his arm began to glow in rhythm with the flow of his mana, and his mouth worked through an incantation.
Once more their surroundings were swallowed in Moor's black mana — and in the same breath, the Sage's spell slammed into Moor's defense.
CRASH—!
A shockwave burst out with a tremendous crack.
Most of the people there were knocked off their feet by it. Even Moor staggered for a moment — then pulled himself together fast and rolled up his right sleeve.
"Those runes... Planning to run? From me?"
The Sage had read Moor's escape for what it was, and cast a spell to jam movement-type magic.
"Sharp eyes, too. Wonderful..."
Moor drew the mana he had readied for teleportation back out of his right arm, converted it on the spot into attack magic — three longswords — and hurled them at the Sage.
"Oh! Fast conversion, nothing wasted. Competent."
"Praise for my magic from a Sage himself — I'm honored beyond words!"
Moor poured out more of his mana, thickening the black fog.
"Blind me and slip away, is that the plan? No, no."
The moment the Sage finished speaking, the black fog around him vanished clean away — and swords took shape in the sky, dozens of them, each the size of a castle tower, beyond any comparison to the blades Moor had conjured.
The conjured swords rained down on Moor and Ran as one.
Moor formed his defensive magic fast, but under that overwhelming mass, the translucent barrier soon broke.
Ran shot out in front of Moor and met the attack spells squeezing through the barrier with his own sword.
Magic that touched Ran's blade seemed to stiffen for a heartbeat — then shattered like breaking ice.
"Moor! Get back — I'll handle this!"
"No! Ran, there are too many people arou—"
Before the two could finish, the Sage closed the distance in a blink, right on top of them.
"Enough leisure to chat — against me?"
A spell formula in runes raced up across the Sage's skin.
In the same instant that Moor and Ran both felt disaster coming, an axe came flying down at the Sage from above.
CLANG—!
The Sage stepped lightly back out of its path, and the axe buried itself in the ground.
"Both of you — this way."
A familiar voice.
Moor made the call instantly: he gathered his mana and clapped his hands.
At the clap, the scattered remnants of his black fog burst outward like a smoke grenade going off.
The Sage responded by scouring the air around himself clear to recover his sight — but by then, the two were already gone.
"Sage, are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine — but losing them like that is troublesome."
The Imperial Army officer came up to the Sage, checking his condition as he spoke.
The Sage's face creased with regret.
"Don't trouble yourself over it — see to your affairs. We'll catch them."
"Truth be told, I'd love to catch them myself, but I have important business today and tomorrow. I leave it in your hands."
***
"Moor, did you see their faces?"
In a dark, unlit room, Ran put the question to Moor with a deadly serious look.
"If you mean the ones the Imperial Army arrested — yeah, I saw. They were all the ones who attacked us this afternoon..."
Moor answered from where he lay sprawled across the room's sofa, sounding drained.
"But those guys were supposed to be the Sage's students, weren't they? So why? And you, mister — why?"
Ran turned around, his gaze going to the person who had helped them.
There stood the hot dog vendor from that afternoon.
"That's precisely what I'd like to ask. You, young man — what is it you've done to me?"